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William Ironside (fl 1953-1957) was a friend of the Labour politician Frederick Pethick-Lawrence.

Frederick Pethick-Lawrence (1867-1954) was a politician active in the campaign for women's suffrage. He was educated at Eton College, and at Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied mathematics and natural sciences. He later studied law and was called to the bar in 1899. After marriage to Emmeline Pethick in 1901 he appended her maiden name to his own surname Lawrence. He was a leading member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) from 1907-1912, founded and edited the periodical Votes for Women alongside his wife, and was imprisoned and suffered forcible feeding for the women's suffrage cause in 1912. Originally a Liberal Unionist candidate (for North Lambeth in 1901), Pethick-Lawrence had a lifelong involvement in the Labour Party, defeating Winston Churchill to become Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for West Leicester (1923-1931) and later working as MP for Edinburgh East and for the Treasury. He was a leading Labour spokesman on economics. A supporter of Indian self-government, he became Secretary of State for India, with a seat in the House of Lords in 1945. After his wife's death in 1954 he married Helen McCombie (née Millar) in 1957, who had also been a militant suffragette. He died in 1961.

Winifred Wrench (fl 1919-1938) was a member of an English family; she was educated at home and then in Germany before becoming a journalist. She was a member of the party that visited Lille in Apr 1919 to see and report on the ruined state of Northern France after the First World War, attending as the representative of the English Speaking Union and Babies of the Empire. She was interested in child welfare throughout her life and was the organiser of the first National Baby Week as well as being the founder of the Mothercraft Training Society. However, by 1925 she had also become concerned with the issue of divorce law at the same time as continuing her association with the Overseas League, acting as the organising secretary for Scotland from 1928 to 1933. In 1934 she was resident in Edinburgh and described herself as a member of the All Peoples Association, a freelance journalist, lecturer and social worker. She remained a member of the English Speaking Union, the Women's Institute and the National Council of Women, the Soroptimists' Club, the Federation of Business and Professional Women and editor of Scottish Home and Country. She appears to have spent some time in Tangiers in Morocco in 1938.

The Lincolnshire Women's Research Group (1985-1986) began as a Workers Educational Association class in 1985 in which women members were encouraged to examine their own experiences and those of their contemporaries in the county of Lincolnshire. The Group studied novels and short stories and then decided to interview local women with a view to the possibility of compiling a book about women's lives in Lincolnshire from the 1930s to the 1950s. After the course, the original class members continued with the project and produced an exhibition in the summer of 1986. Contributions were also made as a result of a Women's Institute essay competition on the subject of women's memories of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s in Lincolnshire. Material was gathered from these essays, interviews with local women, local newspapers and archives in the following areas: health and childcare; waged and war work; sex and superstition; food and drink; education; family life and childhood memories; fashion; and leisure and entertainment.

The National Life Story Collection (1987-) was established in 1987 to 'record first-hand experiences of as wide a cross-section of present-day society as possible'. It operates as an independent charitable trust within the Oral History Section of the British Library Sound Archive and undertakes oral history fieldwork. It has initiated a series of interviewing programmes funded from sponsorship, charitable and individual donations and voluntary effort. In the early 1990s a project supported by The Fawcett Society was undertaken to interview 'pioneering career women, each of whom made their mark in traditionally male-dominated areas, such as politics, law and medicine.' Members of the Friends of the Fawcett Library, now The Women's Library, conducted the interviews.

Between 1974-1981 Brian Harrison, then of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, undertook an oral history project financed by Social Science Research Council (he later extensively used these interviews in his book Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of British Feminists between the Wars Oxford University Press 1987). The original aim of the project was to provide material to supplement documentary sources on the Edwardian women's suffrage movement in Britain and to make these interviews available to scholars subsequently working in the field. Interviews were conducted with surviving Edwardian women's movement campaigners, their sons, daughters, relatives and employees. During the course of the project the chronological scope was widened to include those active in the women's movement after women's enfranchisement. Thematically the scope was also widened to encompass those who were active in various women's organisations, including international and religious organisations, and to cover themes including women's employment and birth control. 205 interviews with 183 individuals were completed.

Visnews (fl 1950-1985) was an international film and television news agency, operating from the 1950s until it was taken over by Reuters in 1985. It was later re-named Reuters Television.

The Hansard Society 'Women at the Top' Commission (1988-2000) was established in 1988 to investigate barriers to women entering senior positions. The Hansard Society itself was formed in 1944 to promote the ideals of parliamentary government in an era when it was felt to be threatened by the rise of fascist and communist dictatorships. As at 2008 the Hansard Society continued to act as an independent, non-partisan educational charity which existed to promote effective parliamentary democracy. Since the 1970s organised research projects on areas relating to its aims and published the findings. One mechanism for this was the establishment of independent Commissions of Enquiry chaired by eminent parliamentarians or academics. These included commissions on electoral reform, the representation of women and the reform of the legislative process. In 1988 it held a one-day seminar at Nuffield College, Oxford, to discuss the under-representation of women in Parliament and to consider the establishment of a Commission to investigate this issue. The Society subsequently set up a Commission, chaired by Lady Howe, which examined the barriers to the appointment of women to senior occupational positions, and to other positions of power and influence and made recommendations as to how these barriers might be overcome. Members included John Banham (CBI), Vernon Bogdanor (Brasenose College, Oxford), Alex Brett-Holt (First Division Association of Civil Servants), Jean Denton (Black Country Development Corporation), Alistair Graham (Industrial Society), Wilf Knowles (Equal Opportunities Commission), Anthony Lester QC, Joe Palmer (Legal and General Group Plc), Lisanne Radice (300 Group), Gillian Shephard MP, Katharine Whitehorn (The Observer), Robert Reid (British Rail), and Kenneth Stowe (Department of Health and Social Security). Susan McRae of The Policy Studies Institute was Research Officer and Rapporteur. The Commission examined certain key areas including women in parliament, public office, the civil service, judiciary, legal profession, management, higher education, the media and trade unions. Its methods included a review of published information about women in public life and employment; interviews with senior personnel in government, business, the civil service and the professions; interviews with experts in organisations committed to increasing equality of opportunity, including the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Women into Public Life Campaign and the 300 Group; contact with companies known for good practice in the employment of women, a survey of employers on their policies and practices towards the promotion of women to senior positions; a survey of companies on the composition of their main holding and subsidiary boards.

The Commission published its initial findings in 1990 in a publication entitled 'Women at the Top' by Elspeth Howe and Susan McRae.

This was followed by three further reports:

• Women at the Top: Progress after five years (1996) by Susan McRae

• 'Women at the Top 2000: Cracking the public sector glass ceiling' by Karen Ross

• 'Women at the top 2005 : changing numbers, changing politics?' by Sarah Childs, Joni Lovenduski and Rosie Campbell

The movement to gain the vote for women was a mass movement that evolved most fully in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It was not, however, the only area of activity with the aim of improving the social and political situation of women in Britain. Earlier in the century, the idea of the 'sacred' protective duty of women gave them a 'high' ideological status in society that far outstripped their legal status. The social work that was undertaken by women's groups in the areas of housing and nursing led to changes regarding national laws on the poor, education and the treatment of the infirm. However, despite these achievements, the women who were responsible for them still found themselves legally impotent. This was also a time when the proportion of women compared with men in the country was increasing and the number of unmarried women without the expected financial support of a husband was growing as a consequence. Reformers therefore began to focus on the most immediate ways of improving the status and economic position of women, focusing on improvements to female education and the employment opportunities available to them. Schemes in the 1860s such as Emily Faithfull's Victoria Press and the plethora of female emigration societies that sprang up at the time and directed by individuals such as Maria Rye were designed to give women who were reasonably educated the means of supporting themselves. These developments were followed by activities centred on women's legal status regarding property and their ability to stand for election at the local level. None of the strands of activity was independent from the other as attitudes towards one affected perceptions of the others, and those who were active in one area such as women's employment also worked with colleagues more commonly associated with others such as education.

In the early nineteenth century it was impossible for women to practice as doctors in Great Britain. The alternative choice of nursing was seen as a corrupt profession of the unskilled and the lower classes until the middle of the century. Both attitudes were caused by women's lack of access to training in the profession, largely through the parallel lack of access to training in universities and colleges that were only open to men. The one role open to them, midwifery, was constantly undermined and devalued due to this very lack of university education involved in learning its skills. In America the situation was slightly different: the English-born Elizabeth Blackwell had become the first woman in the United States to qualify as a doctor though rejection by male colleagues forced her to set up a women's hospital in New York. Visits to London in the 1850s led to work at the St Bartholomew's Hospital and friendship with Florence Nightingale. In 1859 the General Medical Council admitted her to the Medical Register but the following year a special GMC charter made it possible to exclude doctors with foreign medical degrees, leaving women who had qualified on foreign soil open to attack. Nonetheless, in 1869 Blackwell moved permanently to London and there established the London School of Medicine for Women in 1870, as well as the National Health Society. Blackwell's influence on British women intending to enter medicine was already great: in 1862 the Female Medical Society was established and Elizabeth Garrett decided to enter the profession under her advice. However, Garrett's initial attempts to enter several medical schools failed due to the continuing refusal of universities to accept female students. Instead, she was forced to become a nurse at Middlesex Hospital, a profession that had become respectable through the work of Nightingale and her colleagues in professionalising nursing training and practice. Nevertheless, it came to light that the Society of Apothecaries did not specify that females were banned from taking their examinations and in 1865 Garrett sat and passed their examination before the loophole that allowed this was closed. Other countries began to allow women to enter the profession: in 1864 the University of Zurich admitted female students while the universities of Paris, Berne and Geneva followed suit in 1867. Garrett later was appointed visiting physician to the East London Hospital but though she subsequently graduated from the University of Paris, the British Medical Register refused to recognise her MD degree. In the next few years she opened the women-run New Hospital for Women in London with Elizabeth Blackwell and helped Sophia Jex-Blake to establish the London Medical School for Women to which Garrett Anderson was elected Dean of the London School of in 1884. The legal situation of women who wished to become doctors did not change, however. Though Edinburgh University allowed Sophia Jex-Blake and Edith Pechy to attend medical lectures in 1869, male fellow students rioted and their final examinations were rendered void as university regulations only allowed medical degrees to be given to men. The consequence of this was that the British Medical Association therefore refused to register the women as doctors. However, Russell Gurney, a MP and supporter of women's rights took the first legal steps to remedying the situation and in 1876 the Enabling Act was passed that allowed universities to award female students degrees in their subject. This meant that all medical training bodies were now free to teach women in this area if they chose to do so. The following year the Royal Free Hospital admitted women medical students for clinical training and the University of London adopted a new charter in 1878 that allowed women to graduate from their courses. Individual institutions were slowly forced to change their practices to permit women to hold their degrees, though some, like Oxford and Cambridge, resisted until 1920 and 1948 respectively. By 1891, 101 women doctors were in practice in the British Isles, and the following years the British Medical Association was finally forced to admit women doctors.

The issue of women in the Church in Great Britain was one that had its origins in the Reformation. Convents were included in the abolition of the English monasteries and with their disappearance women lost the only ecclesiastical role open to them until the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century women in the Church of England began to campaign for women's work in the church to be acknowledged by allowing them to hold positions in its hierarchy.

In the 1860s, a number of individuals such as Bessie Rayner Parkes and Barbara Bodichon, who were involved in creating employment agencies for women and opening up a variety of professions, became involved in the campaign for women's suffrage. The two movements came to be closely connected through shared membership. Many saw votes for women as the only means by which the professions could be opened up to both sexes and the conditions of working women improved through appropriate legislation. The connection between the two campaigns continued into the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Individual members of suffrage societies were involved in the work of the Women's Industrial Council, which was established in 1886 to campaign for 'equal pay for equal work'. The London Society for Women's Suffrage established a Women's Service department and a bee toymakers' scheme during the First World War, which later became the Women's Employment Department in the post-war period.

William Thomas Stead (1849-1912) was born in 1849, the son of a Congregationalist minister. He attended school formally for only two years from 1891-3 but then became an apprentice office worker in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. From 1870 he began to send articles to the Northern Echo in Darlington and became its editor the following year. His reputation was established by a series of articles on Bulgarian atrocities in Turkey between 1876 and 1878. In 1880 he moved to London as assistant editor of the Liberal newspaper the Pall Mall Gazette, becoming acting editor in 1883 when his superior, John Morley, was elected to parliament as an MP. Under his editorship the newspaper established what Matthew Arnold called the 'New Journalism', introducing the use of illustrations, headlines, maps, and interviews to Britain for the first time. In 1883 he first met Josephine Butler at a mass meeting on behalf of the Salvation Army that took place just after her return from the Federation Congress held at the Hague in Sep 1883. He became a strong supporter of her and the campaign for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. One of his articles, 'What is the Truth About the Navy' of 1884 forced the government to refit British naval defences. It was in 1885, however, that his four articles on prostitution London entitled 'The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon' were published and had a profound influence on the country as a whole. An immediate effect of the work was the introduction of the Criminal Law Amendment Act that raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen for the first time in Britain. However, Stead's investigative methods had left him open to prosecution - later in 1885 he and Rebecca Jarrett were brought to trial on a charge of abducting a child from her home without the knowledge of her father. He was jailed for three months. Other members of the press and public figures attacked his reputation, but Stead also received support from such as Cardinal Manning, Josephine Butler and Lord Shaftesbury. In 1887 he published 'Josephine Butler, a life sketch' (Morgan and Scott, 1887). Stead retired from daily journalism in Jan 1890, founding the monthly Review of Reviews, which he edited until his death, although his attempt in 1904 to start his own newspaper, The Daily Paper, failed almost immediately. During the 1890s, he also became involved with spiritualism and for four years edited a psychic journal called Borderland. In 1897 he published 'Letters from Julia' which he wrote 'under control' from the spirit world. He also later became part of the peace movement and became unpopular in many quarters due to opposition to the Boer War. Stead was travelling to America to take part in a peace congress at Carnegie Hall when he died when his ship, the Titanic, sank on 14 Apr 1912.

Louisa Maria Hubbard (1836-1906), promoter of employment for women and journal editor, was born in St Petersburg in 1836, the eldest daughter of an English merchant, William Egerton Hubbard, who returned to Britain in 1843. The family lived in Leonardslee near Horsham, Sussex, where she was educated at home. She began her public life in the 'deaconess movement', an organisation she supported between 1864-1874. From 1869, Louisa was editor of the Englishwoman's Yearbook. This publication provided a list of all the institutions and societies which existed for the benefit of women and children. In 1873, Louisa was responsible for establishing Bishop Otter College in Chichester. It was a training college for ladies wishing to work as elementary teachers. In 1875 Louisa founded the Woman's Gazette. This paper became known as Work and Leisure from Jan 1880. She was the editor of these papers from 1875-1893. From 1884-1885, she was involved with the United Englishwoman's Emigration Association whose aim was to emigrate women of good character, to ensure their safety during and after their travel and to keep in touch with them for some time after their arrival. In Nov 1885, Ellen Joyce and Mrs Adelaide Ross replaced Louisa Hubbard at the head of the organisation. She was also involved with the United British Women's Emigration Association. Louisa Hubbard died 25 Nov 1906.

Harriet McIlquham (1837-1910) was born in London in 1837. When young, she attended social and political lectures in Gloucestershire. By 1877, she had become a member of the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage as well as the Bristol and West of England Society for Women's Suffrage. In Feb 1881 she and Maria Colbey were the organisers of the Birmingham Grand Demonstration as well as being one of the speakers at the Bradford demonstration held in Nov 1881. That same year, she was elected as a Poor Law Guardian for Boddington in the Tewkesbury Union. An appeal was lodged to annul her election on the grounds that she was a married woman but it was found that she held her qualifying property independently of her husband and therefore remained in place. However, her attempt to be elected as a county councillor in 1889 failed. By 1889, Harriet McIlquham was a member of the Central National Society and a friend of Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy. It was the latter who proposed her as president of the Women's Franchise League in Jul 1889, but two years later the pair transferred to the Women's Emancipation Union where Harriet McIlquham became a member of the council. In 1892 her first pamphlet 'The Enfranchisement of Women: An Ancient Right' was published and was widely read. Her writing continued in 1898 when the Westminster Review published a series of articles by her on Mary Astell, Lady Montague Wortley an eighteenth century journalist known as 'Sophia' and other enlightenment advocates of women's rights. Harriet McIlquham was also an active public speaker and in Feb 1893 gave a speech on women as poor law guardians; this was soon followed by an address to the Women's Emancipation Union conference held in Bedford the following year. Her audience and readers were drawn from across the spectrum of the suffrage movement. She was a member of the Cheltenham branch of the moderate National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies but also lobbied MPs in the House of Commons alongside members of the more militant Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) in Feb 1905. Later, in 1908 and 1909 Harriet donated sums to both the WSPU and the Women's Freedom League respectively. Just before her own death, she helped organise a 'Grateful Fund' to which those who wished to show their appreciation of Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy's suffrage work could contribute. She died in 1910 after a short illness.

The club named the Women's Institute (1897-1928) predated the more famous National Federation of Women's Institutes by almost two decades and was of a very different character. It was founded in 1897 at 15 Grosvenor Crescent by Mrs Nora Wynford Philipps and was intended to be a centre for women involved in the professions, education, social and philanthropic work. It was also intended to make other societies' work better known through its information bureau and co-operated with the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women regularly. It initially held weekly debates and 'at homes' run by the Executive Committee and organised a musical society, an art society, a recreational department, a circulating library, and a voluntary workers' society for philanthropic work. It also organised a secretarial department that undertook the training of typists and book keepers as well as an employment service for its members. At the same time it acted as a centre for the organisation of social and educational activities and a centre for research and dissemination of information on various subjects. It was responsible for the publication of several works such as Mrs Sidgwick's 'The Place of University Education in the Life of Women', pamphlet versions of lectures and the 'Dictionary of Employments Open to Women'. By the turn of the century it had over 800 members and maintained links with over 45 other groups, making it necessary to move to its second location at 92 Victoria Street from where a large range of other feminist organisations operated. In 1916 it was responsible for the opening of the Women's Club for the wives and mothers of servicemen and during the First World War gave rooms to the British Women's Patriotic League, the London School of Needlework, the Women's Local Government Society and the Head Mistresses Association amongst others. After the war, it was the location of meetings of the Dexter Club, the Censorship Club and the association for former members of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. While is appears to have still been active in 1925, activities ceased some time around 1928.

Hannah More (1745-1833) was born in Stapleton in 1745. When in her teens she wrote her first significant work, a play for schoolgirls entitled The Search after Happiness, published in Bristol in 1762. After a brief engagement she devoted herself to writing. She became particularly close to David Garrick and his wife who drew her into writing for the theatre. She wrote such plays as 'The Inflexible Captive' in 1774 and 'Percy' in 1778 until Garrick's death the following year. When this occurred, she retired to Hampton with his widow and continued her writing career in the form of didactic plays and poems. Her politics became increasingly reactionary with the outbreak of the French Revolution but she continued her use of popular forms such as ballads and in 1795-8 she published The Cheap Repository Tracts for the poor. In 1799, she published 'Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education', which called women to be worthy of holding superior moral value in the world while accepting women's inferior social status. Throughout the 1790s she and her sister Martha became involved in a project to teach the children of the poor in the Mendip Hills area. The children were taught to read, though famously not to write, with the purpose of Bible study. They were also taught the skills for trades such as weaving and sewing. She spent the rest of her life engaged in theological and moral reformatory work which found an outlet in texts such as 'Christian Morals' (1813) and 'Moral Sketches' (1819). In 1802, she built Barley Wood where her retired sisters joined her and where she lived until her move to Clifton. She died there 1833.

In a period in which the women's sphere was ideologically located in the home, their entrance in to the public sphere was seen as either a scandal or an object of mockery. However, while the fields of politics and commerce were largely closed to females, paradoxically, other positions in the public eye were not. Women writers and artists could be found from the Renaissance onwards and actresses in particular could achieve great fame for their work. However, women who entered into the public sphere in this way were generally considered to be outside of the normal rules of society even while being lionised by its members. This equivocal social position left them open to abuse, but at the same time meant that they could move freely around all sections of it while remaining at liberty to look after their own business and financial affairs in a way that a woman was not normally permitted to do. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the ambiguous status of such individuals with its benefits and limitations led a number of women involved in the arts to become acutely conscious of women's overall status. This led a number of them to become engaged in the campaign for the vote and for improvement of women's status. Groups such as the Actresses' Franchise League and the Artists' Suffrage League undertook collective action which others continued on an individual level throughout this period and into the second half of the nineteenth century as the campaign to improve women's status continued.

Various

During the campaigns for women's franchise which had been conducted during the later nineteenth century, the focus of the groups taking part had been on influencing members of Parliament and their parties so that reform could be introduced from within Parliament. However, a series of bills to introduce a vote for women had been defeated as members of the Liberal Party, to which so many suffragists were attached, proved hostile to their cause. Additionally, by the turn of the century the media's interest had been diverted to the Boer War, meaning that publicity for the suffrage movement was rare. In this situation, a new organisation was established in 1903. Emmeline Pankhurst had been a supporter of women's suffrage for many years, but resigned from the Manchester branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in this year and formed the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) with her two daughters Christabel and Sylvia. Initially, the group's purpose was to recruit more working class women to the movement, but by 1905, when the new Liberal government began to withdraw active support for women's suffrage, they began to use different 'militant' methods to gain publicity that were soon adopted as a new campaign strategy and would be reused by others both in and outside of their own group. At a meeting on 13 Oct 1905, at which the government minister Sir Edward Grey spoke, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney disrupted the event by shouting, then refused to leave before becoming involved in a struggle. This resulted in their arrest on the charge of assault, they were fined five shillings each, and were sent to prison for refusing to pay. Their methods were in direct contrast to the constitutional methods of other groups such as the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and attracted a number of early adherents such as Charlotte Despard and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. During 1906, the WSPU also began to increase the level of violence used, breaking the windows of government buildings and attacking Asquith's house with stones on the 30 Jun. However, not all agreed with the escalation of militancy or the Pankhurst style of leadership. A number of members left the group in 1907 with Charlotte Despard, Edith How Martyn, Teresa Billington-Greig, Octavia Lewin, and Caroline Hodgeson, to form another militant, but this time non-violent, organisation: the Women's Freedom League, which engaged in acts of civil disobedience. The impact of WSPU arrests increased when, in Jul 1909, hunger strikes began. The prison authorities feared public opinion would turn against them but were unwilling to release the increasing number of suffragettes who adopted this tactic. Consequently, women on hunger strike were force-fed. The violence escalated even further in 1913 when abortive arson attacks on the homes of two anti-suffrage MPs took place, followed by the burning of a series of other buildings. Some members of the WSPU disagreed with this arson campaign and, like Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence in 1912, were expelled or themselves left the group. However, the number of hunger-striking women rose even further and the government introduced the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act, known as the 'Cat and Mouse Act', by which ill suffragettes were released to be re-arrested on their recovery and sent back to prison to complete their sentence. However, the WSPU's situation changed on 4 Aug 1914 when the First World War broke out. Suffrage organisations across the spectrum of opinion suspended their political activities and transferred their efforts to war work, while the WSPU began negotiating with the government to end their militant activity and begin war work in return for the release of current suffragette prisoners. This occurred and the group began to organise demonstrations in support of the war and encouraging women to replace men in the workplace, bringing the militant stage of the campaign for the vote to an end.

Alice von Cotta (1842-1931) was born in Freiburg, Saxony in 1842. Her father was Bernhard von Cotta, the geologist. In 1876 she started studying at Newnham College and was granted the Clothworker's scholarship for the year 1877-1878. During her final year, in 1878, Alice and her friend, Penelope Lawrence, spent their time together at Newnham. Penelope had been a childhood friend as their families already knew one another from a trip the Lawrence family had taken in Freiburg in 1864. In Jul 1878 Alice was appointed to the post of Mistress of Studies at Bedford College. She was paid a salary of £75.00. In Oct 1878, she also spent time at the North London Collegiate School. Her resignation to Bedford College was tendered in Jul 1880. From 1884-1912, Alice von Cotta was Principal of the Victoria-Lyceum in Berlin. This school had been established by crown princess Victoria, wife of Frederick I. Its aim was to provide a higher education for German women, principally teachers, before a university education was available to them. Alice von Cotta died in Hanover in 1931.

The British Women's Temperance Association (1876-1925) was founded under the presidency of Mrs Edward Parker in 1876 to organise women to encourage temperance by education and other means, and to agitate for the restriction of sales of alcohol. In addition it targeted activities at the 7-30 age group, including summer schools and competitions. It was affiliated to the World Women's Christian Temperance Union. It published the 'British Women's Temperance Association Journal' from 1892 entitled 'Wings'. Lady Henry Somerset wanted allegiance between the Association and the suffrage movement, however not all members were in agreement. This caused a rift in 1893, with the formation of the Women's Total Abstinence Union (taking with them the journal 'Wings'). Lady Henry had previously taken over The Woman's Herald, which became the journal for the Association. In 1894 it became The Woman's Signal, officially the Association's journal, but now under the ownership and editorship of Florence Fenwick-Miller. In 1896 the Association started its own paper The White Ribbon. In 1925 the Association and the Women's Total Abstinence Union resolved their differences and merged to become the National British Women's Total Abstinence Union. It later included gambling and moral welfare as part of its interests.

Teresa Billington-Greig (1877-1964) was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1877 and brought up in Blackburn in a family of drapers. Although from a Roman Catholic family, Billington-Greig became an agnostic whilst still in her teens. Having left school with no qualifications she was initially apprenticed to the millinery trade. However, she ran away from home and educated herself well enough at night classes to become a teacher. She worked as a teacher at a Roman Catholic school in Manchester, studying at Manchester University in her spare time, until her own agnosticism made this impossible. From there Billington-Greig joined the Municipal Education School service where her religious beliefs brought her into conflict with her employers. However, through the Education Committee there she met Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903 who found her work in a Jewish school, while that same year she became a member and organiser of the Independent Labour Party. In Apr 1904 she was the founder and honorary secretary of the local branch of the Equal Pay League within the National Union of Teachers. In either late 1903 or early 1904, she joined the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) and became one of their travelling speakers. She was sent to London with Annie Kenney to foster the movement there and to create a London-based organisation, which eventually became the headquarters of the Union. This was done on a small financial budget. The following year she was asked to become the second full-time organiser of the group in its work with the Labour Party and in this capacity she organised publicity and demonstrations as well as building up the group's new national headquarters in London. In Jun 1906, Billington-Greig was arrested in an affray outside of Asquith's home and later sentenced to a fine or two months in Holloway Prison. She was the first suffragette to be sent to Holloway Prison although an anonymous reader of the Daily Mirror paid the fine.

Later in the same month, Jun 1906, she was sent to organise the WSPU in Scotland and it was here that she married Frederick Lewis Greig 1907. However, growing differences with the Pankhursts led to her resignation as a paid organiser, though she remained in the group as a member until Oct 1907. In Oct 1907, Mrs Pankhurst suspended the constitution and took over government of the WSPU with her daughter Christabel. Several prominent members left the WSPU, including Billington-Greig, Mrs How-Martyn and Charlotte Despard who together went on to form the Women's Freedom League (WFL) on the basis of organisational democracy. Billington-Greig was initially appointed the National Honorary Organising Secretary for the League. However, Billington-Greig once more resigned in 1910 when the WFL undertook a new campaign of militancy after the defeat of the Conciliation Bill. Although she did not immediately join another organisation Billington-Greig continued to write and carry out public speaking engagements - activities she continued throughout her life. She also cared for her daughter, born in 1915, and supported her husband's billiards table company. Her only organisational work until 1937 was in the field of sport. Then she once more joined the Woman's Freedom League working for it's Women's Electoral Committee. After the Second World War this became the Women for Westminster group with which she remained involved. Subsequently she took part in the Conference on the Feminine Point of View (1947-1951) and after 1958 she was a member of the Six Point Group while writing her account of the Suffrage Movement.

She had a keen interest in the history of the suffrage movement, as well as her writings on the subject she compiled many biographies. Some of these were created for obituaries for the Manchester Guardian. Her writings on behalf of the women's cause (but to some extent in criticism of it) included 'The Militant Suffrage Movement', published in 1911. Other writings cover a wide range of topics of social and feminist interest. She wrote innumerable articles for a variety of journals. Her interests were wide and she was involved in a large number of women's organisation. In 1904 she had formed the Manchester Branch of the Equal Pay League. She held strong views on a variety of subjects of public interest, but especially equality between the sexes in education and in marriage. She died in 1964.

James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), was born in Lossiemouth, Morayshire in 1866, the illegitimate son of Ann Ramsay, a maidservant. He studied at the local school from 1875 until 1881 before becoming a pupil-teacher. Aged nineteen, he went to Bristol before moving to London in 1886, where he was employed as a clerk for the Cyclists' Touring Club. Poverty and ill-health ended his attempts to win a science scholarship and be became a clerk to Thomas Lough, MP. MacDonald joined the Fabian Society around this time and there met others such as George Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, Walter Crane and the Webbs who were concerned with issues such as socialism and women's suffrage. In 1893 the Independent Labour Party was formed by members of this group, including Philip Snowden, Robert Smillie, Tom Mann, John Bruce Glasier, Ben Tillett and James Keir Hardie.

Mrs Mary Ellen Taylor (fl 1910-1914) and her husband Captain Thomas Smithies Taylor were friends of the Pethick Lawrence family, Dr Elizabeth Wilkes (her sister) and her brother-in-law Mark Wilkes. By early 1912 Mrs Taylor was an active member of the Women's Social & Political Union which was then engaged in a campaign of militant action against government and private property. On 4 Mar 1912 she took part in a window smashing party with a Miss Roberts and a Miss Nellie Crocker, attacking a post office in Sloane Square. They were arrested and brought before a magistrate at Westminster Police Court, who referred their case to the Sessions. From the 5-22 Mar 1912 they were placed on remand at Holloway Prison until Taylor went before Newington Session and was given a three months sentence. While in prison, she went on hunger strike, though she was not forcibly fed, and was subsequently discharged and taken to her sister's house on the 27 Apr 1912. She was imprisoned a second time in Jul 1913 under the alias of Mary Wyan of Reading. Mrs Ellen Mary Taylor refused release under the Cat and Mouse [Temporary Discharge for Ill-health] Act of 1913. She claimed complete discharge and declined to give the prison governor any address. When she was conveyed to a nursing home she refused to enter until her full release was granted and continued her strike on a chair in the road outside. The police then removed her to the Kensington Infirmary where she eventually gave up her protest. Around this time, the Woodford assault case took place, touching the Taylor's immediate circle of friends.

Captain Thomas Smithies-Taylor (fl 1910-1914) was the husband of Mrs Mary Ellen Taylor. He was a supporter of the militant suffragettes based in Leicester. He wrote letters to the national and local press on this and related subjects.

Dr Elizabeth Wilkes (fl.1910) was married to Mark Wilkes, he was a teacher employed by London County Council and a member of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage. She was also a suffragist and a member of the Women's Tax Resistance League. On the occasion when she refused to pay her taxes, her husband was obliged by law to pay the amount on her behalf. However, Mark Wilkes refused to do so and was sent to Brixton prison for this action. The Men's League organised a protest march to the prison and the Daily Herald interviewed Wilkes while in prison. He went on hunger strike and was released due to ill health. A meeting was subsequently organised by the Women's Tax Resistance League at the Caxton Hall in honour of the couple.

Mark Wilkes (fl. 1894-1914) was a teacher and the husband of Elizabeth Wilkes (1861-1956). Elizabeth refused to complete a tax return or to pay taxes herself and informed the tax authorities that as a married woman her tax papers should be forwarded to her husband. He, in turn, claimed that he had neither the means to obtain the necessary information to complete the forms nor to pay his wife's tax bill and was imprisoned for debt. The Tax Resistance League took up the case and achieved much publicity for it.

Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) (1903-c.1919) was the prime mover of suffrage militancy. In Oct 1903 the WSPU was founded in Manchester at Emmeline Pankhurst's home in Nelson Street. Members include: Emmeline, Adela and Christabel Pankhrst, Teresa Billington-Greig, Annie Kenney and Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy. Several had been members of the NUWSS and had links with the Independent Labour Party, but were frustrated with progress, reflected in the WSPU motto 'Deeds, not Words'. An initial aim of WSPU was to recruit more working class women into the struggle for the vote. In late 1905 the WSPU began militant action with the consequent imprisonment of their members. The first incident was on 13 Oct 1905, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney attended a meeting in London where they heckled the speaker Sir Edward Grey, a minister in the British government. Pankhurst and Kenney were arrested, charged with assault upon a police officer and fined five shillings each. They refused to pay the fine and were sent to prison. In 1906 the WSPU moved to London and continued militant action - with the Daily Mail calling the activists 'suffragettes' an unfavourable term adopted by the group. Between 1906-1908 there were several constitutional disagreements with the Women's Freedom League being founded in Nov 1907 by the 'Charlotte Despard faction'. From 1908 the WSPU tactics of disturbing meetings developed to breaking the windows of government buildings. This increased the number of women imprisoned. In Jul 1909 Marion Dunlop was the first imprisoned suffragette to go on hunger strike, many suffragettes followed her example and force-feeding was introduced. Between 1910-1911 the Conciliation Bills were presented to Parliament and militant activity ceased, but when Parliament sidelined these Bills the WSPU re-introduced their active protests.

Between 1912-1914 there was an escalation of WSPU violence - damage to property and arson and bombing attacks became common tactics. Targets included government and public buildings, politicians' homes, cricket pavilions, racecourse stands and golf clubhouses. Some members of the WSPU such as the Pethick-Lawrences, disagreed with this arson campaign and were expelled. Other members showed their disapproval by leaving the WSPU. The Pethick-Lawrences took with them the journal 'Votes for Women', hence the new journal of the WSPU the 'Suffragette' launched in Oct 1912. In 1913 in response to the escalation of violence, imprisonment and hunger strikes the government introduced the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act (popularly known as the 'Cat and Mouse Act'). Suffragettes who went on hunger strike were released from prison as soon as they became ill and when recovered they were re-imprisoned.

Discord within the WSPU continued - In Jan 1914 Sylvia Pankhurst's 'East London Federation of the WSPU' was expelled from the WSPU and became an independent suffrage organisation. On 4 Aug 1914, England declared war on Germany. Two days later the NUWSS announced that it was suspending all political activity until the war was over. In return for the release of all suffragettes from prison the WSPU agreed to end their militant activities. The WSPU organised a major rally attended by 30,000 people in London to emphasise the change of direction. In Oct 1915, The WSPU changed its newspaper's name from 'The Suffragette' to 'Britannia'. Emmeline's patriotic view of the war was reflected in the paper's new slogan: 'For King, For Country, for Freedom'. the paper was 'conservative' in tone and attacked campaigners, politicians, military leaders and pacifists for not furthering the war effort. Not all members supported the WSPU war policy and several independent groups were set up as members left the WSPU. In 1917 the WSPU became known as the 'Women's Party and in Dec 1918 fielded candidates at the general election (including Christabel Pankhurst). However they were not successful and the organisation does not appear to have survived beyond 1919.

Lydia Becker (1827-1890) was born in the Manchester area in Feb 1827 the eldest of 15 children the surviving siblings being Mary, Esther, Edward, Wilfred, Arthur, John and Charles. Her father, Hannibal Leigh Becker (1803-1877) was the son of Ernest Hannibal Becker (1771-1852) a German immigrant who had settled in England and become a naturalised citizen. Hannibal married Mary Duncroft and became the proprietor of first a calico-printing works at Reddish and then a chemical works at Altham in Lancashire. The couple had fifteen children. Her early life was conventional her main interests were in astronomy and botany, and she wrote one book on each subject. In 1865, the family moved to central Manchester where Becker founded the Manchester Ladies' Literary Society, which was a centre for scientific interests and at the first meeting a paper written by Darwin for the event was read. The previous year she had attended a Social Science Association meeting and heard Barbara Bodichon lecture on women's emancipation. Bodichon encouraged her to contact Emily Davis. Through these individuals, Becker became involved with local suffrage groups. In Feb 1867, she was named honorary secretary of the Manchester Committee for Women's Suffrage and was instrumental in rewriting its constitution as the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage. In 1868 she became treasurer of the Married Women's Property Committee. She travelled about the country organising meetings and support for the issue throughout the 1860s and was involved in the campaign to have women ratepayers included on the electoral register. She worked alongside Jacob Bright as the parliamentary agent of the National Society for Women's Suffrage to have the amendment to the Municipal Franchise Bill passed in 1869 so that this could be achieved at a local, if not a national, level. However, her efforts were not restricted to suffrage. In 1870, she was the first woman to be elected to the Manchester School Board, she was also the founder-editor of the 'Woman's Suffrage Journal' in 1870. In the 1870s she was active in the campaign to have the Contagious Diseases Acts repealed and worked beside Josephine Butler and Elizabeth Wolstenholme in the Vigilance Association for the Defence of Personal Rights. She organised a significant repeal meeting in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 1870 with JB, Elizabeth Wolstenholme and James Stuart. She also served on the LNA Executive Committee between 1872-1873. She introduced the first motion against Bruce's Bill at the Conference of Repeal Organisations, 29 Feb 1872. However, parliamentary developments in 1874 led many to believe that the vote might be granted to single though not married women. Becker pragmatically supported this as an interim measure, leading to criticism from the Pankhursts, the Brights and Wolstenholme Elmy. In the later part of that decade she was secretary to the Central Committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and remained with it when the London societies divided over opposition to the CD Acts in 1888. However, her health began to deteriorate and she withdrew from active work in 1889 and travelled to Aix-les-Bains to recuperate. On the 21 Jul 1890 she died in Geneva, Switzerland having contracted diphtheria.

Rosa May Billinghurst (1875-1953) was born in Lewisham in 1875. As a child she suffered total paralysis that left her disabled throughout her adult life. However, this did not prevent her becoming active in social work in a Greenwich workhouse, teaching in a Sunday school and joining the Band of Hope. She was also politically active in the Women's Liberal Association before becoming a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1907. She took part in the WSPU's march to the Albert Hall in Jun 1908 and also helped run the group's action in the Haggerston by-election the following month. Two years later, she founded and was the first secretary of the Greenwich branch of the WSPU and that same year she took part in the 'Black Friday' demonstrations where she was thrown out of her adapted tricycle and arrested. She was arrested several more times in the next few years culminating in a sentence of eight months for damage to letterboxes ('pillar box arson') and imprisoned in Holloway Prison. She went on hunger strike and was force-fed with other suffragettes. The experience led her to be released two weeks later on grounds of ill health. She was able to speak at a public meeting in West Hampstead in Mar 1913 and took part in the funeral procession of Emily Wilding Davison two months later. She supported Christabel Pankhurst's campaign to be elected in Smethwick in 1918 and the friendship with the Pankhursts seems to have survived into the 1920s. However, she later joined the Women's Freedom League and became part of the Suffragette Fellowship. She lived for some time with her brother Henry Billinghurst, an artist, and spent the last years of her life in Weybridge, Surrey. She died on the 4 Sep 1953.

Alice Jane Shannon Ker (1853-1943) was born in 1853, the eldest daughter of Edward Stewart Ker, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. In 1872 she attended University Classes for Ladies in literature and physiology and became a friend of Sophia Jex-Blake who was involved in a dispute with the University of Edinburgh to allow women to study medicine there. Ker eventually studied and took her degree at the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Dublin. She went on to share a practice with Jex-Blake for a year in Edinburgh before studying at Berne University, then working as a house surgeon at the Children's Hospital in Birmingham. She returned to Edinburgh in 1887 and set up an independent practice. The following year she married her cousin Edward Ker and moved with him to Birkenhead and became Honorary Medical Officer to the Wirral Hospital for Sick Children and to the Wirral Lying-In Hospital. During this time, she lectured in domestic economy as well as becoming involved in the Temperance Movement and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In the 1890s she also became active in local suffrage work in the Birkenhead Women's Suffrage Society. In 1907, her husband died suddenly. After this point, Dr Ker's suffrage activities increased and she became increasingly involved with the militant Women's Social and Political Union along with her seventeen year old daughter Margaret. She was in contact with Lady Constance Lytton and Mary Gawthorpe as well as Mrs Forbes Robertson. In Mar 1912 she took part in a smashing raid at Harrods Department Store in London and was arrested and subsequently imprisoned in Holloway Prison for three months. She was released on 10 May 1912 and continued her suffrage activities as well as war work, in Liverpool, where she moved in 1914. She was the host of Sylvia Pankhurst when she spoke there in 1916, before moving to London, where she died in 1943. Her daughter Margaret was a student at the University of Liverpool at this time and she too took part in militant activity. She was arrested twice, the second time spending three months in Walton Gaol from Nov 1912 to Jan 1913. She died in 1943.

Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) (1903-c 1919) was the prime mover of suffrage militancy. In Oct 1903 the WSPU was founded in Manchester at Emmeline Pankhurst's home in Nelson Street. Members include: Emmeline, Adela and Christabel Pankhrst, Teresa Billington-Greig, Annie Kenney and Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy. Several had been members of the NUWSS and had links with the Independent Labour Party, but were frustrated with progress, reflected in the WSPU motto 'Deeds, not Words'. An initial aim of WSPU was to recruit more working class women into the struggle for the vote. In late 1905 the WSPU began militant action with the consequent imprisonment of their members. The first incident was on 13 Oct 1905, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney attended a meeting in London where they heckled the speaker Sir Edward Grey, a minister in the British government. Pankhurst and Kenney were arrested, charged with assault upon a police officer and fined five shillings each. They refused to pay the fine and were sent to prison. In 1906 the WSPU moved to London and continued militant action - with the Daily Mail calling the activists 'suffragettes' an unfavourable term adopted by the group. Between 1906-1908 there were several constitutional disagreements with the Women's Freedom League being founded in Nov 1907 by the 'Charlotte Despard faction'. From 1908 the WSPU tactics of disturbing meetings developed to breaking the windows of government buildings. This increased the number of women imprisoned. In Jul 1909 Marion Dunlop was the first imprisoned suffragette to go on hunger strike, many suffragettes followed her example and force-feeding was introduced. Between 1910-1911 the Conciliation Bills were presented to Parliament and militant activity ceased, but when Parliament sidelined these Bills the WSPU re-introduced their active protests.

Between 1912-1914 there was an escalation of WSPU violence - damage to property and arson and bombing attacks became common tactics. Targets included government and public buildings, politicians' homes, cricket pavilions, racecourse stands and golf clubhouses. Some members of the WSPU such as the Pethick-Lawrences, disagreed with this arson campaign and were expelled. Other members showed their disapproval by leaving the WSPU. The Pethick-Lawrences took with them the journal 'Votes for Women', hence the new journal of the WSPU the 'Suffragette' launched in Oct 1912. In 1913 in response to the escalation of violence, imprisonment and hunger strikes the government introduced the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act (popularly known as the 'Cat and Mouse Act'). Suffragettes who went on hunger strike were released from prison as soon as they became ill and when recovered they were re-imprisoned.

Discord within the WSPU continued - In Jan 1914 Sylvia Pankhurst's 'East London Federation of the WSPU' was expelled from the WSPU and became an independent suffrage organisation. On 4 Aug 1914, England declared war on Germany. Two days later the NUWSS announced that it was suspending all political activity until the war was over. In return for the release of all suffragettes from prison the WSPU agreed to end their militant activities. The WSPU organised a major rally attended by 30,000 people in London to emphasise the change of direction. In Oct 1915, The WSPU changed its newspaper's name from 'The Suffragette' to 'Britannia'. Emmeline's patriotic view of the war was reflected in the paper's new slogan: 'For King, For Country, for Freedom'. the paper was 'conservative' in tone and attacked campaigners, politicians, military leaders and pacifists for not furthering the war effort. Not all members supported the WSPU war policy and several independent groups were set up as members left the WSPU. In 1917 the WSPU became known as the 'Women's Party and in Dec 1918 fielded candidates at the general election (including Christabel Pankhurst). However they were not successful and the organisation does not appear to have survived beyond 1919.

Eliza Tabor (1835-1914) was born in 1835, the daughter of John Tabor, a private school teacher in York, and Mary Holdich. She and her sister Mary Catherine were educated at home and then became school assistants in the family's establishment. Eliza Tabor published her first works in the early 1850s, a series of articles in the British Mothers' Magazine which were later brought together under the title of 'Woodcroft'. This was followed by one novel, 'All for the Best: The Story of a Quiet Life' which was poorly received and another, 'St Olave', which established her as a novelist. This in turn was followed by another, 'Juanita's Cross', which was the first of a series which had a religious theme. This was a reflection of her theological thinking in the period as, after her father's death, she renounced the family's Methodism along with her mother and sister. However, they remained in contact with many family friends and in particular, the Stephensons of Nottingham. Their son John, who had returned from India as a widower, became engaged to her and the couple were married in Bombay in 1875. They remained in India where Stephenson was a senior chaplain until Eliza Tabor returned home in late 1880 and began to look after her stepchildren from her husband's first marriage as well as helping her mother during her illness. In her new home in Malvern she established a local Ruskin Society to discuss his works and became friends with Arthur Tennyson. She and the children remained there for seven years during which time she began to write for the young, and completed several adult novels. Brief marital problems in 1885 were followed by the death of her mother and the return of her husband in spring 1886. He accepted the parish of St Thomas'in Toxteth, Liverpool, where the family moved the following year and remained until 1892 when they moved to Boston in Lincolnshire. She no longer published and lived the life of a vicar's wife after this until 1905 when her husband retired due to illness. They both died in 1914.

Ruth Mary Cavendish-Bentinck (1867-1953) was born Ruth St Maur in Tangiers in 1867. She was the illegitimate daughter of Viscount Ferdinand St Maur, the eldest son of the Duke of Somerset, and a half-gypsy kitchen maid. Her father died in 1869 and her mother went on to marry. Consequently the Duke and Duchess of Somerset raised the child themselves and Ruth was brought up in the English aristocracy. She was brought up within the family home and on her grandmother's death was left an endowment of £80,000. Despite this, by 1887, she was already a committed Fabian Socialist.She energetically supported the cause of socialism, and later that of women's suffrage, throughout her life. In 1887 she married Frederick Cavendish-Bentinck, the grandson of Lord Frederick Bentinck, who was himself a rich man until the death of his father, who left the couple was considerable inherited debts to pay off. She joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1909 and the Fabian Women's Group the following year, when she also published 'The Point Of Honour: A Correspondence On Aristocracy And Socialism'. She become part of the Fabian suffrage unit in 1912 and was able to use her social connections for political ends: for instance, she was able to persuade Bernard Shaw to intervene to have Gladys Evans released from prison in Dublin. That same year she was an organiser of the Women's March from Edinburgh to London and went on to become the secretary of the 'Qui Vive Corps'. However, like a number of members of the WSPU, she became alarmed at the rightward drift of the group and its increasingly violent tactics under the Pankhursts. Therefore, 1912 was also the year when she left the group for the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She was one of the first members of the Election Fighting Fund Committee that promised support to any party officially supporting suffrage in an election where the candidate was challenging an anti-suffrage Liberal. This in effect meant the NUWSS supporting the Labour Party in elections. While this disturbed many NUWSS members, it was fully supported by Cavendish-Bentinck who, on behalf of the Fabian Women's Group, approached the other members of the 'Qui Vive Corps' to start a propaganda campaign amongst the miners of Staffordshire and Derbyshire around this time. In 1913 she took on more activities, becoming an organiser of the Northern Men's Federation for Women's Suffrage and the following year published an article in the 'Women's Dreadnought'. By 1917 she had become a member of the executive committee of the United Suffragists. The main work for which she is remembered is the creation in 1909 of a subscription library of feminist materials open for the use of any individuals working for women's suffrage. She remained actively involved when the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies took it over, along with the Edward Wright Library, in 1918 and it became one of the core collections of the Women's Service Library (now the Women's Library) when it was gifted to them in 1931. Ruth Cavendish-Bentinck died in 1953.

The Josephine Butler Society (1962-fl.2007) was formed in 1962 when the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene was renamed. Its objectives were: To promote a high and equal standard of morality and sexual responsibility for men and women in public opinion, law and practice; To promote the principles of the International Abolitionist Federation in order to secure the abolition of state regulation of prostitution, to combat the traffic in persons and to expose and prevent any form of exploitation of prostitution by third parties; To examine any existing or proposed legislation on matters associated with prostitution or related aspects of public order and to promote social, legal and administrative reforms in furtherance of the above objectives. Its basic principles were: social justice; equality of all citizens before the law; a single moral standard for men and women. (Taken from membership and donation form 1990). The Josephine Butler Society was a pressure group not a rescue organisation. It wished to prevent the exploitation of prostitutes and marginalisation of those who could be forced into this activity by poverty and abuse, and it believed these problems should be addressed by changes in the law. It believed that more should be done to prevent young people from drifting into prostitution, to help those who wished to leave it, and to rehabilitate its victims. Its work in the early 21st century took two main forms: to make representation to various departments of the UK Government on prostitution and related issues an; to liase and network with other agencies both statutory and voluntary who worked in related areas. As at 2008 it was still active.

The origins of the Josephine Butler Society are based in the campaigns against the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864-1869. The Acts were a series of measures aimed at reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the armed forces and applied to a number of ports and garrison towns. Police forces were granted powers to identify and register prostitutes who were then forced to undergo compulsory medical examinations. Women who refused to submit willingly could be arrested and brought before a magistrate. The campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts brought together moralists, feminists and libertarians and included campaigners such as the parliamentarian James Stansfeld, the Sheffield radical Henry J. Wilson and the writer Harriet Martineau. It proved to be one of the largest cross-party political campaigns of the nineteenth century, comparable only to the Corn Laws agitation. The campaign was successful; the Contagious Diseases Acts were suspended in 1883 and finally repealed in 1886.

Josephine Butler (ne Grey 1828-1906) was a leading feminist, prolific writer and tireless campaigner. She was appointed President of the North of England Council for the Higher Education of Women 1867-1869 and edited the influential collection of essays Woman's work and woman's culture in 1869. Having been involved in 'rescue work' with Liverpool prostitutes she became leader of the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1869. She later campaigned with WT Stead against child prostitution in London and from 1886 was involved in opposing measures in India, under the Cantonement Acts, to establish military brothels.

Myra Eleanor Sadd Brown (1872-1938) was born in Maldon, Essex on 3 Oct 1872. Her parents were John Granger Sadd and Mary Ann Price and she was the tenth of eleven children. The family operated a firm of timber merchants and processors in the hometown of Maldon. Myra Sadd received a private education at a school in Colchester. She met Ernest Brown through her interest in cycling; they were married in 1896. The couple moved to Finsbury Park in London, and then to Hampstead. Myra and Ernest had three daughters and one son. Due to the commercial success of her husband's business Myra was provided with independent means. Myra was raised within a Congregationalist environment; later becoming a Christian Scientist. She was interested in artistic pursuits and avidly enjoyed Shaw's plays. Myra is particularly renowned for being a feminist. It is believed that prior to her marriage she purchased a small property giving her, as a ratepayer, the right to vote. In Hackney, Myra served as a Poor Law Guardian. Furthermore, she was a committed supporter of the women's suffrage movement; being a member of the Women's Social and Political Union. In 1912, Myra was arrested and imprisoned; she went on hunger strike and endured forcible feeding. Myra wrote a great deal on behalf of the suffrage cause; the 'Christian Commonwealth' being one such periodical which published her letters. Later, she became associated with Sylvia Pankhurst's East London Federation of Suffragettes, inviting East London women, travelling by bus, to visit her home near Maldon. Following WWI, Myra became an active member of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (later known as the International Alliance of Women). She travelled widely throughout Europe attending conferences. This activity allowed her to indulge her interest in other cultures and countries, as did her periods of wintering in Italy and Egypt with her husband Ernest. Although Myra herself did not speak a foreign language, she insisted that her children should study French and German. The emerging Commonwealth became another area of interest to Myra. From 1923 she had been involved in meetings, which culminated in the formation of the British Commonwealth League (later the Commonwealth Countries League) in 1925. It was a feminist organisation devoted to the upholding of women's rights in the Commonwealth of which Myra became its Treasurer. In 1931 Ernest died of rheumatic heart disease. In 1937 Myra visited South-East Asia where she was present for the birth of her second grandchild. She then extended the tour to visit Angkor Wat and the Malaysian islands. Myra continued her journey to Hong Kong, planning to return via the Trans-Siberian railway. However, she suffered a stroke and died in Hong Kong on 13 Apr 1938. The British Commonwealth League established the Sadd Brown Library of material on women in the Commonwealth as a memorial to her. It was placed in the Women's Service Library, now The Women's Library. Myra's interest in the Commonwealth Countries League, and the International Alliance of Women, has been continued first by her daughter Myra Stedman, and subsequently by Lady Diana Dollery, her granddaughter, both of whom have been closely involved in the development of the Sadd Brown Library.

'Zines' (produced "zeens") are non-commercial, hand-made magazines and booklets. Written, designed and published by their creators, these grass-roots publications are made simply and quickly on photocopiers and home computers. They fuse original artwork with images appropriated from the mainstream media and include writing that is creative, critical, personal and humourous.

Produced in small print runs from 10 to 10,000 copies, zines are ephemeral publications written on any number of topics. Due to their eclectic natures and amateur production values, zines exist on the fringes of popular culture, journalism, art practices, life writing, and academia. They are distributed by their creators through local, postal and internet-based networks and at events such as Ladyfest.

Whilst the history of zines dates back to the mimeo-graphed science fiction fan magazines (fanzines') of the 1930s, it was the fusion of punk culture and cheap photocopying rates in the late 1970s which saw a 'zine explosion' of DIY (do-it-yourself) cultural expression.

Traditionally, zine cultures are dominated by young men. However, the 'girl zine movement' of the early 1990s saw many young women and girls explore their experiences and voices within zines for the first time; inspired by the rise of the feminist and personal zines of the Riot Grrrl movement.

Young women make zines for a number of reasons: to explore their creativity, to make friends, to overcome isolation, and to think critically about the world around them. They blur genre boundaries by mixing together stories, essays, photography, rants, collages, lists, doodles, reviews, diary entries, and autobiographical confessions.

Zines are historical primary sources documenting women's everyday lives and cultural opinions. Zines are also a key tool in analysing 'third wave feminism', as young women explore their self-identities and redefine feminism in these publications.

The Women's Library collects zines and comics which reflect women and girls' experiences, interests and concerns in the UK today.

Heythrop was originally a religious foundation, set up in 1614 by the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) to train its own members. It was originally in Louvain but quickly moved to Liège where it remained until 1794 when the College moved to Stonyhurst, Lancashire. A new College was built near St Asaph, in North Wales in 1848. The Society of Jesus acquired Heythrop Hall, Oxfordshire, in 1923. Heythrop College was set up as a 'Collegium Maximum' - a Roman title indicating a college a little short of university status and issued degrees of the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome. It was opened to students, Aug 1926. In the 1960s a proposal was made for the College to become a 'Pontifical Athenaeum', an institution still rather less than a university, but a degree-granting body in its own right. For that purpose it needed to open its doors to students other than Jesuits, including lay people. This it did in 1965, with the approval of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales. Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, was installed as Chancellor of the new entity. Heythrop College became a constituent college of the University of London in October 1970 and moved to a new location in Cavendish Square. This allowed the College full integration within the British university system. With this move the College was self-governing and no longer a Jesuit institution. Nor was it any longer Roman Catholic. Nonetheless a large Jesuit presence remained, and the ethos continued to be Catholic. The College moved from Cavendish Square to Kensington Square in 1993 for financial reasons.

Art and Architecture (A and A) (est 1982) is a membership organisation which provides a network for practitioners and a forum for debate surrounding the role of public art, design and building. Its origins can be found in a conference, Art and Architecture, held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1982. The event represented a coming together of various strands of thought and activity which had been considering the notion of art in a public context as beneficial to the environment. Art and Architecture as a membership society was formed in the wake of the conference and soon organised itself into four working parties, each addressing a different issue which had been prioritised during the conference. These included Per Cent for Art legislation (promoting the notion that a percentage of the capital costs for building should be allocated to an artistic contribution); the Live Projects Commissions group; the Events group, which organised a series of lectures; and Information and Education, which resulted in production of a newsletter (later the Art and Architecture Journal). A single A and A management board was established under the chair Sir Peter Shepherd. Later chairs included Theo Crosby, Peter Rawstorne, Jenny Towndrow, Christopher Martin, Peter Lloyd-Jones and Graham Cooper.

A and A has organised many lectures, conferences and other events in addition to producing the Art and Architecture journal, edited for many years by former Royal College of Art Librarian Hans Brill. An overriding theme of its work has been the interdisciplinary process and the potential for collaboration and communication between architects and artists, designers and makers.

In 2002, A and A organised a series of events under the banner 'Next Generation' to mark its twentieth anniversary and to consider new approaches to public art and collaboration for the 21st century. The donation of the archive coincided with its twenty-fifth anniversary, around which a number of events were planned, including a three-month exhibition at the Buildings Centre.

Henry Cole was born in Bath in 1808, at the age of 15 he began working for the public records historian and eventually became assistant keeper of the Public Records Office. In response to Prince Albert's Society of Arts competition in 1845, Cole designed a tea service using the pseudonym Felix Summerley which was subsequently manufactured by Minton and embodied his ideas of combining form with function. Following the success of the tea service, in 1847 Cole founded Summerley's Art Manufactures which enabled artists and sculptors to design for industry. Two years later, in 1849, Cole and the painter Richard Redgrave founded The Journal of Design and Manufactures. By this time Cole was involved in the arrangements for the Great Exhibition of 1851 which would display "art applied to industry" through exhibits from around the world. The success of the Great Exhibition encouraged better design schooling in England and in 1852 the Board of Trade set up a department of practical art with Cole as joint secretary, with Lyon Playfair (1818-1898), in this capacity he formed the nucleus of the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1858 he became sole secretary and in 1873 resigned his secretaryship. He was made Knight Commander of the Bath in 1875 and died in London in 1882.

L[eonard] Bruce Archer (1922-2005) was an engineering designer and academic credited with helping to transform the process of design in the 1960s. As research fellow, and later professor of design research, at the Royal College of Art, Archer argued that design was not merely a craft-based skill but should be considered a knowledge-based discipline in its own right, with rigorous methodology and research principles incorporated into the design process. His initially controversial ideas would become pervasive and influential.

After early training at what is now City University, and a role as guest professor at Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm (1960-1), Archer went on to spend a majority of his career at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, until his retirement in 1988. From his initial appointment as research fellow within Misha Black's Industrial Design (Engineering) research unit, Archer ascended to head his own Department of Design Research (DDR) for 13 years (1971-84). Archer's innovative methods were first tested on a project in the 1960s to design improved equipment for the National Health Service. One strand of these studies, Kenneth Agnew's proposal for a hospital bed, culminated in the perfection of Agnew's design through a rigorous testing process and the inclusion of systems-level analysis and evidence-based design. The bed went on to become standard issue across the NHS. Archer's influence extended further through his series of articles in Design magazine in the 1960s, in which he advocated six basic stages of process: programming, data collection, analysis, synthesis, development and communication. In this, he anticipated and described concepts which would later be universally understood by designers in now-familiar terms such as 'quality assurance' or 'user-centred research'. Later successes included the DDR's influential study on the importance of design across the school curriculum (1976); from this the RCA established the Design Education Unit for teachers. The DDR itself was closed - peremptorily in Archer's view - by incoming Rector Jocelyn Stevens in 1984. Stevens instead hoped to give Archer College-wide responsibility for embedding research in all departments; to this end Archer was made Director of Research, a post he held until retirement in 1988. In retirement he remained active as president of the Design Research Society, and as a provider of short courses to various institutions, including a return to the RCA to deliver his Research Methods Course over several years.

The Royal College of Art was founded in 1837 as the Government School of Design. In 1853 the School moved to South Kensington where it became the much enlarged National Art Training School, part of the development of the area by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. The title Royal College of Art was conferred in 1896 with the emphasis on art and design practice. In the mid-20th century the College began the teaching of product design and the provision of specialised professional instruction including graphic and industrial design. The 1960s were a time of physical expansion and a Royal Charter in 1967 gave the College independent university status with the ability to award its own degrees.

Student activity at the Royal College of Art is reflected in the development of projects within individual departments, culminating in the exhibition of work in the annual graduate shows. Since the mid 20th century, when teaching of product, graphical and technical design began, a comprehensive pictorial record has been kept of student work. Work from the annual degree shows has been photographed as comprehensively as possible since the 1960s; in 1979 this effort was centralised with the RCA's slide library assuming responsibility for photography and cataloguing. Images are stored as prints and slides covering the years up to and including 2002, after which a move to born-digital photography, cataloguing and delivery was effected.

Student records began to be maintained two years after the College received its royal charter in 1896 but records for each individual student begin in 1910.

Henry Wilson was born in Liverpool in 1864. He studied Art at Westminster School and the Royal College of Art and at various times he assisted John Oldrid Scott, John Belcher and John D Sedding, whom he succeeded in 1891. From 1895 on, he devoted himself to visionary church decoration schemes, metalwork, jewellery, lecturing and writing. He was associated with the circle of William Richard Lethaby in the Liverpool Cathedral Scheme of 1902. Wilson was both Master of the Art Workers Guild and President of the Arts and Crafts Society. He was a brilliant church interior designer who worked in a variety of styles.

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Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jacob Liebmann Beer), 1791-1864, was the most frequently performed operatic composer during the 19th century. Major works include Il Crotiato in Egitto, 1824; Robert le Diable, 1831; Les Hugenots, 1836; Ein Feldlager de Schliessen, 1844; Le Prophete, 1849 and L'africaine, 1865. He composed much other music in a variety of styles and forms including concerti and church music.

Fanny Davies, born Guernsey, 27 June 1861; studied at Leipzig Conservatory under Carl Reinecke, Oscar Paul and Salomon Jadassohn, 1882-1883; studied at Frankfurt under Clara Schumann, 1883-1885; made London début at Crystal Palace in Beethoven's Fourth Concerto, 17 October 1885; began collaboration with the violinist Joseph Joachim and cellist Alfredo Piatti on the London Popular Concerts; made Berlin début at the Singakademie, 15 November 1887; made other continental appearances in Leipzig, Rome, Bonn (the Beethoven House Festival, 1893), Vienna and Bergamo (Donizetti Centenary Festival, 1897); performed with the Joachim and Rosé String Quartets, and in later years with Pablo Casals and with the Czech String Quartet; was the first pianist to give a recital in Westminster Abbey, July 1921; pioneered revival of English virginal music, as well as performing the music of contemporary Czech, Spanish and English composers; died, London, 1 Sept 1934.

Born Comber, Co Down, 10 Aug 1904; educated Bedford School and Royal College of Music, London; doctorates of music at Trinity College, Dublin, and New College, Oxford; organist and choirmaster, Beverley Minster, 1934-1938; appointed organist, New College, Oxford, 1938; remainder of career spent at Oxford, as a lecturer in music and subsequently Fellow of New College and Balliol, and also taught at the RCM.; died Oxford, 10 Oct 1965. Selected publications: The Oxford Harmony, vol 2 (Oxford University Press, London, 1950); An Introduction to the Technique of Palestrina (Novello and Co, London, 1958); The Technique of Byrd's Vocal Polyphony (Oxford University Press, London, 1966); articles on early polyphonic music, particularly of William Byrd.

Bechstein are a German firm of piano makers founded in Berlin in 1853 by Friedrich Wilhelm Carl Bechstein (1826-1900), who founded the firm in 1853 in Berlin. Following successful receptions at the 1862 London exhibition and the 1867 Paris exhibition, the output of the firm grew from 300 instruments a year during the 1860s to 1000 a decade later, 3000 during the 1890s and 5000 in the years preceding World War I. Following the founder's death, his sons Edwin Bechstein and Carl Bechstein assumed control and later Carl's son, also Carl, joined the firm. The importance of the British market to the firm was such that half of the firm's annual output of pianos was sold there. The firm sought to provide an impressive yet intimate showcase for recitals (particularly featuring the firm's instruments). In 1901 the firm opened a concert room in London, known as the Bechstein Hall, next to its showrooms on Wigmore Street; the first concert on 31 May 1901 featured the virtuoso pianist Ferruccio Busoni. The Hall quickly came renowned for its superb acoustics and enjoyed popularity with both performers and the public. Bechstein, like other German firms in Britain during World War One, experienced anti-German hostility and a decline in business. The firm's affairs were wound up in 1916 by the Board of Trade and the entire business - including studios, offices, warehouses, 137 pianos, and the Hall itself - was sold at auction to Debenhams for £56,500. The Hall reopened in 1917 as the Wigmore Hall.

Born 18 Oct 1858, West Norwood, London, the daughter of August Manns, conductor; educated in Sydenham and Wandsworth, 1864-1874; educated in Stuttgart, Germany, 1874-1876, commenced studies at Stuttgart Conservatoire, 1876; abandoned professional musical studies due to ill-health, 1879; married Frederick Bönten, 1881; lived in London, with numerous visits to Germany; daughter Louise born, 1890; moved to live with her father following the death of her mother, 1893; moved to Bournemouth in 1914, her husband being obliged to move to London due to wartime security restrictions; her husband's business wound up by the Board of Trade, 1917; moved to London, 1919; husband died, 1924; died 8 Jun 1930.

Sir August Manns, born Stolzenberg, 12 March 1825; played in the Danzig regimental band and theatre orchestra as a clarinettist at age 20; member of Gungl's orchestra in Berlin, 1848; served eight years in the Prussian army and arranged classical repertoire for military band and conducted concerts; appointed Assistant Conductor at Crystal Palace, London, 1854; appointed by the Secretary, George Grove, as Conductor at the Crystal Palace, 14 Oct 1855; between 1855-1901 Grove and Manns made the Saturday concerts at the Crystal Palace the principal source of classical music at popular prices; Manns transformed the existing wind band into a renowned orchestra, and was estimated to have conducted 12,000 orchestral concerts during his 42 years at the Crystal Palace; the programmes included Schubert and Schumann symphonies, works by Berlioz and Wagner, many previously seldom-performed works and first London performances; conductor of the Handel Festival, 1883-1900; naturalized as a British citizen, 1894; knighted, 1903; died, Norwood, London, 1 March 1907.

The post of Bursar of the Royal College of Music was created in 1923, with responsibility, under the Council, for the financial administration, property and buildings of the College. Its first incumbent was Mr E J N Polkinghorne, previously Head of the office staff at the RCM, who held the office until 1946, to be followed by Ernest Stammers (1946-1956), Capt John T Shrimpton RN (1957-1971); Maj D A Imlay (1972-1984); Aidan P Miller (1984-1987) and Col W M Morgan (1987-1999). Following reorganisation the post was reconstituted as Head of Resources, with responsibility for the Secretariat, Finance Department, Personnel, Information Services, the Britten Theatre and Estates.

Henry Cope Colles, born Bridgnorth, Shropshire, 20 Apr 1879; entered Royal College of Music at age of 16 and studied music history under Sir Hubert Parry, the organ under Walter Alcock and counterpoint under Walford Davies; won an organ scholarship at Worcester College, Oxford; graduated, 1902; appointed music critic of The Academy and assistant music critic of The Times, 1905, and appointed chief critic, 1911; taught at Cheltenham Ladies College; joined RCM to lecture on music history, analysis and interpretation; joined the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music as an examiner; Fellow and Governor of St Michael's College, Tenbury; chairman of the Church Music Society and of the School of English Church Music; appointed freeman of the Musicians' Company, 1934; Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, 1936; died London, 4 Mar 1943. Publications: Brahms (London, 1908); The Growth of Music (Oxford, 1912-1916); edited Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians Third edition (London, 1927); Voice and Verse: a Study of English Song (London, 1928); The Chamber Music of Brahms (London, 1933); The Royal College of Music: a Jubilee Record, 1883-1933 (London, 1933); edited Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians Fourth edition (London, 1940); On Learning Music and Other Essays (London, 1940); H. Walford Davies (London, 1942); with MF Alderson History of St Michael's College, Tenbury (London, 1943).

A meeting convened by the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House in 1878 had proposed to amalgamate the Royal Academy of Music and the National Training School for Music into a new national music conservatoire, and a charter was drafted. Following the failure of the RAM to enter the scheme, a new charter was drafted in 1880, which proposed particularly that the new Royal College of Music should raise funds to provide for the maintenance as well as the education of certain of its students. The Prince of Wales accepted the presidency of the College's Council, and George Grove became a member of the Council and Executive Committee in July 1881. The draft charter for the proposed Royal College of Music of 1880 had provided for a Council to be the governing body of the College, constituted of three ex-officio members (the President, Principal and Vice-Principal) and thirty other ordinary members. However from 1883 until 1970, the Director sat 'in attendance' with the Council and was not an ex-officio member. Thereafter the Director and other staff were eligible to be appointed Council members, and this was extended in 1975 to include three additional members of staff appointed by the Board of Professors. The President of the Council (normally a royal personage) was also Chairman of the Council between 1882-1965. Thereafter the Chair has been held as follows: Rt Hon Lord Redcliffe Maud, 1965-1972; Col the Hon Sir Gordon Palmer, 1973-1987; Leopold de Rothschild, 1987-1999; Sir Anthony Cleaver, 1999-. The Presidency of the Council has been held as follows: Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, 1882-1901; George, Prince of Wales, 1901-1910; Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, 1910-1918; Edward, Prince of Wales, 1918-1936; George, Duke of Kent, 1936-1942; Princess Elizabeth, 1943-1952; Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, 1952-1992; Charles, Prince of Wales, 1993-.
The Executive and Finance Committees were originally separate entities from creation in 1883, but merged in May 1884. A Finance Committee met separately from the Executive Committee, Mar 1923-Feb 1939, having been instructed by the Council to 'to consider the present system of College finance with a view to the production of a duly audited balance sheet, and to a clearer presentment of the money...for ordinary expenditure'. The Executive and Finance Committee last met in 1991 and it was thereafter reconstituted as the Executive Committee.
The RCM Ladies and Visiting Committee was formed to liaise between the Executive Committee and the Superintendent of the Pupils' board houses on the one hand, and the students living in private houses.
The Building Committee's main business from 1981 was to oversee the construction of the Britten Opera Theatre, alterations to the Library, the Dining Room and Students' Recreation Room.
Ernest Palmer (later 1st Baron Palmer of Reading) endowed the 'Royal College of Music Patron's Fund' with £20,000 in 1903 for 'the encouragement of native composers by the performance of their works'. The first use of the funds was to give public concerts of new chamber and orchestral works from 1904. In 1925, he supplemented his Patron's Fund with a Fund for Opera Study, as well as contributions to the fabric of the building.