Eva Gore-Booth
Eva Gore-Booth
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Eva Gore-Booth

Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth (22 May 1870 – 30 June 1926) was an Irish poet, theologian, and dramatist, and a committed suffragist, social worker and labour activist. She was born at Lissadell House, County Sligo, the younger sister of Constance Gore-Booth, later known as the Countess Markievicz.

Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth was born in County Sligo, Ireland, to Sir Henry and Lady Georgina Gore-Booth of Lissadell. She was the third of five children born to the 5th Baronet and his wife and the first of her siblings to be born at Lissadell House. She and her siblings, Josslyn Gore-Booth (1869–1944), Constance Georgine Gore-Booth (1868–1927), Mabel Gore-Booth (1874–1955), and Mordaunt Gore-Booth (1878–1958), were the third generation of Gore-Booths at Lissadell. The house was built for her paternal grandfather, Sir Robert Gore-Booth, 4th Baronet, between 1830 and 1835 and three generations of Gore-Booths resided there during Eva's childhood, including her paternal grandfather and her maternal grandmother Lady Frances Hill.

Both Eva and Constance were educated at home and had several governesses throughout their childhood, most notably Miss Noel who recorded most of what is known about Gore-Booth's early life. She learned French, German, Latin and Greek and developed a love of poetry that was instilled by her maternal grandmother. Gore-Booth was troubled by the stark contrast between her family's privileged life and the poverty outside Lissadell, particularly during the winter of the Irish Famine (1879) when starving tenants would come to the house begging for food and clothing. Esther Roper later remarked that Gore-Booth was "haunted by the suffering of the world and had a curious feeling of responsibility for its inequalities and injustices."

Gore-Booth's father was a notable Arctic explorer and, during a period of absence from the estate in the 1870s, her mother, Lady Georgina, established a school of needlework for women at Lissadell. The women were trained in crochet, embroidery and darn-thread work and the sale of their wares allowed them to earn a wage of 18 shillings per week. This enterprise had a great influence on Gore-Booth and her later women's suffrage and trade union work.

In 1894, Gore-Booth joined her father on his travels around North America and the West Indies. She kept diaries and documented their travels in "Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba, Florida, New Orleans, St Louis, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, Niagara, Montreal and Quebec." On returning to Ireland she met the poet W. B. Yeats for the first time. The following year she traveled around Europe with her mother, sister Constance, and friend Rachel Mansfield and, while in Venice, fell ill with a respiratory condition. In 1896, while recuperating at the villa of writer George MacDonald and his wife in Bordighera, Italy, she met Esther Roper, the English woman who would become her lifelong companion. Roper was also the secretary of the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage. Believing that she was dying of tuberculosis, Gore-Booth and Roper settled in Manchester to serve working women throughout the remainder of her life.

Gore-Booth became a vegetarian in 1900.

The work of Eva Gore-Booth, alongside that of Esther Roper was responsible for the close link between the struggle for women's rights in industry and the struggle for women's right to vote. As a middle class suffragist representing Manchester, the work of Gore-Booth was mainly recognized in the Lancashire cotton towns from 1899 to 1913. Her struggle began when Gore-Booth became a member of the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Carrying out work at the Ancoats settlement, Gore-Booth became co-secretary of the Manchester and Salford Women's Trade Union Council.

1902 saw Eva Gore-Booth campaigning at the Clitheroe by-election on behalf of David Shackleton, a Labour candidate that promised Eva he would show support for the women's enfranchisement. Shackleton was elected yet he did not act upon his promise made to Eva. This led to the founding of the Lancashire and Cheshire Women Textile and Other Worker's Representation Committee by Gore-Booth, Esther Roper and Sarah Reddish. The setting up of this committee led to Gore-Booth meeting Christabel Pankhurst who also felt campaigned for women's rights. However, in 1904, Christabel caused some controversy in the Women's Trade Union Council as she attempted to force the council to make women's suffrage one of its aims to which they refused. This led to the resignation of Gore-Booth from the council. Resigning from that particular council, Gore-Booth alongside Sarah Dickenson who had also resigned, set up the Manchester and Salford Women's Trade and Labour Council. As part of this council, Eva and other suffragists used constitutional methods of campaigning. In the general election of 1906, they put forward their own candidate, Thorley Smith yet he was defeated. In May 1906 Gore-Booth was present in the suffrage deputation to Campbell Bannerman. Her true feeling of helplessness after the failure of this deputation was captured in two poems, which she wrote. These poems were titled 'Women's Trades on the Embankment' and 'A Lost Opportunity'.

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