2. Before Law

This chapter covers the first twenty-three years of Eliza Orme’s life, the years before she declared her intention to study and practice law. Her parents were well-off and well-connected, acquainted with Dante Gabriel Rosetti, John Stuart Mill, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, and other luminaries. At the age of nineteen she began to study the sciences and mathematics at University College London, and had a sojourn as a teacher of chemistry in a country village. It was only later that she moved to law and political science, sitting in on some of the first classes that were open to women students. Her instructors included William Alexander Hunter, John Elliott Cairnes, and Leonard Courtney, all of whom shared her commitment to the goals of the Liberal Party. At the instigation of John Stuart Mill, who admired her practical good sense, Orme became co-secretary of the London Committee for Women’s Suffrage.