Mrs. Emily Mary Fordham

Emily Mary Fordham, née Foster, was born on July 16, 1865, in Edgbaston, England, to Emily Martha and Balthazar Walter Foster, a physician, politician, and the first Baron Ilkeston. Emily was the eldest of five children, growing up alongside her brother, Balthazar S., and her three sisters, Margaret, Millicent, and Winifred. On June 12, 1889, she married Ernest Oswald Fordham, a landowner, justice of the peace, and director of a brewery. They had two children, Geoffrey and Kathleen.

Fordham was a Poor Law Guardian, parish councilor, and school manager in Cambridgeshire. She was a member of the Society of Women Journalists from 1905 to 1908. Her journalism focused on Poor Laws, education, parish council work, local elections, and legislation relating to women’s participation in local government. She published articles on these topics in the Daily News, East Anglian Daily Times, Evening News, Cambridge Independent Press, Country Life, Nation, Parish Councilor, Parish Councils Journal, The Queen, Socialist Review, Times, Tribune, Westminster Gazette, Women and Progress, and Women’s Employment Gazette. In 1904, she published The Evolution of Local and Imperial Government from the Teutonic Conquest to the Present Day, with a preface by her father, Sir Walter Foster.

Fordham died in London on April 11, 1950, at the age of 84.