Vicar’s wife was global pioneer of women’s rights
IT probably isn’t widely known that the wife of a former vicar of Calderbook in Littleborough was an international pioneer of women’s rights, peace and socialism.
A blue plaque at St James’s, Calderbook, honours the memory of the renowned and indomitable Enid Stacy, who, in a short life spanning only 35 years, campaigned at home and abroad for women’s rights and social reform.
On Monday, 150 years on from her birth in Gloucestershire, the Mothers Union at St Andrew’s, Dearnley, opened its doors for a meeting at which Rae Street told the remarkable story of this young girl from Bristol.
She rose through the ranks to rub shoulders with the Socialist topbrass of Victorian England and to become a great orator in her own right, travelling the length and breadth of England addressing meetings and socialist gatherings.
Her local connection was triggered when she met and later married the Rev Percy Widdrington, with whom she spent a few years living at Calderbrook vicarage and worshipping at St James’.
In 1903, aged 35 and at the height of her pioneering for women and workers, she returned to her little boy and to her husband Percy in Littleborough after two exhausting tours of the USA only to die suddenly from an embolism.
Rae has herself been an activist for women, peace and environmental issues for more than 30 years.
She said of Stacy: “She achieved more in her few years of activism than many do in a long lifetime.
“We need to remember the campaigning of those who struggled in earlier times and we should redress the fact that many of them, especially women, have been forgotten.”