All articles in Women in History
17th December, 2015 in Natural World, Women in History
Mary Anning and the primeval monsters
It sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale – the story of a poor cabinet-maker’s young daughter who discovered an important and massive fossil at Lyme Regis, Dorset. Mary Anning (1799-1847) unearthed the first complete fossilised skeleton of a ‘fish lizard’ or Ichthyosaurus, wh…
17th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
Mrs Guinness: The rise and fall of Diana Mitford
Born at the turn of the twentieth century when votes for women were a distant dream, Diana Mitford’s strive for independence was provocative and courageous. Her father, David, the 2nd Baron Redesdale had his own ideas on modern womanhood – he detested makeup and similar artifices…
16th December, 2015 in Local & Family History, Military, Women in History
Essex Land Girls
I am on a mission to make it happen for Essex girls who have become the butt of so much sexist and patronising humour. So choosing to write about women who, in both wars, contributed to women’s history and the history of wartime agriculture as well as Essex history and twent…
16th December, 2015 in Society & Culture, Women in History
Bringing up baby in the 1950s
Embarking on motherhood was a very different affair in the 1950s to what it is today. While much of the antenatal advice was sensible, if a trifle extreme, it has become a source of on-going debate over the years as to the value of the strictures laid down concerning the actual r…
16th December, 2015 in History, Society & Culture, Women in History
Women and domestic service in Victorian society
In 1891 it was estimated that, country-wide, more than a million – that is, one in three women between the ages of fifteen and twenty – were in domestic service; kitchen maids and maids-of-all work (sometimes referred to as ‘slaveys’) were paid between £6 and £12 a year. ‘Tweenie…
16th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
There’s something about Jane (Austen)…
Jane Austen died aged only 41, didn’t marry, never had children and lived out her days in the south of England, rarely straying from the genteel and orthodox social circle into which she was born. She completed only six full length novels, and tasted only brief and limited fame i…
16th December, 2015 in Local & Family History, Women in History
Researching the suffragette movement
Women have struggled to gain equal rights for centuries. The question of women’s voting rights finally became a core issue in the 19th century, with the struggle particularly intense in Great Britain and the United States. The suffragette movements of the late 19th and 20th Centu…
16th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, Fiction, Women in History
The lessons of Agatha Christie
As the author of nine murder mysteries who has dared follow in the illustrious footsteps of Agatha Christie, I am struck by the fact that the whodunnit ‘formula’ she invented and polished to perfection is now 100 years old. Agatha Christie wrote her first novel The Mysterious Aff…
15th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, Military, Women in History
Emily Hobhouse: Pacifist and patriot
On 4 August 1914, a surge of patriotic fervour swept the nation, Germany was marching through Belgium: young men rushed into war. But not everyone was happy. Emily Hobhouse believed in her country. She believed in it as the leader that had kept the peace in Europe for a hundred y…
15th December, 2015 in Military, Women in History
The role of women in the First World War
The majority of writing about women during the First World War tends to focus on their roles as nurses or workers on the Home Front, but few look at the militarisation of women that took place during those four and a half years. In 1914 war was very much a man’s world and it was…
15th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, Military, Women in History
A nursing sister on the Western Front
Nurses cared for the casualties of the First World War in Europe (on the Western and Eastern Fronts and in the Eastern Mediterranean), in the Middle East (Egypt and Palestine) and in Mesopotamia, India and Africa. The British Military Nursing Service was aided by Voluntary Aid De…
15th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
Unity Mitford meets Hitler
The relationship between Unity Mitford and Adolf Hitler continues to fascinate readers even today but how did the paths of a socialite and a world leader happen to cross? For all Adolf Hitler’s obvious lust for power and theatrical political persuasion he was remarkably catholic…