Church replaces ancient carvings with inspiring women sculptures

From BBC News:

A church is to replace its crumbling medieval carvings with sculptures of inspiring women to honour their "extraordinary" achievements.

Many of the stone sculptures at St Mary's Church in Beverley, East Yorkshire, are now unrecognisable.

Carvings of Queen Elizabeth II, feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and nurse Mary Seacole are among the notable women set to replace them.

Rev Rebecca Lumley said they would "help to inspire the next generation".

Work to install characters from CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia on the outer wall of the church has recently been completed, with the same small team of sculptors used for the latest project.

Clay prototypes of the women are currently being created, with the church aiming for the stone versions to be ready for public viewing by November.

"Pioneering women" who worked in traditionally male-dominated arenas including maths, the sciences and engineering, were prioritised.

read more here @ BBC News

Lady Judith Montefiore: A Brief History

From aish dot com:

It was, in the words of Charles Dickens, “The best of times and the worst of times.” While revolution and political strife roiled Continental Europe, Britain in the 1780s and beyond was home to progressive social change, and to a growing community of educated, cultured Jews who flocked to England.

This group of highly educated, ambitious Jews called themselves the “Cousinhood” – brilliant Jewish families who built empires of business and service, married into each other’s families and created a new, vibrant Jewish community. One of the most prominent of these immigrant Jews was the Dutch-born Levi A. Barnet Cohen who moved to London in the 1770s and eventually became one of a dozen Jews newly elected to Parliament, without compromising his Orthodox Jewish faith. He married a brilliant Jewish woman named Lydia and together they raised an observant Jewish family. Their daughter, Lady Judith Montefiore, became a great – and little known – patron of Jewish life.

Judith used her wealth to support poor Jews, helping build the Jewish Ladies’ Loan and Visiting Society, a Jewish orphanage in London, and educational programs for girls at Jews’ Hospital. Moshe also rose in British society. He was knighted in 1837 (Judith gained the honorific Lady then); that year he was also elected the Sheriff of London – only the second Jew ever elected to that post. Yet despite the Montefiore’s high social position, they were dogged for years by anti-Semitism and snide anti-Jewish remarks.

read more here @ aish dot com

Kitty Marion: Radical Suffragette

Criminal Records Office c.1913

Kitty Marion (1871-1944) was born Katherina Maria Schafer in Westphalia in 1871. Her mother died when she was two years old and when she was fifteen went to live with her aunt in England. She learnt English and it became clear that her ambition was to become a music hall actress, which she achieved three years later in 1889 when she was cast in a pantomime in Glasgow. 

She joined the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) in around 1908, taking part in their marches on parliament and selling copies of their journal 'Votes for Women' in the street. When the Actress' Franchise League began in 1909, she was one of the first members. That same year she was arrested for the first time. The second arrest came in Newcastle a few months later when she threw a stone through the window of a post office, an offence for which she received a month's prison sentence. In Holloway jail she was force fed and reacted by setting her cell on fire. Further attacks on property ranging from breaking windows (Mar 1912) and a fire alarm (late 1912) to burning properties (Levetleigh House in Sussex in April 1913, the Grand Stand at Hurst Park racecourse in June 1913, various houses in Liverpool in August 1913 and Manchester in November 1913). These incidents resulted in a series of further terms of imprisonment during which force-feeding occurred followed by release under the Cat and Mouse Act. 

Fellow WSPU workers finally took her to Paris in May 1914. At the outbreak of war in Aug 1914, Marion's position became doubly uncertain: firstly, there was some question, soon dropped, of returning the suffragette prisoners to jail to serve the rest of their term; secondly Marion was a German by birth and therefore suspect. Despite briefly resuming her career on the stage, she was finally deported, going to America in 1915 where she would spend most of her remaining years. There she quickly became active in the family planning movement and after 1917, she began working with the Birth Control Review published by New York Women's Publishing Company under Margaret Sanger. Marion, with her experience selling 'Votes for Women', became a street hawker, selling the Review in New York for 13 years. She was arrested several times for violating obscenity laws, and was imprisoned for 30 days in 1918. She was granted US citizenship in 1924. 

She returned to London in 1930 to attend the unveiling of the statue to Mrs Pankhurst and began work in the Birth Control International Centre under Edith How Martyn. However, she finally returned to New York where she worked in Sanger's office once more before retiring to the Margaret Sanger Home in New York State where she died in 1944.

read more here:

@ Time

@ Wikipedia

@ BBC News

@ The Spectator

@ BBC Radio

@ History Today

read also:

• Death in Ten Minutes: Kitty Marion: Activist. Arsonist. Suffragette by Fern Riddell
• The Company She Kept: The Radical Activism of Actress Kitty Marion from Piccadilly Circus to Times Square by Christine Woodworth
• Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes by Diane Atkinson
• The Suffragette Bombers: Britain's Forgotten Terrorists by Simon Webb

see also:

@ Wikipedia: List of Women's Rights Activists

A Danish Royal Affair

From History Today:

In 1769 the German outsider, Johann Struensee, arrived in Copenhagen as the physician and companion to the deranged Christian VII. By the end of that year he had not only made great political strides in a country that had the most complete absolute monarchy left in Europe, but had also become the lover of the queen, George III’s youngest sister, Caroline Mathilde. With her agreement, and the acquiescence of the king, Struensee took over the running of the state and attempted to transform Denmark into a model of enlightened absolutism. Struensee and Caroline Mathilde had a daughter; radical reforms multiplied; chaos mounted; enemies massed; violence and tragedy ensued.

Now, thanks in part to the surge of popular interest in Scandinavia, the first film to tackle the story has been released. A Royal Affair stars Alicia Vikander and Mads Mikkelsen. 

It is a beautiful film, tonally taking its cue from the historical epics of Luchino Visconti. Like these, it builds tension to gathering disaster with visual clues. The director, Nikolaj Arcel, is creditably true to the facts. At no point does he seriously deviate from the historical record. But this is a feature film not a documentary attempt to recreate the past and, like every historical fiction, it is therefore also necessarily a portrait of the present. 

Panda is UK "Woman" of the Year

From Jezebel:

In a move that is sure to go down in adorable bear history, the BBC has named a female panda named Sweetie one of its female Faces of the Year.

2011 was either lacking severely in girlchievements or a banner year for lady pandas. So what was Sweetie's glorious achievement that elevated her, a bear, over that of all female humans who did stuff?

She got off of an airplane in Scotland, to great fanfare. That's it. Hooray for Sweetie the panda, woman face of the year.

Not only is a bear deemed to appropriately fit the "woman" category, the rest of the list will leave people who were hoping for a progressive set of female movers and shakers disappointed.

Text Reminders for Abortions

Disturbing article from the Telegraph:

Britain's largest abortion provider said it is introducing reminders because some girls and women had forgotten about their procedures.

Critics said the move, by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), gave a disturbing insight into casual attitudes to abortion.

BPAS, which carries out almost one third of NHS-funded terminations, likened the service, which begins in November, to reminders sent out by dentists before check-ups.

MPs and pro-life groups accused clinics of trivialising serious decisions. Dr Peter Saunders, Chief Executive of the Christian Medical Fellowship said the text reminders would exert pressure on women uncertain about whether to go ahead with an abortion.

"If you have got an unplanned pregnancy and you are in a crisis you would think it would be at the forefront of your mind," he said.

Meanwhile, those women who were agonizing about whether to go ahead with a termination, could feel pressured to go ahead because of the texts, he said.

The Pendle Witch Child

From BBC News:

In recent years children as young as three have given evidence in court cases, but in the past children under 14 were seen as unreliable witnesses. A notorious 17th Century witch trial changed that.

Nine-year-old Jennet Device was an illegitimate beggar and would have been lost to history but for her role in one of the most disturbing trials on record.

Jennet's evidence in the 1612 Pendle witch trial in Lancashire led to the execution of 10 people, including all of her own family.

In England at that time paranoia was endemic. James l was on the throne, living in fear of a Catholic rebellion in the aftermath of Guy Fawkes' gun powder plot. The king had a reputation as an avid witch-hunter and wrote a book called Demonology.

For more on the Pendle Witches, see my post "Lancashire Witches" and visit Mary Sharratt's website.

Voyage to the Moon - 17th Century Style

An old article from Skymania which is intriguing to say the least:

Incredible as it may seem, one of the greatest scientific minds of the time, Dr John Wilkins, a founder of the Royal Society, was planning his own lunar mission four centuries ago around the time of the English Civil War.

It wasn’t hot air either. Inspired by the great voyages of discovery around the globe by Columbus, Drake and Magellan, Dr Wilkins imagined that it would just be another small step to reach the Moon.

Wilkins, who was a brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, explored the possibilities in two books. Records show he began exploring prototypes for spaceships, or flying chariots as he called them, to carry the astronauts.

The Jacobean space programme, as Oxford science historian Dr Allan Chapman calls it, flourished because this was a golden period for science. Huge discoveries had been made in geography, astronomy and anatomy. Seventeenth century scientists were riding a wave.

The above also conincides with this one from the Telegraph: maps of the moon by Thomas Harriot pre-date Galilleo, and will be on display at the West Sussex Record Office in July (2009).

"The 17th century "moon maps" by Harriot appear to reveal that the Englishman preceded the famous Italian scientist in viewing the moon through a telescope. One of Harriot's drawings is dated July 26 1609, six months prior to Galileo's well documented achievement in December 1609. "

Met Police marks 40th anniversary of first female Asian officer

From The Guardian:

NEXT month marks the 40th anniversary of the first Asian woman joining the Metropolitan Police.

Karpal Kaur Sandhu served in Walthamstow and Leyton after joining the force on February 1 1971.

She paved the way for many Asian and women in the force, proving invaluable as an interpreter and was drafted in to deal with CID cases all over London where a female officer was needed.

She was born to a Sikh family in Zanzibar, east Africa, in 1943 and came to the UK in 1962, when she got a job as a nurse.

After joining the police, she served at Hornsey before moving to the Leyton division of the Met.

No Veil On Bus

From the Independent:

A London transport company has launched an "urgent" investigation after two Muslim women claimed they were told to get off a bus because one of them was wearing a face veil.

The 22-year-old students said they were told by the driver of the bus – operated by Metroline – that they could not travel because they were "a threat". When the driver refused to give the women his name, they began filming him with a mobile phone. They said the driver then covered his face.

One of the un-named women told the BBC: "I said, 'It's okay for you to cover your face on my recording, but it's not okay for my friend to cover her face out of choice."

Tuesday's incident comes after Tory Phillip Hollobone caused controversy when he told The Independent he would refuse to meet Muslim constituents who covered their faces.

Pioneering OB's Murderers?

From Babble Australia:

Two doctors, mid-18th century London, are pioneering a brand new field of medicine and hiring henchman to kill their patients so they could conduct experiments on them.

It sounds like a Hollywood historical hit, but it’s not.

William Hunter and William Smellie really were pioneers in the field of obstetrics, and they laid the groundwork for many of today’s childbirth practices.

But a new study suggests that as brilliant as the two Williams were, they were also cold-blooded killers willing to sacrifice the lives of heavily pregnant women to further their research.

Historian Don Shelton published his work in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. He claims that while death and disease were common in a “near-anarchic” London, deaths among pregnant women in their last trimester were relatively rare. Yet between 1749 and 1755, and then again between 1764 and 1774, Hunter and Smellie seemed to have no problem finding deceased pregnant women for their experiments.

And the article from the Guardian: - Founders of British Obstetrics "Were Callous Murderers"

BBC & Older Women

From the Guardian:

When a male newsreader gets older, he becomes an authority; when a female newsreader gets older, she becomes a problem. Harriet Harman, equalities minister, says she heard this gem from a former senior executive at the Beeb. It's probably true, but hopefully it won't be for much longer. Last September, the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, decided that the real problem was not enough older women on the telly – and urged his news chiefs to employ more of them. Suddenly, from being a problem, 50-something women news anchors were in demand.

Now four of them are back in jobs. Just before Christmas, the BBC confirmed the appointments of Julia Somerville, Zeinab Badawi, Fiona Armstrong and Carole Walker . But why hadn't news bosses realised sooner that older women were perfect as news anchors? In many cultures, after all, older women are seen as the fount of wisdom and authority — who could be better for a job that requires lashings of both?

So will this be a flash in the pan? Or might this be a real change? I think it really could. Not only is it cheering that the BBC's head of news, Helen Boaden is herself, wait for it, a 50-something, but when you look Stateside you see a TV landscape in which older women news anchors have every bit as much status as older men (and a lot more, given their experience, than younger women).

Raleigh's "Adopted Son"

Very interesting article from the Times Online (January 2009), which speculates that Sir Walter Raleigh may have adopted a young native boy who returned with him from his voyages to the Americas.

"Much less known is Sir Walter Raleigh’s kinship with a young black boy from Guyana, whom he brought back with him from the Americas and who became ensconced in the explorer’s household, according to newly discovered records.

The register, uncovered by archive staff and The Times, records the baptism of a young Guyanan boy in the Parish of Saint Luke, in Chelsea, on February 13, 1597. It reveals that the boy, named Charles and estimated to be aged between 10 and 12 years old, was brought to the church by “Sir Walter Rawlie” – a common spelling of the explorer’s name at the time. "

UK: PM in Childcare Showdown

From the Telegraph:

The Prime Minister is withdrawing childcare vouchers because he believes too many people who can afford to pay full costs on their own are using it. About 340,000 families claim childcare vouchers from about 35,000 employers. They save parents up to £2,400 a year.

Mr Brown plans to phase out the system from 2011, instead using the money saved to extend free nursery places to two-year-olds from the poorest families.

But Mr Brown's decision to withdraw the benefit has resulted in a number of senior female backbenchers, including Patricia Hewitt, the former health secretary, and Caroline Flint, the former Europe minister, who argue that many working mothers will no longer be able to afford to work if the vouchers are scrapped.

More than 60,000 people have signed a petition on the Downing Street website criticising Mr Brown's decision while almost 40 Labour MPs have signed a parliamentary motion in protest

.

The Amazon

From BBC News:

A rare Jacobean manuscript of a play about women's liberation, which was found in a trunk at a castle, is expected to fetch £90,000 at auction.

The unknown play by Lord Edward Herbert was found during a valuation by auctioneers Bonhams at Powis Castle in Welshpool, Powys.

It is believed the play was to have been performed before James I and his court in 1618, but it was cancelled.

The manuscript of the play, called The Amazon, includes crossings out.

Bonhams said the play was about women's liberation, and "how well women would do without men" and "how useful divorce is".

Shakespeare: to be or not to be

Shakespeare - or the myth surrounding him - has always fascinated me. His life, his death, his works, the myth of his "true" identity.

So here's a fascinating article from Jack Malvern at Times Online, which claims that the Bard had help with his writing.

The 400-year-old mystery of whether William Shakespeare was the author of an unattributed play about Edward III may have been solved by a computer program designed to detect plagiarism.

Sir Brian Vickers, an authority on Shakespeare at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, believes that a comparison of phrases used in The Reign of King Edward III with Shakespeare’s early works proves conclusively that the Bard wrote the play in collaboration with Thomas Kyd, one of the most popular playwrights of his day.

The professor used software called Pl@giarism, developed by the University of Maastricht to detect cheating students, to compare language used in Edward III — published anonymously in 1596, when Shakespeare was 32 — with other plays of the period.

He discovered that playwrights often use the same patterns of speech, meaning that they have a linguistic fingerprint. The program identifies phrases of three words or more in an author’s known work and searches for them in unattributed plays. In tests where authors are known to be different, there are up to 20 matches because some phrases are in common usage. When Edward III was tested against Shakespeare’s works published before 1596 there were 200 matches.

There has been lots about the Bard in the tabloids over the past few years - here's a selection:

• Portrait of William Shakespeare
• Bard was a Catholic
• Hubble Bubble - Shakespeare's in trouble
• The Death of William Shakespeare

Opinion Divided Over Female Bishops

From Christian Today:

A conservative group in the Church of England has welcomed the promise of male bishops to minister to those who cannot accept women bishops, while those who support women bishops warn they may become “second class” within the Church.

The Chairman of Reform, the Rev Rod Thomas, told Premier Radio that he was “very relieved” that the Revision Committee had voted last week to change draft legislation on the consecration of women as bishops. It means that the powers of some women bishops could be curtailed in the face of opposition from traditionalists.

Rev Thomas said that the original legislation for women bishops “would have effectively unchurched large parts of the Church of England”.

“It would have led to great disunity and a lot of upset,” he said.

Changing legislation to provide for those who could not accept women bishops would help, he said, to “preserve the unity of the Church”.

Ruth McCurry, who chairs a group in support of women bishops, told the Guardian newspaper that the Church of England was “legislating schism into existence” and “creating a two-tier church”.

She warned that women bishops were at risk of becoming “second-class bishops” as a result of the changes.

The Revision Committee said many of the submissions it had received supported a statutory code of practice for those unable on grounds of theological conviction to be under a women bishop.

Rev Thomas said the changes offered “a way in which nobody can lose”.

The draft legislation will be amended and sent out to diocesan synods for consideration before final approval from General Synod.

It added that the first consecration of a woman bishop was not likely to occur before 2014.

For the History Buffs

A little something for the history buffs:

Mummy Autopsy -

Dr Augustus Bozzi Granville caused a sensation when he described the autopsy to the Royal Society of London in 1825. He concluded the mummified woman, Irtyersenu, died of ovarian cancer. But a University College London study, published in the Royal Society journal Biological Sciences, strongly suggests she died of tuberculosis.

Anne Frank - YouTube

A channel for Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who died in a Second World War Nazi concentration camp, has been launched on YouTube. The site contains existing and new images, including the only known video footage of Anne - a shot a few seconds-long of her leaning out of an upstairs window during the wedding of a neighbour in July 1941.

Battle of Bosworth -

One of the most celebrated battle sites in British history is situated on the wrong spot, archaeologists now believe. However, Richard Knox, curator of Bosworth Battlefield, said it was now likely that the proper site was on low-lying ground between the villages of Shenton, Stoke Golding and Dadlington, first proposed by the historian Peter Foss in 1990.

Pennies of the Conqueror -

RARE silver pennies minted during the reign of William the Conqueror have been unearthed by a metal detector enthusiast in the North Cotswolds. Kurt Adams, archaeological finds liaison officer for Gloucestershire county council, says the coins are the first of their kind to be discovered and are in perfect condition despite being almost 1,000 years old.

Books: History & England

Some upcoming and recently publications on the various aspects of and events in English history and medieval history:

• Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England by Eric John
• Joan of Arc: la Pucelle by Craig Taylor
• Medieval Maidens: Young Women & Gender in England: 1270 - 1540 by Kim Phillips
• Women of the English Nobility & Gentry: 1066 - 1500 by Jennifer Ward
• Chronicles of the Revolution 1397-1400: The Reign of Richard II by Chris Given-Wilson
• Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography by Paul Fouracre and Richard A. Gerberding
• Court and Civic Society in the Burgundian Low Countries c. 1420-1520 by Andrew Brown and Graeme Small

Happy Reading!

Online: Criminal Trials

From Chris Smyth @ Times Online:

...1.4 million criminal trials from the 18th and 19th centuries that feature in registers that go online for the first time today.

The records, published in a collaboration between the website and the National Archives, include every criminal trial in England and Wales that was reported to the Home Office between 1791 and 1892.

It was a deadly period to be a criminal — the “Bloody Code” when more than 200 different offences carried the death penalty was in place at the start of this era — and the documents detail 10,300 executions as well as 97,000 transportations and 900,000 sentences of imprisonment.

The documents, held in 279 volumes at the National Archives in Kew, were scanned in by volunteers for the genealogical website ancestry.co.uk and can be searched by keyword. They are available only to subscribers, although the website is offering a free two-week trial.