Emily Frost Phipps

Place of birth: Devonport

Service: Teacher, activist, barrister

Death: 1943, Heart disease / Clefyd y galon

Notes: Born November 1865 and the daughter of a dockyard coppersmith, Emily Phipps worked her way from pupil teacher to headmistress of Swansea Municipal Girls’ School in 1895. She was an active feminist, boycotting the 1911 census with her partner Clara Neal (and three others, staying in a sea-cave overnight), was President of the National Union of Women Teachers 1915, 1916 and 1917, and was the editor of the Union journal. She promoted professional careers for girls, shocking some in March 1914 by suggesting that they could become dentists. Emily Phipps stood for Parliament, for Chelsea, in the 1918 election, one of only two women in Wales to stand. She later studied for the bar, and became a barrister in 1925.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Frost_Phipps

Reference: WaW0247

Emily Frost Phipps

Emily Phipps in academic dress

Newspaper headline

Headline to report of Emily Phipps’s speech at Municipal Secondary Schools Prizegiving, 20th March 1914. Cambrian Daily Leader 21st March 1914rnrn

Newspaper report

Report on women candidates’ results in the 1918 General Election. Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard 3rd January 1919.rn