Casting my vote by Maggie Brookes

Whenever I cast my vote I feel I can hear the cheers of all the women suffragists and suffragettes who worked so hard to win that right for me, but when I was posting my ballot paper this time, I wondered how many countries in the world still don't give women the right to vote. 

I was amazed and pleased to discover that technically it's only one. In Vatican City elections only cardinals of the Catholic Church (all men) are allowed to vote for a new pope. However, in looking this up, I discovered that the right to vote and the experience on election day can be two different matters. For example in Kenya, a 2019 United Nations report registered concern about harassment or violence against female voters. Voting can also involve a long and sometimes dangerous walk to a polling station, and in some areas it's culturally unacceptable for pregnant women to be seen out in public, which obviously limits voting.

At the recent UK election, voters were asked to present ID at the polling station for the first time. This seems sensible, but in some countries it can work against women. A report from the Borgen Project said that in Egypt women are less likely than men to have an ID card, and even if they do, their husbands often 'look after them' and simply refuse to hand them over, preventing them from voting. Also, having to reveal their faces in public can also put women off voting if they normally wear a niqab. Not to mention the attitudes of the men. In Nigeria in 2016 President Muhammadu Buhari said, 'I don’t know exactly what party my wife belongs to. Actually she belongs in the kitchen, the living room and the other rooms in my house.'

President Muhammadu Buhari

Of course there are countries where there is no suffrage at all. Brunei hasn't held a national election since 1962, there haven't been elections in Eritrea since its independence in 1993, and a recent election in the United Arab Emirates granted suffrage to only 12% of all men and women.

But hang on. I've disappeared down a research rabbit-hole (this happens all the time to us novelists) and this is supposed to be a history blog, so when did women first get the vote? I've always assumed it was after the first world war, but I realise I'm looking back through a Western, patriarchal lens.

In 1639, a young nun called Marie Guyart (later known as Marie of the Incarnation) set sail for Quebec in 'New France' where she was keen to convert the 'savages.' 

Marie of the Incarnation

Working with the Iroquois women, she discovered, 'These female chieftains are women of standing amongst the savages, and they have a deciding vote in the councils. They make decisions there like their male counterparts, and it is they who even delegated as first ambassadors to discuss peace.' It turned out that many First Nations peoples of North America had a matrilineal system, where belongings and wealth were passed down from mother to daughter and yes, they even had voting rights. Unfortunately, the settlers did not adopt this system, and when women were given the vote in Canada in 1917 that did not even include First Nation people, who weren't allowed to vote until 1960. Canadian First Nation people did not win the vote until 1960.

Back in the Old World, I've always thought of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, as being the very first call for equality for women, but a limited form of women's suffrage had already been introduced in Sweden during Age of Liberty (1718–1772) and also in the Corsican Republic in 1755. 

Mary Wollstonecraft

Sometimes women were given the vote by accident: in a new British Colony called Sierra Leone, all heads of households were given the vote in the 1792 elections because nobody expected a third of them to be African women!  In a similar way in New England in 1756, Lydia Taft became the first legal woman voter when her husband Josiah died, leaving her as the largest landowner in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. In a community calling for 'no taxation without representation,' they had no option but to allow her to vote in local town meetings, 164 years before women were enfranchised in the USA.

Uxbridge, Mass.

Coming into the 19th century, there are odd instances of female suffrage on small islands and territories. The Pitcairn islanders who were the European descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty were allowed to vote from 1838 – including the women – and some women on the Isle of Man had the vote from 1881. In the United States in 1869 the Territory of Wyoming decided to try to attract new settlers by giving women the vote. It's not clear whether that was a success!

A little later, in 1893, the British colony of New Zealand became the first country in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections, though they were not allowed to stand for election. In the following year, South Australia allowed women both to stand for election and to vote.

But of-course it took women's huge contribution to national life during the First World War, before the UK Parliament finally passed the 1918 Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act. It was only one page long and gave women the vote if they were over the age of 30 or property owners or UK university graduates. (At a time when most universities did not confer degrees on women, no matter how brilliant!) Unfortunately, although my own grandmothers were working, married women, they were not yet 30 in December 1918 and very far from being property owners or graduates, and so would not be able to vote for another ten years.

It took some other countries a lot longer to give women the vote, the most surprising laggard being Switzerland. It took till 1991 for The Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden to give women the vote, and women as a whole in Switzerland only gained the right to vote at federal level in 1971.

In the UK the 1918 Act also gave women to right to stand for Parliament and seventeen women took up the opportunity, though only one was elected: the Sinn Fein candidate Countess Constance Markievicz, who never took up her seat. The first woman to actually take her seat was the American Nancy Astor after a by-election in December 1919. Two years later Margaret Wintringham joined her in the House of Commons.

Margaret Wintringham MP

I wish I'd talked to my grandmothers about how this huge change seemed to them. I do remember my maternal grandmother's excitement when Margaret Thatcher was elected as our first female Prime Minister in 1979. I wasn't aware at the time that the first ever female PM in the world had been elected almost twenty years before! Sirimavo Bandaranaike had become Prime Minister in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in July 1960 after the assassination of her husband.

Sirimavo Bandara

 Then the first woman was elected president of a country in 1980. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir of Iceland won the 1980 presidential election as well as three subsequent elections, remaining in office for 16 years.

A quick look at the number of women in government in any given country gives a clue to the levels of equality and the likelihood of women exercising their right to vote, though the countries with biggest percentages of women in parliament might be surprising. The Interparliamentary Union report of 2019 cites Rwanda ahead of the front runners with 63%, and Cuba and Bolivia not too far behind with 53%. The UK came in with 32% at the time. Down at the bottom of the league table were Solomon Islands with 2%, Oman with 1%, Yemen with 0.3% (one woman - go you!) and Micronesia and Papua New Guinea with none.

Chile's first female president Michelle Bachelet has observed, 'When one woman is a leader, it changes her. When more women are leaders, it changes politics and policies.'

Michelle Bachelet

In June 2024, there were 27 countries with women as Heads of State and/or Government. However, UNwomen.org points out this means that 'at the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.' It also notes that the 'five most commonly held portfolios by women cabinet ministers are Women and gender equality, followed by Family and children affairs, Social inclusion and development, Social protection and social security, and Indigenous and minority affairs.'   So, we still have a way to go.

However, the good news is that following the UK election two weeks ago in July 2024, 263 women were elected to the British parliament, representing taking  40.5% of the total seats, including 50 black and minoritised women MPs. I can hear those cheering suffragettes now!

Maggie Brookes. Novelist and poet. Author of Acts of Love and War and The Prisoner's Wife.

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History is written by the winners by Sally Nicholls

Our September guest is Sally Nicholls. She was born in Stockton, just after midnight, in a thunderstorm. Her novels for children and young adults include Ways to Live Forever and An Island of Our Own and have been shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, and won the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize. She lives in Oxford with her husband and small son.
www.sallynicholls.com

Women's march, London, January 2017

History is written by the winners. It’s a truism I’d never really given much thought to, except to vaguely suppose that most victors think that the wars they won were just wars, and propaganda is a thing, and Richard III didn’t actually kill the Princes in the Tower.

It’s something I’ve come face-to-face with recently though, as I’ve been researching my YA Suffragette novel, Things A Bright Girl Can Do, which is set in the First World War. I thought I knew broadly what life was like on the Home Front – everyone was very patriotic and joined up immediately, expecting the war to be over by Christmas. Women knitted socks. Nobody had any idea how awful the trenches were, and if your son joined up, he probably wasn’t ever going to come back.

I thought I knew about the Suffragettes too. They were mostly militants, who broke windows 

and went on hunger strike. When the war came along, they all stopped being Suffragettes and went off to be nurses and bus conductors. The vote was given to them as a thank-you present, and because people suddenly realised that women were just as capable as men, more or less.

It turns out … that’s not exactly true.

Not everyone was particularly patriotic, for a start – although plenty of people were. Saying so is a bit like saying ‘anti-Muslim feeling was running high in twenty-first century Britain’ - I mean, it is, but it’s by no means universal. There’s a wonderful description in one of the books I read about the crowds in London on the day war is declared. The streets are full of celebration and cheering – but in Trafalgar Square, there are two demonstrations going on. One is pro-war, and the other is anti. The day before war was declared, the Labour party had also been in Trafalgar Square, holding an anti-war demonstration.

Not everyone joined up immediately either, although plenty did – between 4^th August and 12^th of September 1914, 478,893 men joined the army. However, these were disproportionately upper and middle class men. The situation was very different for working-class men. Understandably, half a million new recruits joining up made life very difficult for the army. They had to uniform, feed and arm all the non-commissioned men, and paying them a wage was way down the list of priorities. Non-commissioned men could send home half of their salary, but in most cases this was nowhere near as much as they’d been earning in their previous employments, meaning that most working-class families simply couldn’t afford for their father to join up.

Sylvia Pankhurst

One of the books I read as research for Things a Bright Girl Can Do was Sylvia Pankhurst’s The Home Front. In it, she talks about families whose father was a reservist, and how difficult it was when he was called up. Many factories also closed, partly due to lack of demand – the loss of the German market or the market for peacetime goods – partly due to lack of workforce. Prices rose. This created crippling economic hardship. Nobody ever taught me about this in school.

And yes, people did know the trenches were awful, and yes, most of the men in them came home.

The history books’ view of the Suffragettes were similarly biased. There were far more non-militant suffragists than there were militant Suffragettes: the non-militant NUWSS had a membership of around 50,000, while the militant WSPU only ever had around 2,000 members. Though Suffrage campaigning did mostly stop when the war happened, some still went on, and many of the suffragists were opposed to the war and used their time to continue to campaign for women’s issues and peace issues.

It was generally understood that the fight for votes had more-or-less been won in 1914; that the government would have to capitulate once they could find a politic way to do so. The war – and their story that the vote was a thank you for being good girls – provided that. It was a story which infuriated many suffragists. And while, yes, many men and women did realise women’s potential when they suddenly had to become mechanics and omnibus-drivers, many, many women were already frustrated by their limited opportunities before the war. One reason for this may have been universal education and the fact that the average marriage age was increasing; women who fifty years ago were educated solely for marriage, suddenly found that they had the potential to achieve much more; but not the opportunity.

So, history. Still written by the winners. I’m proud to be doing my small part to redress the balance.

 

'THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE', SO DARE WE PROTEST? by Leslie Wilson

Minnesota women's march against Donald Trump. Fibonacci Blue, wikimedia

In 1987, I cut a single strand of the wire fence at Burghfield Royal Ordnance Factory, and was arrested and charged with criminal damage. I defended myself on the grounds that Burghfield was manufacturing nuclear weapons and that I was acting to prevent a crime (the defence of necessity, the crime being the possible annihilation of millions of people). This was at a time when the stationing of Cruise missiles on British soil was seen by many as a threat to our survival, escalating the risk of nuclear war (and indeed, accidental nuclear war did once happen.) I was convicted, of course, though Reading magistrates were both respectful and sympathetic.

I wrote about this action in the newsletter of a Christian community we were then part of, the Othona Community, and one member took strong exception to my action, writing a letter attacking me and comparing me to Hitler and Mussolini. I've often wondered what he based that on (he didn't explain) but I think he meant that I was trying to undermine the democratic process by using direct action. I should have been content with the ballot box, and my pointless vote in a safe Tory seat.

I'm on the left, in a paper 'radiation suit.'

I don't feel I was trying to overturn the democratic process, but only to use the law to argue that nuclear weapons were contrary to international law, a belief I still hold. Unlike Hitler or Mussolini, I did not mobilise thousands of thugs to beat up political opponents, or abolish democratic institutions, murder people, or sack them en masse or herd them into concentration camps.

However, I've been thinking about this, because I keep reading on Facebook threads, and hearing from US Presidents on Twitter, the idea that one shouldn't protest at all in a democracy, but should accept that 'we won.' Also that 'you lost.' Of course, a majority of US voters did not choose Trump, but a narrow majority of voters did cast their votes to leave the EU (one of the contexts in which I encounter this assertion). 'The people have chosen,' we're told, though in the case of the EU it doesn't seem to me as clear as it does to the Daily Mail or Theresa May exactly what they chose.


Consider this idea, though, that if the majority have chosen a particular course of action (or President, though that's the electoral college), the others should pipe down and abandon their principles.Should they?
Democracy is the will of the people, this theory states, and opposition is treachery towards the people (which is why the Mail was baying for the High Court judges' blood on the issue of Parliament deciding whether to Brexit or not).

However, democracy means that there is an opposition. In our own country, it's even deemed to be Her Majesty's Opposition. Jeremy Corbyn is not thrown into the Tower, but invited to the Palace and made a Right Honourable. A victory in an election does not give the winning party the right to occupy all the seats in Parliament. Even in autocratic times, monarchs had to get their policies through Parliament, though sometimes they locked the members in till they'd done what was required of them, and of course Parliament was far less representative than it is now.

Radical Whig Charles James Fox; plenty of people wanted to shut him up.

The British constitution (and this IS a historical issue, for it goes back a long way), is based on the idea that whatever choices are made at any one election can be reversed at the next one. Does one therefore abandon one's ideas till there is a chance of another election? Of course not. What we're being told about Brexit is that it's a once for all decision, done and dusted. But that completely contradicts the nature of democracy. Even in the era when the vote was restricted to property-owners, so we really had an oligarchy rather than a democracy, Whigs alternated with Tories, and when one side was in Government, the other side were on the cross-benches, putting their point of view.

Another aspect of democracy is lobbying. Not pure, maybe, but it happens. Interest groups make representations to government. These may be business groups, they may be charities, or professional associations, or campaigning groups. My husband, who is an environmental consultant and Vice President of the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management, regularly goes to Parliament to address a special interest group, which is attended by many MPs across party lines. This is another practice which goes back a long way; and I see mass demonstrations as another form of lobbying, particularly since they are seldom events all of their own, but are usually underpinned by hours of hard work, writing to MPs, leafletting, petitioning (even back in the '80s), programmes of public information through Press and nowadays social media. This was the case with women's suffrage, with the campaign against child prostitution or the compulsory and abusive medical examination of any woman deemed to look like a prostitute, which Josephine Butler campaigned against.

photo: Women's Library

There is nothing about traditional democracy that suggests it's a crime to inform the electorate. Some might think it's necessary for democracy to work properly, particularly when there is a vocal and often misleading tabloid press, funded by big money and, many would argue, dedicated to spread propaganda that suggests the tyranny of the market is the only way to organise society.

Where this rhetoric of 'You are in a minority, so you should shut up,' comes from, is somewhere else, and there are sinister antecedents. Hitler, indeed, and Mussolini, and Stalin, all three of whom would have had me in a camp licketty-split for my mild act of civil disobedience. In Nazi Germany, everyone was told that the people 'das Volk', agreed with Hitler, and anyone who didn't was isolated, made to feel they were mad, demoralised. It's because of this that only those who had established existing networks (Communists, members of the Confessing Church, some Catholics, Quakers ) could achieve any act of resistance. I remember being driven along the motorway towards Berlin, going through the German 'Democratic' Republic, in 1972, and seeing a poster: REFERENDUM ABOUT (I forget what). ALLE SAGEN JA. (Everyone says yes). This was not a simple piece of campaigning or exhortation. It meant: You will say yes, if you know what's good for you. And these referendums were used to silence people, to validate the regime. You are alone, was the message, no-one else will think of dissenting.

LONG LIVE THE NATIONAL FRONT OF DEMOCRATIC GERMANY! photo, German Federal Archive.

Does majoritarianism trump (sorry, definitely a pun, alas) ethics and human rights? If a majority want us to murder people, to exploit other countries and steal their wealth, to lock dissenters up in prison, torture people the security services suspect of terrorism (partly because someone else has given them their name under torture), in the worst case, to annihilate an ethnic group because you hate them, should everyone go along with that? You alone have these crazy humanitarian views, the majority says, everyone else agrees that the Jews should be destroyed. Or the Armenians, or the Tutsis, or the professional classes (in the Cultural Revolution). Or that black kids should be shot down with impunity by whoever wants to, like Trayvon Martin, whose parents, protesting his murder, are pictured here.

Or civilians drenched in napalm and Agent Orange in the Vietnam war. It was Nixon, I think, who coined the term 'the silent majority' to silence protest about THAT.

Shall we follow Hitler and demonise those who stand out and follow their conscience? Do you prefer Adolf Eichmann to Bonhoeffer, the Scholl siblings, Oskar Schindler, Pastor Gruber who helped many Jews get out of Germany, Elisabeth Abegg who hid them in her homes; Maria von Maltzan who did everything she could to save lives, even those of animals who she certified unfit for combat? These people were, officially, criminals.


When I was one of the million plus who marched against the second Iraq war, Tony Blair told us that we shouldn't march because in Iraq there was no right to protest. If you take that statement apart, it says: We are going to war to implement regime change in Iraq. The current regime is wrong, because people aren't allowed to protest there. Nevertheless, it is wrong to protest here. WHAT??

photo: William M. Connolley: Wikimedia

But we don't go to war over human rights, or hardly ever. Instead, in the name of pragmatism and trade, we welcome mass murderers and heads of terror states to our country and the monarch entertains them at Buckingham Palace. Saddam Hussein was put into Iraq by the British and for years he was 'our bastard', so his despotism was OK.

I marched against the Iraq war because I believed the UN inspectors who said there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (the ostensible reason for fighting), because I thought it would destabilise the region and encourage Islamic fundamentalism (it has), because I thought it was about giving the US and the West access to a lot of oil.

Critical though I am of our first-past-the-post electoral system, we have in this country an admirable tradition of free speech and freedom to express our opinions and find out like-minded people and allies. It isn't perfect, of course: we've had the Peterloo Massacre, the despicable clampdown on reformist organisations in the aftermath of the French Revolution and still more disgracefully, we failed to allow our colonies that freedom. Still, imperfect as it is, it has remained a vital thread of British political life up till the present day.


Democracy needs protest, as long as it is peaceful. To shut up if you haven't got what you wanted is the last thing anyone should do in a democracy, unless what you want is to abolish democracy itself.

Marching for Women's Rights, Carol Drinkwater

Last Saturday, the 21st January 2017, I met up with a couple of friends alongside the Apollo Fountain  in the impressive Place Massena in Nice. We, along with about seventy others, were gathering to march. We were marching - each of us perhaps for slightly different reasons - against Donald Trump and Mike Pence's position on women's rights. At least, that was my principal reason for being there. Denial of climate change was another concern that fired me.
It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining. The world of the Côte d'Azur was going about its business. Yachts out on the water, bobbing in the warm afternoon.
All over the world crowds were gathering to voice their concerns. From Washington D.C the call was echoing.

Ours was a very tiny group because no permit for a demonstration had been granted due to the atrocities that had occurred on Bastille Day last year, 14th July 2016, when a lone truck driver had ploughed his vehicle through the heart of  a crowd of people out in the streets celebrating our national  holiday and murdered more than eighty people including women and children.  France remains on high alert and a country in mourning. Joining demonstrations is perhaps not the wisest act at this time. Still, I believe, that we must continue as normal. We cannot allow ourselves to be restricted by fear or groups such as Daesh win.
A few friends advised me against joining the crowd last Saturday but I was determined and I am very glad that I made the effort. How many have since asked: 'But what was the point?' 'What were you marching for?' 'No democratic rights have been threatened.'

On Monday of this week, his first day in office, President Trump along with seven other MEN gathered together in the Oval Office. Those seven men watched on as Trump signed an executive order to reinstate the Global gag rule, which severely restricts funding for organisations that support or offer advice on pregnancy terminations no matter the circumstances.
This post is not about whether abortion is right or wrong. Each of us has our own conscience and opinions on this subject. But from my point of view, this signature on his first day, overlooked by his male colleagues, is an insult to all women. And I was even more certain that my Saturday afternoon walking in the sunshine with friends and strangers was not a waste of time.

I have penned several books in a very successful series published by Scholastic entitled My Story. Each is a diary written at a chosen point in history that recounts 'live' events through the eyes of an adolescent. Boys and girls are the witnesses, but in my case, I have chosen to tell each of these diary stories through the experience of a young girl. Two of the books - Twentieth Century Girl and Suffragette - published now as two stories of Edwardian England and titled Cadogan Square - are stories set at different stages of the women's suffrage movement: 1900 and 1909.

Women have been marching for their rights for over one hundred and fifty years. Women have endured imprisonment and force-feeding while standing up for what we believe is our place in this world.  We have marched for the right to vote, to qualify as medical or legal advisors, to gain degrees, to handle our own finances, to have the right to apply for a mortgage, to earn an equal wage alongside our male colleagues, to choose to take on the role of motherhood or not ...

I marched last Saturday because I cannot stand by silently and see any of what we have achieved be eroded. I live in a democracy, and thank heavens for that. Not all of us do. Our democracy gives me the right to raise my voice, to sound the alarm. To voice my opinion and to let all politicians know that we are paying attention. It is another form of a vote.  To remain silent, in my opinion, is a complicity.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

“Sophia,: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary” by Anita Anand.

Anita Anand’s “Sophia” tells the story of the youngest Princess of the royal ruling family of the Punjab. Yet this biography opens, not in India, but at a suffragette meeting in Caxton Hall, Westminster, on Friday 18^th November 1910. 

On the platform in the crowded hall sit the leading suffragettes: Emmeline Pankhurst, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Christabel Pankhurst and more. At the back of the stage was a small, dark-skinned figure dressed in Parisian couture. That small, fierce face belonged to Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, activist and suffragette.

Who was Sophia, and what was a young Indian woman doing there anyway? 

The meeting ended with a march to the gates of Westminster, the mother of Parliaments. All that the women wanted was the right to vote but many thought that an irrational demand. The marchers – Sophia among them - were brutally attacked, groped and beaten by uniformed and undercover police as well as crowds of jeering onlookers. Sophia, witnessing a vicious beating, took down the constable’s number and wrote so many letters of complaint that Winston Churchill refused to reply any more. That was his only way of stopping the Princess. Sophia, the admirable subject of this book, was never one to step back when someone needed her help.

“Sophia” is a book that covers a span of history as much as it covers a single life. Born in 1876, Sophia had Queen Victoria as a godparent. By the time of Sophia's death, in 1948, King George was on the throne, and the Empire was ending. The subject - no, the heroine of this book lived through so many events that I appreciated the way Anand gave the full story, whether it was what happened to the Koh-I-Noor diamond, or the cold-hearted massacre at Amritsar, or Asquith’s derailment of the women’s suffrage bills, or the story behind Gandhi’s hunger strikes and more. Many of the stories I half-remembered, but the emotional impact was greater for having them fully retold.

Although Sophia lived in the heart of British society, she was in many ways an outsider. Sophia and her siblings were proudly aware of their royal lineage. Their grandfather, Maharajah Ranjit Singh, had been known as “The Lion of the Punjab”. After his death, the British forced his eleven-year old son, Duleep to give his kingdom to the Crown. The young Sikh was re-educated as Christian gentleman and, being a favourite of Queen Victoria, brought to live in London. All too soon the  handsome Indian prince became a society playboy, shooting, hunting and gambling in the company of the Prince of Wales, and decorating his Suffolk home, Elvedon Hall, in extravagant Moghul style. Meanwhile Duleep's neglected Maharani struggled with a succession of squabbling children. All had strong personalities: Victor, imperious; Frederick, obstinate; bad-tempered Bamba and secretive Catherine. Sophia was born after a five year gap, and was such an easy baby that she drew the siblings together, already the family mediator.

Trouble lay ahead. Their father Duleep had ignored warnings about his extravagant spending, even from the Queen herself. His attitude was understandable: had he not handed Britain his valuable kingdom? How could they not give him what he needed? At last, offended by the Government’s refusal to pay his debts, Duleep stripped Elevedon Hall, selling everything. To Queen Victoria’s distress, he renounced Christianity and set off for the Punjab. British officials halted the family when they reached Egypt. Furious at the endless delay, Duleep abandoned his wife and young family, and set off for Paris and his new mistress.

The picture that Anita Anand gives of Sophia’s early life and family background is fascinating, but it is clear that the constant tension must have felt intolerable. She shows the siblings lives were full of contradictions: they had servants to order about but were themselves regularly spied upon and reported to the Government; they could indulge in extravagant fashions but their money was granted by the India Office; their presence in Britain was dependent on the Queen’s goodwill, as well as on matters of national security, and although as rich aristocrats they were welcomed at society occasions, their Indian heritage made them outsiders.

Growing up, Victor embraced his father’s dissolute lifestyle and was eventually sent to America, while Frederick turned into an extremely conservative Anglophile. For a period, the society whirl claimed Duleep’s daughters. They had been offered a grace-and-favour residence at Hampton Court, and “came out” into society. Sophia embraced her new life: she was keen on horse-riding, bicycling, dog-breeding, photography and  Turkish cigarettes, as well as indulging in extravagant fashions and in seasonal European travel. Yet they were still not permitted to travel to India.

The rush of aristocratic guests for the Delhi Durbar gave the sisters their opportunity to travel quietly. (Anand gives a wonderful description of the magnificence of this event – and the fact that much of India was starving at the same time.) The sisters arrived, but were disappointed. The expected “introductions” did not come, nor any offers of seats or tents or views for the princesses. The British in Delhi did not “recognise” the trio of Indian sisters. Only when they travel towards the Punjab did they receive a proper welcome. Afterwards, Bamba stayed on in Lahore, Catherine returned to Germany and her beloved governess, and Sophia returned alone to Hampton Court. There, apart from her dogs, there seemed to be nobody who needed her. Sophia, as she often did at such times, fell into a profound depression.

Anand’s biography shows Sophia constantly searching out new causes. Witnessing the plight of Lascars - the lowliest ship-hands – on a voyage, Sophia arranged better shelter and financial aid. As a Red Cross nurse, Sophia looked after wounded Indian troops in France. On a second visit to India, she attended revolutionary meetings with Bamba.

Then there is the cause that opens the book: Sophia's involvement with women’s suffrage has, until this biography, largely been hidden. Sophia was from aristocratic circles so she was never imprisoned, even when she flung herself across the Prime Minister’s car, waving “Votes For Women” banners. Her name is rarely recorded. Anand shows that even though Sophia may have been shy, she was determined: Sophia even stood outside her grace-and-favour residence, dressed in her best furs, loudly proclaiming the cause and offering the Suffragette paper to passers-by. She so annoyed the neighbours that they sent messages to the palace officials asking for the troublesome Princess to be removed from her home.

Anand depicts Sophia as an intriguing woman, kind and fiercely loyal to her family, proud of her position and heritage yet uncertain of her place in society. Sophia is a determined letter-writer and petitioner; often awkward with strangers yet devoted to her dogs and anyone who needs help.

I found the last part of Sophia’s life sad. As she grew older, and further away from the interest of the “new” royals, she retired to Coldhatch House in Penn, Buckinghamshire where her imperious attitude made her new servants dislike her. On the other hand, there are glimpses of happiness. Anita Anand describes Sophia’s relationship with young evacuees and her affection for her housekeeper’s daughter Drovna. These offer some clue to the life Sophia might have led if it had been possible for her to marry and have children of her own.

My hope is that this review should not make “Sophia” sound daunting. I found this biography as readable as novel and full of many wonderfully described incidents and events. In fact, I often paused, picturing one or another of the scenes again in my own imagination. The book told a very rich story indeed! “Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary” by Anita Anand is a most remarkable biography.

Review by

Penny Dolan

Women's Work - Celia Rees

As all followers of the History Girls will know, we will soon be publishing an anthology of stories: Daughters of Time. It comes out in March, so excitement is mounting. My story, Return to Victoria, is about Emily Wilding Davison who died bringing down the King’s horse on Derby Day, 1913.

Emily Wilding Davison

Derby, 1913, Tattenham Corner

Did she mean to kill herself, or didn’t she? You will have to wait for the anthology to read my take on the controversy. Whether she meant to die, or to survive, Emily Davison paid the ultimate price.

Many of her sister Suffragettes suffered in pursuit of votes for women. They lost their personal freedom, were subject to imprisonment, force feeding, the iniquities of the infamous Cat and Mouse Act. Their suffering was not in vain but it took the action and sacrifice of millions of women to convince men that their sex should have to right to vote. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act (1918) was passed, enfranchising women over the age of 30. It would not be until 1928 that the franchise would be extended to all women over the age of 21.

Emily Wilding Davison was exceptional in her courage and conviction but it was the actions ordinary women that finally made her goal a reality. The women who took the place of the men who were fighting at the Front. The munitionettes, predominantly working class women who worked in the munitions factories, risking death from premature explosions and their health from the chemicals that turned their skin yellow. The land girls who donned breeches and worked on the farms. The VADS and Queen Alexandra nurses who went to drive ambulances and tend the wounded. The women who left their traditional jobs to go into heavy industry to work in foundries, like the women shown in Anna Airy's painting A Shell Forge at A National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London.

A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London - Anna Airy, Imperial War Museum 

Women can be seen working alongside men in this remarkable painting that glows with the heat of the foundry. It was so hot that the artist's shoes were burnt off her feet. Anna Airy was one of a handful of women artists, working without official Government support or sanction (unlike their male counterparts) who, nevertheless, recorded their own experience and the experience of other women, both at home and in France. 

Olive Mudie-Cooke had trained as an artist. She drove ambulances for the Red Cross and drew and painted what she saw, her experience of war, the experience of women like her: VADS, nurses, auxiliary helpers, ambulance drivers and stretcher bearers.

In an Ambulance A VAD lighting a cigarette for a patient, Olive Mudie-Cooke, IWM

Women artists did not just provide a record of what was happening, important as that now is to our understanding, they also record the fleeting emotions that are so so easily lost to us, as above in this shared moment of intimacy and compassion, or in Flora Lion's painting of girls in a works canteen in Bradford.

Women's Canteen at Phoenix Works, Bradford, Flora Lion, IWM

This painting shows more than women in plain, practical work clothes, heavy boots on their feet, their hair tucked under blue caps, it shows their tiredness, patience, cameraderie, friendship and humour. It shares with the viewer what it was like to be working there.

These were women, artists and subjects, doing what had previously been considered as 'Men's Work'. Together they ensured that the work done by women would be recognised, the contribution women made to society rewarded, and that women would gain the vote. 

Emily Davison did not die in vain. 

Celia Rees

www,celiarees.com