In 1867 she became assistant secretary of the Working Men's Club and Institute Union, gaining trade union experience. In February 1872 she started working for the National Society for Women's Suffrage as their secretary. She resigned the post in 1873, when she married Thomas Paterson (1835–1882), a Scottish cabinet-maker and wood-carver active in the Working Men's Club and Institute Union, who had organized the Workmen's International Exhibition at the Agricultural Hall in 1870. The couple spent a long honeymoon in the United States.
