Margaret Elise Harkness aka John Law (28 February 1854 – 10 December 1923) was an English radical journalist and writer.
Life
Harkness was born on 28 February 1854 at
Upton-on-Severn
Upton-upon-Severn (or Upton on Severn, etc. and locally simply Upton) is a town and civil parish in the Malvern Hills District of Worcestershire, England. Lying on the A4104 (formerly A440), the 2011 census recorded a population of 2,881 for the ...
in Worcestershire.Margaret Harkness Victorian Web, Retrieved 29 December 2015 Her parents were Robert and Jane Waugh Law Harkness. Her father, Robert, was an
Anglican priest
A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particu ...
. She had four siblings and a half sister as her mother had been widowed before she married her father. Her second cousin was the economist Beatrice Webb. She was sent to finishing school at Stirling House in Bournemouth. She is thought to have taken the name "Law" as part of her pen name because it was her mother's maiden name or because she was also a relation of Bishop
George Henry Law
George Henry Law (12 September 1761 – 22 September 1845) was the Bishop of Chester (1812) and then, from 1824, Bishop of Bath and Wells.
Born at the lodge of Peterhouse, Cambridge, of which his father Edmund Law (who later became Bishop of ...
.John Lucas, 'Harkness, Margaret Elise (1854–1923)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 200 accessed 29 Dec 2015 /ref>
Work
After attending a finishing school, Stirling House in Bournemouth, she left home at the age of 23 to make her living. She there trained as a nurse and worked as a dispenser at Guy's Hospital London. Harkness lived in various locations in London, occasionally with her cousin, Beatrice Potter (who later married Sidney Webb). Beatrice Potter had a difficult relationship with a Radical politician, Joseph Chamberlain, that ultimately foundered. Harkness herself eschewed marriage as a result of which her father refused to fund her independent life. Instead, Harkness supported herself through writing, both novels and journalism. When she died in 1923 in Italy, her death certificate described her as "a spinster of independent means.'
Author
In her works of social investigation, Harkness uses a tone of social realism or naturalism, making her different from her male contemporaries. With the financial assistance of her sister and Beatrice Webb, she was able to continue living in London and become a writer. In 1883 she wrote ''Assyrian Life and History'' and the following year ''Egyptian Life and History according to the Monuments''. She was introduced to socialism and a group of people who based themselves at the
British Museum Reading Room
The British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London, ...
; her friends included her sister Katie,
Eleanor Marx
Jenny Julia Eleanor Marx (16 January 1855 – 31 March 1898), sometimes called Eleanor Aveling and known to her family as Tussy, was the English-born youngest daughter of Karl Marx. She was herself a socialist activist who sometimes worked as a ...
,
Olive Schreiner
Olive Schreiner (24 March 1855 – 11 December 1920) was a South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual. She is best remembered today for her novel ''The Story of an African Farm'' (1883), which has been highly acclaimed. It deal ...
, and Annie Besant. Susan David Bernstein argues that this group of women enacted a "transformation of women's work that "entails a proliferation of women's labor across private homes and public spaces." In 1887 she published ''A City Girl''.
Margaret Harkness: 'In Darkest London' – 1889 Flore Janssen, LondonFiction.com, Retrieved 30 December 2015
In 1888 she wrote her novel ''Out of Work'' included descriptions of what happened in
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square ( ) is a public square in the City of Westminster, Central London, laid out in the early 19th century around the area formerly known as Charing Cross. At its centre is a high column bearing a statue of Admiral Nelson comm ...
on 13 November 1887. On that day actions by the police to control a demonstration by the unemployed resulted in injuries, one death, and many arrests. One of the arrests was of the socialist
John Burns
John Elliot Burns (20 October 1858 – 24 January 1943) was an English trade unionist and politician, particularly associated with London politics and Battersea. He was a socialist and then a Liberal Member of Parliament and Minister. He was ...
who she would later work with, together with
Tom Mann
Thomas Mann (15 April 1856 – 13 March 1941), was an English trade unionist and is widely recognised as a leading, pioneering figure for the early labour movement in Britain. Largely self-educated, Mann became a successful organiser and a ...
and
Henry Hyde Champion
Henry Hyde Champion (22 January 1859 – 30 April 1928) was a socialist journalist and activist, regarded as one of the leading spirits behind the formation of the Independent Labour Party. Up to 1893, he lived and worked in Great Britain, moving ...
, editor of the socialist paper ''
Justice
Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...
''. The novel ''Captain Lobe'' followed in 1889. This was later reprinted as "In Darkest London" She put her politics into action during the London Dock Strike that year when she is thought to have influenced Cardinal Manning who successfully interceded in the dispute.
In 1905 she published ''George Eastmont: Wanderer'' about her life during the 1889 Docks strike when she was briefly a member of the Social Democratic Federation. She described the conditions of the poor in London but she did not make it clear about her contact with Bishop Manning although the book was dedicated to him.
Her book ''In Darkest London'' documents poverty in the East End and the Salvation Army's approach to the problem. She wrote a book about Indian life which was published as ''Glimpses of Hidden India'' in 1907 and as ''Indian Snapshots'' in 1912.
At the end of her life, she lived in France and then Italy. Her last work ''A Curate's Promise: a Story of Three Weeks'' was published in 1921 and she died in
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...
in 1923.
Bibliography
* 'Women as Civil Servants,' ''Nineteenth Century'', 1881
''Assyrian Life and History'' 1883
* ''Egyptian Life and History according to the Monument'', 1884
* ''A City Girl'' with Henry Vizetelly, 1887
* ''Out of Work'', 1888
* ''A Curate's Promise'', 1921