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.…
Category: Blog and News
News items of interest to WHN Members
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…
Women’s History Month: International Women’s Day.
International Women’s Day celebrates the achievements of women-past, present and future. It was first celebrated in 1911 and the day has often been commemorated for the last century by feminists on the streets, fighting for their social, economic and political…
Women’s History Month: The International Year of the Nurse.
This year marks the centenary of the death of Florence Nightingale, and in the world of nursing and nursing history this is a reason for celebration of a woman who is regarded by many as the founder of modern nursing.…
Women’s History Month: The Governess- Widow.
Women’s opportunities to realize themselves were limited in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For middle-class girls, marriage was the most suitable role in life. But as widows, women had to count on the money, usually a scarce sum…