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…
Category: Event
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: 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: Constance Markievicz and the Feminist-Republican Dilemma
One of the great ironies of British suffrage history is that the first woman elected to Westminster, Constance Markievicz, was in fact Irish. Markievicz stood as a Sinn Fein candidate for Dublin’s St Patrick’s Division in 1918, winning her seat…
Women’s History Month: Death of Nellie McPherson, the first seawomen to die in WW1.
Few people know that women seafarers sailed in wartime. The stereotype is of rugged Cap’n Birdseye types in sou’westers standing stalwart at the storm-lashed wheel. But women were there – in surprisingly large numbers, as I found when writing my…
Women’s History Month: What about the nanny? Thoughts on Mothering Sunday
Today, as the shops have been telling us for at least a month now, is Mother’s Day, the day when mothers are supposed to have a holiday, put their feet up and receive cards, flowers and presents from their children.…