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1910

America

..... Madame C J Walker ( Sarah Breedlove) opened her own beauty care factory and went on to become America's FIRST black millionairess, philanthropist and supporter of black artists in Harlem

..... women gained the right to vote in Washington

..... Camp Fire Girls, the FIRST non-sectarian organisation for girls in the U.S was founded by Dr Luther Gulick and his wife Charlotte Vetter Gulick. The original Camp Fire Girls handbook was published in 1914 and is regarded as a key document in the emancipation of women in the U.S

United Kingdom

..... General Election: Lancashire & Cheshire Women Textile Worker's Representation Committee put up a suffrage candidate in the Rossendale constituency, but he came bottom of the poll with only 693 votes. After the Election, with the Liberals still in power, though without a majority, a pro-suffrage all-party Conciliation Committee of 54 MP's was set-up to draft a women's suffrage bill which would win Conservative Party support by restricting the franchise to propertied women. The WSPU called a truce of its anti-Government militant campaign. The Bill was defeated as it lacked the vital backing of the Government and so the WSPU responded with increased lobbying of Parliament, with often violent clashes between the Suffragettes and the police

 ..... the Hon. Mrs Bertrand Russel described a pioneer maternity clinic in one of the poorest parts of St Pancras, London. She said " Just by the door is an injunction not to bring in any 'comforter' and within doors the walls are covered with charts and pictures illustrating food values or showing the bow-legged baby and the baby half-strangled by the coils of rubber tubing attached to his feeding bottle. The large light room is divided by a screen. At one end there are rows of chairs and space for perambulators, at the other end a dining table where the daily 1½d dinners are served to nursing and expectant mothers. These dinners are only given on the order of the doctor when she finds that the pregnant mother is in need of wholesome food or that the nursing mother's milk is not sufficiently nourishing for the baby. In winter the average attendance is over twenty. Of this number over half pay for themselves or are paid for by societies or private persons while a few, after careful investigation, are given the dinners free, because of unemployment or illness in their homes"

 ..... Lady Constance Lytton kept a diary in January 1910 when she was a suffragette prisoner in Walton Gaol. She had posed as a working-class woman to expose the treatment of suffragettes in the jail and recorded her experiences when she was force fed saying " At about 5pm the Senior Medical officer returned with, I think, 4 wardresses and the feeding apparatus. The Doctor urged me to voluntarily take food but I told him that was absolutely out of the question. He did not examine my heart nor feel my pulse. He did not ask to do so, nor did I, directly or indirectly, say anything which could possibly induce him to think that I would refuse to be examined. I offered no resistance to being placed in that position but lay down voluntarily on the plank bed on the floor. I shut my mouth and clenched my teeth. The Doctor offered me the choice of a wooden or a steel gag. He explained elaborately, as he did on every subsequent occasion, that the steel gag would hurt and the wooden one not, and he urged me not to drive him to use the steel gag which however was the only one that could overcome my resistance. After failing to unlock my teeth with the wooden gag he used the steel. He seemed, not unnaturally, annoyed at my resistance. After being fed by the stomach tube I was much overcome and I vomited. As the Doctor left me he gave me a slap on the cheek, not violently but apparently to express his contemptuous disapproval: he seemed to take for granted that my distress was assumed. I said to him the next day, "Unless you consider it part of your duty, would you please not strike me (or I may have said slap me) when you have finished your odious job. He did not answer but never repeated the insult " .....  Midge Mackenzie. Lady Constance Lytton's account is from her Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences'

..... between 1910 and 1922 Miss Beatrice Christopher was a housemaid for the lead-mining Bankes family on their 16,000 acre estate at Kingston Lace, Wimborne, Dorset. She died heartbroken, aged 30, after a soldier whom she was to marry left her for another woman. Whilst in their employ she kept a diary, which was found years later by her niece. It is said that the diary was meticulous and surprising erudite for a servant of the time and includes a poem dated June 27th 1912 called Only a Servant Girl, which takes a wry look at Edwardian attitudes towards the working class.  The diary also tells how she met Cpl Elijah Ford, a member of the 2nd Sherwood Foresters from Derby and eventually they became engaged. He was posted to France in the First World War and whilst there sent her 39 postcards but their affair ended when he was taken prisoner in Holland, met a Dutch girl and married her after making her pregnant.  It is believed that he sent Miss Christopher a postcard, which has never been traced, but he is not mentioned in the diary again.  Soon afterwards she contracted tuberculosis and was sent home in 1922. She died a week later and was buried in an unmarked grave with other family members at Witchampton Church

..... the first Association of Advertising Women was set up but was disbanded in 1914

..... women were first employed as bank cashiers when Thomas Farrow founded Britain's first Bank for Women. All the staff and advisory committee were women and only female customers were accepted

Around The World

..... Denmark ..... in 1857, 1907 & 1908 American garment workers, all women, marched and demonstrated demanding better pay. In 1910 their example was the inspiration for Clara Zetkin to declare an international day for Working Women while at the Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen that year. The day chosen was originally to be the last Sunday in February each year, but in 1913 this was changed to March 8th, and has been so ever since. In South Africa women also chose August 9th as their day to commemorate their protest against the extension of the infamous Pass Law to women

..... Germany ..... rayon stockings for women were manufactured

..... Norway ..... women received a general right to vote in municipal elections

Dated items

May 31st ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... the Girl Guide movement was founded by Sir Robert Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes along the same lines as the Boy Scouts association which had been formed three years earlier. Its aim was to encourage girls to be obedient, clean living and resourceful

June 25th ..... AMERICA ..... the White Slave Traffic Act, also known as the Mann Act, was passed to prohibit the transportation of women and girls across state lines for immoral purposes

September 7th ..... FRANCE ..... Marie Curie first isolated radium

September 12th ..... AMERICA ..... Alice Stebbins Wells was the first policewoman to be appointed  to the Los Angeles Police Department

November 27th ..... FRANCE ..... a new law gave pregnant women eight weeks leave from work