On her eightieth birthday, Frances Power Cobbe was celebrated for her lifelong advocacy for women, children, and animal rights. Cobbe championed major social reforms, including women's suffrage, education rights, and property rights, and fiercely confronted the legal injustices of marriage, where women were often treated as property. Her pamphlet 'Wife Torture in England' was a pivotal work advocating for legislative change which ultimately led to the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1878, allowing women legal grounds for separation and custody rights, marking a significant victory for women's rights in her era.
"The notion that a man's wife is his PROPERTY in the sense in which a horse is his property, is the fatal root of incalculable evil and misery."
"A married woman's inheritance and even her own earnings (if she could make any), were legally robbed from her by her husband."
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