All articles in Women in History
8th March, 2016 in Women in History
18 inspirational women who have changed history
To mark Women’s History Month, staff at The History Press nominated eighteen inspirational females from throughout the ages. Here are our picks: Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians (c. 870 – 918 AD) 2018 marked 1,100 years since the death of Aethelflaed, the most powerful woman of…
2nd March, 2016 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
The Brontës: Love, jealousy & sibling rivalry
2016 was a very special year for lovers of great literature, and of the Brontës in particular, as it marked the 200th birthday of the one and only Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette. She is of course one third of the famous Brontë sisters. Amanda White’s…
18th February, 2016 in History, Women in History
Mary I: Tyrant or trailblazer?
500 years since her birth, Mary I is a monarch who continues to divide opinion. First, there’s the ‘bloody’ epithet to deal with, which has dominated accounts of her reign since. Known as a Catholic tyrant and branded a religious bigot for her ferocious persecution of Protestants…
17th February, 2016 in History, Women in History
Five little-known facts about Queen Mary I
Things you (probably) didn’t already know about ‘Bloody Mary’ 1. She was the first ever woman to be crowned Queen of England and rule the country in her own right Mary I was England’s first undisputed queen regnant, discounting Matilda centuries before, and Lady Jane Grey’s brief…
9th February, 2016 in True Crime, Women in History
Unsolved murders of women in Victorian London
When discussing unsolved murders of women in late Victorian London, most people think of the depredations of Jack the Ripper, the Whitechapel Murderer, whose sanguineous exploits has spawned the creation of a small library of books. But Jack the Ripper was just one of a string of…
13th January, 2016 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
Re-examining the life of Anne Frank
The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most famous – and bestselling – books of all time. Yet the girl who wrote it remains an enigma. The real Anne Frank has been hidden again, lost, behind the phenomenon of her posthumously published Diary. In the book I have just completed I ar…
4th January, 2016 in Folklore, Society & Culture, Women in History
Attitudes towards women in the Tudor period
If you ever take yourself on a tour of the dungeons below Norwich Castle Museum you will be introduced to any number of instruments of torture from long ago. But the ones that really capture the public imagination are the ducking stool and scold’s bridle, said to have been used i…
21st December, 2015 in True Crime, Women in History
London’s Victorian murderesses
Of the six murderous women featured in Bad Companions, perhaps one feels most sympathy for the servant girl, Eliza Fenning. Not only could she read and write, she was described as young, petite and pretty and she was engaged to be married. She worked as a cook for the Turner fami…
18th December, 2015 in Local & Family History, Military, Society & Culture, Women in History
East End suffragettes in the First World War
In popular accounts of the outbreak of the First World War in Britain, mention is sometimes made of the fact that the Women’s Social and Political Union suspended their militant campaign for the vote to take up an intensely nationalist, pro-war agenda. Sylvia Pankhurst and the ra…
18th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, History, Women in History
Margaret Douglas: The other Tudor princess
Margaret Douglas, Henry VIII’s once beloved niece, is a somewhat shadowy and mysterious character in Tudor history who ended up taking stage in the bitter struggle for power during Henry’s reign. She was born in a state of emergency in a Border keep where rain dripped from…
18th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
Eleanor Talbot: The Secret Queen
Whichever way one looks at it, Eleanor Talbot was the rock upon which the royal House of York foundered. Unwittingly, and for her part, surely, unintentionally, she brought about the downfall of a dynasty. Through her relationship with Edward IV she ultimately shook the Crown of…
17th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
Mary Sophia Allen: Suffragette to fascist
Mary Sophia Allen, one of the first British policewomen, was an extraordinary and outrageous woman. Born in 1878, she grew up in Bristol where she rebelled against the strictures of middle class life and, at the age of thirty, left home to become a suffragette. Mary was jailed th…