In March 1921, faced with a massive increase in the rate, the Council refused to cut the level of relief to the poor and withheld £270,000 in contributions required by the London County Council (LCC) until the wealthy West…
Author: WHN
Women’s History Month: Sheila Kitzinger
The pioneering natural childbirth activist Sheila Kitzinger was born March 29, 1929 in Taunton, Somerset. It’s an appropriate setting. In Somerset was ‘a nest of suffragettes’[i], at a time when there was silence about ways of birthing and much ignorance…
Women’s History Month: Man married a woman.
A poem published in the Woman Voter in 7 July 1914. Once upon a time a Man married a Woman. Time passed, and one day the Man said: “I love all women. I need a great deal of love.”…
Women’s History Month: Jenny Lind
Jenny Lind or Johanna Maria Lind (1820-1887) was a nineteenth century Swedish opera singer. She was the illegitimate child of the school teacher Anne-Marie Felborg and Niclas Jonad Lind, a bookkeeper. They married when Jenny was 14. From childhood, she had…
Women’s History Month: From the Women’s Library.
On this day: We remember…Eunice Guthrie Murray who died on 26 Mar 1960. Along with her mother and her sister, Sylvia Murray, Eunice joined the Women’s Freedom League and by 1913 was President of the League in Scotland. In…
Women’s History Month: Eleanor Rathbone.
At first sight, there would seem to be little to connect Eleanor Rathbone, Independent MP for the Combined English Universities, with the occupation of Prague by Hitler’s regime on 15 March 1939. But nothing could be further from the truth,…
Women’s History Month: Ada Lovelace Day.
Augusta Ada King, Countess Lovelace (1815-1852) wrote the world’s first computer programme for the Analytical Engine (an early computer), invented by Charles Babbage. She had been taught mathematics by her mother, Annabella Byron, and met Babbage in 1833. When translating…
Women’s History Month: Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923): scientist yet ‘in every way a woman’
On this day, March 23 1899, the scientist Hertha Ayrton read a paper about her electrical researches to the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) who had opened their doors to a woman for the first time. Even today female scientists…
Women’s History Month: Caroline Sheridan or Norton
On the 22 March 1808, Caroline Sheridan (later Caroline Norton) was born into a famous theatrical family. (She revered her grandfather Richard Brinsley Sheridan, but probably never understood how famous in her day had been her great-grandmother Frances Sheridan.) She…