Barbara Bodichon (1827 - 1891). Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was an English educationalist and artist, and a leading mid-19th-century feminist and women's rights activist. She published her influential Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women in 1854 and the English Woman's Journal in 1858. Bodichon co-founded Girton College, Cambridge. Her brother was the Arctic explorer Benjamin Leigh Smith. Barbara Bodichon was the extra-marital child of Anne Longden, a milliner from Alfreton, Derbyshire and a Whig politician, Benjamin Ben Leigh Smith, the only son of the Radical abolitionist William Smith. He had four sisters. One, Frances Fanny Smith, married William Nightingale and produced a daughter, Florence; another, Joanna Maria, married John Bonham-Carter MP and founded the Bonham Carter family. Leigh Smith's home was in Marylebone, London, but from 1816 he inherited and bought property near Hastings: Brown's Farm near Robertsbridge, with an extant house built about 1700, and Crowham Manor, Westfield, which included 200 acres. Although a member of the landed gentry, Smith held radical views. He was a Dissenter, a Unitarian, a supporter of free trade, and a benefactor to the poor. In 1826 he bore the cost of building a school for the inner city poor at Vincent Square, Westminster, and paid a penny a week towards the fees for each child, the same amount paid by their parents. Smith met Anne Longden while on a visit to his sister in Derbyshire. She became pregnant by him and he took her to the south of England, housing her in a rented lodge at Whatlington, near Battle, East Sussex, as Mrs Leigh, the surname of Ben Smith's relations on the nearby Isle of Wight. Barbara's birth caused scandal, as the couple did not marry. Smith rode from Brown's Farm to visit them daily, and in eight weeks Anne was pregnant again. When their son Ben was born, the four went to America for two years, during which another child was conceived. On their return to Sussex, they lived openly together at Brown's and had two more children. After the last was born in 1833, Anne fell ill with tuberculosis. Smith leased 9 Pelham Crescent, Hastings, which faced the sea, whose healthy properties were highly regarded at the time. A local woman, Hannah Walker, was employed to look after the children. Anne did not recover and so Smith took her to Ryde, Isle of Wight, where she died in 1834. Smith, unusually for the time, sent all his children to the local school to learn alongside working-class children, rather than sending the older males to boarding or an elite day school. He later shared financial endowments equally with all the children, both male and female, giving each an income of E300 per annum from the age of majority. Early in her life, Barbara showed a force of character and breadth of sympathies that would win her prominence among philanthropists and social workers. Independent income gave her a freedom not normally possessed by many women and Bodichon and a group of London friends began to meet regularly in the 1850s to discuss women's rights, and became known as The Ladies of Langham Place. This group became one of the first organised women's movements in Britain. They pursued many causes vigorously, including their Married Women's Property Committee.