Arethusa Gibson

Susannah Arethusa Gibson (née Cullum, 1814–1885) was an English Liberal activist and feminist of the 19th century, who variously supported Giuseppe Mazzini and the unification of Italy, mesmerism and spiritualism, and opposed the Roman Catholic Church until joining it in later life. She was married to Thomas Milner Gibson, a leading campaigner for free trade.

Arethusa Gibson, the daughter of Mary Anne Cullum (née Eggers) and Revd. Sir Thomas Gery Cullum of Hardwick House, Suffolk, was born in 1814, and spent her early years for the most-part in Italy.

She married in 1832 Thomas Milner Gibson, who was to become a Conservative and later a Liberal member of parliament, and who advocated for free trade and against so-called Taxes on knowledge. Arethusa Gibson, acting as a formidable society hostess, established a salon of radical politicians, diplomats, literary figures and European emigrees; in her circle were Benjamin and Mary Anne Disraeli, Cobden, Dickens, Hugo, Thackeray, and Louis Napoleon, who she had met in his exile.

Arethusa Gibson was an active supporter of Giuseppe Mazzini, who she met in 1844, in the struggle for the unification of Italy. During his exile in London, her salon provided a locus for his introduction to her wide circle of inflentual friends. In company with a group of like-minded and largely feminist friends, she organised fund-raising events - bazaars, concerts, raffles - following a successful pattern established by women supporters of the Anti-Corn Law League, as well as assisting in the safe passage of letters to and from Italy.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that Gibson had a number of children, only two of whom survived her; and was reputed to have had an affair with Sir George Wombwell. From the 1850s she took an interest in mesmerism and spiritualism. She died in Paris, where she had settled in the latter years of her life.