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1771 to 1780

1771

born .... Laskarina Bouboulina .....  Greek freedom fighter and daughter of a sea captain from the island of Spetses. She was married twice, had six children and was widowed for the second time at the age of fifty. Her life was devoted to the Greek war of independence against Turkish occupation and she had four ships equipped for the war and also maintained a small land army. She took part in the naval blockade of Nauplia and relieved many towns under siege. After a fierce battle in Tripoli , Laskarina was the first to enter the besieged town and she helped to control the rage of the Greek soldiers against the harem women. In 1825 she was killed by a stray bullet during an argument with a relative over a family vendetta ..... and ....

born ..... Maria Nugent .....  in New Jersey, while the United States still gave its allegiance to the British crown. Her father was a loyalist and, at Independence, the whole family moved to England, where he was handsomely compensated for the property he had lost. There were thousands of black ex-servicemen in England at that time who had supported the British in the American Revolution. Most of them were destitute, after having offered their lives to the British cause. Maria married George Nugent in 1797 and accompanied him first to Ireland and then to Jamaica, where he was appointed Governor General and then Commander-in-Chief of the island. Her diary covers the four years of her stay in Jamaica, from 1801 to 1805. She is one of the very few British women to have produced first-hand accounts of their lives during the time of slavery and  centres on her everyday life as the wife of the Governor of Jamaica

1773

born ..... Elizabeth Bichier des Ages (Joan Elizabeth Mary Lucy ) ..... foundress. During the French Revolution she lived with her mother near Poitou. In the absence of a regular priest she organised secret meetings for worship and through this came into contact with St. Andrew Fournet. The result was an establishment of a community of Sisters to look after the sick and to teach young girls. It soon grew and between 1811 and 1830 over sixty convents were opened in Poitou and in Southern France. They were called the Sisters of St Andrew the Apostle (officially, Daughters of the Cross). Mother Elizabeth was a gentle, resolute woman who travelled a lot and was concerned for others. When Fournet died she received help from a Basque priest St Michael Garicoits and encouraged him to found the Society of Missioners called Priest of the Sacred Heart of Betharram. She died in 1838 ..... and .....

born ..... Josefa de Dominguez .....  heroine of the Mexican Independence movement in the 1820s. She was the wife of the Mayor of the city of Queretaro and had access to information on the movements and plans of the Spanish troops which she passed on to the revolutionaries. However her activities became known to the Spaniards and she was imprisoned for three years. Later she was offered compensation for her services to the revolution but refused saying that she needed no reward for doing what was right. She died in 1829..... and .....

born ..... Margaret Catchpole .....  English/Australian pioneer and letter writer who was born in Suffolk. She became a servant and then nurse to an Ipswich brewer's family, the Cobbolds, where she learned to read and write. In 1795 she left them for her lover, a smuggler, but became ill and unable to work. She was eventually arrested for stealing a horse from her old employers, was sentenced to death but it was commuted to transportation. She tried to escape by scaling a 20' wall but was recaptured and sentenced to transportation for life. Her lover was shot. Margaret reached Sydney, Australia, in 1801 and found work as a cook. She eventually rose to the position of housekeeper and overseer for leading colonial families. Although pardoned in 1814 she remained in Australia where she kept a shop and also acted as a midwife and nurse. In 1841 she died of influenza. Her letters to relatives and the Cobbolds give detailed accounts of daily life in the Colonies and of the aborigines and major disasters in Australia. These were turned into The History of Margaret Catchpole in 1845 by Richard Cobbold, after which she became a legend

1774

born September 8th ..... Anna Catherine Emmerich .....  visionary and stagmatic who was born at Flamskeon. She was the daughter of peasants and her early years were spent in poverty and hard labour in the fields. From her childhood she experienced extraordinary visions in which the Holy Virgin and many of the saints appeared to her. She began to show the first signs of the stigmata when she was 24 years old with wounds in her hands and on her side and feet. The King of Westphalia suppressed the Augustinian Order to which she belonged and in 1811 closed the convent. Poor and chronically ill she remained at the shuttered convent attended by a former servant of the institution. The following year Anna moved into a wretched little room of a private home belonging to a poor widow and here she began to manifest further stigmata. During the last five years of her life, Clemens Brentano, a poet and prominent literary figure of the day, stayed by her side and made day by day transcriptions of her visions. These include a lengthy account of the crucifixion, starting with the Last Supper and ending with the Resurrection and were published in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. She died in 1824

1775

England ...... George 111 declared an order that released women and young children from employment in the coal and salt mines where work was frequently as much as 12 hours per day

America ..... the editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, Thomas Paine, published an anonymous article entitled " An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex" which stated that women have achieved much but would achieve more if men honoured them with equal civil rights and freedoms

1776

America ..... a clause was introduced in New Jersey which gave the vote to women with more than $250 to their name. A few women exercised their right but it was repealed a few years later

1777

born ..... Elisa Bonaparte ..... sister of Napoleon Bonaparte and Grand Duchess of Tuscany.  In 1797 she married a Corsican noble  and in 1805 was made duchess of the principalities of Piombino and Lucca by her brother Napoleon.  As she managed the small states so profitably he gave her Tuscany in1809 but her relationship with him became strained when she supported her brother-in-law Joachim Murat in his activities.  She eventually retired to Sant' Andrea near Trieste and died in 1820 ..... and .....

born ..... Jeanne Recamier  neé Francoise Julia Adelaide Bernard .....  noted society woman in the days of Napoleon. She was famous for her beauty and wit and her salon was frequented by the most brilliant society of her day during the Restoration. She was born at Lyons, the daughter of a banker and was educated in a convent until she was fifteen years old when she went to Paris. The following year she married a rich, elderly banker Jacques Recamier and soon became a fashionable hostess. However, her Royalist friends, such as Bernadotte, made her unpopular with Napoleon and in 1805 he exiled her from Paris. She went to Geneva, then on to Rome and Naples and only returned to France after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The Recamier fortune had by now been greatly reduced and after 1819 she lived in Paris in rooms in a convent. Madame Recamier continued to hold her salon but in later years she became totally blind and died in 1849. A family portrait of her hangs in the Louvre. Of a lover she once said "Neither he nor I were passionate enough to need to be alone with each other."

1778

born ..... Mary Brunton neé Balfour ..... Scottish novelist who made her name with her first novel Self Control in 1810 which she dedicated to her close friend Joanna Baillie. In 1798 she married the Rev Alexander Brunton and they settled in Bolton, East Lothian.  From 1803 they lived in Edinburgh where her husband was minister of the Tron Kirk and Professor of Oriental Languages at Edinburgh University. In 1814 she published Discipline and after visiting England in 1815 planned further ones but only one, Emmeline (1819) was completed before her death in childbirth in 1818

1779

England ..... Mrs Johnson started the first ever Sunday newspaper, the British Gazette & Sunday Monitor. As it was illegal to sell newspapers on a Sunday she always printed a sermon or some kind of religious piece to get round the law. She was soon producing 4000 papers each week and remained editor for the next eighteen years ..... and .....

born  ..... Elizabeth Alexieona .....   Empress of Russia and daughter of the Grand Duke of Baden. In 1793 she was sent for by Catherine, grandmother of Alexander, to go to St Petersburgh. Having entered the Greek church she changed her name from Louisa Maria August to that of Elizabeth Alexieona and married Alexander in the same year. She was amiable and benevolent and gave away all her income to the poor keeping only 10,000 roubles. Both her daughters died young and in their honour she founded an institute for the education of orphans. Elizabeth was a graceful person but was also very firm as she displayed during the French invasion of Russia in 1812. For her health's sake she was advised to try a warmer climate and so went south to Taganrog. In 1826 however, feeling herself to be dying but wishing to see her mother-in-law once more, she set out to meet her but died on the Road at the village of Beleff ..... and .....

born ..... Madeleine Sophie Barat ..... French nun who founded the Society of the Sacred Heart. She was born in Burgundy  the daughter of a vineyard owner and was educated mainly by her brother Louis who was eleven years her senior and a student of the priesthood. In 1793 he was arrested in Paris and imprisoned for two years because he refused to accept the civil constitution of the clergy. On his release he continued her education replacing the classics with scripture and theology. She had intended to become a Carmelite nun but was persuaded to lead a new educational institution which aimed to promote educational work among all classes.  The first Convent opened in 1801 at Amiens and from 1802 she was superior. In 1826 it received Papal approval  and during her 63 year rule it grew in academic excellence. Eventually 100 further foundations were established in Europe, North Africa and in America under Sister Rose Philippine Duchesne, the Society's first missionary. Madeleine carried on working until the age of 85 and in her last year was given an assistant. She was canonized in 1925 and her feast day is 25th May, the date of her death in 1865

1780

England ..... in April of this year the first recorded abortion clinic in Britain was advertised on the back page of the Morning Post. It read :  Pregnancy : To the Ladies : any lady whose situation may induce her to seek or require a temporary requirement may be accommodated agreeable to her wishes in the house of a gentleman of eminence in the profession, whose honour and secrecy may be depended on and where every vestige of pregnancy may be obliterated ..... and in

France .....  a course in practical obstetrics was established at the veterinary school at Alfort under the direction of Angelique du Coudray (1712 to 1789) a French obstetrician. Other surgeons were strongly opposed to her teaching but such was her recognition that she was allowed by the church to baptise babies and was often asked to assist at malpractice cases where the mother or child had been mutilated. She was among the French midwives who brought a scientific approach to medicine at a time when charlatans were common and methods were crude. Angelique introduced the use of a model of the female torso and an actual foetus to provide her pupils with practice in delivery. She had received her own licence to practise in 1740 ..... and .....

born ..... Elizabeth Fry neé Gurney .....  famous Quaker and Prison Reformer who was born in Norwich and married Joseph Fry in 1800. They had eight children. Her first visit to Newgate Prison was in 1813 and this was brought about by a visiting Quaker from America who, after seeing the inhumanity and misery which the prisoners underwent, begged her to try and do something for the women. Four years later she formed an Association for the Imprisonment of Female Prisoners in Newgate. Her aims separated men from women, classified prisoners and gave them employment and instruction, not only in England but throughout the world. She was called the ' genius of mercy' and often visited the ships taking women to serve their sentence of transportation in Australia. On one of her frequent visits abroad to study prison conditions there, she visited Kaiserwerth in Germany where the first training hospital for nurses had been established. In 1840 Elizabeth Fry founded the Institute of Nursing Sisters in Whitechapel to train nurses to care for poor people in their own homes. She died five years later ..... and .....

born ..... Pauline Bonaparte ..... Napoleon's favourite and most beautiful sister.   In 1802 she accompanied her husband General Leclerc on an expedition to Haiti but he contracted yellow fever and died. The following year she married Prince Camillo Borghese . Her life was peppered with scandal but she showed more loyalty to her brother than any of the other siblings.  Her last years were spent in Florence and she died in 1825