| Biography | Emily Frost Phipps was an English teacher and suffragette, a barrister in later life, and an influential figure in the National Union of Women Teachers.
While working as a pupil teacher she studied in the evenings so that she could gain entrance to Homerton College, Cambridge. Phipps became head teacher of the infants' school attached to the college. After obtaining a first-class degree in London, 1895, she successfully applied for the headship of Swansea Municipal Secondary Girls School. She left this position to return to Devonport where she worked again in an infant school. This time she studied for an external degree in Latin and Greek which she obtained from London University.
A committed suffragette, she, together with fellow west country woman and lifelong friend Clara Neal (1870 -1936), joined the Women's Freedom League in 1908 following an anti-suffrage meeting in Swansea attended by Lloyd George, and set up a local branch. Like many other members of the Women's Freedom League, Neal and Phipps, together with two training college lecturers and a business woman, staged a boycott on the night of the 1911 Census, staying overnight in a sea cave on the nearby Gower Peninsula. At the NUWT dinner called to celebrate full female suffrage she explained the reason for the action: "Many women had determined that since they could not be citizens for the purposes of voting, they would not be citizens for the purpose of helping the government to compile statistics: they would not be included in the Census Returns."
Emily Phipps was an active member of the National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT), which was formed as part of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) in 1906, following on from the Equal Pay League. (The NUWT became an independent organisation in 1920, and remained in operation until 1961). Emily was elected President for three successive years from 1915 to 1917 and was the first editor of the NUWT journal, Woman Teacher, from 1919 to 1930, later tasked with writing the History of the NUWT (published in 1928).
The 1918 general election was the first in which women could both vote in parliamentary elections and stand as candidates, and Emily Phipps was one of the 17 women who took the opportunity to stand, becoming Independent Progressive candidate for Chelsea constituency with the backing of the NUWT. All the women candidates were heavily defeated, but she retained her deposit in a straight contest with the sitting Conservative MP, Sir Samuel Hoare. |