Thursday 29 January 2015

Use your Vote!  She couldn’t
Sarah Parker Remond (1824-1894)
My stitched portrait shows Sarah outside 48 Bedford Square, the original home of Bedford College.  http://beginnings.ioe.ac.uk/begsholloway.html This website tells more about the College and women who founded it, many of whom campaigned against slavery and asked tor the vote 



Sarah travelled through Britain lecturing on the horrors of slavery in America at a time when Englishwomen rarely spoke in public. After supporting the Suffrage Petition in1866 she trained and practiced as a doctor

Sarah was the child of freed slaves, brought up in New York.   She and her brother campaigned against slavery. Once she went to the theatre and was thrown out because she was Black.  She took the theatre to court and won. She was unable to continue her education in New York so came over to London in the 1850’s to further her education at Bedford College and stayed with campaigners for women’s rights who were active in the women’s anti-slavery campaigns in Britain. She travelled round Britain as an acclaimed anti-slavery lecturer.  After signing the petition in she went to Florence where she trained and practiced as a doctor for many years.  

Tuesday 27 January 2015

Use your vote!  She couldn’t…
No.10  Elizabeth Hall Dare Jerdan (1820-1897) Governess

The governess in her lodgings depicted by Richard Redgrave is young and beautiful- Elizabeth Jerdan  spent more than 30 years in this difficult profession, and then passed her retirement alone in a bed-sit.
Many of the women who asked Parliament for the vote in 1866 had experienced the difficulties of being head of a household, as a single parent, widow, or child supporting an elderly mother.  Many more had lived in such households with all the uncertainty and poverty which this meant at this time.  For Elizabeth and her mother this was compounded by her father’s scandalous behaviour.


 Elizabeth Jerdan was born in 1820 and christened with her younger sister in St Mary Abbots, Kensington in 1825.  Her parents were William and Frances Jerdan. William was a writer, who very publicly had a mistress and an illegitimate family.  Elizabeth had moved away with her mother to Guildford where they lived in poverty.   Her mother died in 1856, and 36 year old Elizabeth then had to support herself.  She earned her living as a governess. In 1891 she was in lodgings as a retired governess in Seymore Place.   She died in 1897.

Monday 26 January 2015

Use your Vote!  Ellen and Ann Jennison could manage a zoo, but they couldn't!

Sisters in Law Ellen and Ann Jennison were part of an extended family of entrepreneurs who ran the Belle Vue Zoological Gardens with a hotel and other facilities.  Both women were involved in te management of ths large and successful enterprise.
  
No 9 Jennison, [ Mrs] Ellen Born 1841, In 1861 she was living at the Belle Vue  Hotel and Garden with her husband George and her  father-in-law the innkeeper. George Jennison in 1871 is ‘ Senior partner in the firm of John Jennision and Co general contractors and proprietors of zoological gardens Belle Vue Manchester employing 153 men In 1881 Ellen  was a widow and Assistant manager to her brother in law James Jennison, Part owner and manager of Belle Vue Zoo.

 9 Jennison, [Miss] Ann Born 1835  she married Angelo Medina, a musician in 1857 and in 1861 census was living with  the extended Jennison family at Belle Vue.Zoo  Her husband Angelo died in 1869 and she married farmer  George Kelsall in 1870.  She was a part owner and manager of Belle Vue Zoo.   Her mother was a Rathbone. http://manchesterhistory.net/bellevue/menu.html

Sunday 25 January 2015

Mondy, Maria Charlotte 
Signed the petition from the family home, 2, Coldbath Street, Greenwich London SE. This was a poor street at the bottom of Blackheath Hill on the way to Lewisham.  Her parents were both working as shoemakers, but both their children worked hard to gain an education. Maria became a teacher and her brother Edmund became a professor of Mining ,

Samuel Mondy and Caroline Glasscock  had married in Deptford in 1839  Both their parents were shoemakers.   Mary was born in Water Street, Bristol in 1843.
 By 1851 the family had moved back to London and were living in Cold Bath Lane Greenwich .  Maria now had a younger brother, 5 year old Edmund.  Her father was a shoe maker and her mother Caroline a shoe binder. 
 In the 1861 census 15 year old Edmund was an apprentice shipwright.  18 year old Maria is absent and I have not traced her whereabouts. Very probably she is working in a school, or perhaps was in Lewisham running a small day school. (see below)   

In 1865 Maria was recruited to the London Association of schoolmistresses, Emily Davies’ organisation which fostered the education of girls by supporting their teachers.  In 1866 she laft home and was living at  44 Charrington Street Oakley Square.  This was a lodging house run by a widow, Ellen Theobald. 


 In 1867 her brother  won a prize from the Royal Society of arts for mathematics done with Deptford Local Board, he won £3 He won another prize for mechanics in 1869   He was a ship wright still. By 1871 Caroline had died, and Samuel has moved to 3 Mount Pleasant Place, Lewisham Road. For a while Maria ran a ladies day school there in 1860, so her father may have owned the property already.  He is employing a live-in Apprentice and they have a servant.  Edmund is now a student at the Royal School of Mines. In 1880 Edmund went to India as a professor of mining, and remained there until he retired in 1903.   By 1881 Samuel has moved to Commercial Place Greenwich and has a house keeper and two lodgers.  He is employing two men and an apprentice. By 1901 he is living in Chetwynd Road St Pancras with his new wife (Amelia Hunt, his housekeeper!)

 In 1871 Maria was teaching at Denmark Hill Grammar School, a large boys’ preparatory school in Camberwell, said to be one of the two best in London. She was one of two governesses, there were also 3 masters and 37 boys boarding.

She was involved with the Working Women’s College in Queen Square and you can see an example https://archive.org/stream/selectionsfromwo185work#page/2/mode/2up of a creative a magazine put together by students of the  Working Women’s college at the time that she  was an associate there. 

At this time she became a mature University student .  From 1879-1880 and 1882-3 she enrolled at University College London for courses.    By 1881 she is a visiting teacher, lodging in Crowndale Road with a qualified nurse and a widow Jane Russell, who is an agent for The Metropolitan Association for Befriending Servants. 

,   In 1891 Maria is still a visiting teacher lodging at at 37 Crowndale Road, sharing with Jane Russell  (now a secretary for a servants association}  and Minnie Baker, clerk to a reading room and Margaret H Bayton, aged 17, a typist. These young working women, Minnie and Margaret , are boarders having their meals provided by Maria and Jane.

In 1891 she is a London member of the American Institute of Instruction, possibly attending in July 1891

She was involved in the National Home Reading Union which offered courses of prescribed books to people of all classes, with reading circles to support their reading. She wrote a pamphlet for the Union which includes suggestions for organising reading groups for young people.  . https://archive.org/details/readingasmeansof00mondrich to read it on line!  From page 4 She writes about her personal experiences of teaching classes of working class children in Board schools and the practical ways that she introduced the children to literature.

 

The Columbian Reading Union. Magazine recorded
721 1896
“Miss Maria C. Mondy, who is in charge of the young people’s section of the
National Home Reading Union, London, in a pamphlet on School Libraries, has
quoted these words from Sir Walter Scott: To make boys learn to read, and then
place no good books within their reach, is to give them an appetite, and leave noth-
ing in the pantry save unwholesome and poisonous food, which, depend upon it,
they will eat rather than starve. She has also gathered some powerful words
from Rev. E. Thring on reading as a means of education.”

  When Maria’s father died in 1905 he left 119 .6..3d
In 1896 and 1921 she was on voters registers at 17 West Hill, Highgate as a householder for Crowndale Road as well as West Hill.    In the 1911 census she records living there on her own, with four rooms    Before she died in 1925 she would have been able to vote.  When she died in Highgate she left £259..1s..10d and her Professor brother was her executor.

Friday 23 January 2015

Use your Vote!  She couldn't...
No 5.  Charlotte Manning (1803-1871 ) was one of the important  women who were role models for Elizabeth Garrett , Emily Davies and  Barbara Bodichon.  Older women who had campaigned against slavery in the 1840's went on to support colleges to educate women- Bedford College and Queens College London, where these campaigners could attend classes.  Charlotte hosted the Kensington Society, where younger women had a safe setting to discuss controversial issues like the vote.   Charlotte  Solly  married Mr Spier and  went to live in India.  She  became interested in Indian history, about which she wrote a book.Ancient India, (1859)   Returning to England after her husband’s death she married Sergent at Arms Manning. She hosted the Kensington Society meetings , signed the 1866 Suffrage Petition and was a founder of the National Indian Association which celebrated Indian culture and welcomed Indian visitors and immigrants.  She became first Mistress of Girton College.

In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography she is mentioned in the biography of her step daughter Elizabeth Adelaide Manning.

Thursday 22 January 2015

Use your vote! She couldn’t!'

4.  Miss Ann Briggs of 51 Wade Lane, Leeds was born in1815 in Ferry Lincolnshire. She was a baby linen maker and had a Baby Linen Repository.  She was one of the very few women who signed the Suffrage Petition who lived quite alone, at least in the censuses from 1851 to 1891.  When she retired she lived in retirement in High Street ,Temple Newsam
This frock for a new-born child is entirely stitched by hand- you need a magnifying glass to see the tiny stitches. Ann Briggs would have given employment to local women as seamstresses, embroiderers and knitters.  One of her neighbours' daughters, aged 14, was a cap maker.
In the very months that the Petition was collected, in April 1866, two sisters who also ran a Baby Linen shop  in Leeds were declared bankrupt-  In the street where Ann lived, only two doors away at no 55 Wade lane , Hannah Bolton also ran a baby linen business, and also asked for the vote by signing the petition.


1861 census Registration District: Leeds Sub-registration District: West Leeds ED, institution, or vessel: 49 Household Schedule Number:

45 Piece: 3394 Folio: 63 Page Number: 7

Wednesday 21 January 2015

Use your Vote… She couldn’t

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-1891) Campaigner and Artist.  A golden haired enthusiast who welcomed George Elliot to London, painted in the Algerian desert, and supported so many friends in their enterprises fo women's rights.   Barbara first campaigned for married women’s property rights in the 1850's, then helped to found the feminist magazine the  English Woman’s Journal at Langham Place.  She gave a paper to the Kensington Society which became the basis for the 1866 women’s suffrage petition, (see my ‘group’ article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ‘ Kensington Society (act. 1865–1868)’ ) She helped Emily Davies found Girton College.  She was also a successful painter, exhibiting and selling her work andwhen she died she left thousands of pounds that she had earned from her painting to Girton College

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography   P. Hirsch, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, 1827–1891: feminist, artist and rebel (1998) · S. Herstein, A mid-Victorian feminist, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1985) · H. Burton, Barbara Bodichon, 1827–1891 (1949) · The George Eliot letters, ed. G. S. Haight, 9 vols. (1954–78) · A. M. Howitt, An art student in Munich, 2 vols. (1853)

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Use Your Vote 2 Emily Davies

Use your vote!!!! 

Emily Davies (1830-1921)
Emily Davies fought tirelessly for the education of women and girls.  She is particularly remembered for founding Girton College, opening Cambridge Local examinations to girls and improving the aspirations and education of schoolmistresses.  In 1866 she organised and delivered the petition for women’s suffrage with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.   She was elected to the School Board for Greenwich in 1870.  She first asked for the vote when she was 36 and did not get it until she was 88. This collaged felt shows her when she first asked for votes for women.
 Thank you Emily.



Oxford Dictionary of NationalBiography  B. Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College (1927) · The cause: a short history of the women’s movement in Great Britain (1928) · A. Rosen, ‘Emily Davies and the women's movement’, Journal of British Studies, 19/1 (1979–80), 101–21 · · M. Bradbrook, ‘That infidel place’: a short history of Girton College, 1869–1969 (1969) · P. Hollis, Ladies elect: women in English local government, 1865–1914 (1987) · D. Bennett, Emily Davies and the liberation of women, 1830–1921 (1990) ·

Monday 19 January 2015


Use your vote! She couldn’t ……  
1.     Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) 
With Emily Davies she organised and delivered the 1866 petition for votes for women to Parliament.(Here she is seen surrounded by the names of some of the 1,499 women who also signed.   
Educated at Miss Browning’s School in Blackheath, Elizabeth Garrett later trained as a doctor and encouraged others to do the same. She founded a teaching hospital for women and practicing herself.  She was elected to the London School Board in 1870 and was first woman Mayor of Aldeburgh 1908-10.  She died the year before some women could vote in parliamentary elections. Her sister Millicent Garrett Fawcett was too young to sign the petition, but went on to lead the constitutional campaign for votes for women.  

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography   J. Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1965) · L. Garrett Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1939) · E. M. Bell, Storming the citadel: the rise of the woman doctor (1953) · M· M. G. Fawcett, What I remember (1924) Elizabeth Crawford  · Enterprising Women: The Garretts and Their Circle (2002)