{{Infobox person | name = Anna Maria Priestman | image = Anna Maria Priestman in 1891 (cropped).jpg | caption = in 1891 | birth_name = Anna Maria Priestman | birth_date = {{Birth date|1828|03|23|df=y}} | birth_place = Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England | death_date = {{Death date and age|1914|10|09|1828|03|23|df=y}} | death_place = Bristol, England }}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2019}} '''Anna Maria Priestman''' (23 March 1828 – 9 October 1914), was a British social reformer and women's rights activist.
==Early life== Anna Maria Priestman was born on 23 March 1828, the seventh of nine children of Jonathan Priestman (d. 1863), a wealthy Quaker tanner from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Rachel Bragg (1791–1854), a minister in the Society of Friends, and the daughter of Margaret Wilson, also a Quaker minister.<ref name="oxforddnb.com">{{cite ODNB|id=57830|title=Priestman, Anna Maria (1828–1914)|first=Sandra Stanley|last=Holton}}</ref> They lived in the Summerhill district of Newcastle.<ref name="oxforddnb.com"/>
==Career== Priestman, along with members of hers and the Bright family, were important in the creation of some of the first women's suffrage societies, founded in London, Bristol, and Bath.<ref name="oxforddnb.com"/> thumb|Anna Maria, Margaret (Tanner) and Mary Priestman in 1891 She was also a supporter of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which was formed in 1870 by Josephine Butler to protest against legislation which undermined the civil rights of those who had been designated prostitutes by the authorities in specified naval and military towns.<ref name="oxforddnb.com"/> Her sister Mary Priestman was the secretary of this organization and her sister Margaret Tanner was its treasurer.<ref name="oxforddnb.com"/> All three sisters supported international campaigns against the government regulation of prostitution, and continued their family's close association with the temperance movement.<ref name="oxforddnb.com"/>
==Legacy== Priestman's photographs, papers related to her speeches, diaries, and her correspondence including letters to Margaret Clark Gillett, Alice Clark, Helen Priestman Bright, Priscilla Bright McLaren and Margaret Tanner, covering the period from 1837 to 1913 are held by the National Archives.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F233918|title=The Discovery Service|first=The National|last=Archives|date=|website=discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk|accessdate=18 November 2017}}</ref>
==Personal life== Priestman chose to remain single, and discussed her views on marriage in correspondence with her cousin and lifelong friend Jane Pease, who also never married.<ref name="Holton2012">{{cite book|author=Sandra Stanley Holton|title=Quaker Women: Personal Life, Memory and Radicalism in the Lives of Women Friends, 1780–1930|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r7I-Ul0Cv54C&pg=PA110|accessdate=18 November 2017|date=12 November 2012|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-14117-2|page=110}}</ref>
==Later life== Priestman died at their Bristol home, 37 Durdham Park, which she shared with her sister Mary Priestman, on 9 October 1914, five days after her sister died.<ref name="oxforddnb.com"/> "The outbreak of the First World War was said to have been too much for either herself or Mary Priestman to bear."<ref name="oxforddnb.com"/>
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Priestman, Anna}} Category:1828 births Category:1914 deaths Category:British women's rights activists Category:Activists from Newcastle upon Tyne Category:British Quakers Category:British women civil rights activists