Emily Murphy was born in Ontario, Canada. Her parents believed that their daughter should receive formal education and have the same responsibilities as their sons, and as a child, she joined her brothers in their adventures. She attended a private Anglican school for girls in Toronto, where she met Arthur Murphy, a theology student who was 11 years older than her. They married when she was 19 and had four daughters.
In her early 30s, Murphy began to publish book reviews, articles, and travel sketches, under her pseudonym Janey Canuck. She also was an active member in more than 20 organizations, including the National Council of Women of Canada; the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada, in which she served as its first national president; and the Canadian Women’s Press Club, in which she served as president for seven years.
In 1903, after one of her daughters died, the family left Ontario, settling in Alberta in 1907. There, 40 years old Murphy organized gatherings for housewives and explored the city to raise awareness of its poor residences and their living conditions. In one of her tours, she met a woman whose husband sold their house and abandoned the family, leaving her and her children homeless, since in Canadian law, under the British Empire, women did not have property rights. This case encouraged Murphy to embark on a campaign to pressure the Alberta legislature to change the law. In 1917, the Dower Act was passed, protecting a wife’s right to own a one-third share of her husband’s property.
In the previous year, Murphy, among other women, attended a trial of two women who got arrested for prostitution. They were ejected from the court because the testimony was “not fit for mixed company.” On that ground, Murphy argued that “if the evidence is not fit to be heard in a mixed company, then the government must establish a court that presides over women to try women.” Her demand got approved, and she was appointed as a police magistrate, the first woman to hold this position in the British Empire.
On her first trial, the defendant’s lawyer claimed that her ruling was not valid because a woman is not considered a person according to the British North America Act of 1867. That has sent Murphy to a decade-long mission – to get women included in the definition of Persons and gain women the same political rights as men, including serving in Senate. In 1927, Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney, and Nellie McClung drafted a petition concerning the interpretation of the word Person in the eyes of the law. After the Supreme Court denied the petition, the women, who became known as the ‘famous five,’ appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England. On 18 October 1929, the Privy Council ruled that the word Persons in the British North America Act includes women, and women can serve in the Senate.
In the first years following the Privy Council decision, Murphy’s opportunity to become a senator was denied for political reasons, not living in the state where a seat was open or belonging to the rival party. She died at the age of 65 from diabetes without becoming a Senator, but after enabling all Canadian women to become one.
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