Charlotte Fell Smith

“ Pennyman's religious opinions took a very mystical turn, and caused George Fox and his saner followers much anxiety. He claimed a special portion of ‘the inner light’ which directed the smallest details of his life. He saw visions, fasted for days together, and more than once went to meeting to experience a kind of euthanasia—standing on a form with ‘his breath and sences taken from him for about half or quarter of an hour’ (Autobiography) . He printed and distributed protests against the Friends, at Devonshire House, Wheeler Street, Horselydown, Bull and Mouth, Ratcliff, and other meetings. ”

“ Again in America, Elizabeth joined her sister in a rapidly growing hospital practice. Students came to them from Philadelphia. At the outbreak of the American civil war they established the Ladies Sanitary Aid Institute and the National Sanitary Aid Association, and organised a plan for selecting, and training for the field, nurses whose services did much to win sympathy for the entire movement. ”

“ The charity has been augmented since Kendall's death. Another of his benefactions at Colchester, Kendall's Trust, provided for the distribution of a certain number of religious books every year. Under Kendall's Foundation, a third example of his beneficence at Colchester, six poor boys were to receive a free education, and for the use of the master and assistants he left a valuable library, which, consisting chiefly of Greek, Latin, and Dutch books, proved unserviceable, and was by consent of the charity commissioners sold in 1865 for the benefit of the school. ”

“ For the support of the school Plume bequeathed a house in Maldon and the farm of Iltney in Mundon, out of which also a weekly lecture was to be maintained in All Saints', Maldon, while the vicarage was augmented by 200l. Ten poor boys of the two parishes were to be taught and clothed in green baize, and an exhibition for an Essex scholar established at Christ's College, Cambridge. ”

“ A series of historical portraits of notable women which she formed for the International Exhibition at Chicago of 1893 she presented to the women's hall of University College, Bristol. She was sole editor of the 'Englishwoman's Review' from 1881 to 1890; from that year Miss Ann Mackenzie was joint editor with her. In 1895 Miss Blackburn gave up most of her public work to look after her father. She was well versed in the history of the suffrage movement, and her 'Women's Suffrage: a Record of the Movement in the British Isles' (1902) remains the standard work. ”

“ It is almost impossible to overestimate Whitehead's share in the foundation of the Society of Friends, or his influence on the development of national religious liberty. Without the mysticism of Fox, Barclay, or Pennington, he addressed his acute legal knowledge and literary gifts to establishing the sect on a sound civil and political basis. His works were almost entirely controversial and written to confute existing attacks upon quakers. ”

“ Joined in 1856 by her sister Emily, who had now also qualified at Cleveland, and by Marie Zackrzewska (a Cleveland student in whose education she had taken much interest and the third woman to qualify) , she opened in New York in May 1857 a hospital entirely conducted by women. Opposition was great, but the quakers of New York gave valuable support from the first. In 1858 Elizabeth revisited England and gave lectures at the Marylebone Literary Institution on the value of physiological and medical knowledge to women and on the medical work already done in America. ”

“ Latey's character was of sterling integrity. His influence with the nobles, bishops, and great men was never used for his own ends. A courtier said of him that no man 'bore a sweeter character at court.' Whitehead calls him 'a sensible man, of good judgment.' An epistle of his, dated from Hammersmith 22 Aug. 1705, shows he was one of the earliest to advocate the employment of women in offices of the society. ”

“ In May, with 'a very slender purse and few introductions of value,' she reached Paris, and on 30 June entered La Maternite, a school for midwives, determined to become an obstetrician. After six months' hard work she contracted purulent ophthalmia from a patient and lost the sight of one eye. Thus obliged to abandon her hope of becoming a surgeon, she, on returning to London, obtained (through her cousin, Kenyon Blackwell) from James (afterwards Sir James) Paget, dean of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, permission to study there. ”

“ He wrote, in defence of the society, a ‘Letter to a Country Clergyman, occasioned by his Address to Lord Teignmouth, &c., by a Suburban Clergyman;’ and to an attack by Thomas Twining and Major Scott Waring on the society's work in India, on the ground that a conquered nation's free exercise of religion was improperly interfered with, Owen replied in ‘An Address to the Chairman of the East India Company,’ &c., London, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions, 1807. ”

“ At seven years old he delivered harangues on life and immortality from a tombstone in Norwich. After having been taught by Joseph Dancer, a schoolmaster at Hertford, Letchworth was apprenticed to a shopkeeper at Epping. His master's efforts to induce him to join the established church were unsuccessful, his appreciation of silent worship being so sincere that he sometimes kept the meeting at Epping alone. He soon moved to London and took a shop in Spitalfields, where he began preaching at the age of nineteen. ”

“ Hayman at Cheltenham grammar school, he took to journalism, becoming editor, in succesion, of 'An anti-Game Law Journal,' of the 'Examiner,' and of the 'Hereford Times.' He was afterwards long connected with the 'Athenæum' and with the London 'Daily Chronicle' as leader writer. He became meanwhile a recognised authority on education, was elected to the council of the College of Preceptors, and edited the 'Educational Times' from 1895 to 1902. ”