Highgate Cemetery #12: Ernestine Rose

'ERNESTINE L. SUSMOND
POTOWSKI ROSE
WOMENS RIGHTS AND ANTI-SLAVERY ADVOCATE,
FREETHINKER
B. JAN 13 1810 D. AUG 4 1892

 

WILLIAM ELLA ROSE
SILVERSMITH, REFORMER, FREETHINKER
B. 1813 D. JAN 31 1882'

Ernestine Rose (née Polowski) was born in Russian Poland and was sixteen when her mother died and her father married her to a friend of his, although she rebelled, journeyed to the civil court and successfully had the marriage annulled. When she returned home her father had married a girl the same age as her. She left home and travelled to several countries before finding support for her feminist and atheist ideas in England with Robert Owen, who encouraged her to lecture.

Her marriage to William Ella Rose was by a civil magistrate and they emigrated to the US in 1836, where they became American citizens, Ernestine continuing to lecture and meeting opposition because of her atheism. She won the support of, among other people, Susan B. Anthony. The Roses returned to England in 1869.

Ernestine Rose's work is collected in Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine Rose, Early Women's Rights Leader (2008), edited by Paula Doress-Worters.