A nod to Tod: formidable but forgotten force within the women's movement

The historian Maria Luddy has observed that “to write the life of Isabella Maria Susan Tod is to write a history of feminist activism in Ireland from the 1860s to the time of her death in 1896”.

A philanthropist, suffragist, and unionist, the range of this formidable and largely forgotten woman’s political and social activities is truly impressive.

By the time of her death on December 8, 1896, she had done much to deserve the reputation as being the most prominent woman in late 19th-century Belfast.

Isabella Tod was born in Edinburgh on May 18, 1836.

Her father, James Banks Tod, was an Edinburgh merchant; her mother, Maria Isabella Waddell, was a native of Co Monaghan.

Isabella Tod was proud of her Scottish ancestry and Presbyterian heritage.

She was conscious that one of her father’s ancestors had signed the Solemn League and Covenant in Holywood, Co Down, in 1646, and that the Reverend Charles Masterton, another ancestor, had been one of the leading Presbyterian ministers in 17th-century Belfast.

That her great-grandfather had served as a colonel in the Volunteers in 1782, founded to protect Ireland from threat of French invasion, was also a source of pride.

In the 1860s Isabella Tod settled in Belfast, earning her living from her writing and journalism.

She was a contributor to the Dublin University Magazine, an independent literary cultural and political magazine, and The Banner of Ulster, a Presbyterian newspaper published thrice weekly.

In the 1880s she wrote leaders in the Northern Whig, the conservative Belfast News Letter’s liberal counterpart and rival.

She was the only woman called upon to give evidence to a select committee inquiry on the reform of the married women’s property law in 1868 and served on the executive of the Married Women’s Property Committee in London from 1873 to 1874.

She successfully campaigned for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869.

Under the terms of this legislation, any woman suspected of being a prostitute could be arrested and be forced to undergo medical examination for venereal disease.

Tod opposed these acts as an infringement of women’s civil liberties, and as a legitimisation of “the sexual double standard” (in that men would never be treated in such a way).

She was life-long advocate of temperance and in 1874 she and Margaret Byers formed the Belfast Women’s Temperance Association.

She was a consistent advocate of access to secondary and tertiary education for girls.

The Ladies’ Collegiate School, Belfast (1859), the Queen’s Institute, Dublin (1861), Alexandra College, Dublin (1866), and the Belfast Ladies’ Institute (1867) owe their existence to Tod’s campaigns.

In her publication entitled ‘On the Education of Girls of the Middle Classes’ (1874), she called for practical education along the lines provided by the Belfast Ladies’ Institute, which she had established in 1867, to enable middle class women from Belfast to earn a living.

She pressured government to include girls within the terms of the Intermediate Education Act of 1878.

In February 1872 she embarked upon the first Irish campaign to secure the vote for women, addressing meetings at Belfast, Carrickfergus, Coleraine, and Londonderry.

The meeting in Belfast on February 6 attracted an audience of 500.

On February 21 she addressed a meeting in Dublin which resulted in the establishment of a suffrage committee which evolved into the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Society.

In 1873 she formed the North of Ireland Women’s Suffrage Society, the first women’s suffrage association in Ireland.

She also addressed meetings in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.

She visited London annually during the parliamentary session to lobby politicians.

In 1884 she authored a pamphlet entitled ‘Women and the new Franchise Bill: a Letter to an Ulster member of Parliament’.

Like many, if not most, Ulster Presbyterians – and she was a very active member of the Presbyterian Church – before 1885/86, she was a Liberal in politics but capable of co-operating very effectively, if circumstances required it, with Conservative politicians.

Gladstone’s conversion to Home Rule split the Liberal Party, produced realignment in British politics and sundered many old friendships.

This too was Isabella Tod’s experience; old friends and fellow campaigners became political opponents.

She reacted to the introduction of Gladstone’s first Home Rule bill in 1886 by establishing a branch of the London-based Women’s Liberal Federation in Belfast.

In 1888 when the Women’s Liberal Federation eventually split on the Home Rule issue, Tod established the Women’s Liberal Unionist Association.

Isabella Tod was a unionist, because she equated unionism with progress: “I knew that all the social work in which I had taken so prominent a part for 20 years was in danger, and most of it could not exist for a day under a petty legislature of the character which would be inevitable …

“What we dread is the complete dislocation of all society, especially in regard to commercial affairs and organised freedom of action.”

She faced poor health for the last 10 years of her life and died of pulmonary illness on December 8, 1896.

She is buried in Balmoral cemetery, south Belfast.

Isabella Tod possessed political skills of a very high order, skills which would have surpassed those of many a contemporary male politician.

She dominated any group or organisation with which she was involved.

Kate Courtney, wife of the MP Leonard Courtney, visited Belfast in 1890 and witnessed Isabella Tod in action at a unionist meeting and concluded that “Miss Tod is wonderful herself but she is constantly ill, and she does not seem to have the gift and perhaps not quite the inclination to insist on these ladies working apart from her… she probably does not see that she overpowers others and prevents them from doing much”.

Her death left a huge gap in the women’s movement – so much so that the North of Ireland Women’s Suffrage Society without her became a branch of the Irish Women’s Suffrage & Local Government Association.