This biography is republished from The London School of Economics and Political Science and was written by LSE Library curator Dr Gillian Murphy. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 8 March 1905, India
Died: 1 June 1905
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
The origins of the London Society, and of its Library, developed from the Women’s Suffrage Committee founded in London in 1866. The Library was for its members but was open to non-members for a fee. This letter in The Woman’s Leader (5 August 1927) gives information about the type of material it contained in those early days, specialising particularly in women’s employment and other matters relating to women as citizens.
The collection was built by donation. Letters were written to members and to authors inviting them to donate their books. This proved successful. However, in 1928, when George Bernard Shaw refused to donate The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism, Vera Douie sold his letter for 15 shillings so that she could buy the book. This event was noted in the Library sub-committee minutes and even reported in the Daily Mail with the headline “Mr Shaw outwitted”.
The Library was housed at 35-37 Marsham Street, Westminster, a converted pub, known as Women’s Service House. It also had a restaurant, a committee room and a hall for lectures and theatre performances.
Women’s Service House became an active centre for those involved in the women’s movement. An example of this is a dinner to celebrate Elisabeth Scott winning the architectural competition to design the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
The Library attracted many prominent feminists as members such as Virginia Woolf and Vera Brittain. Virginia used the collection to research a book which became Three Guineas, published in 1938. Virginia became a member of the London Society, gave talks to the Junior Council, and donated many books to the Library.
Many important book collections were deposited in the 1930s, as well as archives, the first being the archive of Millicent Garrett Fawcett. With the Second World War and the bombing of Women’s Service House in 1940, the Library, now containing over 10,000 items, was rescued and moved to various locations in Oxford. It returned to London nine years later, but the collection was scattered with most held at Westminster Public Library in Great Smith Street.
In the 1950s, the London Society changed its name to the Fawcett Society, which is still active today. and the library became the Fawcett Library in memory of Millicent Garrett Fawcett. New premises were secured at 27 Wilfred Street, Westminster.
A period of expansion followed. The Josephine Butler Society transferred its library and archive on prostitution and trafficking and women’s societies regrouped or closed in the days before the women’s liberation movement, and their archives were given to the Library.
In 1967, Vera Douie retired as librarian. During her 41 years at the Library, she had developed it from a few bookcases for the use of members into a major research collection. Although there were honorary librarians (Jane Norton) and later full- and part-time librarians who contributed to this expansion, the main credit must go to Vera.
IW note: Vera was also active with the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, campaigned for women’s rights and wrote books about women’s employment.