Greevz Fisher (1845-1931)

Born John Greeves Fisher in Youghal, Ireland in 1845, Greevz—fittingly given his propensity to stand out, and in line with his preferred system of phonetic spelling—adopted the ‘z’, and later began spelling his surname ‘Fysher’. The creator of a successful soap-based grease, Fisher’s mind whirred with invention. In addition to spelling reform, he promoted a ‘perpetual kalendar’, and a device for printing reading material for the blind. In matters of religion he was unabashedly freethinking. A declared atheist, Fisher met his wife—the irrepressible Marie Clapham—at a secularist meeting in Leeds. Marie was Yorkshire-born; Greevz had settled there in 1877, marrying Marie ten years later. Marie too was a self-confident freethinker, an advocate of women’s equality, and the first female President of the Leeds Philatelic Society. Her husband was active in the Yorkshire Naturalists, of which he was President in 1930.

The names of the couple’s five children give rich insight into their interests and admirations: a reading list for the 19th century freethinker. Their first son, Auberon Herbert, was named for the Hampshire-born philosopher and individualist, and their second, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, for the barrister, anarchist, inventor, and co-founder of the British Chess Association, alongside whom Fisher helped to form the Legitimation League. The Legitimation League—founded in Leeds in 1893—championed the rights of illegitimate children, who were discriminated against by Victorian laws and moral codes. It sought ‘to create a machinery for acknowledging offspring born out of wedlock and to secure for them equal rights with legitimate children’.