Florence Wallace Pomeroy, Viscountess Harberton (''née'' Wallace Legge; 14 June 1843 – 30 April 1911) was a British campaigner for dress reform. She was born at Malone House in Belfast, the daughter of wealthy landowner William Wallace Legge (died 1868), a and for County Antrim, and his wife, Eleanor Wilkie Forster. She married James Spencer Pomeroy (1836–1912) on 2 April 1861, and in 1862 she became Viscountess Harberton when he became the 6th

Viscount Harberton Viscount Harberton, of Carbery in the County of Kildare is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created on 5 July 1791 for Arthur Pomeroy, 1st Baron Harberton, who had previously represented County Kildare in the Irish House of Commons. He h ...

. They had four children, Aline Florence, Hilda Evelyn, Ernest Arthur George (1867-1944, 7th Viscount), and Ralph Legge (1869-1956, 8th Viscount). Pomeroy became involved in the campaign for dress reform in 1880, after the death of her daughter Aline. In 1883 she became President of the

Rational Dress Society The Rational Dress Society was an organisation founded in 1881 in London, part of the movement for Victorian dress reform. It described its purpose thus: The Rational Dress Society protests against the introduction of any fashion in dress that e ...

(which she possibly co-founded in 1881), which described the attributes of "perfect" dress as: In 1893, '' The Guardian'' mentioned her "Short Skirts League" whose members would wear skirts of at least above the ground when out walking. In 1898, she founded the Rational Dress League. She was a keen cyclist, and one of her most celebrated moments was when the landlady of the Hautboy Inn at Ockham, Surrey, refused to serve her because she was wearing her "rational dress" of baggy knickerbockers instead of a skirt. Pomeroy sued the landlady, but lost the case because she had been offered service in an alternative room, albeit one occupied by three men. The Cycling UK (formerly the Cycle Touring Club (CTC), which removed its badge of approval from the Hautboy at the time) says that "the case hit the national headlines, made CTC a lot of friends, led to more women's cycling groups, and was a milestone on the road to female emancipation". In later years she took up the cause of women's suffrage. Her obituary in '' The Times'' says that she had written pieces for that newspaper to express the view that women could do more of the work currently done by men, and had also campaigned for reforms to prevent tuberculosis. It ended by saying that: She died in Onslow Square, South Kensington, aged 67.

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1843 births 1911 deaths People from Belfast Harberton British women activists {{UK-activist-stub