Wilhelmina Hay Abbott

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Wilhelmina "Elizabeth" Abbott
Born
Wilhelmina Hay Lamond

(1884-05-22)22 May 1884
Dundee, Scotland
Died17 October 1957(1957-10-17) (aged 73)
Known forSuffragist, editor and feminist lecturer
SpouseGeorge Frederick Abbott
Children1

Wilhelmina Hay Abbott (née Lamond; 22 May 1884 – 17 October 1957), also known by the name "Elizabeth Abbott," was a Scottish suffragist, editor, and feminist lecturer, and wife of author George Frederick Abbott.

Early life and education[edit]

Abbott was born Wilhelmina Hay Lamond in Dundee, Scotland, on 22 May 1884. Her mother was Margaret McIntyre Morrison and her father was Andrew Lamond, a jute manufacturer and commission agent. She had one older sister, Isabel Taylor Lamond.[1][2] The family moved to Tottenham when her father received a job as managing director of Henry A. Lane & Co. She was educated at the City of London School for Girls and in Brussels.[2][3] She trained in London for secretarial and accounting work between 1903 and 1906, but then attended University College London in the summer of 1907, where she pursued a broader course of ethics, modern philosophy, and economics.[2][4] As a young woman she began using the first name "Elizabeth."[1]

Career[edit]

In 1909 Elizabeth Lamond started organizing for the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage. In that role she campaigned with Mary McNeill in the Orkney Islands.[5] She took a position on the executive committee of the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies the next year, along with Dr. Elsie Inglis.[6][7] McNeill and Inglis became doctors in the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service.

During World War I, Lamond toured extensively in India, Australia, and New Zealand as a lecturer, for two years, raising money for the Scottish Women's Hospitals.[8] Of her travels, she declared, "I received unbounded hospitality."[9] After the war, she served as an officer of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, and edited its newsletter, Jus Suffragii.[3][10]

Concerned primarily about economic opportunities for women, she joined Chrystal MacMillan, Lady Rhondda, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and others in founding the Open Door Council (later Open Door International) in 1926.[11][12] Abbott chaired the Open Door Council in 1929.[13][14][15] She also chaired the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene for ten years, and was active with the organization for much longer.[16][17]

In her later years, she continued work on women's economic security, as co-author of The Woman Citizen and Social Security (1943), which responded to gender inequalities in the Beveridge Report.[18][19][20]

Personal life[edit]

She married travel writer and war correspondent George Frederick Abbott in 1911. They had one son, Jasper A. R. Abbott, born that same year. Abbott died in 1957, age 73.[3]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Jane Rendall, "Abbott, Wilhelmina Hay (Elizabeth)," in Elizabeth Ewan, Sue Innes, and Siân Reynolds, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh University Press 2006): 3. ISBN 0748617132
  2. ^ a b c Beaumont, Caitríona (2022). "Abbott [née Lamond], Wilhelmena Hay [Elizabeth] (1884–1957), women's movement organizer and suffrage campaigner". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.111937. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 16 December 2022.
  3. ^ a b c Elizabeth Crawford, "Mrs. Elizabeth Abbott," Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 (Routledge 1999): 1-2. ISBN 184142031X
  4. ^ Cheryl Law, Women: A Modern Political Dictionary (I.B. Tauris 2000): 9. ISBN 186064502X
  5. ^ Leah Leneman, A Guid Cause: The Women's Suffrage Movement in Scotland (Aberdeen University Press 1991): 95. ISBN 0080412017
  6. ^ Eva Shaw McLaren, Elsie Inglis, the Woman with the Torch (London 1920): 3-4. ISBN 1428039449
  7. ^ "The Late Dr. Elsie Inglis," Dominion 11(66)(11 December 1917): 3.
  8. ^ Eva Shaw McLaren, ed. A History of the Scottish Women's Hospitals (Hodder & Stoughton 1919): 368-371.
  9. ^ "Scottish Women's Hospitals; Mrs. Abbott Back from New Zealand," Sydney Morning Herald (15 January 1918): 4.
  10. ^ William L. Malabar, "Romance Nations in Europe Tardy with Woman Suffrage," St. Petersburg Daily Times (15 January 1921): 6.
  11. ^ "Open Door Council," finding aid, Women's Library.
  12. ^ Deborah Gorham, "'Have We Really Rounded Seraglio Point?' Vera Brittain and Inter-War Feminism," in Harold L. Smith, ed., British Feminism in the Twentieth Century (University of Massachusetts Press 1990): 92. ISBN 0870237055
  13. ^ Elisabeth Prügl, The Global Construction of Gender: Home-based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century (Columbia University Press 1999): 45. ISBN 978-0-231-11561-2
  14. ^ Mrs. Lillian Campbell, "With the Women of Today: Launch Equality Drive," The Daily Times [Beaver County, PA] (21 June 1929): 16.
  15. ^ Pamela M. Graves, Labour Women: Women in British Working Class Politics, 1918-1939 (Cambridge University Press 1994): 145. ISBN 9780521459198
  16. ^ Roger Davidson and Gayle Davis, The Sexual State: Sexuality and Scottish Governance, 1950-1980 (Edinburgh University Press 2012): 22. ISBN 0748645608
  17. ^ Susan Kingsley Kent, "The Politics of Sexual Difference: World War I and the Demise of British Feminism," Journal of British Studies 27(3)(July 1988): 242.
  18. ^ Elizabeth Abbott and Katherine Bompas, The Woman Citizen and Social Security (London: Bompas 1943).
  19. ^ Elizabeth Wilson, Women and the Welfare State (Routledge 2002).
  20. ^ John MacNicol, The Politics of Retirement in Britain, 1878-1948 (Cambridge University Press 2002): 396. ISBN 0521892600
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