page_title: Agnes Pochin
section_title: The start of the suffrage campaign
hierarchical_section_title: Agnes Pochin / The start of the suffrage campaign
caption_attribution_description: Manchester
context_page_description: Agnes Pochin or Agnes Heap was an early British campaigner for women's rights. She funded campaigns, wrote one of the first tracts and was one of the three speakers at the first suffrage meeting in Manchester.
context_section_description: On 14 April 1868 the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage which had been formed the year before held its first public meeting. This meeting is one of the milestones that mark the start of the campaign for women's suffrage. The meeting was at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and the three main speakers were Lydia Becker, Anne Robinson and Agnes Pochin. Pochin's husband who was the Mayor of Salford chaired the meeting. Pochin was criticised for leaving her children, but it is suspected that her daughter, Lydia, was present at the meeting. She would have seen her mother propose the second motion that called on the audience to support the proposal that women who were legally qualified should enter their names on the electoral register.
  In 1870 Pochin and her husband moved south in order that her husband could travel more easily to the House of Commons. The Pochins still paid for a survey of Salford women and as a result over a thousand women were added to the voting register. Moreover, the Pochins paid for legal defence when the legality of this approach was challenged. In 1872 Agnes became a member of the executive Central Committee for Women's Suffrage. Her husband addressed the committee and he expressed the opinion that the committees meeting would mark a turning point in history. In 1873 her call for the women's suffrage was republished at last with non-de-plume but with the name of "Mrs Henry Davis Pochin". Over the next few years the central and Manchester committees received large sums from the Pochins. Pochin moved on to the Women's Emancipation Union in 1892 and over the next decade, she made donations to local and national committees.
  In 1892 Pochin was given the honour of launching the battleship HMS Revenge. She took the opportunity to challenge the church's historical poor regard for women.
  Pochin died in 1908 and she was buried in the mausoleum known as "the POEM" in the grounds of Bodnant Garden, where she had lived since 1874 in the Conwy valley.
caption: The (former) Free Trade Hall in Manchester
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