Agnes Elizabeth Slack or Agnes Elizabeth Saunders (15 October 1858 – 16 January 1946) was a leading

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

Temperance advocate.

Life

Slack was born in

Ripley, Derbyshire Ripley is a market town and civil parish in the Amber Valley district of Derbyshire, England. It is northeast of Derby, northwest of Heanor, southwest of Alfreton and northeast of Belper. The town is continuous with Heanor, Eastwood, Nottingham ...

in 1858. Her Liberal Wesleyan Methodist parents were Mary Ann (born Bamford) and Thomas Slack. Her father made bricks and her elder brother, John Bamford Slack, would become a minister and politician. At the age of 14 she was sent to a boarding school in Lincoln. Methodists believed in temperance and religion was Slack's life's work. In 1895 she became the secretary of the National British Temperance Women's Association and the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union. Slack had good connections with the American

Woman's Christian Temperance Union The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far ...

and she referred to their President, Lillian Stevens as "mother". She continued her education afterwards attending summer schools at Oxford and Cambridge in bible studies before the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. During this time she established strong links with the American vice-President

Anna Adams Gordon Anna Adams Gordon (1853–1931) was an American social reformer, songwriter, and, as national president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union when the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted, a major figure in the Temperance movement. Biography E ...

in Boston. Gordon became the President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union when Stevens died in 1914. In 1920 the United States banned alcohol. In 1925 there were two women's temperance organisation's in the UK, because of a disagreement over the suffrage movement in 1893. She was the last President of the National British Temperance Women's Association until it merged with the

Women's Total Abstinence Union Women's Total Abstinence Union (WTAU) was a British women's organization active during the temperance movement in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters were at 4 Ludgate Hill, London. In addition to a president, there were 41 vice-presidents. The ge ...

. As a result, she was the founding President of the National British Women's Total Abstinence Union.Eve Colpus, ‘Slack , Agnes Elizabeth (1858–1946)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 201
accessed 10 Aug 2017
/ref> The following year, her niece Aelfrida Tillyard, published the first biography of her life, documenting her travels to Canada, America, Scandinavia and South Africa. In the same year she became the first woman to preach at

Wesley's Chapel Wesley's Chapel (originally the City Road Chapel) is a Methodist Church of Great Britain, Methodist church situated in the St Luke's, London, St Luke's area in the south of the London Borough of Islington. Opened in 1778, it was built under the ...

. Slack married an architect named Charles Saunders in 1943 and she died in

Kettering Kettering is a market town, market and industrial town, industrial town in the North Northamptonshire district of Northamptonshire, England, west of Cambridge, England, Cambridge, southwest of Peterborough, southeast of Leicester and north- ...

in 1946.

Books

*“Agnes E. Slack” (“Two Hundred Thousand Miles Travel for Temperance in Four Continents”) by Aelfrida Tillyard, 1926. Published by W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, Cambridge, England. *Slack, A. E. (1908), ''My travels in India'', published by John Heywood Ltd, Manchester, England. *''People I have met and places I have seen: some memories of Agnes E. Slack'', 1942

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Slack, Agnes Elizabeth 1858 births 1946 deaths 20th-century English memoirists 20th-century English women writers English women memoirists Writers from Derbyshire People from Ripley, Derbyshire English temperance activists English women activists Woman's Christian Temperance Union people British travel writers English women travel writers