1851 to 1860
1851
England
..... Ann Knight was involved in starting the Sheffield Association for Female Franchise, which petitioned the House of Lord’s for women’s suffrage
born
..... Queen Olga of the Hellenes ..... eldest daughter of the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia and niece of the Emperor Alexander 11 and was brought up under an excessively severe and strict discipline. Implicit and unquestioning obedience was the keynote of early training of Russian Royal children and the slightest offences were visited with heavy penalties. Therefore, when she was told at the age of sixteen that she was to marry King George of Greece, whom she had never seen, she agreed immediately. Their betrothal was publicly announced on May 16th 1867 and they met for the first time two months later. The result of this meeting was a happy one, they fell in love and the story of their lives furnished a Danish writer with the theme for a very romantic novel, a copy of which was given to them on their wedding day. She was well accepted by the people of Greece and a year later gave birth to a son, Prince Constantine. Altogether she had six children. In 1869 at the age of eighteen and as Queen she was hostess to King Edward V11 and Queen Alexandra of Great Britain who were then the Prince and Princess of Wales. Being very nervous on this her first great occasion, instead of being in the throne room where the etiquette of the Court required that she should receive them, she rushed downstairs when she heard their carriage and greeted them on the steps outside the Palace. This greeting greatly pleased the Royal visitors and they invited her and her husband to a return visit to England. Due to political dissension’s this was not made possible until 1876. In 1897 when war broke out between Greece and Turkey she formed the Queens Guild and each member undertook to send in a certain quantity of clothing, food or money each week and this was then passed on to the refugees. She introduced many reforms in the Royal establishment and a number of alterations in the domestic arrangements at the palace. Basically she was a person who devoted herself to her duties as a mother and renounced all social and public engagements except for those that it was absolutely imperative for her, as the Consort of the Sovereign, to keep
1852
America
..... Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, the first college claiming to offer equal opportunities to men and women, was founded
born
..... Alice Liddell ..... favourite of Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, the story read by millions. The Rev. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was an Oxford University lecturer and in 1865 he sent the completed version of Alice in Wonderland to Alice Liddell. He had begun to write it in 1862 on a warm summer afternoon as he sat by the river entertaining three young friends. It is said that he preferred the company of small girls to boys but by the time the book was finished Alice had reached puberty and he no longer felt comfortable with her. One early review said ‘ a stiff, overwrought story’ but during his lifetime the book sold 180,000 copies and is still being read today. Alice grew into a beautiful and gifted young woman who had close ties with the Royal family. She was romantically involved with Queen Victoria’s fourth son, Prince Leopold, but they could not marry and eventually she married an Oxford graduate Ronald Hargreaves. Their marriage lasted 42 years and they had three sons, two of whom were killed during the First World War. She remained friends with Prince Leopold, he was godfather to her second son and named his own first child, Alice. She lived to be over 80 years old and sold most of her Carroll material in New York
born
..... Martha Jane Cannary - Calamity Jane ..... American frontierswoman who was born in Princetown, Missouri where her parents were farmers. In the early 1870s she earned her living, dressed as a man, as a muleskinner in Wyoming and it was here that she met Wild Bill Hickock. She later claimed that they had married and that he was the father of her daughter. In 1875 she accompanied General Crook on his Sioux expedition but when he found out that she was a woman he sent her back. In 1876 she settled down with Hickock in the outlaw town of Deadwood in Dakota but he was murdered in the same year. Four years later she left and wandered through the West before marrying again in 1885. They soon separated however and she returned to Wyoming where she gained a reputation for hard drinking and wild behaviour. She joined the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and toured with it visiting England in 1893. In 1900 she starred at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York but was repeatedly fired for drunkenness, brawling and assaulting policemen. She died of pneumonia at a hotel near Deadwood on August 7th 1903 and was buried next to Wild Bill as she had requested
1853
America
..... in May Delavan House, Albany, New York, became the first to employ waitresses. The celebrated American feminist Amelia Bloomer recorded in a letter written a few months later .. “stopping overnight at Delavan House in Albany, we were agreeably surprised on entering the dining room for supper to see about a dozen young women in attendance at the tables. This was something new. When we visited the house last winter the waiters were all men. Now not a man was to be seen in that capacity. In place of their heavy tread and awkward motions was women’s light footfall and easy graceful movements. In a conversation with the proprietor we learned that the change was entirely satisfactory, the only objectors being a few women who preferred black men”
..... the Constitutional Convention in Massachusetts was subject to a petition for women's suffrage signed by 74 women
born
..... Mary Elizabeth Lease ..... American temperance agitator and Populist campaigner . She was called to the Kansas Bar in the late 1870s and became famous as a reformer and demagogue, denouncing ‘ the bloodhounds of money’. In a speech in 1890 she declared .. “ The farmers of Kansas must raise less corn and more hell" . She died in 1933
1854
Norway
..... the same rights of inheritance for sons and daughters was brought. Prior to this sons had inherited twice as much as their sisters
born
..... Clementina Maria Black ..... Trade Unionist who was born in Brighton and at the age of 22 was left in charge of her invalid father and seven younger brothers. Several years later she went to London to teach, study and write and became involved with the problems of women’s work and wages. From 1886 to 1888 she was Secretary of the Women’s Protective and Provident League. She created a Consumers League and supported the 1888 London Match Girls Strike and also initiated the Equal Pay Resolution at the Trade Union Congress of 1888. She joined the new Women’s Trade Union Association and campaigned against sweat shop labour and was an original member of the Women’s Industrial Council (1894) becoming President. She became Vice-President of the National Anti-Sweating League and also wrote on the subject. Clementina was a keen suffragette and an early member of the National Union of Woman’s Suffrage Society and an inaugurator of the great suffrage petition of 1906. She died in 1922
1855
America
..... in Massachusetts, the divorce law was reformed, making it fairer to women
..... Elmira Female College, New York, became the first US institution to grant academic degrees to women
..... the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was a Christian organisation founded by Emma Roberts and Mary Jane Kinnaird who wished to promote Christian unity and interdenominational understanding through social and educational activities. Subsequently the organisation offered hostel accommodation to members
born
..... Mary Mackay ..... daughter of the Scottish song-writer Charles Mackay. She was born in London and educated in a French convent, was a brilliant pianist and adopted her pseudonym Marie Corelli and the story of her Italian parentage for her concert career. However, her first novel in 1886 A Romance of Two Worlds ( which was partly autobiographical) was such a success that she became a professional writer. Altogether she wrote 28 best selling novels including Thelma (1887) Barabbas (1893) and The Sorrows of Satan (1895) which broke all previous sales records. She never married and lived with her best friend Bertha Vyver. She was convinced of her own genius, hated criticism and refused to send her books to reviewers. She died in 1924 and for twenty years her companion Bertha kept her house unchanged. Miss Corelli’s ink dried to dust before her empty chair
born
..... Olive Schreiner ..... South African novelist, rationalist and feminist, the sixth of twelve children of a German father and English mother. The lived near the Cape of Good Hope and as she had no formal education this prevented her from becoming a doctor as she wished and so at the age of fifteen she became a governess to a Boer family in the Karoo desert. She began writing Story of an African Farm but could not find a publisher in South Africa and in 1881 left for England to try there. It was eventually published in 1883 and received both praise and hostility, especially for its denunciation of the oppression of women. She did not like England however and in 1889 returned to South Africa. She published little more fiction and with her husband campaigned for suffrage, racial justice and for the Boer cause. They were both interned during the war. This was when she wrote her massive and influential study Women and Labour which was published in 1911. In 1913 she returned to England and was active in the peace movement. She died in 1920 and was buried on a hill in South Africa
1856
America
..... after being taken from Mississippi to California by her master, Biddy Mason gained her freedom. She eventually became a wealthy landowner, one of the first black women to Los Angeles to own property
..... Loreta Janeta Velazquez secretly married an American soldier and when the Civil War broke out she persuaded him to enlist in the Confederate army. Not content with that, she decided to go to war herself and to disguise her female shape had a framework of thin wire made which she wore under her shirt. She signed up under the name of Lieutenant Harry T Buford and joined her husband at his camp near New Orleans. Unfortunately he was killed shortly afterwards. She was present at the first battle of Bull Run when some 5,000 dead and wounded were left on the field and any feminine tenderness and sensitivity she may have had had been set aside with her petticoats. She had a lust for battle and when she discovered that there was little immediate prospect of further action she decided to become a spy. Dressed in clothes from a Negro washerwoman she paid another black servant to row her across the Potomac at dead of night and entered Unionist territory. She made her way to Washington, where, more suitably attired, she stayed at one of the leading hotels posing as an unfortunate but loyal Unionist, widowed by the war. Before long she was able to make the acquaintance of a number of Yankee politicians and generals and by asking innocent sounding questions was able to build up a picture of future Unionist troop movements. If caught and convicted she would most certainly have been shot. She returned southwards and passed on what she had learned to the Confederate leaders and then resumed her military life. She was among the defenders of Fort Donelson which endured a bloody, four-day siege before finally surrendering. Loreta escaped but was wounded and her true sex was discovered by one of the doctors. She was arrested on suspicion of being a Unionist spy and only just managed to extricate herself. Her freelance activities came to an end and she received instructions from Confederate headquarters to return to enemy territory in the guise of a Unionist widow and to try to gain access to prisoner-of-war camps to encourage the inmates to escape. This was the first official mission she undertook during the war. When the war ended her adventures did not and she travelled widely in Europe and tried her hand at mining in California ........ " She lived her life : she did not dream it, think it, hope for it, or regret her inability to experience it. She had the gift of actualizing her ambitions "
England
..... Florence Nightingale formed an institution for the training of nurses at St Thomas's Hospital, London, where the trainer nurses were called 'Nightingales'
1857
England
..... on January 1st the Marriage and Divorce Act came into effect and through the new civil courts women could divorce husbands for adultery, cruelty and desertion. Mother’s rights of access to children after divorce were extended
born
..... Alice Stone Blackwell ..... daughter of Lucy Stone and niece of Elizabeth Blackwell. Alice was instrumental in reuniting the two major factions of the suffrage movement in America with the formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890. In 1891 she was a reporter for the Woman’s Journal at the national convention of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and wrote “ multitudes of women who began by seeing only the drunkard are learning, through the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, to look beyond the principle.” As a second generation suffragist she voted in the first national election following the passage of the 19th Amendment. She died in 1950
born
..... Beatrice - Princess ...... youngest daughter of Queen Victoria and mother of Queen Victoria of Spain. She was her mothers constant companion until her marriage in 1885 to Prince Henry of Battenberg who died at sea of fever caught in the Ashanti expedition of 1896. Although she was 28 years old when she married ,Queen Victoria was so attached to her that she insisted that she make her home at Osborne. She was a brilliant and accomplished woman with hobbies such as yachting, motoring, music, painting and photography and was also a composer and had a number of piano pieces and songs published. She died in 1944
born 8th April
..... Fanny Lucy Houston ..... eccentric English philanthropist who married three times and was left a large fortune by her third husband Sir Robert Paterson Houston, MP for the West Toxteth division of Liverpool. She was a strong advocate of women's rights and in 1917 was appointed DBE for her work for nurses during the First World War. As owner of the Saturday review she was able to air her views and her contributions to charity covered a wide field. In 1931 she gave a gift of £100,000 to a British team to enable them to compete in the Schneider trophy and the race was won by a super-marine Rolls-Royce S6, the direct predecessor of the Spitfires and Hurricanes which won the Battle of Britain in 1940. She also financed the expedition which flew over Mount Everest in 1933 which assisted in the ultimate conquest of the mountain by providing new maps of the area. In 1932 she offered money for the air defence of London but this offer was refused. She died on 29th December 1936
born
..... Louisa Stephanie Cecile Chaminade ..... French pianist and composer whose earliest pieces were written when she was eight years old. In 1875 she made her debut as a pianist and attracted attention with recitals of her own works. She toured and in 1872 visited England where she was very popular. Altogether she wrote over 200 piano pieces, several of which she recorded and which included The Scarf Dance from her ballet Callirhoe. Her other compositions include Les Amazones for chorus and orchestra, a Concertstuck for piano and orchestra, a Flute Concertino, two piano trios and many songs. She died in 1944
1858
England
..... Florence Nightingale's “ notes on matters affecting the health, efficiency and hospital administration of the British Army” contained numerous innovative statistical diagrams, including polar-area charts which she invented
Norway
..... the telephone and telegraph administration was opened to women, the first of the public services
born January 22nd
..... Beatrice Webb ..... a great socialist and sociologist who, with her husband, fought to expose the horrors of the lives of Britain’s sweated workers in tailoring shops throughout the country. She became one of them and moved from shop to shop to survey and report her findings back to Charles Booth. These findings became one of the most important chapters in his work Life and Labour
born April 23rd
..... Pandita Ramabai ..... India's foremost champion of emancipation for women. She penned a feminist manifesto, converted from Hinduism to Christianity, translated the Bible into Marathi and established a refuge for child widows and other people in need. She died on April 5th 1922