Matilda Ashurst Biggs

Matilda Ashurst Biggs (c 1818-1866) was a member of the notable nineteenth-century British family of reformers, the Ashursts. Their circle of radicals was nicknamed the “Muswell Hill Brigade” after the family homestead. Alongside her family, Matilda Biggs promoted progressive domestic and foreign causes, especially working for women’s equality in Britain and Italian unification. Matilda was the second of the four daughters of William Henry Ashurst and Elizabeth Ann Brown: her sisters were Eliza Ashurst Bardonneau-Narcy, Caroline Ashurst Stansfeld, and Emilie Ashurst Venturi. Matilda did not publish under her own name, but contemporaries described as being very clever: “All the daughters were remarkable women, but Matilda’s powers are said by one who remember her to have even transcended those of her sisters. She must, indeed, have possessed a rare intellect.” She had one brother, William Henry Ashurst, junior, who became solicitor to the Post Office. Revealing their strong sense of shared family values, all the children embraced reform ideas.

In 1837 Matilda married a businessman, Joseph Biggs (1809-1895) whose two older brothers John and William would serve as Members of Parliament from Leicester. Like the Ashurst family, the Biggses were Unitarians with a penchant for radical causes.

Matilda Ashurst Biggs cultivated an international network of allies. As a young woman she attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840 with her father who served as a delegate from Darlington. She befriended American abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott. It was Matilda who wrote Garrison to inform him of her father’s death in 1855. She entertained Ralph Waldo Emerson on his visit to England in 1847 and her correspondences to him are preserved in the special collections archived at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. She had a keen interest in politics, as evidenced in an undated letter written to Emerson regarding Americans’ need to expiate their sin of slavery.

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