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…
Author: WHN
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…
Women’s History Month: Shall We Go to the Pictures?
Three figures approach a doorway, lured in by the promise of a ‘stupendous’ time, their shapes thrown into relief by the bright lights of the picture house. The image comes from Shall We Go to the Pictures?, written by…
Women’s History Month: From the Trade Union Congress.
The Trade Boards Act 1909 introduced minimum wages in certain industries. In 1910, the Chainmaking Trade Board set a rate of 2½d per hour for adult women workers which was almost double the rate paid at the time. Mary Macarthur…
Women’s History Month: Jane Barker
On the 19 March 1718, poet and novelist Jane Barker, in her capacity as an active Jacobite, wrote advising the exiled Duke of Ormond (in code) regarding a suitable time for a Jacobite invasion of Britain. Barker was a Roman…