Although Emmeline continued with the Poor Law work, even giving a joint
paper with another woman Guardian, Mrs. Sale, at the September 1897
Northern Poor Law Conference,^71 Richard and his troubles were increasingly
occupying her time. She gave her full support to her husband when attempts
were made by some Manchester City Councillors to buy off his opposition to a
costly and unnecessary culvert scheme to dispose of sewage. Richard’s fight had
been going on for about one year; he had written a number of letters to the
press, condemning the scheme, and also led a deputation to the town hall to
protest against misleading propaganda. In September 1897 some City
Councillors intimated to him that if he accepted the culvert scheme, he would
be retained as Counsel for the Corporation in the private bill necessary to get
the scheme through parliament, whereby he would be paid a fee of about
£10,000. That such a consideration ‘weighed with him not a straw’,^72 despite
his financial worries, was a view that Emmeline ardently shared. She admired
her husband’s integrity and idealism and had no patience with the humbug and
seedy side of local politics. When the Lord Mayor of Manchester demanded
that a poll of the ratepayers be taken on the issue, the result was 20,528 for the
culvert and 49,069 against.^73 It was a great victory for Richard about which
Emmeline and the children felt justly proud, despite their financial difficulties.
But out of the hearing of his children, Richard shared with Emmeline his regrets
that he could not do more to realise his ideals nor to eliminate those ‘social
evils’ which people from all strata of society were ‘openly condemning and
attacking’.^74
SOCIALIST AND PUBLIC REPRESENTATIVE