Elizabeth Thomson’s Autobiography: In Context
Elizabeth Thomson’s Autobiography: In Context
Elizabeth Thomson was a teacher, missionary, suffragette and travel enthusiast, and her autobiography tells the story of all these different parts of her life.
Elizabeth was born in 1847 in Glasgow, to Robert and Margaret Thomson. The Thomsons were an affluent middle-class family; her grandfather Thomas was a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, and her father held the same position at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. While Elizabeth was born in Glasgow, she spent substantial parts of her life living in the south of England, as well as later residing in Edinburgh.[1]
Elizabeth was a beneficiary of the growing educational opportunities for women in this period. Her autobiography records how she and her sister Agnes attended Queen’s College, a pioneering girls’ school, while living in London in the late 1850s and 1860s. While women were not admitted to the Scottish universities on equal terms until 1892, the sisters pursued higher education via another route, completing lecture courses with the Edinburgh Ladies’ Educational Association in the late 1870s and early 1880s.
The Thomson sisters were involved in a variety of voluntary public work over the course of their lives, all of which is captured in the autobiography. In the 1880s, when the family was living in Worthing, Elizabeth was heavily involved in setting up a ‘rescue’ centre in the town, providing classes and support to unemployed working-class women and unmarried mothers, and in establishing a local branch of the National Vigilance Association, which campaigned against trafficking and prostitution. The Thomson sisters also took the temperance pledge in 1882, and Elizabeth promoted the movement both at home and in India. The sisters went on three missions to India in c.1892-96, c.1899-1902, and c.1907-09. They worked in various locations across the country, mainly as teachers. The autobiography suggests several influences on the Thomsons’ public work, from religious motivations to Victorian middle-class morality and paternalism to imperialism.
The final defining cause in Elizabeth’s life was the campaign for women’s suffrage. She and Agnes joined the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1909, when they were in their sixties. Her autobiography records how they campaigned for the vote. They attended marches and protests, including the suffrage procession in Edinburgh in 1909, and the ‘Black Friday’ protest at the Houses of Parliament in 1910. They subsequently turned to militant action. Elizabeth was twice arrested and imprisoned in Holloway Prison for protests in London in 1911-12, including throwing stones at government buildings. In 1913, the Thomson sisters were arrested and tried for conspiring with other suffragettes to set fire to the stand at Kelso racecourse. Elizabeth was sentenced to three months in Calton Jail, Edinburgh, but she went on hunger strike and was released under licence. In defiance of the authorities, she fled abroad to Europe to avoid recapture, where she was joined by her sister. The events of the autobiography finish at around this point in 1914, although it appears that Thomson was still writing or editing the text by 1917. Elizabeth lived just long enough to witness the passing of the Representation of the People Act, which granted some women in Britain the vote, in February 1918. She died the following month in Edinburgh.
This brief summary of the contents of the autobiography points to its wider significance. The version which has been digitised is the only known surviving copy of the work. It is believed to be a later typescript copy of the original, but no other versions are publicly available, and the book was never published. While much scholarly attention has been devoted to the published autobiographies of the mainly London-based leaders of the suffrage campaign, Thomson’s life-writing provides a fascinating account of two more ordinary members of the Scottish movement.[2] It complements several other autobiographies of Scottish suffragists and suffragettes which were never published but are instead dispersed in archives across Britain.[3]
Thomson’s life-writing is somewhat unusual in its style. As the summary above suggests, Elizabeth’s closest relationship was with her sister Agnes, and they lived, travelled and worked together for most of their lives. As Gemma Elliott has argued, her autobiography is written almost as a joint autobiography with her sister and frequently refers to ‘we’ rather than ‘I’.[4] The autobiography is not very introspective, but what it lacks in self-reflection, it makes up for in descriptive detail. Thomson’s account chronicles everything from her daily life and domestic arrangements, to her experiments with amateur photography, to her health and treatment by some of the first women doctors. The sisters were also seasoned travellers, visiting many countries across Europe, Asia and North America, and the text reads almost as a travel journal in places.
Elizabeth Thomson’s autobiography is therefore a fascinating source for the study of social history, the history of the British Empire, political history and the development of the women’s movement.
Hannah Speed, History PhD student at the University of Glasgow, researching ‘Women’s life-writing and the suffrage campaign in Scotland c.1890s-1990s.
Published July 2026.
Elizabeth Thomson was a teacher, missionary, suffragette and travel enthusiast, and her autobiography tells the story of all these different parts of her life.
Elizabeth was born in 1847 in Glasgow, to Robert and Margaret Thomson. The Thomsons were an affluent middle-class family; her grandfather Thomas was a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, and her father held the same position at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. While Elizabeth was born in Glasgow, she spent substantial parts of her life living in the south of England, as well as later residing in Edinburgh.[1]
Elizabeth was a beneficiary of the growing educational opportunities for women in this period. Her autobiography records how she and her sister Agnes attended Queen’s College, a pioneering girls’ school, while living in London in the late 1850s and 1860s. While women were not admitted to the Scottish universities on equal terms until 1892, the sisters pursued higher education via another route, completing lecture courses with the Edinburgh Ladies’ Educational Association in the late 1870s and early 1880s.
The Thomson sisters were involved in a variety of voluntary public work over the course of their lives, all of which is captured in the autobiography. In the 1880s, when the family was living in Worthing, Elizabeth was heavily involved in setting up a ‘rescue’ centre in the town, providing classes and support to unemployed working-class women and unmarried mothers, and in establishing a local branch of the National Vigilance Association, which campaigned against trafficking and prostitution. The Thomson sisters also took the temperance pledge in 1882, and Elizabeth promoted the movement both at home and in India. The sisters went on three missions to India in c.1892-96, c.1899-1902, and c.1907-09. They worked in various locations across the country, mainly as teachers. The autobiography suggests several influences on the Thomsons’ public work, from religious motivations to Victorian middle-class morality and paternalism to imperialism.
The final defining cause in Elizabeth’s life was the campaign for women’s suffrage. She and Agnes joined the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1909, when they were in their sixties. Her autobiography records how they campaigned for the vote. They attended marches and protests, including the suffrage procession in Edinburgh in 1909, and the ‘Black Friday’ protest at the Houses of Parliament in 1910. They subsequently turned to militant action. Elizabeth was twice arrested and imprisoned in Holloway Prison for protests in London in 1911-12, including throwing stones at government buildings. In 1913, the Thomson sisters were arrested and tried for conspiring with other suffragettes to set fire to the stand at Kelso racecourse. Elizabeth was sentenced to three months in Calton Jail, Edinburgh, but she went on hunger strike and was released under licence. In defiance of the authorities, she fled abroad to Europe to avoid recapture, where she was joined by her sister. The events of the autobiography finish at around this point in 1914, although it appears that Thomson was still writing or editing the text by 1917. Elizabeth lived just long enough to witness the passing of the Representation of the People Act, which granted some women in Britain the vote, in February 1918. She died the following month in Edinburgh.
This brief summary of the contents of the autobiography points to its wider significance. The version which has been digitised is the only known surviving copy of the work. It is believed to be a later typescript copy of the original, but no other versions are publicly available, and the book was never published. While much scholarly attention has been devoted to the published autobiographies of the mainly London-based leaders of the suffrage campaign, Thomson’s life-writing provides a fascinating account of two more ordinary members of the Scottish movement.[2] It complements several other autobiographies of Scottish suffragists and suffragettes which were never published but are instead dispersed in archives across Britain.[3]
Thomson’s life-writing is somewhat unusual in its style. As the summary above suggests, Elizabeth’s closest relationship was with her sister Agnes, and they lived, travelled and worked together for most of their lives. As Gemma Elliott has argued, her autobiography is written almost as a joint autobiography with her sister and frequently refers to ‘we’ rather than ‘I’.[4] The autobiography is not very introspective, but what it lacks in self-reflection, it makes up for in descriptive detail. Thomson’s account chronicles everything from her daily life and domestic arrangements, to her experiments with amateur photography, to her health and treatment by some of the first women doctors. The sisters were also seasoned travellers, visiting many countries across Europe, Asia and North America, and the text reads almost as a travel journal in places.
Elizabeth Thomson’s autobiography is therefore a fascinating source for the study of social history, the history of the British Empire, political history and the development of the women’s movement.
Hannah Speed, History PhD student at the University of Glasgow, researching ‘Women’s life-writing and the suffrage campaign in Scotland c.1890s-1990s.
Published July 2026.
[1] More information about Thomson’s life can be found in: Elizabeth Ewan et al. (eds.), The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018). Leah Leneman, A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland (Revised edition, Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1995).
[2] Some of the key work in the field of suffrage autobiography includes research by Krista Cowman, Mary Joannou, Hilda Kean, and Laura Mayhall.
[3] For example, Isabella Carrie, Helen Crawfurd, Eunice Murray, and Jessie Stephen.
[4] Gemma Elliott, '“Women who Dared to Ask for a Vote”: The Missing Memoirs of the Scottish Suffragettes', Women's Writing, 25:3 (2018), p.323. Elliott’s article is the only in-depth, published, scholarly examination of Thomson’s autobiography https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/161889/
Footnotes
[1] More information about Thomson’s life can be found in: Elizabeth Ewan et al. (eds.), The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018). Leah Leneman, A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland (Revised edition, Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1995).
[2] Some of the key work in the field of suffrage autobiography includes research by Krista Cowman, Mary Joannou, Hilda Kean, and Laura Mayhall.
[3] For example, Isabella Carrie, Helen Crawfurd, Eunice Murray, and Jessie Stephen.
[4] Gemma Elliott, '“Women who Dared to Ask for a Vote”: The Missing Memoirs of the Scottish Suffragettes', Women's Writing, 25:3 (2018), p.323. Elliott’s article is the only in-depth, published, scholarly examination of Thomson’s autobiography https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/161889/