Emilie Ashurst Venturi

Emilie Ashurst (Hawkes) Venturi (6 July 1821 – 16 March 1893) was an artist, writer, and activist who pushed for reforms in nineteenth-century Britain.

She corresponded with Mazzini, the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, the artist James McNeill Whistler, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, the activist Josephine Butler, and the Irish politician John Dillon.

[4] Her father was a prominent solicitor who supported anti-slavery, Chartism, the repeal of the Corn Laws, the creation of the Penny Post, the end of Church Rates, and the unification of Italy.

Venturi considered Giuseppe Mazzini as another brother almost from the time he met the Ashursts in 1844, and she worked tirelessly for the cause of Italian unification.

Venturi published six essays about Mazzini’s ideas in addition to three translations of his major works, including The Duties of Man.

[8] She died on the 16th March 1893 and was buried in the dissenters section of the western side of Highgate Cemetery in the Ashurst family vault.

She served as the editor for the journal of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (The Shield) from 1871-1886, a cause supported in Parliament by her brother-in-law James Stansfeld.

[17] She also painted portraits of the Cowen family in Newcastle and other political figures such as Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin and Louis (or Lajos) Kossuth.

[18] Later in her life she befriended James McNeill Whistler, her next door neighbor on Cheyne Walk (now Lindsey Row) in Chelsea.