Helen Taylor (1831-1907)
(text copied fromWomen's History Month 2003 by Sunshine for Women: http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2003/h_taylor3.html)
Though she supported the work of both her mother Harriet Taylor Mill and her step-father John Stuart Mill, Helen Taylor was a woman's suffrage advocate and woman's rights activist in her own right and her activities on behalf of women continued until her own death.
After John Stuart Mill's death, Helen Taylor added a postscript then published his Autobiography, fulfilling one of his last wishes. In 1876, she ran a bitterly fought and successful campaign for the London School Board in the borough of Southwark, a seat she held following the next two elections. During her nine years on the school board, Taylor fought for poor children, for equal pay for male and female teachers, and for equal financial support for boys and girls schools. In 1885 Taylor ran for Parliament as the Camberwell Radicals's candidate, but her nomination was refused by the returning officer, as expected.
Josephine Butler's campaigns against the Contagious Diseases Acts had stimulated a feminist desire to raise the morals of society and to replace the double sexual standard with a single one – woman's. William Stead's 'Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon', a newspaper series which broke the story about "white slavery" (female sexual slavery) in Victorian England, added momentum to Butler's campaign. In the 1880s, Taylor turned her attention to the "moral purity movement," joining the Moral Reform Movement when it was founded in 1881. Of special concern was to help "fallen women," to eliminate the sexual double standard, and to erase the legacy of the Contagious Diseases Act in India. At the end of the decade Taylor was working on Home Rule in Ireland. By 1900, nearly seventy years of age, Helen's health deteriorated and she retired from public life.