Lettice Fisher

Lettice Fisher (14 June 1875 – 14 February 1956) was the founder of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, now known as Gingerbread. She was also an economist and a historian.[1][2]

Lettice Fisher
Born	Lettice Ilbert 14 June 1875 London, United Kingdom
Died	14 February 1956 (aged 80) Thursley, United Kingdom
Alma mater	Somerville College, Oxford
Occupation	Educator, economist, suffragette
Known for	Founder of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child
Spouse(s)	H. A. L. Fisher ​ ​ (m. 1899; died 1940)​

Background and education

Lettice Fisher (née Ilbert) was born on 14 June 1875 in Kensington, London to Sir Courtenay Peregrine Ilbert and his wife Jessie.[3]

She was educated at Francis Holland School, London and Somerville College, Oxford, where she was awarded a first in modern history in 1897. She worked as a researcher at the London School of Economics from 1897 to 1898. From 1902 to 1913, she taught history at St Hugh's College, Oxford, and she also taught economics for the Association for the Higher Education of Women in Oxford.[4]

Whilst at Oxford, Fisher was also involved in voluntary work in housing, public health and child welfare.[5] She was an active suffragist, chairing the national executive of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) from 1916 to 1918.[3] She ran to become President of the NUWSS in 1919, following Millicent Fawcett‘s post-war resignation, but was defeated by Eleanor Rathbone.[6]

The National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child

During World War I, Fisher undertook welfare work among women munitions workers in Sheffield. It was the wartime scale of illegitimacy and its resulting hardships that led her, in 1918, to found the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, in order to challenge the stigma associated with single parent families, and to provide them with the support they needed.[3][4]

The Council aimed to reform the Bastardy Acts and Affiliation Orders Acts, which discriminated against illegitimate children, and also to address the higher death rates of children born outside marriage, by providing accommodation for single mothers and their babies.[7] They also provided practical advice and assistance to single parents, and helped with their inquiries.

Lettice Fisher was the first chair of the Council (from 1918 to 1950), with Sybil Neville-Rolfe acting as the deputy chair.[5]

Family life

In July 1899, she married Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher, a tutor at New College, Oxford, who had taught her as an undergraduate. He became Warden of New College in 1925.

In 1913, they had one daughter, Mary Bennett, who became principal of St Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1965 to 1980.

After her husband's death in 1940, she moved to Thursley in Surrey. She died there on 14 February 1956 after suffering a stroke. After cremation her ashes were interred at New College, Oxford.[3]

References

1. Fisher, Lettice Ilbert (1 January 1922). Getting and Spending: An Introduction to Economics. Collins.
2. Fisher, Lettice (1 January 1925). Then and Now: Economic Problems After the War a Hundred Years Ago ...
3. "Lettice Fisher". www.oxforddnb.com. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
4. Robinson, Jane (5 February 2015). In the Family Way: Illegitimacy Between the Great War and the Swinging Sixties. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 9780241962923.
5. Thane, Pat; Evans, Tanya (1 May 2012). Sinners? Scroungers? Saints?: Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century England. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780199578504.
6. Pedersen, Susan (1 January 2004). Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300102453.
7. "Gingerbread - Celebrating 95 years of Gingerbread - Gingerbread: Celebrating 95 years of working with single parent families". gingerbread.org.uk. Retrieved 16 December 2016.