Léon-Pierre Richer (19 March 1824 – 25 June 1911) was a French free-thinker, freemason, journalist and feminist who worked closely with Maria Deraismes during the early years of the feminist movement in Paris. He edited Le Droit des femmes (Women's Rights), a feminist journal that appeared from 1869 to 1891. He was founder of the Ligue française pour le droit des femmes (French League for Women's Rights), one of the main feminist organizations in France in the 1880s. However, Richer was concerned that women were not sufficiently educated in republican principles, and that giving them the vote could cause a clericalist and monarchist reaction and the loss of democracy.
Early years
Léon Richer was born in 1824 in the Orne department. He spent eleven years working for the Orléans Railroads as a notary's clerk, then in the mid-1860s became a journalist. He wrote a column for the Petit Parisien. Richer published several studies of religious philosophy in the Alliance religieuse universelle and then the Libre Conscience, reviews directed by Henri Carle. From 1866 to 1868 the Opinion nationale published his Lettres d'un libre-penseur à un curé de village (Letters from a Free-Thinker to a Village Priest), which were widely discussed and republished in two volumes. He then published a series of pamphlets along the same line of thought: Le Tocsin, Alerte! and les Propos d'un mécréant. The ultramontanists responded with attacks on the author.
Richer was called a "tranquil and serious man." According to Simone de Beauvoir he was "the true founder of feminism in France." In 1868 political meetings were authorized. Richer arranged and directed a series of Grand-Orient conferences in the rue Cadet in Paris, where he spoke several times. In February 1866 he encouraged Maria Deraismes (1828–94) to participate in these "philosophical conferences". This launched her career as a feminist. Deraismes had inherited a fortune, and decided to avoid marriage so as to retain her freedom.
Richer founded Le Droit des femmes (Women's Rights), a journal that appeared from 1869 to 1891. The purpose of the weekly newspaper was to campaign for reform of women's legal rights. Demands included establishment of a family council that would help women whose husbands or fathers were abusive, better education for girls, higher wages for women to reduce the need for prostitution, equal wages for equal work, admission of qualified women to the professions, women's control of property and wealth and revisions to the Civil Code. The paper did not demand women's suffrage, which Richer always claimed to support but always in practice found reasons to oppose. Richer edited the paper and wrote most of the content. Desraismes helped fund the paper, to which she contributed. She and Richer founded the ''Societé pour l'amélioration du sort de la femme (Society for the Amelioration of Women's Condition), which held the first feminist banquet on 11 July 1870.
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was born on 4 September 1870 after the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War. After the war ended the country was divided between liberal republicans and conservative monarchists, but both groups united in opposing the loose morals of the former imperial court, and women's rights were associated with immorality. The feminists resumed their activities, but kept a low profile. In the mid-1870s Eugénie Potonié-Pierre joined the Society for the Amelioration of Women's Condition and became secretary of Le Droit des femmes and a regular contributor to the journal. Desraismes and Richer organized a Women's Rights conference in July–August 1878. The organizing committee included representatives from France, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia and America. The congress discussed history, education, economics, morality and law.
Hubertine Auclert tried to bring up the subject of women's suffrage at the 1878 conference, but this was rejected as premature and Auclert broke away. The majority of feminists stayed with Desraismes and Richer. Richer and Deraismes advocated the pragmatic strategy of la brèche (the breach) and opposed Auclert's confrontational strategy of l'assaut (the assault). The first priority was to consolidate the secular Republic, and women's political rights came second to this goal. The alliance with the republicans had positive results. After the republicans won control of the National Assembly in 1879 Richer wrote the divorce bill that Alfred Joseph Naquet introduced in the Chamber of Deputies.