Papers of Ursula Roberts

The archive consists of correspondence with, inter alia, Dr Emil Oberholzer and Dr Maude Royden, arising out of Mrs Roberts' association with the Anglican Group for the Ordination of Women and the interdenominational Society for the Ministry of Women in the Church. Papers of these organisations include memoranda for submission to Lambeth Conferences. Also included are Press cuttings re the ordination of women, and manuscript extracts in English and Latin, from theological writings on the position of women in the Early Church.

Arranged chronologically.

This collection is available for research. Readers are advised to contact The Women's Library in advance of their first visit.

Deposited in the Fawcett Library 1964-1965, see Fawcett Library Annual Report.

Ursula Roberts (1887-1971) was born in 1887 at Meerut in India, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel R J H Wyllie and Emily Titcomb. She married the Rev. William Corbett Roberts in 1909 and from this point both became increasingly concerned with female suffrage and the role and position of women in the church. She was the author of 'The Cause of Purity and Women's Suffrage' published by the Church League for Women's Suffrage as well as the Honorary Treasurer and Honorary Press Secretary of the East Midland Federation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Both before and after the First World War, her main interest was women in the Church of England. She was a member of the Church League for Women's Suffrage, which was established in 1909 as a non-party, non-militant organisation by the Rev. Claude Hinscliffe and his wife, renamed League of the Church Militant after 1918. Roberts subsequently became one of the key members of the Anglican Group for the Ordination of Women after a call for evidence on women and the ministry went out in the run up to the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in 1930. She was also a member of the interdenominational Society for the Ministry of Women in the Church, which led her to correspond with Dr Emil Oberholzer and Dr Maude Royden. She died in 1971.