Death of Ada Nield Chew

Ada Nield Chew died on 27 October 1945 at the age of 75. By the time of her death, she had lived through the culmination of the very causes she had spent her life fighting for: British women had won full and equal suffrage with men in 1928, and the trade union movement she helped build had grown into a powerful force for workers' rights.

Her death marked the end of a remarkable life that began in rural poverty and encompassed work as a farm labourer, factory seamstress, anonymous newspaper columnist, National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) organiser, and prolific writer on issues of class and gender. Throughout her life, she remained committed to the idea that working-class women's emancipation required both the vote and economic justice — a dual focus that distinguished her from some contemporaries who focused solely on suffrage.

In the decades following her death, Ada Nield Chew's contributions were largely overlooked by mainstream histories of the suffrage movement, which tended to emphasise middle-class leaders. However, from the late twentieth century onward, historians and local communities — particularly in Crewe, where her factory letters first brought her to public attention — have worked to recover and celebrate her legacy. Her daughter, Doris Nield Chew, published a collection of her mother's writings and a biographical account, ensuring her voice and story continued to inform later generations of feminist and labour historians.