Cobbe is conjectured to be the recipient from the subject matter of the letter; she was one of the organisers of petitions in support of women’s suffrage (see n. 3, below). The year is conjectured from the dates of John Lubbock’s career as a member of parliament, the dates of the Darwins’ visits to London (see n. 2, below), and from the circumstance of Cobbe’s residence in Beckenham in 1873 (see n. 3, below).

John Lubbock was MP for Maidstone, Kent, from 1870 until 1880. Although Lubbock had a country residence near the Darwins in Down, the reference to his presenting a petition to the House of Commons suggests that the meeting took place in London. The only years in which the Darwins were in London on 18 March were 1872 and 1873.

The petition was probably intended to be one of more than nine hundred petitions presented to Parliament by local communities between 1870 and 1873 in support of the Women’s Disabilities (Removal) Bill (House of Commons Reports on Public Petitions 89 (1873)). The bill was designed to extend the vote to women property owners and occupiers. The bill was introduced by Jacob Bright in 1870, when it passed a first reading but was thrown out in committee; Bright reintroduced it at every parliamentary session until 1877 (Blackburn 1878, pp. 14–15). In 1872, it was scheduled for debate on 1 May, and in 1873, Bright proposed a second reading on 30 April. Two of CD’s correspondents, Cobbe and Lydia Ernestine Becker, gave lectures in support of the bill and helped organise local petitions. In spring 1873, Cobbe moved temporarily to Thayer’s Park Farm in Beckenham, close to Down (Mitchell 2004, p. 216). Other women’s rights issues to which the letter may refer are the Shop Hours Regulation Bill, limiting the working hours of female shop assistants, which Lubbock proposed in April 1873, and the campaign to amend the Married Women’s Property Act, of which Lubbock was also a supporter (Hansard parliamentary debates 3d ser. (1830–91), vol. 215 (1873), cols. 466–7, and vol. 218 (1874), col. 191).