Barbara Bodichon: the Sussex woman who helped change women’s lives
In Brightling churchyard, Jack Fuller’s pyramid is understandably good at attracting attention. But there is another life to discover here, and one whose influence reaches far beyond this quiet corner of Sussex. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was an artist, traveller, campaigner and co-founder of Girton College. She helped challenge the laws that governed women’s lives and put her money behind her convictions. She also had a close friendship with Bessie Rayner Parkes, the mother of Hilaire Belloc.
An unconventional Sussex childhood
Barbara was born at Whatlington, near Battle, in 1827. Her father, Benjamin Leigh Smith, was a politician with radical sympathies; her mother, Anne Longden, was a milliner. Her parents never married, placing their children outside the comfortable conventions of respectable Victorian society.
Barbara spent much of her childhood in Hastings, where the family settled at 9 Pelham Crescent. Her mother died when she was seven. Her father encouraged education and independence, and when his children reached twenty-one, he gave his daughters investments just as he did his sons.
For Barbara, the resulting income meant choices. She could travel, study, paint and support causes without first finding a husband to finance her existence.
Barbara and Bessie
In 1846, Bessie Rayner Parkes’s family took rooms at 6 Pelham Crescent. Barbara lived a few doors away. The two young women became close friends, reading, exchanging ideas and questioning the restrictions placed on their sex. In 1850, they travelled through continental Europe without a chaperone, visiting Belgium, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. There were landscapes to explore, paintings to see and their friend, aspiring artist Anna Mary Howitt, to visit in Munich.
They also experimented with dispensing with corsets and shortening their skirts. Sensible clothes for walking, perhaps, but a challenge to expectations nonetheless. Independence could begin with something as practical as being able to move comfortably. (Ref: Victorian Web)
Bessie introduced Barbara to her cousin Elizabeth Blackwell, who had qualified as a doctor in America. Here was another woman demonstrating what might be possible when ambition survived the obstacles put in its way. Barbara’s cousin was none other than Florence Nightingale. However, Barbara’s illegitimacy meant the women were not close and Nightingale took a different approach to women’s rights, namely that women “should prove their capability through vital public service (like nursing and healthcare)”. (Ref: The Nightingale Society.)
Putting change into print
In 1854, Barbara published a plain-language account of English laws affecting women. It exposed the profound disadvantages married women faced, including restrictions on their control of property and earnings. The campaign she helped build contributed to the long struggle that brought the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882. Education and employment mattered just as much. How could women support themselves if respectable society denied them training and then disapproved of their working?
In 1858, Barbara and Bessie helped establish the English Woman’s Journal, with Bessie as editor. Its pages made room for serious discussion of women’s education and employment. Around the journal grew the Langham Place circle, bringing women together to exchange ideas and develop practical opportunities. (Ref: Hastings Press).
Barbara also helped organise the mass women’s suffrage petition presented to Parliament by John Stuart Mill in 1866. Change required persistence, and she was prepared for a long campaign.
An artist with a purpose
Alongside all this, Barbara pursued painting seriously. She studied art, exhibited her landscapes and moved among artists and writers, including her close friend George Eliot. Marriage to the French doctor Eugène Bodichon in 1857 brought long periods in Algeria, whose landscapes became another subject for her work.
Her commitment to education helped create Girton College with Emily Davies. The college began at Hitchin in 1869 before moving to Girton in 1873. Barbara supplied substantial financial support, but also cared about students’ comfort and surroundings, contributing paintings as well as money. Bessie supported the college too. Their shared belief in women’s education left a tangible legacy.
Back to the Sussex woods
Barbara eventually made her Sussex home at s Scalands Gate, near Robertsbridge. She originally built the house near Scalands Farm and named it Scalands Gate. Barbara designed the house and painted it with her own artwork. Gertrude Jekyll created the garden. Sadly, it was destroyed by fire in the 1950s but rebuilt and now stands on the corner of the lane and as is called Scaland’s Folly.
The house was visited by Barbara’s interesting circle of friends. In the 1860s these included Mary Howitt, Rossetti and Siddal, Frederick and Marianne North and Herbert Gladstone (who became Prime Minister). Later guests included Gertrude Martineau, Lord Brassey, George Eliot and John Ruskin. Bessie’s recollections place her in this same landscape in spring 1864, meeting Mary Howitt at Robertsbridge station and remembering the woods around Scalands.
Barbara also supported a local night school, extending educational opportunities to working people close to home. She died in June 1891 and was buried at Brightling.
Her grave offers a reason to pause. Beyond the pyramid and the familiar stories of Sussex men lies a woman whose friendships, imagination and determination helped widen the possibilities for generations who followed.
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