The records do not necessarily provide the full stories … Miss Alma Tadema, daughter of the artist, on 30th September 1915 brought to Mrs Webbe, Mme Marie Wybo, aged 29. She had thrown vitriol and threatened suicide. A younger girl in unspecified trouble, possibly theft or being out all night, was Maria Caroline Verwilt, aged 15. In this instance, as in many others, Mrs Webbe was appointed her Guardian by the Old Street Juvenile Court. However, women who were categorized as morally deficient were likely to find themselves in positions where power relationships became particularly complex. One of these was Gertrude Kuypers. In May 1917, Somerset House, responsible for refugee registration, asked the W.R.C.’s Intelligence Department to find Gertrude’s Baby. It was found in Nazareth Convent at Hammersmith, placed there by Father Christie, the Catholic priest who worked with the W.R.C., because the Mother, i.e. Gertrude, was ‘leading an immoral life’.
Category: Politics
The Women ‘who never cry’: British Women Released by Germany
The women were more fortunate than the 150 white men, who were taken back to Prisoner of War camps in Germany. And that privileging of women was a common pattern in WW2 .
After that Betsy and Geraldine’s group endured two weeks of what one newspaper described as ‘a rollicking Robinson Crusoe adventure’ on Emirau (‘Squally’) Island. It was not.
Then on Christmas Day an Australian naval initiative rescued them and took them safely to the Antipodes.
Will Women Click for Clique?
Indeed the word ‘product’ to describe Clique seems just as apt as terms such as magazine, publication, title. Likewise, the woman with the magazine in her hands is perhaps better described as the consumer rather than the reader. Despite some standard women’s magazine features, such as a cookery page, there is very little to read; the emphasis is firmly on visual content. Furthermore, the magazine repeatedly and consistently positions the reader as a consumer. Using the Clique app, the reader-consumer can ‘unlock hidden content’ on every page, indicated by a range of eight symbols. This is where the interactive element comes in, allowing the reader-consumer to share details of items with friends, watch videos of fashion shoots or get styling tips.
The Geo-Politics of War and Woman-Terror in Congo
Rape and sexual torture have featured prominently in the Congo’s killing fields. Occurring on a daily basis, militia strategically turn the bodies of females of all ages, some infants, others elderly, into battle grounds. They do this by penetrating and mutilating their victim’s genitals to impart maximum physical and psychological damage. The damage to victims, and also to their families and communities, is not only horrific. It is immeasurable. It happens alongside kidnapping which, while targeting young men as military recruits, also targets girls and women for sex slavery. Often, women and girls are held captive for months or, in some instances, for several years.
UNFALTERING – Strength, Courage and the Grimsby VADs
Due to the likelihood of war and the possibility of invasion of Britain by Germany, the Territorial Army was created in 1908 by the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane. Its original purpose was home defence. In 1909 it…
GRANTHAM: Moral Panic in the First World War
‘Men’ who did not ‘get into the war literature’ such as ‘cleaners, launderers and the like’ were, in fact, usually women. The Grantham Labour Exchange worked out a scheme for washing garments by collecting them on Mondays and returning them on Fridays. Each woman was expected to take about twenty-four sets of washing per week, a set comprising four garments from each man; for this she would be paid 3½d per set which would entitle her to 7s per week. It was thought that the plan would benefit local washerwomen by a total of £218 per week …
Barbara Pym: A Quiet Social Historian
Barbara Pym’s novels provide a social history of the period over which she wrote from the 1920s to 1980. ‘Young Men in Fancy Dress’, written when she was sixteen, inspired by the 1920s, is unpublished. Unlike the novels that follow…
Afghanistan: Violence Against Women on the Rise
Back in 2009, the Afghan government approved an Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW) Law that criminalises child marriage, forced marriage, the selling and buying of women under the pretext of marriage, giving females away to settle disputes, forced self-immolation and various other acts of violence against women. However, Ingibjorg Gisladottir, director of UN Women in Afghanistan, expressed concern that only a small percentage of cases under the law involved violence against women. Most such cases were neither registered nor investigated.
The Cry of Lost Aboriginal Sisters Across Canada
•The Indian Act of 1876 was intended to assimilate indigenous peoples. It denied self-government and segregated those subject to its provisions on apartheid style reserves. Patriarchal societies were intended to replace matriarchal ones. The 1884 Indian Advancement Act included Inuit communities, requiring their members to carry a tattoo on their necks.