Emma Cons
Emma Cons, the second daughter in the family of seven children of Frederick Cons (1810–1870), pianoforte key maker, and his wife, Esther Goodair (1807-1882), daughter of a Stockport mill owner, was born in London on 4th March 1838. Her father had his own business and when he died it was taken over by his son, it employed just one man and one boy. (1)
Emma went to a school run by Caroline Southwood Hill, but when her father became too ill to work in 1852 she was forced to leave. She wanted to become an artist and attended a school run by the mother of the painter Henry Holliday, and then went to the art school in Gower Street, London. (2)
On 30th October 1854, Emma attended a meeting organised by Frederick Denison Maurice on his scheme for a Working Men's College. Also in the audience was Caroline Southwood Hill and her daughter, Octavia Hill. Emma and Octavia soon became very close friends. (3)
Her sister, Ellen Cons (1840-1920) was also an artist who worked as a glass-stainer before becoming a governess and social worker. Eliza Cons (1842-1924) also worked as a glass-stainer before being appointment as a Superintendent of The Walmer Castle Coffee House in Seymour Place, London. (4)
Octavia Hill decided she would mentor Emma. As she explained in a letter to her friend, Mary Harris, in 1857. "She (Emma Cons) has now thoroughly established herself, and has begun to study, walk, think, draw, be entirely independent of me... whoever cares to break through her shell will be well rewarded... I find in her a strength and energy which is quite refreshing, and consign to her much which I should otherwise undertake myself... I feel, in Miss Cons, whose growth I have watched eagerly, an amazing perseverance, a calmness, a power, and a glorious humility before which I bow, and which I feel may be destined to carry out great works more nobly. I am particularly glad that she has friends, as I find that now instead of giving her my society, I can only give her my friendship and sympathy." (5)
Christian Socialist
Emma Cons supported this cause and became active in the Christian Socialist movement. During this period she met John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes. Ruskin employed her in 1856 to work on the restoration of illuminated manuscripts. "During a visit to Switzerland she noticed that the work of watch engraving was carried out by women, and, taking the view that this was ideal work for women, when she returned to England she apprenticed herself to a watch engraver, together with a group of female friends. After completing their training the women established a co-operative watch engraving business in Clerkenwell, but they encountered great hostility from male competitors, who intercepted the messenger who brought the women work and injured him so severely that the manufacturers became uneasy at supplying them with further orders. With insufficient work, the co-operative was eventually forced to close." (6)
Judi Leighton argues that "Her next employment also brought Cons into conflict with established male employees. She was the first woman to be hired by the stained-glass manufacturers Powells of Whitefriars, and the men deliberately sabotaged her work until Arthur Powells's personal intervention ended the persecution. One of her most important commissions at Powells was to work on the restoration of the stained-glass windows in the chapel of Merton College, an assignment which kept her in Oxford for two years in the early 1860s." (7)
Emma Cons went on to be the first woman employed by the renowned stained glass manufacturer, Powell's of Whitefriars, which handled commissions for many of the Pre-Raphaelite Boy's Club. She worked on the restoration of Merton College Chapel in Oxford for two years but again suffered from bullying, her work deliberately damaged by her male colleagues. According to Henrietta Barnett, because of these experiences, Emma "disliked, positively disliked, the male sex." (8)
Others have argued that even if this was true, it does not have seemed to have stopped Emma from seeking and gaining support from a wide range of men and working with them perfectly effectively. Beatrice Webb argued that Emma had a complex relationship with men that "to a certain extent unsexed" her. "Not that I despise these qualities; the former is indispensable in any work, but with the manager it is more moral; with the organizer more technical justice. Push and severity are not prominent qualities of the governing and guiding women. For the guidance of men by personal influence, feeling more than thought is required." (9)
Housing Project
In 1864, on the death of his father, John Ruskin inherited £120,000 and some property. He agreed to invest £800 of his inheritance in Octavia Hill's long-held dream, to establish improved housing for the poor. Hill wrote to a friend: "I have long been wanting to gather near us my friends among the poor, in some house arranged for their health and convenience, in fact a small private model lodging-house, where I may know everyone, and do something towards making their lives healthier and happier, and to my intense joy Ruskin has promised to help me to work the plan." (10)
Octavia Hill purchased a terrace of artisans' cottages just off Marylebone High Street, London, and a short walk from Regent's Park. The premises were transformed by cleaning, ventilation, clearance of the drains, repairs, and redecoration. Octavia also recruited a team of women that included Emma Cons and Henrietta Barnett to help her with this venture. She later argued that the most important aspect of her system was the weekly visit to collect rent. This allowed her and her colleagues to check upon every detail of the premises and to broaden their contact with the tenants, especially the children. They also tried to find local and regular employment for the tenants. Beatrice Webb described the women as "welfare workers and moral guardians of their tenants". (11)
Emma Cons looked after Octavia Hill's property in Drury Lane. Hill was pleased by the way she carried out the task: "She (Emma Cons) has undertaken them wholly, makes her own centre quite independent of this house except as to funds, enrols her own volunteer workers, founds her own classes, clubs, savings' banks, keeps her own accounts, supervises all the business and personal work, and reports to the owners of the court direct. I asked her to adopt this plan, because I saw that she was quite able to take the lead in any group of courts entrusted to her, that she might grow to be a centre of workers, and so be able to extend the plan to more courts than we could while she was only my lieutenant, and while all decisions came from me. I knew she would manage courts differently from me. I thought this a gain." (12)
Henrietta Barnett also praised the work of Emma Cons: "I can visualise her now: mounting ladders, mixing colours, ordering and laughing at the men, who when too inexperienced, backward, or perhaps indolent, would show resentment at, or disinclination for the job, were made ashamed and also encouraged by seeing Miss Cons seize the brush and give an excellent lesson on distempering, painting or washing down." (13)
Emma Cons was quoted in the Illustrated London News as saying: "My work has been essentially practical. It has been to endeavour by making the housing of the mass of the people more sanitary and comfortable, themselves more provident and temperate, and their recreation more intelligent and healthy, to make their lives more happy and better worth living." (14) The Preston Herald reported: "Miss Emma Cons, who from the age of seventeen has devoted her time, her talent, and her fortune to the relief of the poor." (15)
Coffee Music Hall Company
By 1870 she had become manager of the Central London Dwellings Improvement Company. Emma Cons became aware of the economic and social damage that excessive drinking could cause in families and became an active member of the temperance movement. She joined up with Thomas Hughes, social reformer and co-founder of the Working Men's College, to set up a coffee tavern, ‘The Cat and Comfort' in Covent Garden. Lizzie Broadbent points out: "The idea was to offer a pleasant, teetotal, alternative to the many pubs in the area. A working girls' club was soon set up on the same premises, giving access to a piano and a library as well as offering job counselling and a creche for working mothers. It was soon after this, at the end of 1876, that Emma founded her first social enterprise, the Coffee Taverns Company."
In April 1878, the Coffee Taverns Company issued its second Annual Report. Its first three sites now had 4,000 customers a day and were selling 26,500 drinks, 1,646 loaves of bread, 384 pounds of beef and ham and 30 dozen eggs every week. The report made "special mention of the invaluable service which Miss Cons has rendered." William Gladstone became vice-president of the company and Florence Nightingale wrote asking to buy shares. By March 1879, the chain had expanded to 16 venues, adding nine more the following year. By then, the company saw 30,000 customers a day. (16)
1879 Emma Cons formed the Coffee Music Hall Company with the specific object of providing entertainment, and in the next year the company leased the Victoria Theatre on the Waterloo Road (widely known as the Old Vic) as the venue for Cons's experiment with "purified" entertainment. Formerly an music-hall, in an area surrounded by gin palaces, public houses, and criminal haunts. Over £3000 was spent on refurbishment and renamed the Royal Victoria Coffee Music Hall, it was opened for business on 27th December 1880, with an offering of wholesome entertainment and alcohol-free refreshments. (17)
Emma's niece, Lilian Baylis, assisted her in running the Old Vic, and gradually took on more management duties running concerts, film shows, lecture programmes and variety shows. Although she retained an active interest in the theatre for the rest of her life, it was Baylis who transformed its repertoire. After her aunt's death she obtained a theatre licence from the lord chamberlain so that she could start staging Shakespeare. (18)
Morley College
Emma Cons overestimated the willingness of the local population to sit through a performance of entertainment without drinking alcohol and the venture soon ran into financial difficulties. In May 1881 the theatre closed, but after an energetic fund-raising campaign Cons reopened it in October, with a programme of music-hall style entertainment, science lectures, ballad evenings, and temperance meetings. Another financial crisis ensued, and in 1884 the industrialist and Liberal MP Samuel Morley agreed to help as long as the building was used for education The "penny science lectures" given in the hall led to the foundation of the Morley College for Working Men and Women. (19)
The programme on offer expanded beyond the sciences to include French, literature, music, politics and economics. The earliest classes were held in rooms running beneath the Old Vic's stage, and she officially opened the college on 28th September 1889. It was the first institution of its kind to admit both genders on an equal footing. Emma Cons mission was to educate, inspire and bring people together in an inclusive and affordable environment. The college provided art, dance and music classes, alongside lessons in literacy and numeracy to provide skills and contribute to the futures of working people. (20)
Morley College attracted talented teaching staff. Gustav Holst was the Director of Music and other teachers and lecturers who went on to great things were Virginia Woolf, E.M. Foster, Emmeline Pankhurst, Maud Pember Reeves, Christabel Pankhurst, Graham Wallas, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson and Ernest Shepherd. Right from the start, it was agreed that three of the council members had to be women and there was a series of women principals. This included Mary Sheepshanks and Eva Hubback. (21)
Surrey Lodge
Emma Cons also established the South London Dwellings Company, which bought a property between the Lambeth and Kennington roads that Cons transformed into model dwellings, known as Surrey Lodge. In 1883 Beatrice Potter joined the Charity Organization Society (COS), an organisation that attempted to provide Christian help to those living in poverty. While working with the poor, Beatrice Potter realised that charity would not solve their problems. She began to argue that it was the causes of poverty that needed to be tackled, such as the low standards of education, housing and public health. (22)
Beatrice Potter visited Surrey Lodge in 1885: "Visited Miss Conns at Surrey Buildings... Working-class tenements, shops and cottages, outside staircase, balconies round pleasure-ground, water closets together, one to each tenement with keys, no sinks. Wash-house and drying-ground on roof. Miss Cons trained by Octavia Hill. Not a lady by birth, with the face and manner of a distinguished woman, a ruler of men. Absolute absorption in work, strong religious feeling, very little culture or interest in things outside the sphere of her own action. Certainly not a lover of fact of theory. Was not clear as to total number of rooms, unlets or arrears. No description of tenants kept. Did not attempt to theorize on her work. Kept all particulars as to families in her head, spoke to her people with that peculiar mixture of sympathy and authority which characterizes the modern class of governing women. Unlike the learned woman, the emotional part of their nature is fully developed, their sympathy kept almost painfully active… They have the narrow-minded-ness and social gaucherie of complete absorption, physical and mental, in one set of feelings and ideas." (23)
Political Activities
Emma Cons was lifelong champion of women's rights, she was a constitutional suffragist. In 1887 a group of women, including Emma Cons, Millicent Fawcett, Eva Maclaren, Frances Balfour and Marie Corbett, formed the Liberal Women's Suffrage Society (LWSS). (24)
In 1889 Cons was appointed an alderman by the newly formed London County Council. Cons served on six committees (asylums, housing, industrial schools, parks, sanitation, and theatre) and a number of subcommittees. She explained her commitment to the cause of women councillors with the words: "I believe that for such work as ours women are not only qualified but needful, and I desire to defend their franchise as far as lawfully I may… those duties are to me a trust, not only for women but for the whole community." (25)
She was a member of the executive committee of the LWSS, and vice-president in 1892, and served on its temperance committee in 1894. She was also a member of the London Society for Women's Suffrage, serving as vice-president in 1908–11. (26)
Emma Cons died at a friend's home, Chippens Bank, Hever, Kent, on 24 July 1912, and her ashes were scattered in the surrounding woods. Her estate was valued at £3,374. 10s. (27)
The memorial to Emma Cons on the Old Vic Theatre states. "Lover of beauty and pupil of Ruskin, she yet gave up the life of an artist for social work… To improve housing for working men and women. To provide wholesome and joyous recreation at a low price. To promote education… She gave her very self, large-hearted and clear-sighted, courageous, tenacious of purpose and of great personal modesty." (28)
Primary Sources
(1) Gillian Darley, Octavia Hill: A Life (1990)
Emma Cons was of German descent; her mother had seven children, the youngest of whom was Elizabeth, Lilian Baylis' mother. She was hoping to be an artist and had been a student at the Art School in Gower Street before coming to Mrs Hill's to help at the Guild. As in Octavia's case, Emma Cons's family had to earn for itself, since her father was sick; and soon she was helping with the toymakers too. She seems to have released Octavi's adolescent high spirits with her own carefree personality, which was underpinned by an equally powerful sense of moral purpose.
(2) Octavia Hill, letter to Mary Harris (1857)
She (Emma Cons) has now thoroughly established herself, and has begun to study, walk, think, draw, be entirely independent of me... whoever cares to break through her shell will be well rewarded... I find in her a strength and energy which is quite refreshing, and consign to her much which I should otherwise undertake myself...
I feel, in Miss Cons, whose growth I have watched eagerly, an amazing perseverance, a calmness, a power, and a glorious humility before which I bow, and which I feel may be destined to carry out great works more nobly. I am particularly glad that she has friends, as I find that now instead of giving her my society, I can only give her my friendship and sympathy.
(3) Octavia Hill, Letter to Fellow Workers (1876)
She (Emma Cons) has undertaken them wholly, makes her own centre quite independent of this house except as to funds, enrols her own volunteer workers, founds her own classes, clubs, savings' banks, keeps her own accounts, supervises all the business and personal work, and reports to the owners of the court direct. I asked her to adopt this plan, because I saw that she was quite able to take the lead in any group of courts entrusted to her, that she might grow to be a centre of workers, and so be able to extend the plan to more courts than we could while she was only my lieutenant, and while all decisions came from me. I knew she would manage courts differently from me. I thought this a gain… Miss Cons had an ideal; left to herself she would gladly have sacrificed it to mine in a moment… That could not be. I set her free to work towards her own standard; I knew we should each learn from the other. I must say I have been astonished how little her work has differed from mine; still it is her very own… I see several courts full of people watched over, saved, cared for, all without me. I see a group of volunteers working with full energy, with deep devotion, some of whom I never knew.
(4) Beatrice Webb, diary entry (12th August, 1885)
Visited Miss Conns at Surrey Buildings... Working-class tenements, shops and cottages, outside staircase, balconies round pleasure-ground, water closets together, one to each tenement with keys, no sinks. Wash-house and drying-ground on roof.
Miss Cons trained by Octavia Hill. Not a lady by birth, with the face and manner of a distinguished woman, a ruler of men. Absolute absorption in work, strong religious feeling, very little culture or interest in things outside the sphere of her own action. Certainly not a lover of fact of theory. Was not clear as to total number of rooms, unlets or arrears. No description of tenants kept. Did not attempt to theorize on her work.
Kept all particulars as to families in her head, spoke to her people with that peculiar mixture of sympathy and authority which characterizes the modern class of governing women. I felt ashamed of the way I cross examined her… She lives on the premises; collects other blocks, but devotes much time to other work in connection with the amusement and instruction of the people. A calm enthusiasm in her face, giving her all to others. "Why withhold any of your time and strength?" Seemed to be her spirit… These "governing and guiding women" may become important factors if they increase as they have done lately; women who give up their lives to the management of men, their whole energy of body and mind absorbed in it.
Unlike the learned woman, the emotional part of their nature is fully developed, their sympathy kept almost painfully active… They have the narrow-minded-ness and social gaucherie of complete absorption, physical and mental, in one set of feelings and ideas. The pure organizer belongs to a different class. She is represented by the active secretary to a growing society or the matron of a big hospital – is to a certain extent unsexed by the justice, push, and severity required. Not that I despise these qualities; the former is indispensable in any work, but with the manager it is more moral; with the organizer more technical justice. Push and severity are not prominent qualities of the governing and guiding women. For the guidance of men by personal influence, feeling more than thought is required.