Kathleen Hill (1900-) was born in 1900. During her life she was involved in the operation of the Poor Law after the 1930 Poor Law Act, which introduced limited financial public assistance and which was means tested from the following year. From that point onwards, only the aged found their way into the Workhouses and outdoor relief introduced. She went on to be a member of the National Assistance Board that replaced it after the 1948 National Assistance Act.
Annie Lacon (1880-1968) was born in Birmingham in 1880. She attended a meeting in Birmingham in 1906 at which Emmeline Pankhurst was a speaker and immediately became the first member of the Birmingham branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). There she also met the man who was to become her husband. In 1907 she was selected as a delegate from Birmingham sent to protest at the House of Commons. During this event on the 20 Mar 1907, she was arrested with around seventy other women and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The following day she was tried and fined five shilling which she refused to pay. She was then held for fourteen days in solitary confinement. She subsequently continued as a member of the WSPU, later giving birth to a daughter whom she named Emmeline. This occurred two months after the death of her husband and she subsequently went to live with her sister before moving to Northampton in 1948 where her daughter was employed. She remained a member of the Labour party there until the end of her life, as well as belonging to the Northampton Business and Professional Women's Club. Lacon was also a member of the Women's Freedom League and birth-control campaigner. She died in 1968.
Louisa Twining (1820-1912) was born in 1820, the grandchild of Richard Twining, the head of the firm of tea and coffee merchants. She was educated at home and later attended lectures at the Royal Institute. She was a talented artist and her first publication, in 1852, was the book Symbols and Emblems of Early and Mediaeval Art. It was the year after this that she became aware of the problems presented by the workhouse when she visited a former nurse in one such establishment. She organised a workhouse-visiting scheme amongst her friends but attempts to implement it were rejected by the local Poor Law Board. Attempts to sway the board through personal interventions, letters to the press and lectures met with little success until 1855, when the Rev. JS Brewer published one of Twining's lectures in 'Practical Lectures to Ladies'. A further pamphlet entitled 'A Few Words about the Inmates of Our Union Workhouses' followed this, while a petition was also circulated. The effect of this was that the first visiting committee was set up in 1857 and the following year she established a campaigning organisation under the title of the Workhouse Visiting Society that published its journal from Jan 1859 until 1865 and was active in workhouse reform. It's stated aim was 'the promotion of the moral and spiritual improvement of Workhouse inmates' and the organisation was especially concerned with the care of children and the ill, work which would lead her to take an interest in the question of nursing in later life. This work over a period of five years had equipped Twining with a significant knowledge of the Workhouse system and consequently she was asked to give a paper to a meeting of the Social Science Association that took place in 1857. Two years later, she undertook several interviews with the Poor Law Boards and was subsequently asked to give evidence on Poor Schools the following year. Her statement called for women poor law inspectors and for girls to receive training in a suitable trade, a call that resulted in the appointment of Mrs Nassau Senior as the first female Poor Law Inspector in 1872. She went on to try to have measures adopted to improve the standard of workhouse nursing and in 1870 set up the Workhouse Infirmary Nursing Association. Her interest in training for girls had been evident for a number of years. Since 1850 she had given classes for women at the Working Men's College as well as attending lectures herself at Queen's College and she would later become involved with the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. She was elected as one of the first female poor law guardians in 1884 (she was a guardian for Kensington and Tunbridge Wells) and remained in this post until 1890. In 1900 she retired from work and died in Tunbridge Wells in 1912.
Lisa Pottesman (1881-1959) was born in Romania in 1881 and came to London as a member of a theatre troupe. In 1903 she married Wolf Pottesman and in the early 1920s became a patient of Dr Harold Burt White, who in 1932 was subsequently struck off the Register for ' improper conduct with a lady patient' . Lisa's campaign for his re-instalment brought her into contact with Sylvia Pankhurst and a friendship developed between the two women. After Lisa's organisation of a petition to the General Medical Council, and her seeking of public support for Dr Burt White, he was reinstated in 1937. Restrictions on his practice however caused Lisa again to plead his cause with County Hall (London County Council) in 1939. He died in 1952, Lisa died in 1959.
Mary Alexander Jackson (1905-1977) was born Mary Telford in Abergavenny in 1905. She studied French and History at Aberystwyth University, later going on to become a member of the British Federation of University Women and becoming involved in the movement to establish playgrounds for children in urban areas. In the 1920s she met John Jackson who, in 1928, went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to become a surveyor. She followed in 1929 in order to marry him. They had three children who moved around the island with them continually in the course of John Jackson's work. They remained there until the outbreak of the Second World War, then Mary Jackson and her children were evacuated to Natal in South Africa. The whole family returned to Cambridge in 1948. Mary Jackson became employed teaching French nearby in Cottenham Village School and took part in a large number of voluntary organisations such as the Children's Playground Association which she founded in 1949. She became particularly involved in the National Council of Women at both a local and a national level. She was the local chair for three years, and during the 1950s was one of the twelve representatives of the NCW on the government commission sent to West Germany to study women's voluntary work there. She also retained an interest in the welfare of African women in the United Kingdom and was active in trying to organise centres for their use. She died in 1997.
Margery Corbett Ashby was born at Danehill, Sussex in 1882 to Charles Corbett, the future Liberal MP for Grinstead, and Marie Corbett. At the age of eighteen, she formed a society called the Younger Suffragists with a group of friends and her younger sister Cicely. The following year, in 1901, Margery won a place at Newnham College, Cambridge, to read Classics. Three years later, despite passing her examinations, Cambridge refused to grant her a degree on the grounds of her gender. Subsequently, she obtained a place at the Cambridge Teachers Training College, though she would later decide against teaching as a profession. That same year, in 1904, she and her sister attended the first meeting of the International Women Suffrage Alliance in Berlin with their mother.
She had been involved in the women's suffrage movement since Cambridge, where she had joined the local branch of the National Union of Women s Suffrage Societies. In 1907 Corbett was appointed Secretary of that same organisation and editor of the journal, The Common Cause, positions that she held until she was elected to the executive committee two years later. It was in 1909 that she also became a member of the Cambridge Women s Suffrage Association as well as becoming involved in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance as a speaker at their conferences in Berlin and Stockholm. The following year, she married the barrister, Brian Ashby, giving birth to their only child four years later. In 1912 she became a poor law guardian in Wandsworth and in 1914 was the chairperson of the Barnes, Mortlake and East Sheen branch of the London Society for Women s Suffrage. However, when that year the NUWSS launched the Election Fighting Fund policy, which promised support to any party officially supporting suffrage in an election where the candidate was challenging an anti-suffrage Liberal, Corbett Ashby felt compelled to resign form the organisation.
Corbett Ashby passed the First World War carrying out work in hospitals and running a canteen at an outbuilding of Woodgate for local schoolchildren. In 1919, she attended the Versailles Peace Conference in place of Millicent Garrett Fawcett as a member of the International Alliance of Women. After the passing of the Qualification of Women Act in 1918, she became one of the seventeen women candidates that stood in the post-war election. She stood as the Liberal candidate for Ladywood, Birmingham, but lost her deposit in the process, having advocated feminist policies that would have given women full political equality with men. The following year she took part in the first post-war congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and was elected president of the organisation in 1923, a position she would hold until she retired in 1946. She succeeded Eleanor Rathbone as the president of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and co-founded the Towns Womens Guild with Eva Hubback in the late 1920s which she also presided over for a time. In 1932 Corbett Ashby was the British delegate to the Geneva Disarmament Conference, but resigned from this position in 1935 in protest at the British Government's refusal to support any practical scheme for mutual security and defence. That same year, she resigned from the head of the Towns Womens Guild but accepted the presidency of the Women s Freedom League instead. Around the same time, she became the vice president of the Fawcett Society.
Corbett Ashby continued to be active in politics after the Second World War. In 1952, at the age of seventy, she became editor of International Women's News. Her last political action was at the age of ninety-eight when she took part in the Women's Day of Action in London in 1980. She died at Danehill on 22nd May 1981.
Mary Stocks (1891-1975) was the daughter of Roland Danvers, a General Practitioner, and Helen Constance Rendel. She was educated at St. Paul's Girls' School, London and at the London School of Economics (LSE) where she studied economics, graduating in 1913. In 1913 she married John Leofric Stocks. Mary went on to have an academic career at the University of Oxford, LSE, King's College of Household and Social Science, Manchester University and Westfield College London, of which she was Principal from 1939-1951. Whilst still at school, Mary had become a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She carried a banner in the 1907 'Mud March' and stewarded at meetings, distributed literature, attended conferences and addressed street corner meetings. In 1914 she became a member of the Executive Committee of the NUWSS and in 1928 remained involved in the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. In addition she was active in the birth control movement and was a member of various royal commissions and statutory committees, including the Unemployment Statutory Committee. Mary Stocks also wrote and broadcast widely. Her publications include 'The Industrial State: A Social and Economic History of England' (1921), 'The Case for Family Endowment' (1927), a biography of Eleanor Rathbone and histories of district nursing, the Manchester University Settlement and the Workers Educational Association. In addition, she published two autobiographical volumes, 'My Commonplace Book' (1970), which contains an account of her suffrage activities, and 'Still more commonplace' (1973). She was created a life peer in 1966. She died in 1975.
Margaret Eleanor Scott (1859-1929) was born in Norwich in 1859. Between 1872 and 1876 Scott was apprenticed as a pupil teacher of St Paul's City Trust School, Norwich and received a Bishop's Certificate of Norwich diocese for five years of scripture examinations. She gained a first class Queen's Scholarship in 1876, and went on to study at Norwich Training College between 1877 and 1878, gaining a first division certificate. Between 1879 and 1884, and again in 1889, Margaret Scott studied at Cambridge University, focusing mainly on sociology, physiology and history. Scott taught at a number of schools during the 1880s including Cringleford Public School, Norwich between 1878 and 1881, St Paul's City Trust School, Norwich between 1881 and 1883, Marylebone Queen's Scholarship Class of the Central Classes for Training Young Teachers and Wordsworth College for Training Teachers, Kilburn, in 1887. Scott was also headmistress of All Souls' Schools, South Hampstead during the 1880s. During the 1890s Scott was Special Lecturer to the National Health Society and lecturer on hygiene, domestic economy, history and literature to the Central Classes for Teachers, Marylebone. She went on to co-write Domestic Economy: Comprising the Laws of Health in their Application to Home Life and Work with Arthur Newsholme in 1893. In 1897 Scott was on the committee of the Norwich Sanitary Aid Commission, she had gained a diploma for proficiency in Sanitary Knowledge granted by the Sanitary Institute (London), and was the only woman in the United Kingdom qualified to act as a Sanitary Inspector under the Public Health Acts during this period. Scott married Edward Pillow, an engineer and later Organising Secretary for Technical Education, Norfolk County Council, in 1891. They had two sons, Edward and Henry Montgomery. Margaret Scott died in 1929.
ME Roberts (fl 1881-1968) was born around 1881. She became a member of the Sheffield branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) around 1906 before leaving this to join the local branch of the Women's Freedom League which came into being around Dec 1908 after Charlotte Despard and her associates followers broke away from the Pankhursts and other WSPU's leaders. Roberts seems to have taken part in the Pageant of Women that was held in Sheffield in 1910. She would later become the local secretary of the Sheffield WFL. In 1909 she took part in a deputation to 10 Downing Street to hand in a petition to the Prime Minister. She kept an interest in the militant suffrage movement throughout the 1930s, keeping in correspondence with the Record Room of the Suffragette Fellowship. In 1940 she moved to Liverpool where she lived for the rest of her life. She retired to a home around 1968.
Frances May Greenup (1902-1998) was born in 1902, the daughter of George Tuckwell, a police constable. At the age of fourteen she began her training as a pupil teacher in Coleshill, Warwickshire. In 1922 she went on to study at St. Gabriel's College, Camberwell, London. Once qualified she took up a teaching post in Tottenham. Two years later, in 1926, she married the artist Joseph Greenup (1891-1946). He had been educated at the Birmingham School of Art, South Kensington College of Art and at the Royal Academy School and he worked as an illustrator for newspapers, books and periodicals and as a portrait painter. In the 1930s May also took up painting and was elected to the Royal Institute of Water Colourists. In 1940 she joined the Auxiliary Ambulance Service as a driver and was promoted to Station Officer at 39 Weymouth Mews, London. Joseph died in 1946 and after his death May left London to live in the Cotswolds and then in Cardiganshire with her friend Elizabeth Bridge (1912-1996), also an artist, and continued to teach and to paint. She died in 1998.
Marjorie Hayward (1905-1974) was born in 1905 and attended Maida Vale High School before working with the Federation of British Industries as a typist. From 1928-1930 she was the London Correspondent of the Commercial Bulletin of South Africa and later moved to the press office of ICI. She remained in this position for 11 years undertaking promotional work on dyes and agricultural products across Europe and introducing the zip to the designer Schiaparelli on a visit to Paris in the late 1930s. In 1940, at the start of the Second World War, she left ICI to work in the Ministry of Labour Headquarters. There, she became involved with a survey of woman-power available to industry in 1942, undertaking fieldwork and interviews at labour exchanges. This work for the SE1 Department resulted in a report co-written with Isabel Harrison and KD Matheson, highlighting the lack of involvement of married women with children and their failure to return to industry as the government had requested that year. After this and until the end of the war, she remained involved with the Employment Planning Committee at the Ministry where she stayed until 1959. During this time, she also became involved with Business & Professional Women's Clubs, sitting on its Employment Conditions Standing Committee in the post-war period. After her time at the Ministry, she became involved in film production, making a number of art-related films that were distributed by the British Council. In 1963 she joined with Audrey Mitchell and Don Pavey to form Hayward, Mitchell and Pavey Limited, a firm of colour practitioners that wrote, photographed and produced five filmstrips on colour for educational use. The company was also involved in creating colour schemes for buildings and making decorative features as well as writing a series of training courses on the business use of colour and design. Hayward was awarded an OBE. She died in 1974.
May Morris (1862-1938) was born on the 25 Mar 1862, christened 'Mary', and was the younger of William and Jane Morris's two daughters. Both she and her sister Jenny were accomplished embroiderers - taught by their mother and by their aunt, Bessie Burden - and in 1885 May took over the direction of Morris and Co.'s embroidery department. She also actively assisted her father in promoting the cause of Socialism in the 1880s and 90s. At the turn of the century she taught embroidery at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and at Birmingham's Municipal School of Art, becoming a leading figure in the (mainly male-dominated) Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris was an accomplished Embroiderer, jeweller, and fabric designer; she was also the first President of Women's Guild of Art (founded 1907). Her Introductions to The Collected Works of William Morris, 24 volumes edited by her and published between 1910 and 1915, contain many illuminating details of Morris's career and his family life.
Mollie Prendergast (1907-fl 1977) was born in 1907, in Hallthwaites, Cumberland, the daughter of George Shaw, a farm labourer and Mary Shuttleworth. She grew up near Boughton in Furness, Lancashire. Mollie left school in 1920 and went into service in Ambleside and later at Malton in Yorkshire. She then moved to London and held several positions there. In 1928 she married Wesley Packham, a chauffeur and subsequently gave up work. During the Second World War she joined the ARP and trained with the St. John's Ambulance Brigade. In 1942 she joined the Communist Party. During the War she also took evening classes and went to work as a clerk in the insurance conglomeration Amalgamated Approved Societies that became part of the Ministry of National Insurance after the War. She was amongst the first tourists to visit East Germany after the War and she also travelled to Switzerland, Austria, Spain, France, Australia, Czechoslovakia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Her husband died in 1951. After this Mollie Prendergast became involved in political action in health and housing, especially locally in Marylebone and St. John's Wood, and went on political marches and demonstrations, including with CND. In 1958 she married for a second time, to Jim Prendergast, a railway guard at Marylebone Station. He died in 1974. Mollie then became secretary to Joan Maynard MP, a position from which she retired in 1977.
Rose Lamartine Yates (1875-1954) was born in Brixton in 1875 to French parents. She studied at Clapham and Truro High Schools, at Kassel and finally at the Sorbonne. Yates studied modern languages at Royal Holloway College in 1896, but did not complete the course, though she did pass the Oxford final honours examination in modern languages and philology. She met her husband, Tom Lamartine Yates, a solicitor, through the Cyclists Touring Club in 1900. In 1907, Rose was elected as its first woman member, stating during the election process that she was not a suffragette. In 1909, she joined the committee of the Wimbledon branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), becoming its treasurer and organising secretary in 1910. The Wimbledon branch of the WSPU were renowned for their militant suffrage campaigns. Yates took the step of maintaining her right of free speech on Wimbledon Common after the Home Secretary attempted to prevent public meetings being held in open spaces by drafting in 300 policemen. The start of the First World War saw the Wimbledon branch converting its offices into Distress Kitchens of which Rose was Treasurer. This was followed by the opening of another soup kitchen in Merton. After the fragmentation of the WSPU, Yates became a committee member of a new organisation 'Suffragettes of the WSPU'. Yates was responsible, together with Una Dugdale Duval, for establishing the Suffragette Record Room that opened in 1939.
See the biography for Billinghurst; Rosa May (1875-1953); suffragette
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 & 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.
No further details are known about Phyllis Vickers.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
George Grove became a member of the Council and Executive Committee of the proposed Royal College of Music (RCM) in July 1881, and became its first Director in 1882, rather through his abilities in organizing the many fund raising and administrative meetings required prior to the College's opening than by an official appointment. Through Grove, the Director's role gained wide-ranging powers of policy and administration subject to the College's Council. Grove retired in 1894. He was succeeded by Sir Hubert Parry (1895-1918), Sir Hugh Allen (1919-1937), Sir George Dyson (1938-1952), Sir Ernest Bullock (1953-1959), Sir Keith Falkner (1960-1974), Sir David Willcocks (1974-1984), Michael Gough Mathews (1985-1983) and Dr Janet Ritterman (1993-).
The Board of Professors was established from the outset of the College in 1883, in continuance of a similar system previously operating in the National Training School for Music, to assist in general educational matters and policy within the College. The first Board consisted of 10 professors, supported by a larger panel of 30 other teachers. In 1975 the Council decided that three additional members of staff appointed by the Board of Professors were to be eligible to be members of the Council.
Bela Ivanyi-Grunwald (1902-1965) was born the son of a well known Hungarian painter of the same name and grew up in an artists' colony. He studied history at Budapest University and completed a Ph.D thesis on the proposed economic reforms of Count Istvan Szechenyi (1791-1860). As a result he was commissioned to edit a critical text of one volume of Szechenyi's collected works. This work with its lengthy introduction by IG was ground breaking for its time and established IG as economic historian. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War IG left his post as Reader in Hungarian History at Budapest University to take up a scholarship to Britain in order to study the activities of the exiles of the 1848-1849 Hungarian War of Independence. While he was in Britain war broke out and after Hungary entered the war IG renounced his (Hungarian Government funded) scholarship in protest and applied for political asylum which was granted. He lived in Britain for the remainder of his life. He became a regular contributor to the Hungarian Service of the BBC and was lecturer in Hungarian at SSEES 1947-1965. He wrote a number of works including a monograph on Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894) and also a biography of Szechenyi which were never published. His interests went beyond Hungarian history to include various aspects of British history such as eighteenth century dissenters and Catholic recusants. IG also became a collector of books, prints, maps and pamphlets.
Aleksandr Valentinovich Amfiteatrov (1862-1938) was born in Russia. He became a fairly well known journalist and popular novelist. In 1902 he was exiled for writing a satirical article on the imperial family. He returned, then emigrated to France in 1905. During the First World War Amfiteatrov returned to Russia once more and in 1916 became editor of the nationalist newspaper "Russkaya volya". He left Russia for the last time in 1920 to settle in Italy. In 1927 he joined an anti-Soviet secret Society "Bratstvo Russkoi Pravdy" [Brotherhood of Truth]. He died at Levanto, Italy in 1938.
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Reginald Robert Betts (1903-1961) was born in Norwich. After completing his studies at Oxford University he took up a post there as a temporary lecturer. This was followed by positions as lecturer at Liverpool and Belfast Universities. In 1934 he became a professor at Southampton University. As a medieval historian, Betts specialised in the history of Bohemia but later developed a great interest in the modern Czechoslovak state, becoming an expert in Czech affairs. This knowledge led to his appointment at the BBC, during the later years of the Second World War as editor of the broadcasting service for Czechoslovakia and later of the whole European service. After the war Betts was briefly, 1945-1946 a professor at Birmingham University before becoming Masaryk Professor of Central European history at SSEES in 1946, a position he held until his death. He was also head of the History Department at SSEES until 1957.
(Mary) Daisy Waldegrave (1871-?) was the daughter of Granville Waldegrave, 3rd Baron Radstock. She married Edwyn Bevan.
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The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published the "Economic and social history of the World War" series.
Professor Francis (Frank) William Carter was Head of the Department of Social Sciences at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at University College London (UCL) and Honorary Fellow of the UCL Geography Department. After attending Wulfrum College of Education in Wolverhampton, he studied at the universities of Sheffield and Cambridge and the London School of Economics. He lectured at King's College before joining UCL in October 1966, where he researched primarily the historical geography of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, covering themes such as agriculture, migration, city development and the environment.
Sources: Clout, Hugh 'In Memorium Francis William Carter 1938-2001: An Appreciation' in Nations, Nationalism and the European Citizen; 'Foreign Direct Investment and Regional Development in East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union: A Collection of Essays in Memory of Professor Francis 'Frank' Carter (Ed. Turnock, David 2005) and Turnock, David 'Obituaries: Francis William Carter 1938-2001' in The Geographical Journal Vol. 169, No. 3 (Sep. 2001) pp. 275-276
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Hilda Fowlds (1891-1931) became a teacher after graduating from London University. She was appointed headmistress of William Gibbs' School Faversham, Kent in 1921. She made several visits to Eastern Europe particularly Hungary where she made a number of friends. It was while visiting Hungary in September 1931 that she became one of some thirty people killed in the Biastorbagy railway disaster when the Budapest-Paris Express was derailed by a bomb.
Vaclav Havel (1936-) was born in Prague and first published his writings in literary journals in 1955. In 1968 as a result of his campaigning for human rights Havel was identified by the Czech Government as a dissident. Resultingly in 1971 his works were officially banned and later Havel was forced to take work in a brewery. In 1977 Havel was a co-founder of Charter 77, a human rights movement. He was put under house arrest and in 1979 was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for sedition. During this time his plays were becoming better known and performed in the West. In 1988 Havel assumed leadership of the Civic Forum opposition group and after the resignation of the Communist Government he was elected President of Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) in 1989.
Petar Hektorovic (1487-1582), was a Croatian nobleman and well known figure in sixteenth century Croatian literature. He lived on the island of Hvar which was at that time under Venetian rule but was under threat from invasion by the Ottoman Empire which had conquered most of South-Eastern Europe at that time.