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Elizabeth Wolstenholme, the daughter of a Methodist minister from Eccles, was born in 1834. Elizabeth's brother Joseph received an expensive private education and eventually became professor of mathematics at Cambridge University. The Rev. Wolstenholme held traditional views on girls schooling and Elizabeth only received two years of formal education.
After the death of both her parents, her guardians refused permission for Elizabeth to attend the newly opened, Bedford College for Women. Elizabeth decided to educate herself at home until she gained her inheritance at the age of nineteen. In 1853 Elizabeth purchased her own boarding school in Manchester.
Elizabeth believed that teaching was a highly skilled occupation that needed special training. In 1865 Elizabeth Wolstenholme joined with other women schoolteachers in her area to form the Manchester Schoolmistresses' Association. Two years later Elizabeth and Josephine Butler helped establish the North of England Council for the Higher Education of Women. This organisation provided lectures and examinations for women who wanted to become schoolteachers.
Wolstenholme felt passionate about improving the quality of women's education. In 1869 Josephine Butler asked Elizabeth to contribute an article on education for her book Women's Work and Women's Culture. The article criticised middle class parents for their lack of interest in their daughter's education and set out her plans for a system of high schools for girls in every town in Britain.
In 1864 Parliament passed the Contagious Diseases Act. This act required women suspected of being prostitutes to undergo compulsory medical examination. If the women were suffering from venereal disease they were placed in a locked hospital until cured. Elizabeth Wolstenholme considered this law discriminated against women, as the legislation contained no similar sanctions against men. Elizabeth and Josephine Butler decided to form the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Elizabeth took the view that it would be impossible to have legislation like this reformed until after women had the vote. In 1865 she joined with Lydia Becker to form the Manchester Society for Women's Suffrage.
In the early 1870s Elizabeth became friendly with Benjamin Elmy, a poet from Congleton. Elmy supported Elizabeth in her many campaigns and in 1874 the couple were married. However Elizabeth was an atheist and refused to get married in church. Elizabeth was also hostile to the marriage laws that discriminated against women. The wedding was a civil ceremony and true to her principals, Elizabeth refused to make a promise of obedience to her husband. She also refused to wear a wedding ring or to give up her surname. Three months after their marriage, Elizabeth gave birth to a son.
Elizabeth worked closely with Richard Pankhurst on several campaigns. She was a member of the Married Women's Property Committee which eventually led to the Married Women's Property Act (1882) and later she joined with Pankhurst to campaign for the Custody of Infants Act (1886), which improved the custody rights of mothers.
In 1889 Elizabeth joined Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst to form the Women's Franchise League. Elizabeth, like Richard and Emmeline, was also a member of the Manchester branch of the Independent Labour Party. By the early 1900s Elizabeth had become very critical of what she called the "fiddle-faddling" of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and was one of the first people to join the Women's Social and Political Union. However, Elizabeth was now in her seventies and was not able to take any actions that would result in her going to prison. Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy died in 1913.
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(1) Elizabeth Wolstenholme believed that improvements in education would increase women's economic independence. Elizabeth Wolstenholme explained her views in an article that she wrote in 1869 entitled The Education of Girls.
Nothing is more plainly to be seen by those who will open their eyes than three things: (1) That a very large proportion of women do not marry. (2) That of those who do marry, a very considerable proportion are not supported by their husbands. (3) That upon a very large number of widows… the burden of self-maintenance and of the maintenance of their children is thrown.
(2) In October 1874, Elizabeth Wolstenholme, who was five months pregnant, married Ben Elmy at Kensington Register Office. Some members of the Married Women's Property Committee believed that Wolstenholme should resign as they felt the "scandal was harming the women's movement. Josephine Butler sent a letter to women leaders defending Elizabeth Wolstenholme and Ben Elmy.
They have sinned against no law of Purity. They went through a most solemn ceremony and vow before witnesses. I knew of this true marriage before God - early in 1874. It would have been a legal marriage in Scotland. They blundered; but their whole action was grave and pure. The English marriage laws are impure. English law… sins against the law of purity. It is a species of legal prostitution the woman being the man's property.
(3) In 1869 Elizabeth Wolstenholme wrote a booklet The Education of Girls where she argued for large-scale reform of the British educational system.
English parents, who are apathetic and irrational enough about the education of their boys, are much more so when the education of their girls… Fashion has stamped its approval upon certain external accomplishments and graces. The period during which social triumphs can be achieved is short and fleeting… Mothers say that their little daughters must not be troubled with the halfpennies and farthings in her arithmetic, because, "it will not help her to get married"… How to deal with these difficulties in the case of parents is the standing perplexity of teachers. We must confess that we see no hope for immediate reformation. It is only by the greater extension of education itself that education will come to be rightly valued, and in this way the task of the teachers of the next generation will be far easier and pleasanter one than that of teachers of today.
(4) In 1907 Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy outlined the arguments for women's suffrage in her booklet Women's Franchise: The Need of the Hour.
Women demand our immediate enfranchisement on the same terms as men because we have, by long and painful experience, proved the absolute impossibility of securing any further redress of the many legal wrongs from which we still suffer, and because we fully realise the great danger of further careless, mischievous, and unjust legislation, greatly imperilling the well-being of women.
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