In February 1839 a young woman named Emma Martin attended a series of three Owenite lectures.She was immediately converted to the Owenite ‘socialist’ principles, but also utterly dismayed to discover in the third lecture that the speaker denied the divine origins of the Bible.
She decided to challenge the leading Owenite socialists of the day on this question and began touring the countryside, debating the issue on public platforms.This in itself was an extraordinary thing for any young women to do at the time, but more was to follow.At the end of 1839 she had a second conversion, and realising she no longer believed in God, left her husband, and dedicated herself to the Owenite cause.
Emma Martin became an accomplished orator and pamphleteer, and one of the leading ‘evangelizers of infidel socialism.’
The combination of her attacks on the sanctity of the Bible and her demands that women be treated as fully equal to men meant that she was much attacked, denounced as ‘libidinous in heart and mind’, and on several occasions jeered, chased, and even stoned by crowds.We can hear her vigorous style in contemporary records:
Is it not dreadful when one of the sex begins to think for herself? Why others will follow the horrible example! And where will it end?…Common sense will usurp the place of spiritualism, and liberty and love will supersede witchcraft.I fear I shall live to see that dreadful day.
Worn out by the attacks, disillusioned by internal disputes within the Owenite movement, and disgusted by criticism from her own side that her outspoken speeches were damaging the cause, she abandoned public speaking, and became a midwife, producing tracts on female health.In 1851 at the age of thirty nine she died of tuberculosis and was buried in Highgate cemetery.‘We have lost the most important woman in our cause,’ wrote Holyoake.[1]
[1]Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and feminism in the nineteenth century, Barbara Taylor, 1983, pp 130-157
