Florence Fenwick Miller

Florence Fenwick Miller (sometimes Fenwick-Miller, 5 November 1854 – 24 April 1935) was an English journalist, author and social reformer of the late 19th and early 20th century. She was for four years the editor and proprietor of The Woman's Signal, an early and influential feminist journal.

Early life and education

Florence Fenwick Miller was born in Stepney, the eldest daughter of John Miller, a merchant sea-captain, and of Eleanor Estabrook Miller, daughter of a railway engineer. Miller was named after Florence Nightingale. Privately educated as a child, she read for a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh from 1871, in the year following the Edinburgh Seven, the first females to be admitted to the course. Like the Seven, she was unable to pursue clinical practise and Edinburgh declined to award a degree to her. Edinburgh University had decided against awarding medical degrees to women. In 1873, she took a midwifery certificate at the Ladies' Medical College in London.

Career

Despite her training, Miller quickly moved away from medical practice towards wider spheres. She quickly established herself as a lecturer on literary and social reform topics, debating in London at the Sunday Lecture Society, appearing before the London Dialectical Society (which was engaged in investigating the phenomenon of Spiritualism; James Edmunds, the founder of the Ladies' Medical College was a committee member); and giving talks throughout the country. She was an early and vocal advocate of women's suffrage and, later, in 1889, was one of the founders, with Emmeline Pankhurst, of the Women's Franchise League.