Edwards, Henrietta Muir (1849-1931), was a Canadian feminist and author. Edwards became famous for her participation in the Persons Case of 1927, a legal case that changed the political status of Canadian women.
Henrietta Louise Muir was born on Dec. 18, 1849, in Montreal, Quebec. She studied art in school and with tutors and later exhibited and sold her paintings. In the early 1870’s, Henrietta and her sister Amelia established the Working Girls’ Association, a group that provided food, shelter, and training for women searching for jobs. The sisters operated a self-sustaining boarding house for working women in Montreal. A few years later, they started Canada’s first magazine for working women, Women’s Work in Canada. In 1876, Henrietta married Oliver Edwards, a physician.
Edwards volunteered for a number of women’s organizations, including the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Baptist Women’s Missionary Society. In these groups, she promoted temperance (limiting alcohol consumption) and public health reforms. She also promoted the establishment of libraries, as well as better conditions for women in prison.
In 1893, Edwards helped establish the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC). In 1897, she helped found the Victorian Order of Nurses. For more than 30 years, Edwards worked for the NCWC as the convener for the Committee on the Laws for the Better Protection of Women and Children. In this position, she promoted reforms in the areas of divorce, dower rights (widows’ rights to some of their husbands’ property), immigration, and mother’s allowances (government money for mothers). She also promoted education about laws affecting women and children. Though she had no formal legal training, Edwards authored two legal handbooks for women, Legal Status of Canadian Women (1908) and Legal Status of Women of Alberta (1917).
In 1927, Edwards joined four other reformers—Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Emily Murphy, and Irene Parlby. The group requested a court ruling on whether women could serve in Canada’s Senate. The case challenged the meaning of the word persons in the British North America Act, Canada’s basic governing document. In 1929, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom ruled that the word persons included women as well as men. Women thus became eligible for appointment to the Senate. Edwards and her fellow reformers became known as the Famous Five (see Famous Five ).
Edwards died on Nov. 10, 1931, in Fort Macleod, Alberta.
