Emily Ford

Ford was secretary of the association and in 1879 backed a series of lectures on the laws relating to women's property rights and custody of infants.

The society was active from 1879 until 1883 and had among its leading members suffragettes such as Susan Dacre, Annie Swynnerton and Jessie Toler Kingsley.

[4] Ford then transferred her suffrage society membership to London[5] and expressed the desire that her art works should be hung "where they could speak".

[12] The painting, now lost, showed an allegorical figure with light rising behind her - a celebration of female achievement which heralded a bright new future.

[9] Deborah Cherry has claimed that the blue robes worn by 'the soul' echo those of the Virgin Mary, the intercessor between heaven and earth.

[15] High Church Anglicanism flourished in Leeds and provided Ford with opportunities to unite her spiritual beliefs and artistic practice.

[7] After her baptism at All Souls' in 1891 she gave the church eight panel paintings which attached to a tall font canopy designed by R. J. Johnson of Newcastle.

Painted in a primitivist Italian style, they depict scenes from the Bible but the figures themselves are portraits of people she knew, clerics, the church's congregation and herself.

Having not been cleaned the works fell in to a very poor state of repair, however following fundraising and the intervention of the Victorian Society the paintings were restored in 2014.

[18] Ford's religious art works had once decorated numerous churches throughout England, unfortunately the majority have not survived due to demolition or changing tastes.

She continued to devote herself to religious art designing stained glass windows and painting murals, but also produced posters, banners and shields for the suffrage movements.