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…
Category: Blog and News
News items of interest to WHN Members
Women’s History Month: Marianne Farningham
On this day, 16 March, 1909, the writer Marianne Farningham (Mary Ann Hearne) died, at the age of 75, in the Welsh sea resort of Barmouth. The following day her obituary in the Times described Marianne as having been ‘for…
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.…
Women’s History Month: Eglantyne Jebb.
Last night the paperback of my biography of Eglantyne Jebb was launched at the wonderful Women’s Library in London, as part of their on-going Wise Words Book Fest. The book’s publication was deliberately timed to coincide with Mothering Sunday because Eglantyne changed…
Women’s History Month: Mary Gawthorpe
On the 12 March 1973, Yorkshire working-class suffragist Mary Gawthorpe died at ninety-two, after a decade of widowhood, in a nursing home in New York (borough of Queen’s). In England she had been generally supposed to be already dead for…
Women’s History Month: Army accepts women in principle, for first time.
World War One’s history is full of lively women longing to support (as well as oppose) the war effort. And in many cases they went off and did so by themselves after rebuffs from high-up chaps who declared ‘We don’t…
Women’s History Month: Parliamentary debate: Should women work on warships?
Women served with the British Royal Navy since 1917. But their motto – perhaps said through gritted teeth – was ‘Never at Sea.’ Officially, members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) were only allowed to help the war effort…
Women’s History Month: Before there was internet, part 1: viagra
Fed up receiving emails advertising viagra and other sexual remedies? Well, your ancestors may have felt similarly. Nineteenth century newspapers were full of advertisements promising sexual remedies, from treatments for syphilis to cures for impotency. A selection from Irish newspapers…