Emily Faithful
| Emily Faithfull | |
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| Born | 1835 Headley, Surrey |
| Died | 1895 Manchester |
| Occupation | women's rights activist and publisher |
Emily Faithfull (1835–1895) was an English women's rights activist, and publisher.
Emily Faithfull was born on 27 May 1835 at Headley Rectory, Surrey. She was the youngest daughter of the Rev. Ferdinand Faithfull and Elizabeth Mary Harrison. Faithfull attended school in Kensington and was presented at court in 1857.
Faithfull joined the Langham Place Circle, composed of fellow like-minded women Barbara Leigh Smith Bodicon, Bessie Rayner Parkes, Jessie Boucherett, Emily Davies, and Helen Blackburn. The Langham Place Circle advocated for legal reform in women's status (including suffrage), women's employment, and improved educational opportunities for girls and women. Although Faithfull identified with all three aspects of the group's aims, her primary areas of interest centered on advancing women's employment opportunities. The Circle was responsible for forming the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women in 1859.
In 1864, Faithfull was implicated by involvement in a divorce case between Admiral Henry Codrington and his wife Helen Jane Smith Codrington (1828-1876). Codrington was accused of attempting to rape Faithfull, however as the case developed these charges were later dropped and Faithfull declined to provide testimony. It was also suggested that Faithfull and Helen were lesbian lovers. As a result of Faithfull's limited involvement and association with the case, her reputation suffered and she was shunned by the Langham Place Group. It was after this association with the case that Faithfull moved to destroy all of her private papers, in particular letters written to and from her family, leaving little behind besides her professional publications and a few treasured letters and clippings.
Of her nephews, one was the actor Rutland Barrington and another the Indologist John Faithfull Fleet, ICS. Amongst her friends she counted Richard Peacock, one of the founders of the Beyer Peacock Locomotive Company, to whom she dedicated the Edinburgh edition of her book Three Visits To America with the words to my "Friend Richard Peacock Esq of Gorton Hall" in 1882. She was also the witness to the marriage of Peacock's daughter Jane Peacock to William Taylor Birchenough, the son of John Birchenough another manufacturer cited in Three Visits To America for his treatment of women employees in his silk mill in Macclesfield, at Brookfield Unitarian Church which Richard Peacock built in Gorton.
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