Emily Murphy

About the Emily Murphy

Emily Murphywas a Canadian women’s rights activist and author. In 1916, she became the first female magistrate in Canada and the fifth in the British Empire after Elizabeth Webb Nicholls, Jane Price, E. Cullen and Cecilia Dixon of Australia (all appointed to office in 1915). She is best known for her contributions to Canadian feminism, specifically to the question of whether women were “persons” under Canadian law.

Murphy is known as one of “The Famous Five” (also called “The Valiant Five”)–a group of Canadian women’s rights activists that also included Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby. In 1927, the women launched the “Persons Case,” contending that women could be “qualified persons” eligible to sit in the Senate. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that they were not. However, upon appeal to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council, the court of last resort for Canada at that time, the women won their case.

However, there has been some criticism of her later work, mainly for her role in the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta and her allegations that a ring of immigrants from other countries, particularly China, would corrupt the white race by getting Canadians hooked on drugs. In her book The Black Candle, she wrote: “It is hardly credible that the average Chinese peddler has any definite idea in his mind of bringing about the downfall of the white race, his swaying motive being probably that of greed, but in the hands of his superiors, he may become a powerful instrument to that end.”