In 1938 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, one of the leaders of the Women’s Social & Political Union (WSPU), published her autobiography, My Part in a Changing World. In it she noted, “My thanks are due also to my secretaries, Miss Esther Knowles…
Category: Biography
Hurrem Sultan as the first haseki of the Ottoman Empire by Zhara Adal
During the sixteenth to seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire saw a change in its political dynamic as Imperial women began to influence the decisions of the Imperial court.[1] 1534-1683 is known as the ‘Sultanate of Women’ as Imperial women within…
Finding Ethel Davis (1865-1948) by Clare Wichbold
When I began researching Hard Work – But Glorious: Stories from the Herefordshire Suffrage Campaign, I was keen to find images of the women I was writing about. Their thoughts and words were important but being a huge fan of…
“Shall we break this law?” Kitty Marion: An Actress who became a Pioneer of Birth-Control by Twisha Singh
“Shall we break this Law” stared me in the face from the cover of the “Review”. “Law” indeed! That was no law, but a tyranny forced upon voteless women buy a “morality” fanatic, Anthony Comstock, in 1887, and so far…
‘The World through a Woman’s Eyes’: Jessie Ackermann and women’s mental mapping at the turn of the twentieth century
When first introduced to the concept of historical mental mapping, which aims to reconstruct shifting spatial imaginaries of continents and countries, I was struck by the overwhelming dominance of men’s accounts as source material. Was it fair to assume that women throughout history perceived the arrangement of the world’s spaces – countries, continents, regions and borders – in the same way as their male counterparts?
A statue for the Past, Present and Future: making space for Betty Campbell, by Angela V. John
Photo courtesy of Ruth Cayford, MWW. Wednesday 29th September 2021 was no ordinary day in Cardiff. For a start there was glorious sunshine sandwiched in between days of seemingly relentless rain. And it was the culmination of years of planning,…
Writing the Life of Millicent Price, Suffrage Campaigner, by Lucienne Boyce
In 2020 I wrote a piece for the WHN blog about the biography I’m not writing. In ‘Giants and Geniuses’ https://womenshistorynetwork.org/giants-and-geniuses-by-lucienne-boyce/ I explained my decision not to write about someone very famous, or someone who’s described as a ‘giant’ or…
A mortal […] comes up like a flower and is cut down, by Lucy Coatman
Carved onto the gravestone of Baroness Mary Vetsera in Heiligenkreuz, this Bible verse provides a sobering outlook on her short life. In the early hours of the 30th of January 1889, seventeen year old Mary was shot – willingly –…
A supposititious child by Dr Linda Maynard
On 26 August 1910, a notice appeared in the San Francisco Examiner: ‘Wanted. For adoption – a newly born infant; must be a boy.’ Four years later, Dorothy Slingsby, an American in her forties, finally confessed to placing the advert.…