She rented a shop and house at 25 Ludlow Street, Chorlton-upon-Medlock, Manchester which were of high enough monetary value to qualify their occupier under the pre-1867 £10 household borough franchise.

Alongside his wife, Ursula Mellor Bright, he was a founder of the Manchester branch of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, in January 1867.

[4] In fact she was a citizen in her own right as she had been fined a pound by the Police Court for selling short measures at her shop in the Manchester suburb of Chorlton-on-Medlock.

At this time, votes had to be spoken out loud and Punch magazine marked this with a ditty: "To the fair Lily Maxwell a bumper, Who in petticoats rushed to the poll, And for Jacob Bright entered her plumper, Mill’s first ‘person’, singular, sole!

These claims were presented at the Court of Common Pleas by Sir John Coleridge and Richard Pankhurst in Chorlton v. Lings on 2 November 1868.