Clementina Black

Clementina Black (1854 – 19 December 1922) was a writer, feminist and pioneering trades unionist.

She was born in Brighton, the daughter of the solicitor and town clerk of Brighton, David Black (1817–1892), and his wife, Clara Maria Patten, the daughter of a court portrait painter (1825–1875).^[1]

In 1875, Clementina's mother died from a rupture caused by lifting her invalid husband. Clementina, as the eldest daughter, was left in charge of an invalid father and seven brothers and sisters. Her siblings included the mathematician Arthur Black and the translator Constance Garnett.^[2]

Clementina's first novel, A Sussex Idyll, was published in 1877. After his father's death, she moved to London where she continued to write and was a close friend of writer Amy Levy and Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx.

Clementina Black was involved in the problems of working-class women and the emerging trade union movement. In 1886, she became honorary secretary of the Women's Trade Union League and moved an equal pay motion at the 1888 Trades Union Congress. In 1889, she helped form the Women's Trade Union Association, which later became the Women's Industrial Council.

She helped organise the Bryant and May strike in 1888. She was also active in the Fabian Society and the women's suffrage movement.

Alongside reports on social conditions, she wrote seven novels, including The Agitator about a socialist strike leader.^[3] She died at her home in Brighton in 1922, and is buried in East Sheen Cemetery, London.^[4]

Bibliography

• A Sussex Idyll (1877)
• An Agitator (1894)
• Sweated Industry and the Minimum Wage (1907)
• A Case for Trade Boards (1909)
• Married Women's Work, with others from the Women's Industrial Council (1915)

References