Henrietta Louise (Muir) Edwards (1849 - 1931)

Henrietta Muir Edwards was a Canadian women's rights activist and reformer.She was one of the^[1] Famous Five,they were five Canadian women who asked the Supreme Court of Canada to answer the question, "Does the word 'Persons' in Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, include female persons

Biography

Henrietta (Muir) Edwards is Notable.

Henrietta (Muir) Edwards was a part of the Suffragette Movement.

Henrietta Muir was born in 1849 to a wealthy Montreal family. After finishing school and a tour of Europe,her father bought a big house in downtown Montreal where Henrietta and her sister Amélia founded a Working Girls Club in Montreal in 1875 to provide meals, reading rooms and study classes. They also published a periodical, The Working Women of Canada, which helped to bring working conditions into the public eye. This project was undertaken at their own expense, and was funded from their earnings as artists. This was a forerunner to the Y.W.C.A

Henrietta Edwards married Dr. Oliver C. Edwards in 1876 and they had three children. They moved to Indian Head, North West Territories Dr. Edwards was the government doctor for the Indian reserves . Henrietta continued to pursue women’s rights and feminist organizations .In 1890 Henrietta's husband fell ill so they returned to Ottawa,where she took up the cause to help female prisoners, she worked with Lady Aberdeen, wife of the Governor General to establish the National Council of Women in 1893 and the^[2]Victorian Order of Nurses VON in 1897.

The Government of Canada selected individuals to assist in an advisory capacity about how to invoke stricter conservation measures during the latter period of the First World War, Henrietta Edwards was part of the selected committee, and it was the first time in Canadian history that a woman had been called for a review of public policy with the Government.

Henrietta wrote two books about women and the legal problems she was trying to overcome, Legal Status of Canadian Women (1908) and Legal Status of Women in Alberta (1921). She worked with Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby and Emily Murphy for recognition matrimonial property rights.She ask for their help again to fight for^[3] the Persons Case in the late 1920s, which established that Canadian women were eligible to be appointed senators and more generally, that Canadian women had the same rights as Canadian men with respect to positions of political power^[4] they became known as the Famous Five

In October 2009, the Senate voted to name Henrietta Edwards and the rest of the Famous Five Canada's first "honorary senators. The Canadian government commissioned her to paint a set of dishes for the Canadian exhibit at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition