Annie Besant

Annie Wood was born on 1 October 1847 in London, the daughter of William Burton Persse Wood (1816–1852) and his wife Emily Roche Morris (died 1874). Her father was English, attended Trinity College Dublin, and attained a medical degree; her mother was an Irish Catholic. Her paternal grandfather Robert Wright Wood was a brother of Sir Matthew Wood, 1st Baronet.

Wood's father died in her early childhood, leaving a son, Henry Trueman Wood, and Annie, his one daughter. Her mother supported Henry's education at Harrow School by running a boarding house there. Annie was fostered by Ellen Marryat, sister of the author Frederick Marryat, who ran a school at Charmouth, until age 16. She returned to her mother at Harrow self-confident, aware of a sense of duty to society, and under the influence of the Tractarians. As a young woman, she was also able to travel in Europe.

In summer 1867, Wood and her mother stayed at Pendleton near Manchester with the radical solicitor William Prowting Roberts, who questioned Wood's political assumptions. In December of that year, at age 20, Annie married the cleric Frank Besant (1840–1917), younger brother of Walter Besant, an evangelical, serious Anglican.

Marriage and separation

The Rev. Frank Besant was a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, ordained priest in 1866, but had no living: in 1866 he was teaching at Stockwell Grammar School as second master, and in 1867 he moved to teach at Cheltenham College as assistant master. In 1872, he became vicar of Sibsey in Lincolnshire, a benefice in the gift of the Lord Chancellor—who was Lord Hatherley, a Wood family connection, son of Sir Matthew Wood, 1st Baronet. The Besant family, with their two children, Arthur and Mabel, moved to Sibsey, but the marriage was already under strain. As Besant wrote in her Autobiography, "we were an ill-matched pair".

Money was short, and Frank Besant was stingy. Annie Besant was sure a third child would strain the family finances too much. She wrote short stories, children's books, and articles, but her husband controlled the money she earned.

Besant began to question her own faith after her daughter Mabel was seriously ill in 1871. She consulted Edward Bouverie Pusey: by post he gave her advice along orthodox, Bampton Lecture lines, and in person he sharply reprimanded her unorthodox theological tendencies. She attended in London, with her mother, a service at St George's Hall given by the heterodox cleric Charles Voysey, in autumn 1871, and struck up an acquaintance with the Voyseys, reading in "theistic" authors such as Theodore Parker and Francis Newman on Voysey's recommendation. Voysey also introduced Besant to the freethinker and publisher Thomas Scott. Encouraged by Scott, Besant wrote an anonymous pamphlet On the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth, by "the wife of a beneficed clergyman", which appeared in 1872. Ellen Dana Conway, wife of Moncure Conway befriended Annie at this time.

The Besants tried much to repair the marriage. The tension came to a head when Annie Besant refused to attend Communion, which Frank Besant demanded, now fearing for his own reputation and position in the Church. In 1873 she left him and went to London. She had a temporary place to stay, with Moncure Conway. The Scotts found her a small house in Colby Road, Upper Norwood.

The couple were legally separated and Annie Besant took her daughter Mabel with her, the agreement of 25 October 1873 giving her custody. Annie remained with Mrs. Besant for the rest of her life. At first, she was able to keep contact with both children and to have Mabel live with her; she also got a small allowance from her husband. In 1878 Frank Besant successfully argued her unfitness, after Annie Besant's public campaigning on contraception, and had custody from then of both children. Later, Annie Besant was reconciled with her son and daughter. Her son Arthur Digby Besant (1869–1960) was President of the Institute of Actuaries, 1924–26, and wrote The Besant Pedigree (1930). Initially in London, Besant attempted to support her daughter, her mother (who died the following year) and herself with needlework.

Criticism of Christianity

Besant opined that for centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil and that the greatest saints of the Church were those who despised women the most. "Against the teachings of eternal torture, of the vicarious atonement, of the infallibility of the Bible, I leveled all the strength of my brain and tongue, and I exposed the history of the Christian Church with unsparing hand, its persecutions, its religious wars, its cruelties, its oppressions." In the section named "Its Evidences Unreliable" of her work "Christianity", Besant presents the case of why the Gospels are not authentic: "before about A.D. 180 there is no trace of FOUR gospels among the Christians."