1761 to 1770
1761
born ..... Anne Marie Grosholtz ..... French wax modeller famously known as Madame Tussaud was born in Strasbourg. In 1766 she went to Paris to live with her wax-modeller uncle and during the French Revolution they were forced to take death masks of many victims and leaders. In 1802 she established an exhibition of wax models of famous people in London which was destroyed by fire in 1925 but re-opened in 1928. Originally housed in the Strand, the exhibition was transferred to Baker street in 1833 and to its present site in Marylebone Road in 1884 ..... and .....
born ..... Dorothy Jordan neé Phillips ..... actress who made her first appearance in 1779 in Dublin under the name of Miss Francis. When she went to England she adopted the name of Mrs Jordan and made her debut in 1785 at Drury Lane as Peggy in The Country Girl. She played many other parts there and also appeared at the Haymarket and at Covent Garden. Her last London performance was in 1814 and her final stage appearance was at Margate the following year. She was the long time mistress of the Duke of Clarence (William 1V) and bore him ten children. After her farewell performance she went to France where she died a year later in St. Cloud (1816) ..... and .....
born ..... Emma Lyon Hamilton ..... at Great Neston in Cheshire, the daughter of Henry Lyon. She married the British Ambassador at Naples, Sir William Hamilton and at this court became intimate with Queen Maria Carolina and used their friendship to gain state secrets. She claimed to be very important to Britain. In 1793 she met Nelson and became his mistress. Their child Horatio was born in 1801. She survived Nelson by ten years and died in very poor circumstances in Calais in 1815. Before she died she published two volumes containing her letters with Nelson
1762
born ..... Constanze Weber ..... who married Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart against strong opposition. After his death she played a strong role in ensuring that his reputation would last. They had six children but only two survived and their last years together were difficult and they were very poor. On a pension of one third of his salary, Constanze managed to improve her position through arranging concerts of his works and sang in several of them herself. In 1800 she sold Mozart's manuscripts to the publisher Andre and this resulted in the groundwork for the catalogue on which subsequent scholarships have been based. She remarried in 1809 and her husband began a biography of Mozart in 1810. On his death she was left to see it through publication in 1828 and it remained the main source of Mozart studies for many years. She died in 1842 ..... and .....
born ..... Joanna Baillie ..... Scottish poet and writer of verse plays who moved to Hampstead in 1791 and when it was revealed that she was the author of the anonymous Plays on the Passions (1798, 1802 and 1812) was welcomed into London literary society. The plays were written mainly in verse and published as scripts before they were staged. In later life she took part in religious and philanthropic projects and died in 1851 ..... and .....
born ..... Margaret Catchpole ..... English-born Australian pioneer who was transported to New South Wales in 1801 for stealing and became a servant and nurse. She later managed a farm. ran a store and acted as a midwife until dying in 1819 of an illness brought on by helping a neighbour during bad winter weather. She regularly wrote home to the Cobbold family in England, where she had been a servant, and these letters formed the basis of Richard Cobbold's book Margaret Catchpole (1845) and gave a valuable account of early 19th century life in Australia
1763
England ..... Catherine Macaulay published her first volume of her History of England - one of the earliest historical works by a woman ..... and .....
born ..... Mary Berry ..... English writer born in Yorkshire. Her mother died in 1767 three years after the birth of her sister Agnes and they were brought up by their grandmother until 1770 when they went to London where, until 1775, they were educated by a governess. Eight years later, on a long European tour with her father, she began her Journals which she kept for seventy years and which were published after her death in 1865. In 1788 the two sisters met Horace Walpole who called them his ' twin wives' and he bought a house for them in Teddington. Three years later he persuaded them to move into Little Strawberry Hill (Cliveden). When Walpole died in 1797 Mary edited his works and when her father died in 1817 she became a professional writer. She had a brilliant personality, powerful intelligence and remained at the centre of the fashionable literary circles until her death in 1852
1764
born ..... Ann Radcliffe neé Ward ..... English romantic novelist who was born in London and at the age of 23 married William Radcliffe, a graduate of Oxford and a student of law who became proprietor and editor of the weekly English Chronicle. In 1789 she published The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne followed by a Sicilian romance the following year The Romance of the Forest. For The Italian (1797) she received £800 and for The Mysteries of Udolfo (1794) the sum of £500. Ann travelled a lot and her diary shows her keen eye for natural scenery and ruins. Her contemporary reputation was considerable, she was praised by Scott and influenced by such writers as Byron, Shelley and Charlotte Bronte. Her particular brand of ‘gothic romance’ found many imitators, most of them inferior to her. She stopped writing in 1797 and retired to her estates near Leicester where she died in 1823 ..... and .....
born ..... Elizabeth ..... daughter of Louis, Dauphin of France and Marie Josephine de Saxe. She was educated by the Countess de Marsan and led a tranquil country life among friends and books, a life which she enjoyed at her villa at Montrevil for some years previous to the outbreak of the Revolution. When the storm broke upon the heads of the Royal family she met it piously but firmly like a true daughter of France having earlier sensed the weakness and irresolution of the King's character and divined the hopelessness of the royal cause. After the return from the flight to Varennes she wrote to a friend that all was resolved and having decided to cast in her lot with that of those she loved she refused all the persuasions of Louis to take refuge with her sister Clotilde at the court of Turin. In 1792 with the King and Queen she was imprisoned in the Temple and saw each of them led to their execution. Two years later she was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal and found guilty of keeping up a treasonable correspondence with her exiled brothers. She was condemned to the guillotine and executed on the same day ..... and .....
born ..... Mary Lamb ..... who was educated as a child with her brothers but was forced to give up her schooling and work to help them whilst they completed their education. When she was thirty years old she went mad, killed her mother and was sent to an asylum. She was later released into the custody of her brother Charles and he took care of her. The Tales of Shakespeare was written by her but published under Charles' name and she also wrote an essay on needlework in which she argued that women should be paid for the work they did in the home. She died in 1841
1765
born ..... Gertrudis Bocanegra ..... Mexican freedom fighter. She was a patriot and philanthropist who organised schools for Indian children in Mexico and during the War of Independence in 1810 created an underground army of women. She was eventually taken prisoner by the government, tortured and publicly executed in 1817 ..... and .....
born ..... Sophia de Condorcet ..... one of the most outstanding women who conducted salons during the period of the French Revolution. At first she devoted herself to intellectual and cultural pursuits but as the Revolution grew her salon became a gathering place for revolutionary party members. She was sent to prison at one stage for her outspoken views but was later released. Others of her circle died on the scaffold and her husband committed suicide in prison. She struggled then to make a living as a painter but died in obscurity in 1822
1767
born ..... Maria Edgworth ..... celebrated writer who was born at Black Bourton in Oxfordshire. Her fathers family, which was established in the county of Longford, Ireland, during the reign of Elizabeth, was one of the most powerful in the district and had its full share of the perils during the stormy period which ended with the victories of William 111. At the age of nine Maria was sent to school in Derby and three years later to a higher school in London. At this time she did not show any of the superior abilities which she possessed. At one time it was feared that she would lose her sight and eventually her failing health caused her to be removed from school at the age of fifteen and was taken , by her father, to Edgeworthstown, Ireland. She became inseparable from him until his death in 1817. He trained her in the habits of business, making her assist him in his office, keeping accounts and giving her the knowledge of the people among whom she was to live. It was this contact with the tenants, with their modes of expression, impulses, crafts and wit, that she learned to feel and value their good qualities whilst not becoming blind to their evil ones. Her father alone, understood her, but by others she was considered shy and reserved. During this period she wrote the Letters for Literary Ladies but it was not published for several years. She also formed the plan for the set of stories that begin with the Parent's Assistant and end with Harry and Lucy. The novel Castle Rackrent appeared with her name at the beginning of the 19th century. She became even more successful but to her the greatest reward was the reforming of the miserable state of society in Ireland that it had exposed. When her father died her happy life was broken up, she felt his loss intensely and for a while could not fully pursue her writings but eventually in 1823 she one again resumed them. Maria died in 1849 ….."some people talk of morality and some of religion but give me a little snug property"
1768
born ..... Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel ..... daughter of Duke Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick a vassal state of Prussia. Her mother was one of the daughters of George 11. When she was four, the Royal Marriages #act was passed, whereby the consent of the reigning sovereign must be secured for any marriage. She became the wife of George 1V when he was the Prince of Wales in 1795 and a year later their daughter Princess Charlotte of Wales was born. The marriage was not a successful one, he could not stand her, but they remained wed. George ignored her completely and she took many lovers. It was also rumoured that she had had an illegitimate child and so in 1806 the government set up a secret enquiry about her entitled The Delicate Investigation. Years later, when the material became public, men stopped their servants and then their wives from reading it. In 1820 George succeeded to the throne and Caroline assumed the role of Queen but the new King ordered that her name be omitted from the Liturgy and forbade royal honours to be paid to her at foreign courts. In 1821, when he was crowned at Westminster Abbey, she claimed to share the ceremony with him but the doors were closed to her. She had no ticket of admittance, was repulsed by the officials and jeered at by the crowds. She died in August of the same year. On her deathbed she urged her husband to marry again but he replied that he would rather have mistresses. To this she replied " That shouldn't hamper your marrying" ..... and .....
born ..... Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armont ..... at Saint-Saturnin des Ligeurs in Normandy and was educated at an exclusive convent. She was ambitious, reserved and convinced of an heroic destiny. After a quarrel with her father she went to live with her aunt at Caen where the banned Girondhins took refuge in May 1793. She became closely associated with them and was determined to kill Jean Paul Marat whom she saw as a regicide and murdering demagogue. Charlotte went to Paris where she bought a kitchen knife, gained access to Marat by pretending that she had news of a Girondhin conspiracy and then stabbed him repeatedly whilst he was in the bath. She was arrested immediately and nearly attacked by a mob. The Revolutionary Tribunal tried her and she was found guilty and guillotined four days later. On the day of her execution in 1793 at the age of twenty three she explained her reasons in a highly rhetorical Address to the French Friends of Law and Peace
1769
born ..... Maria Lachapelle ..... French obstetrician whose mother and grandmother were influential midwives. When her mother died she was appointed head of maternity at the Hotel Dieu where Baudelocque was teaching obstetrics. Marie insisted that instruments should be used as little as possible and in classifying positions of the foetus reduced his 94 positions to 22. Her great published work was Practique des Accouchements (1821-25) in three volumes and which covered 40,000 cases. She studied further at Heidelberg and on her return to France organised a maternity and children's hospital at the Port Royal, where she trained many midwives for other parts of Europe and also instituted many innovations in patient care. She died in 1821 ..... and .....
born ..... Philippine Duchesne ..... Nun of the Society of the Sacred Heart and a missionary in America. She decided to become a nun at the age of seventeen in the community where she had been educated but because of political situations her father refused his consent. In 1791 the Visitation nuns were expelled and she returned to her family during the period of the Revolution. Philippine tried to revive the convent in 1802 by buying the buildings but the plan did not work. She offered them to Madeleine Sophie Barat, foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart. Philippine and four others were admitted and in 1805 they were professed. Her greatest desire was to be a missionary and in 1818 she and four others arrived in St. Louis, Missouri where they established a school for poor children in a log cabin. They later moved into a brick building and opened a novitiate, receiving the first American postolant in 1820. A year later a second house was opened and five years later two more were founded. At the age of seventy one years Philippine was superseded as superior but she founded a school for Indians at Sugar Creek in Kansas. She was unable to speak their language and at her age found the living conditions too severe. She retired to St Charles in Missouri and lived there until her death in 1852 dying in conditions of extreme poverty. She was canonised in 1969 and her festal day is the 17th November
1770
America ..... Phillis Wheatley published her first poem, becoming the earliest known published African-American woman writer - second American woman and first black woman writer to be published ..... and in
England ..... the first club to admit members of both sexes was Almack's in King Street, St James', London. The six women founders included Lady Pembroke and Lady Molyneux. Candidates for election had to be nominated by members of the opposite sex and likewise could be blackballed. The principal activity of the club was gaming for high stakes ( see also 1871) ..... and in
France ..... Marguerite Gerard was one of the earliest women painters to achieve professional success ..... and .....
born ..... Sophie Cottin neé Risteau ..... French writer considered by some to be the most accomplished novelist of her time. Her most successful work Elisabeth, ou les exilés de Sibérie ( Elisabeth, or the Siberian Exiles) was written in 1806 and in 1817, ten years after her death, Victor Hugo noted that many regarded her as one of the most talented of novelists
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