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1912

 

 

 

America

 

....  male voters in the states of Michigan, Kansas, Oregon and Arizona voted to amend the constitution to grant women suffrage, but the suggestion was rejected by the Wisconsin electorate and in Massachusetts a minimum wage law relating to women and children was passed

 

..... Eleanora Sears became the first woman to play polo

 

 

 

United Kingdom

 

..... Mary Sumner, wife of the rector of Old Alresford in Hampshire, began the Mother's Union and its aim was to arouse parents to a sense of responsibility for the religious upbringing of their children. In 14 years its journal grew in circulation from a single parish to over 13,000 subscribers

 

..... the Ski Club of Great Britain was founded in 1906 and from the beginning the sport was mixed. As early as 1902 women had been sighted on the slopes. In 1912 however, a Miss Maitland caused consternation when she entered a downhill competition at Murren and beat all the men. Skiing was a very dangerous sport for women, principally because if they wore trousers they were likely to be stoned or spat at as they walked through the Alpine villages. A London tailor, called Symonds, proposed a solution, which was a detachable skirt to be worn over the breeches while climbing the slopes. Women were not generally allowed to wear trousers until the First World War and even then faced comments 

 

..... before 1912 in Britain, women doctors were not allowed to publish in The Lancet, on the grounds of prudishness

 

..... the Labour Party Conference passed a resolution in favour of adult suffrage but stipulated that Labour MP's must oppose any franchise bill that excluded women. With this welcome support from one of the parliamentary parties, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which had previously maintained a line of strict non-party neutrality, set out to back pro-suffrage Labour candidates at by-elections. To do this it established a special election Fighting Fund and was able to employ over 60 organisations to fight the campaign up and down the country

 

..... between 1912 and 1914 the Suffragettes within the WSPU escalated their arson campaign in the face of Asquith's and the Liberal's intransigence. Their extreme militancy reached its crescendo when, on Derby Day 1913 Emily Wilding Davison, threw herself under the King's horse and was killed: a funeral procession of 6,000 accompanied her coffin through the streets of London. With increasing numbers of suffragette prisoners going on hunger strike and with the Government's policy of forced feeding acquiring notoriety, the Government responded with the cruel "Cat and Mouse Act (Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Ill Health Act), which allowed suffragettes to be temporarily discharged to recover their health and then re-admitted to prison

 

..... the WSPU had to go underground, to avoid police harassment and Christabel Pankhurst directed operations from exile in Paris. The WSPU became increasingly isolated as both the Pethick-Lawrences and Sylvia Pankhurst found it impossible to condone their policies, Sylvia Pankhurst helped to form the East London Federation of Suffragettes as an alternative to the elitist autocracy of the WSPU and through its paper the Dreadnought, it campaigned on a wide front not only for votes for women but also for improving the conditions of home workers, unsupported mothers etc

 

 

Around The World

 

..... Norway ..... a new law gave women right of access to most public offices, but not to the clergy or to diplomatic, military and Cabinet Minister appointments

 

 

 

 

Dated items

 

April 16th ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... American pilot Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly the English Channel

 

July 23rd ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... the Modesty League protested against tight dresses

 

November 11th ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... the long awaited report of the Royal Commission on divorce called for men and women to be treated equally by the divorce laws. It also recommended putting divorce within the reach of the poor and widening the grounds to include - desertion for three years, cruelty, habitual drunkenness, insanity and imprisonment under committed death sentence. Prior to this adultery had been the only grounds available