Anna Lindsay (activist)
Anna Lindsay or Anna Dunlop was a Scottish women's activist. She was to be one of the founders of the Glasgow Association for the Higher Education of Women and her name was said to be synonymous with the women's movement in Scotland. She was the first chair of the Scottish Women's Liberal Federation.Life
Lindsay was born in Edinburgh in 1845 to Eliza Esther and Alexander Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop. She was one of the first students at the University Classes for Women in Edinburgh where she impressed her professors.
Lindsay married the academic Thomas Martin Lindsay in 1872 and moved to live with him in Glasgow.
The Glasgow Association for the Higher Education of Women was started after a suggestion of Mrs Jean Campbell by Professor John Nichol in 1868 to start lectures for women. Anna Lindsay was amongst its founders. Their third children in 1879 was Alexander Lindsay, 1st Baron Lindsay of Birker, who became a Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, Master of Balliol College, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford.
In 1889 she used her membership of the Liberal Party to form a local women's association that was known as the Glasgow and West of Scotland Women's Liberal Association. She was just the vice-chair but when this organisation merged with others to create the Scottish Women's Liberal Federation in 1891 she became the chair. It was only her health that prevented her from continuing in that role after 1899.
Lindsay died in Kelvinside in Glasgow.
