Women, Late Chartism, and the Land Plan in Nottinghamshire

This article explores the relationship between working-class women and Chartism, focusing chiefly on Nottingham. It argues that the opportunities for women to participate in the movement were much more varied and enduring than previous historians have often supposed. One of the reasons why women were so prominent by the time of Chartism in the 1840s was because of a tradition of political participation. Even by the period of late Chartism (post-1842), women were still participating in popular politics, and nowhere more so than in the Land Plan, a scheme to resettle urban workers on the land. Drawing on a database of some 2,300 Nottinghamshire members of the Land Plan, the evidence suggests that the region’s women were more likely to join, and on their own volition, have their own jobs and possess a degree of independence that was not the case elsewhere.