Charlotte Wilson

For other people named Charlotte Wilson, see Charlotte Wilson (disambiguation).

Charlotte M. Wilson
Wilson at Newnham College c.1874
Born
Charlotte Mary Martin

(1854-05-06)6 May 1854
Kemerton, Worcestershire, England
Died6 May 1944(1944-05-06) (aged 90)
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, United States
Other namesC.M. Wilson, Mrs Arthur Wilson, Charlotte Mary Wilson and Charlotte Martin Wilson
Alma materNewnham College, Cambridge
Years active1884–1914
Known forFreedom newspaper
Notable workWhat socialism is (Fabian Tract 4)
Women and Prisons (Fabian Tract 163)

Charlotte Mary Wilson (6 May 1854, Kemerton, Worcestershire – 28 April 1944, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York) was an English Fabian and anarchist who co-founded Freedom newspaper in 1886 with Peter Kropotkin, and edited, published, and largely financed it during its first decade. She remained editor of Freedom until 1895.[1]

Early life and education

Charlotte Wilson, who was born Charlotte Mary Martin, was born into a middle class family in Kemerton, in Worcestershire, a village near the town of Tewkesbury in the adjoining county of Gloucestershire.[2] Her father, Robert Spencer Martin, was a wealthy surgeon, whose grandfather was a silk manufacturer[3], while her mother, Clementina Susannah Davies, came from a prosperous commercial and clerical family[4].

Wilson initially attended Cheltenham College, where "she was very unhappy"[4]. Afterwards, in 1873, she attended Merton Hall in Cambridge University[2], where "she was very happy"[4]. While she was in Merton Hall, Wilson took the Higher Local Examination.[4] She did not take a degree because at the time women were not allowed to take a degree in the university[4], a proscription which wasn't lifted until 1923[2]. Wilson left Cambridge "with a fluency in the langauge of positivist social science, an ability to engage in masculine discourse about economics and evolution that made hers one of the handful of female voices audible in the radical debates."[3]

The Fabians

In 1876, Wilson married Arthur Wilson, son of the vicar of Islington in London[3], a distant cousin, a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford and a stockbroker.[4] The couple moved to Hampstead in London, where she became "active in charitable and educational work."[4]. She joined the Fabian Society in 1884 and in the December was elected to its Executive.[5] At the same time she founded an informal political study group for 'advanced' thinkers, known as the Hampstead Historic Club[6] (also known as the Karl Marx Society or Proudhon Society[7]). This met in her early 17th century former farmhouse, called Wyldes, on the edge of Hampstead Heath.[8] No records of the club survive but there are references to it in the memoirs of several of those who attended. In her history of Wyldes Mrs Wilson records the names of some of those who visited the house, most of whom are known to have been present at club meetings.[9] They included Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw, Sydney Olivier, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Belfort Bax, Edward Pease, E. Nesbit, Hubert Bland, Karl Pearson, Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, Frank Podmore, Ford Madox Brown, and Olive Schreiner among others. The secretary was Emma Brooke.[10]

The club first turned its attention to studying Das Kapital read out by a Russian woman in French, and later turned to Proudhon. In 1889 George Bernard Shaw described the Club discussions and how heated they became.[11] Although the Fabian Society and Hampstead Historic Club contained many of the same people, they remained separate. The ideas debated by the club resulted in the publication of Fabian Essays in Socialism in 1889.[12] This led Shaw to describe Hampstead, and the meetings, as 'the birthplace of middle-class socialism.'[13]

Another visitor to the house was Stepniak who, with Mrs Wilson, Karl Pearson and Wilfrid Voynich, established an informal society that was later formalised as The Society of Friends of Russian Freedom. Mrs Wilson is believed to be the model for Gemma in the best-selling novel The Gadfly by Ethel Voynich[14][15]; while a description of Mrs Wilson's faux farm kitchen where the club met was given by E. Nesbit[16].

An active campaigner she spoke at socialist rallies, including that in Trafalgar Square on 13 November 1887, known as Bloody Sunday, which police broke up violently.[17]

The Freedom years

In 1886, parliamentarians within the Fabian Society proposed that it organize as a political party; William Morris and Wilson opposed the motion, but were defeated. She subsequently "resigned from the Fabian executive in April 1887, and took no active part in the society for twenty years, though she maintained her membership."[18]

She wrote extensively to Karl Pearson about anarchism, the Fabians, the Karl Marx Society and about her hoped-for Russian Society from 1884 to 1896.[19][20]

In 1886, Wilson and Kropotkin co-founded Freedom, an anarchist newspaper that shared William Morris's press with which he printed Commonweal; Wilson remained its editor until 1895.[21] The newspaper's mission statement is stated in every issue, on page 2, and summarises the writers' view of anarchism:

"Anarchists work towards a society of mutual aid and voluntary co-operation. We reject all government and economic repression. This newspaper, published continuously since 1936, exists to explain anarchism more widely and show that only in an anarchist society can human freedom thrive."

Her publication Work (1888) was mistakenly attributed to Kropotkin for many years.[22]

Return to the Fabians

For the remainder of the century, during which in 1896 her father died, which in 1903 was followed by the death of her mother, Wilson did not involve herself in left-wing politics.[21] She resumed political activity in 1906. She did not disavow anarchist ideology. However, she alligned herself with the Fabian Society.[21] And shortly afterwards, from 1908 to 1913[23], she served as its General Secretary, during which she joined the campaign for female suffrage.[24][25][26]

Wilson was also the main founder of the Fabian Women's Group, which:

"originated in a drawing-room of fashionable South Kensington. At its first gathering in March 1908, fourteen ladies pledged to unite in the study of the relation between the two most vital movements of the day: socialism and feminism. Many distinguished and remarkable women were involved, including Beatrice Webb, novelist Edith Nesbitt, birthcontroller Annie Besant, shopworker and first woman cabinet minister Margaret Bondfield, and 1902s Labour MP Susan Lawrence."[27]

Wilson hosted the meetings of the Group at her home in St John's Wood.[21] She was also the Secretary of the Studies Subcommittee (1908–1913) of the Society in which she heavily influenced the direction of its studies into working conditions for women. In 1912 she co-wrote with Helen Blagg a tract for the Society entitled Women and prisons. In 1911, according to Walter (2007, p. 227) she described the activities of the Fabian Women's Group.[28] And, until 1916, when she resigned because of illness; she was its most active member.[21]

Publications

1880s

  • "Women's labour in factories". Justice. 8 March 1884.
  • "The condition of the Russian peasantry". Today. July and August. 1885.
  • "Social democracy and anarchism". Three essays on anarchism. Over the water, Sanday, Orkney: Cienfuegos Press. 1979 [originally January, 1886]. ISBN 0-904564-26-6. Retrieved 14 February 2026.
  • "The Family as a Type of Society". The Anarchist (April). 1886.
  • "Freedom" (PDF). Freedom. 1 (1 October): 1. 1886 [originally June, 1886]. Retrieved 11 February 2026.
  • "The principles and aims of anarchists". Three essays on anarchism. Over the water, Sanday, Orkney: Cienfuegos Press. 1979 [originally July, 1886]. ISBN 0-904564-26-6. Retrieved 14 February 2026.
  • "Anarchism". Three essays on anarchism. Over the water, Sanday, Orkney: Cienfuegos Press. 1979. ISBN 0-904564-26-6. Retrieved 14 February 2026.
  • "Education by force" (PDF). Freedom. 1 (2 November): 1–2. 1886. Retrieved 11 February 2026.
  • "The condemned anarchists". Commonweal. 12 November. 1887.
  • "The tragedy of Chicago. Freedom. 1887. December.
  • "Women's Labour" (PDF). Freedom. 1 (10 July): 2. 1887. Retrieved 11 February 2026.
  • "The women of the commune". Freedom (April). 1888.
  • "Work". Freedom (July). 1888.
  • "The marriage controversy". Freedom (October). 1888.
  • "The revolt of the English workers in the nineteenth century". Freedom (April–September). 1889.
  • "What anarchist communism means". Freedom (August). 1889.

1890s

  • "Democracy or anarchism". Freedom (February). 1890.
  • "Anarchism and homicidal outrage". What is anarchism?. 1893.[29]

1900s

  • "A brief history of Freedom" (PDF). Freedom. XIV (153): 49-50. 1900. Retrieved 12 February 2026.
  • "The economic disintegration of the family". Fabian News. 1909. July.
  • (With Helen Blagg) Women and prisons (Fabian Tract No. 163 ed.). London: The Fabian Society. 1912. Retrieved 12 February 2026.

Notes

  1. ^ Walter, Nicholas (2004). "Wilson [née Martin], Charlotte Mary". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/45776. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b c Walter 1979, p. v.
  3. ^ a b c Hinely 2012.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Walter 2007, p. 220.
  5. ^ Pease 1916, p. 48.
  6. ^ Anon 1895, p. 8.
  7. ^ British Library Archive ADD MS 50511 f143, Emma Brooke to G.B. Shaw, 26 November 1885
  8. ^ Venning 1977.
  9. ^ Wilson 1902.
  10. ^ Daniels 2003.
  11. ^ Shaw 1965.
  12. ^ Shaw 1889.
  13. ^ Hampstead and Highgate Express. 1 June 1907.
  14. ^ Walter 2007, p. 229.
  15. ^ Bevir 2011, p. 258.
  16. ^ Langley Moore 1966, p. 85.
  17. ^ Basdeo 2022, p. 227.
  18. ^ W 1986. The article by 'W' was the second article in the initial part of the centenary issue of Freedom and was accompanied by ten other articles which were authored by HB, NW and VR, and in the case of HB and NW were co-authored by them. The remainder of the issue included an article by Nicholas Walter.
  19. ^ Porter 2004, pp. 108, 160, 171.
  20. ^ See the Pearson Papers (ref. 900) at UCL
  21. ^ a b c d e W 1986.
  22. ^ "Book Review: Charlotte M. Wilson's Anarchist Essays", NEFAC, 2 December 2002.
  23. ^ MacKenzie & MacKenzie 1979.
  24. ^ London School of Economics Archive FABIAN SOCIETY/H30
  25. ^ London School of Economics Archive FABIAN SOCIETY/H20
  26. ^ Oakley 2021, p. 79.
  27. ^ Alexander 1988 front cover.
  28. ^ Fabian Women's Group 1988 originally 1911.
  29. ^ Richards 2016, p. 70 observed: "This article (signed 'The Freedom Group') though it is certain that Charlotte Wilson was the author) was published in 1893 in response to a declaration from the Spanish government."

References

Further reading

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