Another prominent member at this period was Mrs. Charlotte M. Wilson,
wife of a stock-broker living in Hampstead, who a short time later
"simplified" into a cottage at the end of the Heath, called Wildwood
Farm, now a part of the Garden Suburb Estate, where Fabians for many
years held the most delightful of their social gatherings. Mrs. Wilson
was elected to the Executive of five in December, 1884 (Mrs. Wilson, H.
Bland, E.R. Pease, G. Bernard Shaw and F. Keddell), but after some time
devoted herself entirely to the Anarchist movement, led by Prince
Kropotkin, and for some years edited their paper, "Freedom." But she
remained throughout a member of the Fabian Society, and twenty years
later she resumed her Fabian activity, as will be related in a later
chapter.
All this time the Socialist movement in England was coming into public
notice with startling rapidity. In January, 1884, "Justice, the organ of
the Democratic Federation," was founded, and in August of that year the
Federation made the first of its many changes of name, and became the
Social Democratic Federation or S.D.F. The public then believed, as the
Socialists also necessarily believed, that Socialism would be so
attractive to working-class electors that they would follow its banner
as soon as it was raised, and the candidatures undertaken by the S.D.F.
at the General Election in November, 1885, produced widespread alarm
amongst politicians of both parties.
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