Background
Smeal was born in Glasgow in 1801, the daughter of William Smeal, a grocer and Quaker of the Glasgow society. Her father William founded the Glasgow Anti-Slavery Society in 1822.
Smeal was born in Glasgow in 1801, the daughter of William Smeal, a grocer and Quaker of the Glasgow society. Her father William founded the Glasgow Anti-Slavery Society in 1822.
She was educated as a Quaker at Ackworth School in Yorkshire.
She was the stepmother of Eliza Wigham and the second wife of John Wigham. The family resided in Edinburgh, later moving to Aberdeen. Smeal became the leader and secretary of the radical Glasgow Ladies Emancipation Society.
Smeal had a record of anti-slavery activity, long before the free Church became involved in the issue.
In 1838 she published an important pamphlet with Elizabeth Pease of Darlington titled Address to the Women of Great Britain. This document called for British women to speak in public and to form anti-slavery organisations for women.
An address that Smeal prepared for Queen Victoria has been credited with being the "final blow" that ended slavery in the Caribbean. In 1840 Smeal became the second wife of the Quaker John Wigham, who was a tea merchant and active abolitionist, in Glasgow.
Smeal and Wigham"s marriage took place in the same year as the World"s Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where Eliza was one of the delegates.
After the Ladies" Emancipation Society ceased activity, Jane and Eliza, along with some of their friends, set up the Edinburgh chapter of the National Society of Women"s Suffrage. Priscilla Bright McLaren, the president, Elizabeth Pease, the treasurer, and McLaren"s daughter Agnes McLaren joined Eliza as joint secretaries. Jane died in November 1888 after a prolonged illness.
Four of the women associated with Edinburgh in the nineteenth century were the subject of a campaign by Edinburgh historians in 2015.
The group aimed to gain recognition for Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Priscilla Bright McLaren, Eliza Wigham, and Jane Smeal – the city"s "forgotten heroines".