House where Angelina Vidal died (Rua de São Gens, 41)

In this small single-storey house with a green gate lived and died Angelina Vidal.³ The daughter of the conductor Joaquim Casimiro, she was a teacher, journalist and writer, and spread republican propaganda at rallies — two in Porto, in 1880, became famous — and in newspapers such as O Sindicato, Justiça do Povo and Emancipação, which she owned. She wrote for A Voz do Operário (The Worker’s Voice) from 1883, was the newspaper’s editor between 1897 and 1901, and taught French, piano and music, at the Society and at home.¹

She defended the rights of women workers and the education of women as the road to equality. In “Às operárias portuguesas” (To the Portuguese women workers), of 1886, she urged them to fight for a twelve-hour day, when the working day was fifteen hours long.³ She never spoke of feminism, and even criticised the republican women of the League who were fighting for the vote, but she defended equality between men and women, at work and in civil law.¹

Life was hard for her. She separated from her husband, the Navy doctor Luís Augusto de Campo Vidal, and lost custody of her children.³ When he died, in 1894, the monarchy’s government refused her the pension, because she was an “enemy of the institutions”.¹ The women workers of the tobacco factories took up a collection to help her, and A Voz do Operário found her a salary as a French teacher.³ The survivor’s pension was only granted to her on 31 July 1917, and Angelina Vidal died the next day, here, “almost destitute”.¹ The newspaper O Século paid for the funeral, at the Alto de São João cemetery, where representatives of the Socialist Party, of A Voz do Operário and of the tobacco workers, among others, spoke.²

In 1924, the City Council named a street nearby after her, Rua Angelina Vidal, with the inscription “Distinguished Lecturer and Propagandist of Social Emancipation”.¹ In 1991, A Voz do Operário and the Graça Parish Council unveiled a memorial stone in her honour on this house.⁴