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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O PQ R S T U V W XYZ

" do we really know anybody? Who does not wear one face to hide another"

American journalist .......    Frances Marion  1886-1973

Her Name is Frances

* Frances Brooke

born 1723 died 1789

..... FIRST novel in Canada was written by her, The History of Emily Montague in 1769

* Frances Mary Buss

born 1827 died 1894

..... FIRST President of the Association of Headmistresses. At the age of 18 she was running her own school, teaching during the day and attending courses in the evening. In 1871 her school became a public school. She also founded and supervised the Camden School in Prince of Wales Road, was an original member of the Council for Teacher Training and was a founder of the Training College for Women Teachers which opened in Cambridge in 1886

* Frances Xavier Cabrini

born 1850 died 22nd December 1917

..... Italian who was the FIRST Roman Catholic saint in America when canonised in 1946. In 1872 she was refused in her efforts to become a nun for health reasons so she became a school teacher and took a private vow of virginity. After becoming a missionary she received Papal approval for the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Hearts and although she wanted to work in China she was advised to devote herself to the Italian immigrants in the USA of which she became a citizen.  She eventually got an orphanage going and in 1890 moved it to West Park on the River Hudson where she established the novitiate and the most important house of her congregation in the USA foundations. By 1917 her congregation numbered 1500 nuns in eight countries and 67 houses devoted to education, nursing and the care of orphans. After her death from malaria she was buried in Mother Cabrini High School in New York

* Frances Manwaring Caulkins

born 1795 died 1869

..... American educationalist and historian who was the FIRST woman to be elected to the prestigious Massachusetts Historical Society in 1849

* Frances Cleveland

..... wife of the 22nd President of the U.S.A Grover Cleveland, she was the FIRST First Lady to give birth in the White House and was also the youngest First Lady

* Frances Dakers

..... one of the FIRST women blue-buttons on the London Stock Exchange

* Frances Harper

born 1825 died 1911

..... FIRST black American to have a book published when Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted appeared in print in 1892. It was a novel about the reconstructed South. She was born of free parents, was self-educated and worked at various jobs besides her writing which included 10 volumes of poetry, her novel and many articles. She also toured as a lecturer and advocated abolition. At the 1866 Women's Rights Convention and at the 1869 meeting of the Equal Rights Association she advocated rights for women. She founded the National Association of Coloured Women and served as its Vice-President until her death

* Frances Heaton

..... Englishwoman who was the FIRST woman director-general of the Takeover Panel in 1992 and was the FIRST woman appointed to the board of directors of the Bank of England in its 299-year history

* Frances B Johnston (born 1864 died 1952) and Jessie T Beals

 ..... two of the FIRST women press photographers

* Frances Line

..... in 1989 she became the FIRST female controller of Radio Two. She joined the BBC in 1957 as a secretary  and in 1970 became a producer. In 1985 she became Head of Music

* Frances MacCurtain

born 12th October 1936 died 1998

..... voice specialist who became the FIRST person in Britain to receive a doctorate in the science of speech when she completed her thesis at University College, London on Pharyngeal Factors Influencing Voice Quality in 1982. She went on to develop methods of photographing and measuring the vibration of the vocal folds, so that it became possible not just to hear, but to see the voice functioning. In 1988 she founded VoicePower which combined voice training with advice on presentation and her courses were soon in demand

* Frances Marion

..... American who was the FIRST woman screenwriter to win an Oscar which was for The Big House (1930) a prison drama starring Wallace Beery and Robert Montgomery

* Frances H Melville

..... FIRST Scottish woman Bachelor of Divinity

* Frances Morgan

..... FIRST woman surgeon to carry out a surgical operation although it was performed illegally as she possessed a foreign qualification which did not entitle her to perform surgery. Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the only woman doctor on the British Medical Register at this time

* Frances Murphy

nee Frances Mary Wrangham

born April 29th 1926 died 1995

..... arachnologist who was the FIRST woman President of the British Entomological and Natural History Society despite the fact that she was not an entomologist. A frequent guest on television and radio programmes with her pet tarantula, she was a founder member of the British and also the American Arachnological Societies as well as of the Friends of the Natural History Museum

* Frances Pawlett

..... in the early 1700s she made Stilton, Britain's FIRST blue cheese, in Melton Mowbray. The name Stilton came from the place where it was originally sold

* Frances Coralie Perkins

born April 10th 1882 died 1965

..... after being a witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 in which nearly 150 women and girls died unnecessarily she worked tirelessly to improve safety standards at places of work and became an inspector in New York in 1912. In 1919 she was  the FIRST woman member of the New York State Industrial Commission and from 1933 to 1945 was the FIRST American woman Cabinet Minister when made head of the Department of Labour under President Roosevelt. She influenced the passage of national legislation establishing a federal floor on wages and a ceiling on hours, unemployment compensation, the Civilian Conservation Corps and limited the employment of children under 16 years

* Frances Mary Perry

neé Everett

born 19th February 1907 died 1993

….. writer on gardening who became the FIRST woman to be elected to the council of the Royal Horticultural society in 1968. She later became a vice-president

..... born in New Jersey, America,  she was brought to London at the age of sixteen, changed her name to Frances Day, dyed her hair platinum blonde and began her career as one of London's FIRST exotic and erotic cabaret stars, Britain's FIRST stage and screen sex symbol

* Frances Stewart - Duchess of Richmond

….. Britannia first appeared on a British coin in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, about the year A.D.120. The figure disappeared for centuries until revived by Charles 11. The FIRST model for this figure was Frances Stewart and on February 25th 1667 Samuel Pepys noted in his diary " At my goldsmith's did observe the King's new medal, where in little there is Mrs Stewart's face as well done as ever I saw anything in my whole life, I think: and a pretty thing it is that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by". In the 19th century the daughter of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach (later Viscountess St. Aldwyn) then Chancellor of the Exchequer, sat as model for the figure on a new florin

*  Frances Wynne Williams

..... FIRST woman president of Cardiff and District Law Society. She was also chairman of the South East Wales Group of the Association of Women and past chairman of South Wales Solicitors' Family Law Association - June 2000

* Frances E Willis

..... FIRST woman career diplomat to serve as an Ambassador and the FIRST American envoy to Switzerland in 1953. She was a Stanford graduate with a doctorate in history and began her diplomatic career when Calvin Coolidge was President of the United States. In 1927 she took her first foreign service examination. Her first post was in Santiago, Chile and during the next 37 years she served in Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Britain and Finland

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