Jessie Boucherett

Who was Jessie Boucherett?

Jessie Boucherett was an English campaigner for women's rights.

A strong Conservative from a landed family in Lincolnshire, Jessie Boucherett was the youngest daughter of Louise Pigou and Ayscoghe Boucherett, descended from French Protestants.

Boucherett's activities for women's causes were inspired by reading the English Woman's Journal, which reflected her own aims, and by an article in the Edinburgh Review about the problems of the many 'superfluous' women in England during the middle years of the nineteenth century, a time when there were far more women than men in the population.

With Barbara Bodichon and Adelaide Ann Procter, Boucherett helped found the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women in 1859. This became in 1926 the Society for Promoting the Training of Women which today operates as the registered charity Futures for Women.

Also in 1859, Boucherett and Procter joined the Langham Place Group. A small but determined group which campaigned for the improvement of the situation of women, it was active between 1857 and 1866.

Boucherett was a promoter of the women's suffrage movement and a strong supporter of the Married Women's Property Act.