The Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee held their annual Innes Duffus Memorial Lecture at Dundee’s Discovery Point this evening.

Over 100 craft members and guests heard from Roger Illsley FSA Scot about the life and family of Frances Wright, a remarkable woman born in Dundee’s Nethergate who in 1994 was inducted into the American Women’s Hall of Fame. She was hailed as the first American woman to speak publicly against slavery and for the equality of women.

Deacon Convener of Dundee’s Nine Incorporated Trades, John Fyffe MBE, said,

‘‘Dundee has a long history of producing strong, hard working women, to this day routinely being referred to as ‘She’ town due to the volume of women working in the mills, and Frances Wright was amongst some of the first to be properly recognised for her work.  Roger has given us a fascinating insight into her life, family and work which craft members have thoroughly enjoyed.’’

Frances Wright (September 6, 1795 – December 13, 1852), widely known as Fanny Wright, was a Scottish-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, utopian socialist, abolitionist, social reformer, and philosopher, who became a US Citizen in 1825. The same year, she founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee as a utopian community to demonstrate how to prepare slaves for eventual emancipation, but the project lasted only five years.

In the late 1820s, Wright was among the first women in America to speak publicly about politics and social reform before gatherings of both men and women. She advocated universal education, the emancipation of slaves, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, legal rights for married women, and liberal divorce laws. Wright was also vocal in her opposition to organised religion and capital punishment. The clergy and the press harshly criticized Wright’s radical views. Her public lectures in the United States led to the establishment of Fanny Wright societies. Her association with the Working Men’s Party, organised in New York City in 1829, became so intense that its opponents called the party’s slate of candidates the Fanny Wright ticket.

Wright was also a writer. Her Views of Society and Manners in America (1821), a travel memoir that included observations on the political and social institutions of the United States, was very successful. She also authored A Plan for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the United States Without Danger of Loss to the Citizens of the South (1825).