Anne Knight (Feminist and abolitionist campaigner)

Location

City Park West, opposite railway station in Duke Street (erected 1987)

About

Anne Knight was born in Springfield, Chelmsford in 1786 to a large Quaker family.

She was a prominent abolitionist, distributing literature and organising petitions and public meetings. She even formed a branch of the Women's Anti-Slavery Society in Chelmsford and has a village in Jamaica, Knightsville, named after her.

It was this work that led to her pioneering work in feminism, after becoming concerned about how female campaigners were treated by their male counterparts. She was furious when those men attempted to stop women taking part in the World Antislavery Convention held in London in 1840. 

She was inspired to start a campaign advocating equal rights for women. This included having gummed labels printed with feminist quotations, which she would attach to the outside of her letters.

In 1847, she published what is believed to be the first ever leaflet on women's suffrage.