Chartist women at a delegate conference, 1841

The Chartist national delegate meeting that assembled in York at the end of August 1841 was not faced with the most difficult of agendas. The sole purpose for which it had been called was to welcome Feargus O’Connor on his release from prison and to draw up a suitable address as just one element in the festivities greeting the release of ‘the liberated patriot’.  

Even so, more than seventy delegates took part in the meeting, largely from the North of England, but some from as far afield as London and Dumfries. And most notably of all, their number included Mrs Elizabeth Ellis and Mrs Elizabeth Sumper, representing ‘Bradford Females’ (Northern Star, 4 September 1841, p6).

Part of the delegate list carried in the Northern Star.

There is unfortunately no record of anything either of them may have said at the meeting. But the very fact of them being there makes this conference unique: although there were many Female Charter Associations all over the country, there is no other recorded instance in which such societies were represented at a delegate event, regional or national. Intriguingly, there were no representatives of the Bradford men at the meeting. 

The Bradford women were clearly numerous and well organised. In August 1839, the Northern Star reported that ‘the female radicals of the Bradford district, amounting to upward of 600, walked in procession through the principal streets’ led by a woman carrying a large printed board on which were printed the words ‘exclusive dealing’.

Unfortunately neither Mrs Sumper nor Mrs Ellis is mentioned again in fifteen years’ worth of the Northern Star, and neither have I located either of them in census or other official records. But it seems likely that Elizabeth Ellis would have been married to George Ellis, the Bradford news-agent and vendor of the Star whose name appears from time to time in the paper. This, then, would have been a Chartist household – and quite likely a teetotal one, because in the spring of 1841, George Ellis of Manningham near Bradford, secretary of the Teetotal Chartist Association, also put his name to the Temperance Address initiated by Henry Vincent (NS, 20 March 1841, p3).

If anyone knows anything more of Mrs Sumper or Mrs Ellis, please let me know!