Sophia Chichester

Sophia Catherine Chichester (née Ford; 7 August 1795 – 29 April 1847) was an English patron of religious and political unorthodoxy.

[1] She supported the work of reformers including Robert Owen and Richard Carlile, and was president of the British and Foreign Society for the Promotion of Humanity and Abstinence from Animal Food.

[2] Along with her sister, Georgina Welch, she has been described as "a unique case of upper-class female radicalism in early Victorian England.

[4] The sisters "began to cultivate unorthodox prophets, preachers, and political subversives, protecting their privacy while dispensing gifts of money by letter.

[1] The sisters, whose individual correspondence it is difficult to discern from one another's,[4] described the "irrational & immoral custom of marriage", boasting of their reading of radical publications.

[1] In these years, despite her proclamations of radicalism and support of unorthodoxy, Sophia was described as "a fair, well preserved, good-looking woman... with quiet, subdued, well-bred manners and gentleness of speech.

As Jackie Latham has written, "[a]ll the evidence suggests that, supporting each other emotionally, they worked in isolation to reform the world with the means that their circumstances offered: correspondence and money.