Agnes Pochin

GRO Death Index

• POCHIN, AGNES 82
• GRO Reference: 1908 M Quarter in LLANRWST Volume 11B Page 276

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WIKI

Agnes Pochin or Agnes Heap (1825 – 1908) was an early British campaigner for women's rights. She wrote one of the first tracts.

Her sister was married to the chemist James Woolley and she married his business partner Henry Pochin. The marriage took place at the Presbyterian Church in Manchester in 1852.

Pochin wrote in 1855 "The Right of Women to Exercise the Elective Franchise". She argued for not only equal voting rights but also equality with respect to education, divorce, ambition or social aspiration. She wrote that "Women's life in the middle classes is, and has been rendered a dull one". It was signed "Justitia", and it was not published under her name until 1873.

In 1858 Pochin unsuccessfully tried to get John Bright to introduce a women's right to vote clause into his Reform Bill. Bright could see no reason to oppose such a move personally but he thought that including this clause might jeopardise the bill. From 1866 to 1868, her husband was Mayor of Salford

In 1892 she was given the honour of launching the battleship HMS Revenge. She took the opportunity to challenge the church's historical poor regard for women.

Pochin died in 1908 and she was buried in the mausoleum known as "the POEM" in the grounds of Bodnant Garden, where she had lived since 1874 in the Conwy valley.

Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.

Agnes Pochin (1825 – 1908)

• early supporter of women’s rights,
• helped found the powerful Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage.

Priscilla Bright-McLaren (1815-1906) was another early pioneer against slavery and in support of women’s suffrage. Agnes’ daughter Laura married Priscilla’s son, Charles McLaren (Ist Lord Aberconwy), and these two campaigning families became a united political force.

• https://www.bodnant-welshfood.co.uk/womens-suffrage-100th-anniversa...

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https://www.sueyounghistories.com/2008-09-13-agnes-pochin-and-homeo...

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