Harriet Clisby

Harriet Clisby (1830-1931) was an English physician, women's rights activist, and founder of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.

Harriet Clisby was born in St. James's, London, in 1830, and moved with her parents and two siblings to Adelaide, South Australia, when she was eight years old. She married Henry Edward Walker on February 25, 1848. While in her twenties she moved to Melbourne, where she worked as a magazine editor for the Southern Phonographic Harmonia and co-published The Interpreter, the first Australian magazine published by women. She also organized a community home for the rehabilitation of women prisoners.

Inspired by Elizabeth Blackwell's 1852 book on women's health, Clisby decided to study medicine. She traveled to England, where she met with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, a prominent woman physician and hospital founder who advised her to train in the United States. With a friend's financial support, Clisby trained at the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women, graduating in 1865. In 1871 she moved to Boston, where she practiced homeopathy and lectured on hygiene.

In 1877, while still living in Boston, Clisby and several friends founded the Women's Educational and Industrial Union to address the problems of poor women, especially unemployed immigrants. In a large building on Boylston Street, women could take English language lessons, learn millinery, dressmaking, and needlework, and obtain free legal advice. Later the WEIU provided job placement services and training for domestic and retail work, and eventually established a women's credit union. The WEIU remained in operation well into the 20th century, providing many of the same services as a settlement house. Clisby served briefly as the organization's first president before resigning for health reasons, and was vice president from 1882 to 1889.

After retiring from medicine she moved to Geneva, where she founded L'Union des Femmes. She remained active for many years, giving lectures on medical and spiritual subjects into her nineties. She died in London in 1931 at the age of 100.

Clisby is remembered in connection with the WEIU on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.