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Mary, the odd one
born on the sea
maid of honour
and Siamese twins
..... 16 year old MARY CAREY was the only woman thrown into the cramped and gloomy detention cell which became known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, She was the wife of one of the British East India Company's seamen and was driven into the 18' long x 15' wide cell on June 20th 1756 along with about 145 men. When the cell door was opened at 6 am the next morning only 22 men and Mary were alive to tell the story of horror. The bodies of those left behind were dragged out by the soldiers and thrown into a ditch which was then filled in with earth
..... MARY CHULKHURST ..... born 1100 died 1134 ..... one of Siamese twins born in the village of Biddended in Kent and was joined at the hips and shoulders to her sister Elisa and they stayed joined together until their deaths. When they died they left their lands in trust to the poor of the village and the rents were spent on the sick and needy as well as on the Easter dole of bread and cheese which visitors to the old workhouse received on Easter Monday and which consisted of a hard wheaten cake shaped like two women joined together
..... MARY FITTON ..... born 1578 ..... Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth l in 1595 and sister-in-law of sir John Newdegate, who founded the Newdegate Poetry Prize at Oxford. During her lifetime the make-up mainly used by Elizabethan women was white powder made from lead which dried their skin, turned their hair snow-white and poisoned their systems. She is thought by some to be the fickle "dark lady" of the Shakespeare sonnets and her portrait hangs in the dining room at Arbury Hall in Warwickshire
..... MARY MALLON known as Typhoid Mary lived in New York City in America where she died in 1938 after being kept in detention for 23 years. She was the source of nine outbreaks of typhoid, notably that of 1903
..... OCEAN BORN MARY was born at sea on July 28th 1720 when her parents were emigrating from Ireland to the New World and whilst the ship was in the hands of pirates. Their leader Captain Pedro promised that if the new born baby was named Mary after his wife he would spare all on board. He kept his promise, Mary grew to be a beautiful woman, married and had four sons. Legend has it that when her husband died Captain Pedro came back into her life. He had retired from the sea and been pardoned for his crimes. They settled down together both living well into their nineties. Many say that her ghost has returned often searching for the hoard of treasure buried somewhere near her hometown of Henniker in New Hampshire by Captain Pedro
..... MARY LINDELL was an Englishwoman who lived in France and during the First World War she won the Croix de Guerre for her work as a nurse on the Western Front. She set up an escape line for British flyers, was imprisoned and when set free set up another escape route. However the Gestapo once again caught up with her and she was shot whilst trying to escape. From the hospital she was transferred to a concentration camp
.... MARY WHITE ROWLANDSON ..... born c 1635 died c 1678 ...... daughter of John White, an early settler of Lancaster, Massachusetts, she married Joseph Rowlandson, a congregational minister in 1656. during King Philip's war, when the Marragansetts attacked Lancaster in 1676, she was abducted and held for eleven weeks and five days until she was ransomed. Her account of this capture "The Sovereignty and Goodness of God,Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs Mary Rowlandson" was published in Cambridge in 1682. This book is one of the most popular examples of 17th century American prose and has been re-printed and re-edited many times
..... MARY SCHIFFER went to London from Dublin in 1916 to seek her fortune, began working at the Hyde Park Hotel as a housemaid and was there until her death sixty years later. Her job brought her into contact with many great and famous men and women and on her retirement the hotel management asked Anthony Masters to write her biography
..... MARY WHITEHOUSE - a national figure - cheered, feared, loved and hated in her constant fight to clean up national television which began in 1965, She is now widely respected and has been instrumental in getting various Acts on the Statute Book concerning Indecent Exposure, the Protection of Children and Video Recording and it took 26 years to get the Independent Broadcasting Council set up. At her first meeting at Birmingham Town Hall in 1965, thirty seven coach loads of people from all over the country came to help her campaign. Although she became the target of obscenities and jokes and was even banned from appearing on BBC for eleven years, she never wavered