Catherine Impey

Catherine Impey
Born(1847-08-13)13 August 1847
Street, Somerset, England
Died14 December 1923(1923-12-14) (aged 76)
Street, Somerset, England
Other namesKatie Impey
Occupations
  • Activist
  • editor
Known forTemperance and anti-racist activism
Notable workAnti-Caste (1888–1895)

Catherine "Katie" Impey (13 August 1847 – 14 December 1923) was an English Quaker activist for temperance and against racial discrimination. She was the founder and editor of the anti-racist journal Anti-Caste (1888–1895).

Biography

Early life

Impey was born into a Quaker family on 13 August 1847 in Street, Somerset, to Robert Impey (1820–1886) , a farmer who formerly worked as a tanner, and Mary Hannah Impey (née Clothier; 1823–1895). She went by the name Katie.[1]

She and her sister Ellen received a Quaker education at Southside House, in nearby Weston-super-Mare. The school required all graduating students to embark on a philanthropic endeavour; Catherine and her sister elected to "help remove oppression among the darker races of the world."[2]

Activism

Temperance

Impey was a lifelong teetotaller and made advocating temperance part of her life's work. She was a member of the Street Teetotal Society, the British Women's Temperance Association, and the International Order of Good Templars.[2]

Anti-racism

Impey founded Britain's first anti-racist journal, Anti-Caste, in March 1888 and edited it until its last edition in 1895. In the first issue, she wrote:[3]

When the curse of negro slavery lay upon the Southland, when it means danger and even death to agitate against it, and philanthropy was ever busy upon the thousand social evils of the day; when men who were timid or indifferent begged to be let alone – there came from the young man William Lloyd Garrison those grand words that are now engraved upon his monument at Boston: "I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard."

The journal was inspired[4] by Booker T. Washington's Southern Letter. Impey visited the United States several times from 1878 and the journal focused largely on issues in America. In 1893, she co-founded the Society for the Recognition of the Universal Brotherhood of Man, with the American civil rights activist and former slave Ida B. Wells, who visited the UK[5] to campaign against the lynching of black Americans.[1]

Travels

Impey made her first trip to the United States in March 1878 when a schizm in the Good Templars over the issue of integration led to the formation of the Right Worthy Grand Lodge (RWGL). A Good Templar lodge in the US state of Kentucky wanted to join the International Order of Good Templars (IOGT), but refused to admit black people as members, whereas the IOGT in England was already integrated. The IOGT decided to permit segregated lodges and the British group split off in protest, forming the RWGL. That year, Impey was named the RWGL's Secretary of the Negro Mission for the United States and sent her to Boston to attend the RWGL conference held in Boston's Pythian Hall.[6]

Personal life and death

Impey became a vegetarian in 1879.[7] Her sister died in 1921.[2] After a short illness, Impey died at her home in Street on 14 December 1923.[1]

See also

Further reading

  • Dr Caroline Bressey, Anti-Caste: Britain’s First Anti-racist Journal, synopsis on ESRC website (RES-000-22-0522), accessed 27 July 2006. Also abstract from Dr Caroline Bressey in teaching programme at University of Essex, "Departmental Seminars – Abstracts and Bio-notes", accessed 27 July 2006.
  • "Catherine Impey, Ida B Wells and Mika Feldman de Etchebéhère". The Left Berlin. Retrieved 26 December 2020. Catherine Impey, Ida B Wells and Mika Feldman de Etchebéhère: Rebellious Daughters of History #15
  • "Catherine Impey – Women In Peace". Women In Peace. 11 January 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  • "Quakers against racism: Catherine Impey and the Anti-Caste Journal". quakersintheworld.org. Retrieved 16 January 2024.

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Fahey, David M. (23 September 2004). "Impey, Catherine". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39157. Retrieved 19 December 2025. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b c Simpson, G. R. (January 1925). "Notes: Catherine Impey". The Journal of Negro History. 10 (1). The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History: 104–106. doi:10.1086/JNHv10n1p104. JSTOR 2713672.
  3. ^ Jordan, Brucella Wiggins (2003). Ida B. Wells, Catherine Impey, and trans-Atlantic dimensions of the nineteenth-century anti-lynching movement (PhD thesis). Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, West Virginia University. doi:10.33915/etd.1845. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  4. ^ The Booker T Washington Papers Vol. 3 1889–1895, pp. 33–34, accessed at "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 27 July 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) 27 July 2006.
  5. ^ Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale, White Women, Racism and Slavery, Verso, 1992, p. 175, ISBN 0-86091-552-2 cited in Shula Marks, "'Half-ally, half-untouchable at the same time': Britain and South Africa since 1959", accessed 3 December 2007.
  6. ^ "Catherine Impey and The Black Atlantic". The Secret History of Scarsdale. 21 February 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  7. ^ Gregory, James. (2002). "The Vegetarian Movement in Britain c. 1840–1901". eprints.soton.ac.uk. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
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