Back to home page

1861 to 1870

1861

America

..... the Civil War between the North and South began. Many slaves fled to the South Carolina Sea Islands where Charlotte Forten-Grimke taught the freed men how to read and write

1862

England

..... the Female Middle Class Emigration Society was founded by Miss Maria Rye who ran a highly successful law copying office for women clerks in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. She came up with the idea of emigration as an alternative and suitable occupation as there was a rising demand in Australia, New Zealand and Natal for superior servants and governess’. The society lasted for 23 years in which time it settled over 300 women in the colonies. Not a vast achievement but it was carefully organised and provided valuable experience for later migration societies. In the next 60 years no less than seven similar societies were formed including the Women’s Migration and Overseas Appointments Society

..... Elizabeth Ferrard, founder of the Community of St Andrews in 1861, was ordained deaconess by Bishop Tait of London. Other dioceses followed suit and the Order was recognized at the Lambeth Conference in 1897

..... Emily Faithful was appointed Publisher and Printer-in-Ordinary to the Queen and from 1889 was awarded a pension of 50 pounds a year. Five years previously she had started a printing house in Edinburgh where the work was done exclusively by women

born

.....  Daisy Bates neé O’Dwyer ..... who became one of the most notable Victorian women adventurers, her name being a legend most of her life of which half was lived amongst the Aborigines in Western and Southern Australia.  She greatly admired the British ways, the British Empire and those who gave their lives to its service in remote places. After investigating alleged cruelty by white settlers to the Aborigines  ( which she disproved) she spent many years wandering among the tribes in Australia and became known as Kabbarli meaning ‘ their grandmother’. She continued to choose to live in tents in the wilds even when in her seventies. In 1934 she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and every Empire Day, May 4th, she commemorated the occasion along with her friends, the aborigines. She died in 1952 having passed her last years in Adelaide, age and illness having forced her to retire from the wild life

1863     

America

..... Mary Ellen Pleasant, hailed as " the mother of civil rights in California" successfully campaigned for the passing of a law that gave black people the right to testify in court against whites. The following year she brought a successful lawsuit against San Francisco streetcar operators for refusing her the right to board on grounds of colour. In 1850 she had arrived in San Francisco where she opened a string of boarding houses and restaurants and used much of the profits to help fugitive slaves

England

..... the Soldiers Home at Aldershot, one of the first of such establishments was founded by Mrs

Daniell. Aldershot had changed from a quite village into a largely garrisoned town and was known as        ‘The Devil’s Stronghold’ after the Indian Mutiny, having as many as 24,000 troops stationed there. At first Mrs Daniell did not live at the home, which was not very big and stood on a hill quite near the Cavalry barracks. However, as  time went by, she found she could only manage the increasing work by making it her home and this she did until her death in 1871. Her daughter carried on her work and several more homes were opened over the years including ones at Colchester, Manchester and Plymouth. A home was also built at Chatham in memory of Mrs Daniell

..... the first experiments to allow girls to sit for a University Local was made in  December by the Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. They had been goaded into this display of sexual equality by Miss Emily Davies, the founder of Girton College, Cambridge. 85 girls sat the examination in London and the paper was the same as the boys, but despite the poor total of female candidates it was continued on an experimental basis for three years and formally approved in 1867. The two most distinguished headmistresses of this time took directly opposite stands on the subject. Miss Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham Ladies College asserted that to enter her pupils for an examination taken by boy candidates would lower the tone of her school. Miss Frances Buss of the North London collegiate School, which was socially less exclusive, was an active supporter from the beginning and she entered no less than 25 of her pupils at the first examination in 1863

Norway

 ..... unmarried women over the age of 25 were given the same authority in law as adult men, but lost this authority when they married

born

..... Agnes Deans Cameron ..... in Victoria, Vancouver, of Scottish parents and was brought up like most girls in the colonies, to earn her own living. She first started teaching, then tried journalism, but then, with her niece, started upon the memorable trip through a country where no white woman had previously been - the farthest north of Canada, a 10,000 mile journey from Chicago to the Arctic along unbeaten tracks, traveling by bullock wagon and riding or walking. She came to possess unequalled knowledge of the North West and when she eventually took up residence in London she lectured there on her travels but did not like city life

1864

America

.....  Rebecca Cole and Rebecca Lee became the first two African-American women to received medical degrees

England

..... the Contagious Diseases Act ( also 1866 and 1869) stipulated that women in seaports and military towns were liable for compulsory examination for venereal disease, whilst making no reference to men

..... the Society for Promoting Employment of Women was established

born

..... ?? Grove - Lady ..... a prominent advocate of woman suffrage, a brilliant writer and a world wide traveller. She was the daughter of General Pitt-Rivers of Rushmore and began to write when she was 15, contributing to nearly every serious magazine in England. Her books include Seventy-One Days Camping in Morocco and The Social Fetish. She travelled extensively in America, Europe and Africa. In Morocco she crossed the Atlas mountains

born 

..... Margot Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith neé Margaret Tennant ..... daughter of Sir Charles Tennant, an enthusiastic radical. In 1894 she became the second wife of Herbert Henry Asquith, then Home Secretary. She was a brilliant and clever woman and played a conspicuous role in the formation of a society of well-known intellectual and artistic people known as ‘The Souls’ of which the ‘Queen’ was the Duchess of Rutland. She did a lot of charitable work in the East End of London with poor children and factory girls and she and her sister started a crèche for babies in the poor district of Wapping. She died in 1945 …..” the question of sex dominates the destinies of half mankind. How wearisome too much dilation upon it can become”

born

..... Mary Susan Etherington ..... stage comedienne known as Marie Tempest who trained as a singer and began her stage career in musical comedy. In 1899 she began to perform in dramatic roles. In 1902 she toured the world as Kitty in The Marriage of Kitty and on her return to England then became known for playing the parts of elegant middle-aged women. Judith Bliss in Hay Fever (1925) was a part especially written for her by Noel coward. She was made a DBE in 1937 and died in 1942…… “ I never allow myself to be bored because boredom is ageing. If you live in the past you grow old and dull and dusty. It’s very nice, of course, to be young and beautiful, but there are other qualities, thank God”

1865

America

.....  Fannie Jackson Coppin began teaching at the Institute for Colored Youth ( later Cheyney University) in Philadelphia

 ..... Vassar Female College, Poughkeepsie, New York, was founded, essentially the first U.S women's college

England

..... the Kensington Society, made up of a group of women dedicated to higher educational opportunities for women was formed

..... Elizabeth Garrett Anderson passed her medical exams and so became the first British woman doctor  

born February 9th

 ..... Beatrice Stella Campbell neé Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner ..... who became known as Mrs Patrick Campbell. She was a tempestuous actress who first became famous in the role of Paula Tanqueray in ‘ The Second Mrs Tanqueray’ in 1893, and for the first time in the history of the British Empire, created a realistic portrait of the previous romantic character of the woman who had sinned. She also appeared in the plays of Ibsen and Shaw with whom she had a friendship which resulted in an exchange of literary passionate letters. She was exceedingly beautiful and witty and seemed destined to become a great star. She became a banner bearer of the pre-1914/18 war intellectual drama. Her private life saw some sad times, her only son was killed in the First World War and her second husband, Winston Churchill’s stepfather, left her for another woman. At one time she was earning £250 per week but when audiences tired of her this dropped to £3 per week and she was reduced to borrowing from friends and living on credit. She had squandered the vast sums of money she earned and died alone and in poverty in France on  April 9th 1940 ….. " I don’t care what they do as long as they don’t frighten the horses                               

1866

England

..... the founding members of the Fawcett Society, formed the Women's Suffrage Committee which organised a petition for women's suffrage presented to Parliament by John Stuart Mill. In 1867 he introduced a women's suffrage amendment to the Reform Bill, the first time that women's suffrage was raised in the House of Commons. The Society was named in 1867 as The London Society for Obtaining Political Rights for Women, becoming later in the same year The London National Society for Women's Suffrage. From 1897, it was a member of The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Its President was Millicent Garrett Fawcett, sister of the pioneer woman doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. Work to attain the vote for women on equal terms with men occupied the Society, called successively The London Society for Women's Service following the limited extension of the suffrage to women in 1918, and The London and National Society for Women's Service from 1926, until the passing of the Equal Franchise Act in 1928. Once equal franchise for those aged 21 and over was gained, more attention could be given to other areas in which women were subject to discrimination, including the widespread constraints on women's employment opportunities and unequal pay. From 1924, through the generosity of Sarah Clegg, the Society was able to establish the first Women's Service House in Marsham Street, Westminster, London SW1, and to move on to adjoining larger premises including the Women's Service Hall, soon renamed the Millicent Fawcett Hall, built for it from 1929. The Women's Service Library, which has grown to become The Fawcett Library, was started on the Marsham Street site in 1926. After various temporary arrangements arising from wartime bombing, the Society moved to Fawcett House, Wilfred Street, Victoria in 1957 and to Vauxhall in 1982, the Library having been housed at City of London Poly since 1977. In 1953 the society was renamed The Fawcett Society in honour of Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett who campaigned for women's suffrage for over 60 years  ( from the leaflet supplied by The Fawcett Society)

..... Elizabeth Garrett Anderson opened the St Mary's Dispensary for Women which, six years later, became the New Hospital for Women with a ward of ten beds.  The premises were rapidly outgrown and the hospital moved to Marylebone Road, London, and increased in size to sixteen beds.  At the turn of the century its popularity meant another move to Euston Road and on the death of its founder, was renamed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital. A year before her death a Jubilee appeal was launched with the backing of the hospital's patron Queen Alexandra  who wrote " I fully recognise the great importance of the work which has so successfully been carried out during the past fifty years at the hospital, and feel that the value of the education which is given to our medical women there cannot be over-estimated"

..... the Ladies Discussion Society organised a Women's Suffrage petition for John Stuart Mills to present to Parliament

Norway

..... women were given the same rights as men to carry on a trade

1867

England

..... the Society for the Promotion of Women's Suffrage was founded in Manchester by Lydia Becker

..... the Scottish Women's Suffrage Society met for the first time

..... the North of England Council for Promoting Higher Education of Women was founded by reformers keen to achieve women's examinations at university level

..... a Reform Bill augmenting female suffrage was passed, supported by John Stuart Mill and Henry Fawcett 

born  26th September

..... Rosa Lewis neé Ovenden ..... hotel owner. At the age of twelve Rosa became a general servant and, at sixteen, was employed in the home of the exiled Comte de Paris. She worked her way up to head kitchen-maid and, after a period in the household of the Duc d'Aumale at Chantilly, was put in charge of the kitchen of the Duc d'Orleans at Sandhurst. Having acquired the skill of French cooking, she started going out to cook in private houses and was employed by Lady Randolph Churchill, the Saviles, the Asquiths, and Capt. Charles Dull, a prominent member of the Marlborough House set. Edward VII first met her at Sheen House and was charmed, not only by her cooking, but also by her personality, and for the next twenty years she was in demand by hostesses entertaining the King. In 1893 she married a butler, Excelsior Tyrel Chiney Lewis, and they ran a lodging house, but he was a drunkard and in 1903 she divorced him. Meanwhile, she continued her business of cooking in private houses, now able to take a team of cooks with her, though she was careful to see that her standards were fully maintained. She also gave lessons to the cooks of wealthy households. In 1902 she bought the Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street, London, and maintained it as a fashionable hotel, to which only guests of whom she approved were admitted, the more distinguished the better, with a few presentable wealthy Americans. Up to the time of the First World War, the Cavendish was highly regarded by many well-known aristocrats and country gentlemen, and Rosa continued to be highly popular in the kitchens of the London houses of fashionable hostesses. During the war, private entertaining on a grand scale ceased and Rosa had only the Cavendish to keep her busy. She was immensely generous to young officers, who could not afford to meet her charges, and she became notorious for the way in which she allowed the impecunious young men to stay without paying their bills and recouped her losses from the more wealthy. In her later years, she became a legend.  She died at the Cavendish on 29 November 1952

1868

America

..... the working Women's Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

..... the National Labor Union admitted four women to its Congress

England

..... the first public meeting on the subject of Women’s Franchise was held in London

France

..... the FIRST Parisian art school to admit women was the Académie Julian

born

 ..... Caroline (La Belle) Otero ..... Spanish actress and famous coquette born in Cadiz who was allegedly abducted by a cabaret dancer at the age of 13. By the age of 14 she was married and made her debut as a night club singer in Monte Carlo. She soon became one of the famous courtesans of the ‘ Gay Nineties’ and acquired a large fortune and jewels but all this was gradually lost in later years in gambling. She had many lovers including Edward V11, the Kaiser and Alfonso X111 of Spain. At the height of her fame she visited St. Petersburg and toured America. She died in Nice in 1965 in great poverty, the last great courtesan …… "ever since my childhood I have been accustomed to see the face of every man who passed me light up with desire. Many women will be disgusted to hear that I have always taken this as homage. Is it despicable to be the flower whose perfume people long to inhale, the fruit they long to taste?"

born March 27th

..... the triplets Faith, Hope and Charity ..... were born at Marlboro, Massachusetts and set the world record for the longest lived triplets on record. The first to die was Hope at the age of 93 on March 2nd 1962  

born July 4th

..... Henrietta Swan Leavitt .....  American astronomer who studied at Radcliffe College and in 1892 received an AB. She volunteered as a research assistant at Harvard College Observatory and advanced rapidly to a permanent position as Head of the Photographic Photometry Department. Her most famous discovery was the periodical luminosity relation of the constellation Cepheid (Variable Stars). It was extremely valuable in making possible the investigations of the Milky Way galaxy. She also discovered 2400 variable stars, about half those known at the time. She died of cancer on December 12th  1921

born

 ..... Mary Hunter-Austin ..... in Illinois who lived in the desert for many years studying the Indian way of life. She was a member of the artist colony at Carmel and then moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to teach and to further study the Indians. Her first book was  – The Land of Little Rain (q.v.1903) and in 1911 she wrote a play The Arrow Maker. Her autobiography was Earth Horizon (1932) and she died two years later

1869

America

.....  the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was founded in Boston by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Brown Blackwell

..... the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was founded by Susan Brownell Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

..... Mary Ashton Livermore established The Agitator, a journal aimed at promoting voting rights for women

..... in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, a new constitution granted women the right to vote and to hold office

..... the first national women's labour organisation, the Daughters of St Crispin (DOSC) was created in Lynn, Massachusetts

England

.....  the first of the publishers to explore the women’s market for magazines was D C Thompson, who, in 1869, produced The People’s Friend – a popular magazine which can still be bought today. In 1885 The Lady was launched and took the genteel slot. In the early 1900s Woman’s Weekly and Good Housekeeping were important in that the former established the standard mixture of features of interest to women i.e knitting, sewing, cookery, fiction etc. Good Housekeeping was the first magazine to acknowledge modern woman as a consumer and arbiter of taste rather than a passive and pale reflection of her husband’s ideas. In 1932 Woman’s Own was launched and five years later Woman. Magazines diversified more as the market began to toughen and more aimed at specific interests such as cookery. Then came magazines like Cosmopolitan which aired subjects previously kept under wraps and which provoked women into being free and happy with their sexuality and sensuality. In 1984 Working Woman was launched and was targeted at the career girl

..... John Stuart Mill, influenced by his wife Harriet, advocated the emancipation and equality of women in The Subjection of Murder

..... Cambridge University allowed women to take an examination at University level

..... the 1869 Municipal Corporations Act included an amendment, drafted by Dr Richard Pankhurst to allow women ratepayers the municipal franchise. This enabled single women ratepayers ( not married women) to vote in municipal elections

..... Girton College was founded for women

Norway

 .....  unmarried women attained majority at the same age as men , 21 years

born

 ..... Emma Goldman ..... Russian born exponent of anarchism. In 1886 she went to the U.S.A. and began to write and lecture on behalf of various reform movements including feminism and birth control. She founded the magazine Mother Earth in 1906, was jailed twice for advocating pacifism and in 1919 was deported to Russia. She left there soon afterwards and finally settled in Canada where she died in Toronto in 1940. Her autobiography is entitled Living My Life (1931) and two of her other works are The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (1914) and My Disillusionment in Russia (1925)

born November 9th

..... Marie Dressler neé Leila Von Koerber..... M.G.M’s highest paid performer and the most popular star of the 1930s. This fame came to her when she was 60 years old and fat and flabby, the most unlikeliest movie star. Her first film was Tillies Punctured Romance in 1914 and in 1931 she received an Oscar for Best Actress in Min and Bill. The following year she received an Oscar nomination in 1932 for Emma. Her other films include Annie Christie (1930) Tugboat Annie (1933) The Late Christopher Bean (1933) She died in 1934….. " a rut is like a grave, it’s only a question of depth"

born

..... Maude Abbott ( Elizabeth Seymour ) ..... Canadian cardiologist and promoter of medical education for women in Canada. She trained at Bishops College but her goal was to join the medical faculty at McGill University in Montreal. This she eventually achieved. In 1898 she was appointed Assistant Curator of the Medical Museum at McGill and in 1900 became Curator. In 1923 she took a two-year appointment as visiting Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and then returned to McGill as a lecturer in pathology. She was awarded an honorary MD and LLD from McGill. She developed the Osler Catalogue of the Circulatory System and organised and edited the Bulletin of the International Association of Medical Museums. Among her other works before her death in 1940 is Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease

1870

America

..... after the Civil War, the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution granted the franchise to emancipated black men but not to women except for those in the new territory of Wyoming which was created in 1869 ( see also 1890). In the same year the National Women’s Suffrage Association and the American Women’s Suffrage Association were formed and in 1890 its leaders, Susan B Anthony and Lucy Stone merged the two organisations to keep the suffrage movement alive in the USA

..... Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin established Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly, a magazine advocating free love, equal rights and legal prostitution

England 

..... the 1870 Education Act included a section which enabled women of property to vote for and become members of the new school-boards and broadened elementary education for girls and boys

..... the first Married Women’s Property Act allowed women to own, inherit and bequeath property. They were also allowed to enter into legal contracts and establish businesses. Amendments to this Act followed in 1874,1882 and 1893 ( see also 1882)

..... the first Women’s Suffrage Bill was drafted by Dr Pankhurst. Between 1879 and 1914 there were 28 unsuccessful suffrage bills

..... the National Union for Improving the Education of Women was  founded

born February 12th

..... Marie Lloyd neé Matilda Alice Victoria Wood .....  variety actress, singer and great Cockney comedienne who became the darling of London audiences with her saucy ditties and famous wink. Although she was admired by King Edward V11 her act was considered risqué in proper circles and she was barred from the first Royal Command performance in 1912. Not to be outdone, she hired the nearby London Pavilion and covered the theatre with announcements which said – Every Performance by Marie Lloyd is a Command Performance by Order of the British Public. She toured the USA, South Africa and Australia, gave a lot to charity and appeared many times in shows for various charities. She married three times. Some of her famous songs are – Oh Mr Porter, What Shall I do, Everything in the Garden's lovely, The Boy I love sits up in the Gallery and Tiddley-om-Pom. She collapsed on stage at the Alhambra on October 7th 1922 singing one of her famous ditties – One of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit – and the audience thought that the fall was part of the act and loved it. She died in her dressing room . On her fortieth birthday she said " I’m forty and no woman knows what falling in love can mean until she’s forty "