Helen Bright Clark

Helen Bright Clark (1840–1927) was a British women's rights activist and suffragist. The daughter of a radical Member of Parliament, Clark was a prominent speaker for women's voting rights and at times a political realist who served as a mainstay of the 19th century suffrage movement in South West England. A liberal in all senses, Clark aided progress toward universal human brotherhood through her activities in organisations which assisted former slaves and aboriginal peoples.

In 1840, Clark was born Helen Priestman Bright in Rochdale, Lancashire, England to Quakers Elizabeth Priestman Bright and future Privy Council member, statesman John Bright. Clark's mother soon sickened and then died of tuberculosis in September 1841. John Bright's sister, Priscilla Bright, later Priscilla Bright McLaren, took the place of the mother and served an influential role in raising Clark. Six years after her mother's death, Clark's father remarried, eventually having seven more children including John Albert Bright and William Leatham Bright.

As Helen Bright, Clark attended the Quaker school in Southport, under the tutelage of Hannah Wallis—this was the same school attended by her aunt Priscilla under the instruction of Wallis' mother. In 1851, aunt Priscilla bore a daughter Helen Priscilla McLaren.

The Brights held in their house copies of essays written by John Stuart Mill, and young Helen Bright became especially interested in Mill's advocacy of the "enfranchisement of women"—the idea that the right to vote should be extended to women. In 1861 she wrote to her step-cousin Agnes McLaren, "how absurd to talk of repression and taxation going hand in hand, and all the while excluding wholly the one half of the population from the franchise." In 1866 as Helen Bright she signed the "Ladies' Petition" on suffrage being circulated by Elizabeth Garrett and Emily Davies, as did her former teacher Hannah Wallis. The petition with its 1,499 signatures was presented by Mill to the House of Commons in June 1866. Later that year, Helen Bright married William Stephens Clark (1839–1925) of Street, Somerset. William Clark was a liberal Quaker, the owner of C. & J. Clark the shoe makers, and member of a family friendly to the idea of women's rights: his sister and niece had also signed the suffrage petition.

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