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Joanna Southcott was born in Devon in April 1750, the daughter of a farmer. She promised her dying mother that she would devote her life to piety, and rejected all her suitors to work as a maid or labourer in households in and around Exeter. It was not until she was 42 years old, in 1792, that she began to experience the voices and visions which were to make her a celebrated public figure. She was spoken to by a voice which predicted future events. Joanna attempted to interest clergy of several denominations in her prophesies, sending them sealed copies of her predictions to be opened after a certain date - thus proving her foreknowledge of events. In 1801, spurred by the correct predictions she had made for 1796-1800, she spent her life savings and published a book of her prophesy entitled "The Strange Effects of Faith". Her publication was a success and began to attract followers. Joanna moved to London and received the patronage of Jane Townley, who promoted her cause, welcomed Joanna into her household and provided her with a maid to act as her amanuensis. Between 1801 and 1814 Joanna published 65 pamphlets outlining her prophesy and spiritual vision, becoming one of the most popular writers of her time. In 1815 it is estimated that her followers numbered 20,000.

At the age of 64 she claimed to be pregnant with Shiloh, the second coming of Christ. She was due to give birth in November 1814 but despite experiencing labour pains no child was forthcoming and instead Joanna died in London on 27 December 1814. An autopsy found no foetus, although the doctor noted swelling in the abdomen which could have mimicked the symptoms of pregnancy and caused pain similar to labour.

After Joanna's death a core of her inner circle kept the faith quietly, and protected the 'great box', which contained sealed prophecies that were to be opened some time in the unspecified future. In 1816 the box was passed to Jane Townley, and upon her death in 1825 to Thomas Philip Foley, and finally in 1835 to Foley's son, the Revd Richard Foley. In 1839, in order to gain control of Southcott's legacy, Lavinia Taylor Jones (niece of Lucy Taylor, one of Joanna's Exeter employers) dressed as a man to enter Richard Foley's rectory, where she tried to steal the box. Soon after that, rival boxes began to appear. As recently as 1977, the Panacea Society, a twentieth-century millenarian group dedicated to Southcott, claimed to know the secret whereabouts of the true box.

Source: Sylvia Bowerbank, 'Southcott, Joanna (1750-1814)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

In 1819 there were two Methodist meeting houses in Edmonton, (W Robinson, The History and Antiquities of Edmonton, 1819, p 186). One of these was probably replaced by the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Fore Street, built in 1860. In 1909 the trustees purchased the freehold of the "Manor House", a site adjoining the chapel, for the building of the Edmonton Wesleyan Mission or Central Hall, which was opened in 1911. The old chapel and school were demolished and new Sunday school premises erected on the site in 1929. The Edmonton Methodist Church was part of the Stoke Newington Methodist Circuit until about 1896 when it joined the Tottenham Circuit. In 1941 Edmonton was one of the churches which constituted the Enfield Circuit.

A Methodist place of worship was first registered in the Tottenham area in 1765. Numbers grew slowly until a period of rapid expansion in the 1860s which encouraged the building of new chapels. The original 1765 chapel was rebuilt on a larger scale in 1867 and an ambitious construction project - to build 50 new chapels - was begin in Wood Green in 1871. In 1896 Tottenham became the head of a large circuit stretching from Seven Sisters Road to Cheshunt and had one of the most active communities in North London. A circuit is normally a group of churches in a local area served by a team of ministers. A minister will have pastoral charge of one or more churches, but will preach and lead worship in different local churches in the circuit, along with local preachers. The arrangements for leading worship in a circuit are drawn up in a quarterly Plan.

In 1882 a Roman Catholic chapel was opened in Hampton Wick, and in 1884 a Roman Catholic school was built in Fairfax Road, South Teddington. The ground floor served as a school and the upper floor as a chapel until the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Kingston Road was opened in 1893. Built of red brick in the classical style, this consisted at first of five bays and was extended westwards in 1935 by another two bays. The church was consecrated in 1944.

Source: 'Teddington: Roman catholicism', A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 3: Shepperton, Staines, Stanwell, Sunbury, Teddington, Heston and Isleworth, Twickenham, Cowley, Cranford, West Drayton, Greenford, Hanwell, Harefield and Harlington (1962), pp. 79.

Princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was born on 17 May 1768 at Brunswick, the second daughter of Karl II, duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and Princess Augusta, sister of George III. She was married to George, Prince of Wales on 8 April. The Prince was reportedly the worse for alcohol and had to be supported to go through the ceremony. This inauspicious beginning heralded a series of quarrels between the royal couple. Caroline alleged that throughout the honeymoon the Prince consorted with his drunken cronies and ignored her. On his part, the Prince took offence at Caroline's accusation that he had mistresses, refused to change his social and domestic habits for her benefit, and demanded that she should submit to his authority, which she refused to do.

The only child of this stormy marriage, Princess Charlotte Augusta (1796-1817), was born on 7 January 1796. Caroline had attempted to live on amicable terms with George, but he neglected her and she became increasingly lonely, bored, and resentful. The inevitable separation took place in 1796. Caroline left Carlton House in 1797 and went to live in a rented house near Blackheath. The Prince would have forbidden her access to her child, but King George III, who always favoured Caroline, insisted that she should be allowed to visit Charlotte.

Caroline made no attempt to exploit her situation politically. She remained prominent in society and entertained frequently at Blackheath, often in an informal and high-spirited atmosphere. During the Regency she was excluded from the court and only with difficulty could she obtain permission to see Charlotte, who was educated under the Prince of Wales's supervision. Caroline therefore decided to leave England, and set off on a series of travels, initially to Brunswick but shortly afterwards around the Mediterranean. Almost weekly reports came in of indiscreet and scandalous behaviour, improper entertainments in which she took part, and extravagant and theatrical behaviour which became a subject of scandal in the newspapers, providing further ammunition for her estranged husband in his efforts to divorce her.

As soon as George IV became king Caroline set off for England to claim her position as Queen. She was met at St Omer by Henry Brougham, whom she made her Attorney-General, and by Lord Hutchinson on behalf of the Cabinet who brought a proposal, reluctantly accepted by the King, to give her an annuity of £50,000 provided she would not cross the Channel nor claim the title of Queen. She refused, despite Brougham's plea to her to negotiate a settlement. She was now being advised by Matthew Wood, an alderman and former Lord Mayor of London, who represented a group of metropolitan radicals who wanted to use her to stir up opposition to the king and the government. The Queen's arrival became, as the government had feared, the occasion for widespread public rejoicings. She reached London on 6 June and went first to Alderman Wood's house in South Audley Street, later renting Brandenburg House at Hammersmith. Throughout the proceedings against her in the summer and autumn of 1820 she was the focus of many demonstrations, receiving over 350 addresses of support from all sections of the population, many from groups of women who saw her as a symbol of the oppression of their sex. She also had the support of The Times and many other opposition or radical newspapers. She herself had no interest in or sympathy with radicalism, but her cause was now overtly political as the nation divided into two camps.

The Cabinet, spurred on by the vengeful King, unwillingly prepared a bill of pains and penalties to strip Caroline of her title and to end her marriage by Act of Parliament. The bill was introduced into the House of Lords on 17 August. It was one of the most spectacular and dramatic events of the century. The Queen's progresses to and from Westminster to attend the 'trial', as it became known, were attended by cheering crowds; deputations by the dozen visited Brandenburg House to present addresses, the newspapers published verbatim accounts of the Lords' proceedings, and the caricaturists on both sides had a field day. So obscene were some of the prints against the King that over £2500 was spent in buying them up and suppressing their publication. Against this proof of public support for the Queen the 'trial' was doomed to failure. The witnesses were clearly unreliable and were discredited by the cross-examination of her counsel, Henry Brougham and Thomas Denman. Many of the witnesses were believed to have been bribed or intimidated, and the widespread knowledge that George himself had had several mistresses added to the belief that Caroline was a victim, if not an entirely innocent one, of royal and political persecution. In the end, though the circumstantial evidence against her was strong enough to convince many peers of her guilt, many also feared that her condemnation would spark off popular rioting or even revolution. Ministers realized that even if the Lords passed the bill the House of Commons would almost certainly reject it under intense pressure from their constituents. The bill passed its third reading in the Lords by only nine votes and Liverpool, the Prime Minister, announced on 10 November that it would proceed no further.

Caroline had not, strictly speaking, been acquitted of the charges against her, but the public verdict was in her favour as a wronged woman unjustly persecuted by a husband no better than she was. A great crowd turned out to witness her procession to a thanksgiving service organized by her supporters in St Paul's Cathedral on 29 November 1820, when the psalm ordered for the service was no. 140-'Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man'. Nevertheless, attempts to exploit her victory were unsuccessful. The Cabinet rejected her demand for a palace and the King refused to let her be crowned with him. He was supported by the Privy Council who declared that a Queen had no inherent right to coronation, which was at her husband's discretion. When she tried to force her way into the Abbey on coronation day, 20 July 1821, she was humiliated by being refused entry and she was jeered by the crowd that had so recently acclaimed her.

Caroline now accepted the Government's offer of an allowance of £50,000 a year if she went to live abroad, but less than a fortnight after the coronation she was taken ill at the theatre, and after a short but painful illness she died, apparently of an intestinal obstruction, on 7 August 1821. She wished to be buried beside her father at Brunswick, and the British government was only too anxious to get her corpse out of the country. Her funeral procession was intended to pass round to the north of the City of London to avoid public demonstrations. The cortège was intercepted by a crowd at Hyde Park Corner and forced to go through the city after a battle with the Life Guards in which two men were killed by the soldiers. The coffin was eventually embarked from Harwich, her supporters placing on it as it left British waters the inscription 'Caroline, the injured Queen of England'. Her body was taken to Brunswick and laid in the ducal vault on 24 August.

Source: E. A. Smith, 'Caroline (1768-1821)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004.

In 1878 the Primitive Methodists registered a chapel in Western Road, Southall. A new chapel building, standing on the corner of Western and Sussex Roads, was erected in 1876-1877. This was the first Methodist building in the Southall area.

John Wesley preached in Hillingdon and Uxbridge in 1754 and 1758, but there is no other evidence of 18th-century Methodist activity. By 1851, however, there were five Methodist meetings in Hillingdon. The Methodist Central Hall was erected in 1930 at the junction of High Street and Park Road. In 1957 Lawn Road Primitive Methodist congregation was amalgamated with that of Central Hall. The Central Hall was renovated and extended in 1959 to meet the increased demand.

Highgate or Jackson's Lane Wesleyan Methodist church was opened in 1905, on a site at the corner of Archway Road. The building included a Sunday school and was designed by W. H. Boney of Highgate. The church seated 650 and the schoolroom 400. Jackson's Lane was well known during the 1960s for its counselling centre. The church was closed in 1976.

There was said to be a congregation of about 30 Wesleyans at Isleworth in 1810, but they did not open a chapel until 1829, in North Street. A new chapel was built in 1924 in Twickenham Road, just south of North Street.

Trinity Wesleyan Methodist chapel was built in 1899 at the corner of Walm Lane and Dartmouth Road, Willesden. The church was closed in 1948.

The Local Government Act 1894 made provision for local self-government in England and Wales in the form of parish councils for every rural parish with a population of 300 and upwards. The existing rural and urban sanitary authorities became the new district councils. Further re-arrangement of districts was carried out by review, by county councils under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1929.

Rating remained in the hands of the parish overseers in 1894, although under the Public Health Act 1875 a general district rate was levied by the urban authorities. The Rating and Valuation Act 1925 abolished the rating powers of the overseers of the poor and named the new rating authorities as the councils of every county borough and urban and rural districts. A consolidated rate - 'the general rate' - replaced the confusion of various separate rates. In addition, a new valuation list was to be made for every rating area, to come into force on either 1 April 1928 or April 1929, followed by a second list in 1932, 1933 or 1934. Instructions were given in the act for draft valuation lists and records of totals to be made.

Summary of constituencies of Sunbury and Staines District Councils:

Sunbury Urban District Council:

Sunbury UDC included Sunbury Common, Charlton and Upper Halliford, Shepperton (including Lower Halliford and Shepperton Green), Ashford Common and Littleton. By the Middlesex (Feltham, Hayes, Staines and Sunbury-on-Thames) Confirmation Order, 1930, the parish of Shepperton and parts of Ashford and Littleton were transferred to Sunbury Urban District on the dissolution of Staines Rural District. As a result of local government re-organisation in the Greater London area, Sunbury Urban District was transferred to the administrative county of Surrey with effect from 1 April 1965.

Staines Urban District Council:

Staines UDC included Staines, Ashford, Laleham, Stanwell (including Stanwell Moor and Poyle). As a result of local government re-organisation in the Greater London area, Staines Urban District was transferred to the administrative county of Surrey with effect from 1 April 1965.

Staines Rural District Council:

Staine RDC included Ashford, East Bedfont with Hatton, Cranford, Hanworth, Harlington, Harmondsworth, Laleham, Littleton, Shepperton, Stanwell (part). On the dissolution of Staines Rural District in 1930, East Bedfont with Hatton and Hanworth were transferred to Feltham Urban District, Cranford and Harlington to Hayes and Harlington Urban District, and Harmondsworth to Yiewsley and West Drayton Urban District. The remaining areas were transferred to Sunbury and Staines Urban Districts, as detailed above.

In 1974 the Urban Districts of Sunbury and Staines became part of Spelthorne Borough Council, in the administrative county of Surrey.

The German Evangelical Reformed Church was established in London in 1697 by Protestant refugees fleeing religious oppression in the Palatinate. William III permitted services to be held in the chapel of the Savoy Palace. A new church built in Duchy Lane, Savoy, on the site of a French Church was consecrated in 1771. It was closed and demolished in 1816 to make way for the construction of Waterloo Bridge. A new church was consecrated in 1819 in Hooper Square, Leman Street, Whitechapel, which was in turn demolished as the site was required for railway purposes. The replacement church built in Goulston Street, Whitechapel, in 1886-1887 was destroyed by bombing in 1941.

A Methodist circuit is normally a group of churches in a local area served by a team of ministers. A minister will have pastoral charge of one or more churches, but will preach and lead worship in different local churches in the circuit, along with local preachers. The arrangements for leading worship in a circuit are drawn up in a quarterly Plan.

A Methodist circuit is normally a group of churches in a local area served by a team of ministers. A minister will have pastoral charge of one or more churches, but will preach and lead worship in different local churches in the circuit, along with local preachers. The arrangements for leading worship in a circuit are drawn up in a quarterly Plan.

Brentford is now part of the Richmond and Hounslow Methodist Circuit.

The Federation of Women Civil Servants (1916-1932) was founded in 1916 as women became employed in this sector. At the end of the nineteenth century, there was great opposition to women's employment amongst male employees, in contrast to employers' acceptance of a new workforce who worked for lower wages and was less inclined to industrial agitation. This hostility also affected the male-dominated trade unions of the period, especially those concerned with the Civil Service. This meant that women civil servants of the time continued to occupy separate and lower grades than those of men, and a marriage bar prevented them continuing to work after they became wives. It was not until the turn of the century that female trade unions agitation for equal pay and conditions with the male workforce began. The Federation of Women Civil Servants was established in 1916 as an amalgamation of the Federation of Women Clerks and the Civil Service Typists Association. The Federation of Women Civil Servants represented all permanent and established female public servants other then writing assistants. Along with most of the civil service trades unions, was involved in efforts to introduce arbitration and militated for what would become Whitley Councils. After the end of the First World War such action helped bring about a major restructuring of the service. Grades that had been unique to each of the departments were now merged across the entire service to form four basic bands. However, the Federation was vocal in its opposition to the report presented by the official Joint Reorganisation Committee. Despite the statement of the Sex Disqualification Act of 1920 that 'women should have equal opportunity with men in all branches of the Civil Service and Local Authorities', it maintained there should be a separate selection process for women that did not involve the traditional examination and supported lower wages for women working in the same grades as men. When the mixed unions failed to support their position, the Federation withdrew from the staff side of the Council as well as from the Civil Service Alliance, losing its seat on the National Whitley Council in the process. The changes to the organisation of the Civil Service grades resulted in the merger of trade unions that had previously been structured around specific departments. When women were finally assimilated into the general grading system in 1920 as part of the restructuring, the Federation found itself weakened as members left for larger mixed unions that were better represented on the Whitley Councils. In 1928, the rules of membership were changes to allow them to affiliate temporary workers previously covered by the Association of Women Clerks & Secretaries. The resulting situation led to the eventual amalgamation of the two in 1932 and the creation of the National Association of Women Civil Servants.

The Women's Employment Publishing Company Ltd (1913-1974) was established by the Central Employment Bureau for Women around 1913-1914 in order to deal with its publications. The Central Bureau had been issuing the twice-monthly journal 'Women's Employment' since 1899 and other occasional publications in connection with their work and the Women's Employment Publishing Company continued this work from the head office in Russell Square. In addition to the main periodical, the press was also responsible for the publication of numerous editions of 'Careers (later, and 'Vocational Training'): 'A Guide to the Professions and Occupations of Educated Women and Girls', 'The Finger Post', 'Hints on how to find work' and 'Open Doors for Women Workers'. The directors just before the outbreak of the Second World War were H John Faulk (Chair), Miss ER Unmack (Managing Director) and Miss AE Hignell (secretary). Despite problems caused by this disruption and a decline in the number of readers in this period, the company survived and continued publishing 'Women's Employment' until 1974. The Bureau seems to have ceased functioning at around the same date.

The Women's Engineering Society (WES) (1919-) was founded in 1919 and largely financed by Lady Margaret Eliza Parsons, who acted as its first President while Dame Caroline Haslett served as first General Secretary between 1919 and 1929. Lady Moir acted as President between 1928 and 1930, followed by Verena Holmes between 1930 and 1932, Amy Johnson (1934-1937) and Caroline Haslett (1939-1941). The WES emerged from the Engineering Committee of the National Council of Women. This had been set up to look at the position of women employed in munitions. In spite of the restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, compelling many employers to dismiss women workers, enough women remained in engineering and enough women wanted to enter the profession to make the WES worthwhile.

The Society was initially based in London, but other branches soon followed in Newcastle, Manchester and the Midlands. The objectives of the organisation were: to promote the awareness of engineering as a prime creator of wealth in society and the contribution women can make to it; to promote the training and education of women engineers, to ensure women engineers can influence the process of policy formation and decision-making in government and other organisations; to foster good practice in the employment of women engineers in order to enable them to progress equally with male colleagues; to provide a network of members and support.

The first Annual Conference was held in Birmingham in 1923. The Council met four times per year. Additionally, the society launched the Verena Holmes Lecture Fund in 1969 to encourage young people to join the engineering profession and to give career advice. The Caroline Haslett Memorial Trust awards university scholarships. The official organ of the society, since 1919, was 'The Woman Engineer', published quarterly.

The WES launched and kept close links with the Electrical Association of Women. In 1925 the Society, with outside help, organised the Conference of Women in Science, Industry and Commerce held at the Empire Exhibition, Wembley. In 1934, the WES persuaded the International Labour Organisation to amend the Washington Convention on the issue of women working during the night.

Ira Rischowski (fl 1899-1977) was born in Germany in 1899 and trained as an engineer receiving a Dipl. Ing. VDI, a German degree which corresponds to the English B.Sc. She was an active member of the German anti-Nazi and socialist group 'Org.' in the 1930s and after having been shortly imprisoned in 1935 she emigrated to Britain with her husband. When she came to Britain she worked as a draughtswoman and planning engineer at Tuvox Ltd., Middlesex from 1942 to 1944, but then transferred to James Gordon Ltd, London where she made a career from draughtswoman to Head of Projects Department in 1956 and where she worked until her retirement.

She became an Association member of the WES London Branch on 27.11.1939, a full member in 1949 and an Honorary member in 1977. She served on the London Branch Committee, was a member of Council from 1948, was Chair of the Equal Pay Sub-Committee and of the Training and Opportunities Sub-Committee.

Women in Libraries (1979-1990) was founded in 1979, relatively late in the history of women working in libraries. In 1909 a survey found that 41 percent; of librarians were women. By the 1960s, however, 70%; of the profession were female. Despite this rise, women's wages in the area remained lower than those of both their male colleagues and women in other professions. In 1979, Sheila Ritchie undertook research into the positions and pay of female librarians and produced an article entitled '2000 to 1: a sex oddity' which was published in 'Assistant Librarian' in Mar 1979. It contained a statistical analysis of figures on women in the field and highlighted the fact that though women staffed most public libraries, it was male staff that dominated senior positions in the profession. In response to this, and together with Sherry Jesperson, Avril Rolph, Jane Little, Jane Allen and Briony Vitow, she helped found the first feminist group for women working in this field. In 1979 a meeting of 20 women was held at the Polytechnic of Central London and an inaugural conference was held in the spring and attracted over 200 women that arrived at three principle points. These were: firstly, the rights of women as employees in the profession and as library users were not being given proper attention; secondly, a movement was needed to put this right; thirdly, it should not be restricted to feminist librarians, but open to all women, staff and users. Following a meeting in Sep 1980 organised by Avril Rolph and Sherry Jespersen, a group of around 10 women, initially known as 'The Feminist Library Workers' Group', held regular meetings to organise a conference, which was held in Feb 1981 at the Polytechnic of Central London. It was based on two main themes: women's position as workers in libraries and women's role in libraries as those both choosing and using books. Workshop sessions were held to discuss related topics. Sheila Ritchie and Jane Little (one of the organising group) were guest speakers. At the end of the meeting, a group was formally brought into being, entitled 'Women in Libraries', and a majority vote decided that it should be open to women only.

This group was initially put forward as the Library Association Group for Women's Interests and Education but was rapidly changed to Women in Libraries. The subscription was £5 and a newsletter entitled WiLPower was issued on a regular basis. Quarterly meetings were held, though changes were soon made to the structure of the group, which would move it from being a traditionally structured organisation to a looser collective framework. Initially it was also decided not to affiliate to the Library Association so as not to exclude non-members of the Association from the group. Their attempts to be accepted as a Group of the Library Association (LA) failed because of their policy of restricting membership to women only and because of the perception that their aims were political rather than professional. In order to be able to affiliate, they opened up membership at all members of the Library Association and other interested parties. They then redefined themselves as a body in existence to provide a forum for members to identify and work towards the solution of problems common to women in libraries and the library profession by several means. Those were: collecting and disseminating information relevant to the personal development of women in libraries and the profession; working with members to identify continuing educational needs for women library workers and provide appropriate educational opportunities; to provide mutual support and assistance to women library workers; to provide advice to library workers of either sex who felt they had been subject to sexual discrimination; and to promote the involvement of women in the Library Association.

Through the national management and new local sub-groups, they continued to encourage writing on women in libraries and held workshops which were later published as well as running career development programmes and monitoring of stereotyping in library stock. Additionally, they were active in raising and discussing areas of interest such a job-sharing that later became official practice, later became official practice. It ceased its work in the early 1990s.

Alice Helena Alexandra Williams (1863-1957) was born on 12 Mar 1863 at Castel Deudraeth, in Wales. The youngest of 14 children of David Williams MP, she had no formal education. During the first World War, Alice Williams worked for the French Wounded Emergency Fund. With friends, she set up the Signal Bureau in Paris, to give advice to those searching for the injured, the missing and refugees. The French government subsequently awarded her the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise. A keen supporter of the Women's Institute movement, she became the president of the Deudraeth group and gave the ground and raised funds for the building of Britain's first Institute Hall at Penrhyndeudraeth. Williams was elected to the National Federation of Women's Institutes, as their first Honorary Secretary and then to the Executive Committee that superceded it in Oct 1918. When this position was abolished to make way for that of paid General Secretary, Williams once more took the role until she resigned to devote more time to her other position of founding editor of its journal, 'Home and Country' in Oct 1919. She retired as editor in 1920. In addition to her work with the Women's Institute, Alice Williams was also responsible for the setting up of branches of the Lyceum Club in Paris and Berlin. In 1919 she was the founder and the first chair of the Forum Club in London. She also took the chair from 1928 until 1938. Her watercolours were frequently exhibited, and she was a member of the Union des Femme Peintres et Sculpteurs, Paris and of the Union Internationale des Aquarellistes, Paris. Williams was a writer specialising in poetry and verse that commemorated special occasions. She also wrote a number of published plays and pageants such as 'Aunt Mollie's Story' (1913), 'Britannia' (1917), 'Britain Awake: An Empire Pageant Play' (1932) and 'Gossip' (1935). She was made a bard under the name of Alys Meirion in 1917 and received a CBE in 1937. She died on the 15 Aug 1957, aged 94.

A Muriel Pierotti (1897-1982) was born in Bristol in 1897 and her family moved to London when she was ten. Her mother joined the Women's Freedom League shortly after moving to London and involved her daughters from an early age. Muriel's father, a committed socialist, worked as a Post Officer sorter before working in the Assistant Controller's office at the PO headquarters at Mount Pleasant. Muriel was educated at elementary schools, leaving her London Secondary School at 18 for a wartime position in the Civil Service. Muriel qualified as a secretary and worked for some years at a hospital school in the country, run by Mrs Kate Hervey, a friend of Mrs Despard. When the hospital school closed, Muriel moved to the National Union of Women Teachers in 1925, becoming Assistant Secretary in 1931. When Miss Froud retired as General Secretary in Sep 1941, Muriel replaced her and remained in post until the NUWT closed down. She wrote its history 'The story of the National Union of Women Teachers' in a pamphlet published in 1963. Muriel Pierotti was closely involved with a number of women's campaigning organisations throughout her life. She was a member of the Women's Freedom League, before 1918, along with her sister Lilian (who died in 1956) and knew both the Pethick-Lawrences and Charlotte Despard. She remained with the organisation throughout the 1920s and was active in the campaign for equality of suffrage until 1928 when it was granted. In 1925, she was the author of a pamphlet entitled 'What We Have and What We Want!' She was also an active trade unionist and involved with the Equal Pay Campaign which took place during the 1940s and 1950s. She continued to engage with the issues affecting the status of women throughout the next few decades, becoming a member of the Joint Standing Committee of Women's Organisations in the 1940s to consider questions relating to the civil and political status of women. Muriel was also involved in organising the production of Jill Craigie's film 'To Be A Woman' which was co-sponsored by the NUWT and the Equal Pay Campaign Committee. She was also a member of the Status of Women Committee from 1945 to 1978.

Betty Heathfield (1927-2006) was born into a mining family in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. She attended Chesterfield Girls' School and won a university scholarship, which she did not take up for financial reasons. Instead she left school at sixteen to work as a secretary in a local engineering company and became interested in left-wing politics, joining the Young Communist League. In 1953 she married Peter Heathfield, a miner who became the general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers. She was active in her own right in labour politics in Chesterfield, as a member of the Co-Operative Women's Guild, and a founding member of the Derbyshire Women's Action Group. She became one of the spokeswomen and leading members of the national Women Against Pit Closures organisation during the miners' strike of 1984-1985. Alongside Anne Scargill she led the support campaign for miners' families - organising financial aid, holidays for children, and touring the USA and Canada to raise support for British mining communities. She also took part in an oral history and writing project to document the experiences of women during the action. After the end of the strike, Heathfield studied for a politics degree at Lancaster University. She was also involved in a Women's Co-operative Guild Age Exchange Theatre Company project on the history of the Guild. After suffering from Alzheimer's disease she died on 16 Feb 2006.

Georgina Agnes Brackenbury (1865-1949) studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1888-1900. She was a member of both the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the Women's Social and Political Union. She was arrested in Feb 1908, after taking part in a raid on the House of Commons and was sentenced to six weeks in Holloway Prison. After her release, she continued in militant suffrage activities and was imprisoned for a month in 1912 for smashing windows. She was the daughter of Hilda Brackenbury (1832-1918) and sister of Mary Brackenbury (1866-1946), who were both also involved in militant suffrage activity.

Bayard Simmons (fl.1906), author, poet and contributor to 'The Freethinker', was a member of the Men's Social and Political Union for Women's Suffrage. He was the first man to go to prison for the cause of women's suffrage, spending two weeks in Brixton Prison in 1906.

Charlotte Despard (1844-1939) was born in 1844, the daughter of Captain William French and Margaret Eccles. In the 1850s her father died and her mother became mentally ill, resulting in the child being sent to London to live with relatives. Her early experiences in London led her to become politically radical at a young age but she was not active until after her marriage in 1870 to Maximilian Despard a wealthy Anglo-Irish businessman (one of the founders of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank), who was, like her, a rich radical Liberal. Charlotte supported Home Rule for Ireland from 1880. In 1874 Despard published her first novel, Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow which would be followed by several more in rapid succession. Her husband died in 1890, and she emerged from the resultant depression through involvement in social work at the Nine Elms Mission in Battersea where she would eventually move the following year. From 1894-1903 she acted as a poor law guardian in Vauxhall, taking on more responsibility as a school manager in 1899. In this period her political views became more marked, supporting the Marxist Social Democratic Federation and eventually being nominated as one of their representatives at the second International in 1896. This association continued until 1906 when she became a member of the Independent Labour Party. For a short time she was involved in the Union of Practical Suffragists and then the Adult Suffrage Society that called for votes for women of all levels of society. However, these affiliations were later to go into abeyance when she became a leader of the militant suffragette movement alongside the Pankhursts. Her initial reaction to the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was hostile due to their willingness to accept a socially limited franchise and in 1906 she spoke out against them at the first meeting of the Women's Labour League. It was the former Labour Party organiser Teresa Billington-Greig who finally convinced her to become a member and in the summer of 1906. After the resignation of Sylvia Pankhurst and the arrival of Emmeline and Christabel in London, Despard became the Joint Secretary of the WSPU with Edith How-Martyn, while also becoming active on a practical level. In Feb 1907 she was arrested during the demonstration from the 'Women's Parliament' held in Caxton Hall to the Houses of Parliament and was sentenced to three weeks in prison. However, in the Spring of 1907, rifts began to grow between Despard and the Pankhursts when it became clear that WSPU election policy meant that the group were effectively supporting Conservative candidates as a means of opposing Liberal candidates. Despard, How-Martyn, and Anne Cobden Sanderson jointly sent a message to the Independent Labour Party conference to state that they would not take part in any by-election where a Labour Party candidate was standing. This was immediately publicly repudiated by Emmeline Pankhurst.

In Sep 1907, the WSPU's annual meeting was cancelled by the Pankhursts and the group's constitution changed without consultation of members. However, Despard and Billington-Greig together organised another conference for the intended day and effectively began the Women's Freedom Party that still took a militant approach but concentrated on non-violent illegal methods. The following year, she spent five months touring the country in a caravan. 1909 began with her being arrested for leading a delegation to speak to the Prime Minister, but was discharged after five days for ill health. The following month she was officially elected president of the Women's Freedom League. In 1911 she was one of those who organised resistance to the census which took place that year as well as becoming the editor of 'the Vote'. The sheer range of her activities caused some colleagues to question her focus as leader of the WFL and dissent began to grow, resulting in the resignation of Billington-Greig and attempts to oust her from the leadership of the organisation after the failure of the Conciliation Bill in 1912. In the event, it was the majority of the executive board that resigned and Despard remained in place and attended the Budapest Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance the following year in this capacity. When war was declared in 1914 the Women's Freedom League rejected the pro-war stance of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the WSPU which both suspended their suffrage campaigns.

Instead, in 1915, Despard joined the Women's International League, the National Council for Civil Liberties, the Women's Peace Crusade and the No Conscription Fellowship and in 1917 she resigned as President of WFL to concentrate on working for the Women's Peace Crusade. Also in 1917 she attended the convention of the British Socialists in Leeds in 1917 at which the Revolution in Russia was welcomed and where she was elected to the provisional committee of the Workers' Socialist Federation. After the Qualification of Women Act was introduced in 1918, Despard stood as the ultimately unsuccessful Labour candidate in Battersea in the post-war election, having resigned as the leader of the WFL.

Despard had been interested in Irish politics from a campaigning visit to Dublin in 1909. She was strongly in favour of Home Rule, but after the death of the hunger-striker Terence Macswiney she committed most of her time and money to the cause of communism in Ireland. She moved to Ireland in 1920 and thereafter only visited London briefly each summer. She lived and worked with Maude Gonne in Dublin to create a reception centre for displaced people as well as campaigning against the British policy of internment. Despard formed the Women Prisoners' Defence League, which was later banned. Despard also paid for the establishment of a factory intended to give employment to Republicans who were economically discriminated against. In 1921 she moved to Roebuck House a mansion outside Dublin that would frequently be raided by the police looking for IRA members who found a safe house there. However, she later resigned from Sinn Fein as a response to the factionalism of its members. She visited the Soviet Union in 1930, and took the decision to move from Dublin to Northern Ireland in the wake of an attack on the Irish Workers' College, which she had financed for some time. In moving to Belfast she handed Roebuck House to Maude Gonne. In the mid-thirties, her finances were becoming strained and she was declared bankrupt in 1937. Nonetheless, she continued to fight Fascism until her death as a result of a fall at her home in Nov 1939.

Daisy Dobson (fl 1927-1950) was the friend and private secretary of Dr Agnes Maude Royden, the pacifist and Christian preacher. Dobson accompanied Royden on her lecture tours of the world, sending reports home to friends and family.

Dorothea M Barton (fl.1890-1933) was born Dorothea Zimmern sometime towards the end of the nineteenth century. She became a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in the early part of the twentieth century and was university educated, receiving at BA before 1912. By this time, she had also become active in the Women's Industrial Council, many of whose members were also active in the suffrage movement and which worked closely with the NUWSS and Women's Freedom League in the area of improved pay and conditions for female workers. Together they argued that when women achieved the vote, employers would be forced to improve their situation and that, on the other hand, enfranchisement itself was the best way of improving industrial conditions for women overall. With this in mind, The Women's Industrial Council set about acquiring information about industrial problems and Barton, as its Assistant Secretary, undertook an investigation of the wages and conditions of women in 1912. In Jun 1912 she gave a paper to a conference on the prevention of destitution which was later published as 'The Wages of Women in Industry' by the council. She published a series of articles on the issue through the Council, including, 'Clothing and the Textile Trades: Summary Tables' (with LW Papworth) and 'The Trade Boards: Table of Minimum Rates', in 1912. She also wrote 'The Civil Service and Women', for 'The Political Quarterly' in 1916, and 'Women's Wages' in 1912 for The Women's Co-operative Guild in 1912.

She appears to have become interested in the Fabian Society around 1913, and her longstanding interest in the suffrage movement in America led her, in 1915, to become a member of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. In 1915 she was also the Honorary Secretary of the Training School Committee of the Council. By 1914 she had become a Lady Inspector of the Board of trade and possibly a member of the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries the following year. She appear to have married her husband WJ Barton, the headmaster at the College in Epsom, around 1915 or 1916, moving form London to the Headmasters' House there at this time. Her interest in the issues of women's equal pay and conditions appears to have subsisted after the war and she was asked to deliver a paper on women's wages to the Royal Statistical Society in 1919 while the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship published her article 'Equal pay for equal work' that same year. It is likely that Barton was the first person to deposit an archive with the Fawcett Library (now The Women's Library) on 15 Mar 1933, when she presented her 'notes on women's wages etc' to them.

Vera Douie (1894-1979) was born in Lahore in 1894, the daughter of a British Civil servant in India. She was educated at the Godolphin School, Salisbury before going on to complete her studies at Oxford University before degrees could be taken by women. She subsequently became a library assistant at the War Office Library from 1916 until 1921, the year in which she became the indexer of 'The Medical History of the War'. She later became the librarian of the London National Society for Women's Service at the Women's Service Library at Marsham St, London between 1926 and her retirement in 1967. It was Douie who, during this period, laid the foundations of its transformation into the Fawcett Library (now The Women's Library). She was active in the women's movement throughout her life and was particularly involved in the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene. During the Second World War she was a fervent campaigner for equal rights and published 'The Lesser Half' on behalf of the Women's Publicity Planning Association in 1943, examining the 'laws, regulations and practices introduced during the present war, which embody discrimination against women'. After the war, she also published Daughters of Britain: an account of the work of British women during the 2nd World War (1950). When she retired in 1967, she was awarded the OBE for her life's work. She died in 1979.

Miss Elizabeth Dowse (fl 1824-1828) set off in Sep 1826 to spend a winter at Nice with a friend sent there for the 'recovery of her health'. She appears to have travelled with a Mrs Athersole and the latter's niece, Miss Nevill. While presumably based in the South of France for two years, Miss Dowse travelled at various times in Switzerland and Italy. On 21 Sep 1828, the steam packet George IV brought her 'once more to old England'. The following day she states that she was 'at home at my father's after an absence of four years'. She must have been living in France 1824-1828.

Emily Faithfull (1835-1895) was the youngest child of Reverend Ferdinand Faithfull, rector of Headley in Surrey, and his wife, Elizabeth Mary, on 27 May 1835. She was educated both at home in Headley, Surrey and at a boarding school in Kensington, from the age of 13 before being presented at court in 1857, aged 21. She was a member of the Langham Place Group. Emily had a keen interest in women's employment that later led her to write and give lectures on the subject. In 1859 she was a co-founder of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, together with Jessie Boucherett, Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes. Emily also served as secretary to the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science's Committee in Nov 1859. Bessie Rayner Parkes was also a member of this committee and it was she who introduced Emily to the printing press. Emily founded her own printing house, The Victoria Press, in Mar 1860. It was a printing office for women typesetters, housed in Great Coram Street, later in Farringdon Street and then Praed Street, London. Emily being appointed Printer and Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty in 1862 acknowledged its success. From 1863 to 1880 she published and edited the Victoria Magazine that became a voice for those championing women's employment. In 1864, due to her close friendship with his wife, Helen Jane, she was involved in the public scandal of the divorce case of Admiral (Sir) Henry Codrington that affected her public reputation. Emily became one of the first women to join the Women's Trade Union League, founded in 1875 by Emma Paterson. She also served as Treasurer to a girls' club in Lamb's Conduit Street in Bloomsbury and on moving to Manchester, ran the local branch of the Colonial Emigration Society. In 1872 Emily made her first visit to the United States where her talks were well received, she re-visited in 1882 and 1883-4 and produced a book entitled Three Visits to America (Edinburgh, 1884) which compared the movements for women's work in England and America. She also published two novels. In 1874 Emily was involved in establishing the Women's Printing Society and a few years later, in founding 1877, the 'West London Express', which unfortunately only lasted eighteen months. Emily was on also the staff of the 'London Pictorial'. Ownership of 'The Victoria Press' was transferred to the Queen Printing and Publishing Company in Apr 1881. In the same year Emily helped found the International Musical, Dramatic and Literary Association, which was concerned with securing better protection through copyright. Emily was fortunate to receive £100 from the royal bounty in 1886 and from 1889 received an annual civil-list pension of £50. After suffering for many years with asthma and bronchitis, Emily died 31 May 1895 in Manchester aged sixty.

Elizabeth Gundrey (fl 1959-1975) was a journalist and author of 'Jobs for Mothers'. Prior to this Elizabeth wrote articles on the employment of middle class wives and on widowhood. She also wrote a paper for the National Economic Development Committee on recruitment and training of married women in the retail trade.

Edith Maud Hull (1880-1947) (née Henderson) was an author who wrote using the pseudonym EM Hull. She was also known as Edith Maud Winstanley. She was born in London to James Henderson, a Liverpool shipowner, and Katie Thorne, of New Brunswick, Canada. In her youth she travelled in Algeria, which may have provided the inspiration for her later novels. She married Percy Winstanley Hull (b 1869), a gentleman pig farmer of Derbyshire, in the early 1900s. They lived at The Knowle, the Hull family estate in Hazelwood, Derbyshire, and had one daughter, Cecil Winstanley Hull. EM Hull began to write romantic fiction during the First World War while her husband was serving in the military. Her first and most famous novel, The Sheik (1919), was a bestseller, and was made into a phenomenally successful film starring Rudolph Valentino. It was considered exotic and shocking at the time, contributing to the fashion for the 'desert romance' genre of fiction and turning EM Hull into a bestselling novelist. She went on to write seven more books, including Sons of the Sheik (1925), which was also made into a film with Valentino. EM Hull died at home in Hazelwood, Derbyshire on 14 Feb 1947.

Emily Wilding Davison was born in Blackheath in 1872. She attended Kensington High School and then Holloway College. However, two years into her course her father died and she was forced to leave to become a governess. She was subsequently able to pay for a course a St Hugh's College at Oxford. She sat her final examinations in 1893 when she took a first-class degree. She was subsequently employed by the Church of England School for Girls in Edgbaston from 1895-6 before moving to Seabury School in West Worthing. She then move again to Berkshire where she again became a governess until 1906, the year in which she joined the Women's Social and Political Union.

She was employed by the Women's Social and Political Union as chief steward at the Hyde Park procession in June 1908 and was one of the nine arrested in March 1909 when a deputation marching from the Caxton Hall to the Houses of Parliament was prevented from seeing the Prime Minister. She was arrested a second time in July when after interrupting a meeting in Limehouse addressed by David Lloyd George. This time the sentence was doubled to two months and Davison went on hunger strike. She was released after five days, beginning the long series of arrests, imprisonments and releases after force-feeding that would make up much of the rest of her life. In September she was arrested with Dora Marsden for throwing balls labelled 'bomb' through the window of a meeting in Manchester, received a two month sentence and was released after two and a half days having gone on hunger strike. Unable to find work, she became a paid organiser of the WSPU from April 1910. She managed to enter and hide in the House of Commons three times between 1910 and 1911, and was the first to embark on a campaign of setting fire to pillar-boxes. During her imprisonment in Holloway in 1912, she threw herself over landing railings on two separate occasions, incurring injuries which would continue to afflict her. On the 4th June 1913, she tried to seize the bridle of Anmer, the King's horse running at the Derby. She received head injuries and never recovered consciousness, dying on the 8th June. Her funeral was preceded by a large funeral cortege that became one of the iconic events of the campaign for Women's Suffrage. The service took place at St George's Church, then the coffin was taken by train to the family grave in Morpeth in Northumberland. After her death, she became an almost mythic figure in popular culture and her memory was perpetuated both within the movement and beyond.

Florence C Stevens (c.1890-), her sister Eleanor Stevens, and her friend Rose Barry were supporters of the women's suffrage movement. Florence played in the Drum and Fife Band of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which was formed in 1909, during the summer of which it regularly marched round Holloway Prison to play inspiring music, and also played for special suffrage events and activities. Patricia Woodlock was a member of the WSPU in Liverpool and was repeatedly imprisoned for her suffrage activities. Her release from Holloway Prison after serving three months in Jun 1909 was celebrated by the WSPU by a breakfast in London and receptions in Manchester and Liverpool.

Sylvia Haymon (1917-1995) was born Sylvia Rosen in Norwich on 17 Oct 1917, the daughter of a Jewish master tailor. She was educated at the London School of Economics but did not complete the course, instead marrying Mark Haymon in 1933. During the Second World War she worked in the United States, where she was employed by a New York toyshop as a buyer. She returned with the first of her two daughters to Britain in 1947 where she became a broadcaster, working with Woman's Hour in the early 1950s. She also became a freelance writer for The Lady, The Times and Punch until the late 1960s, writing articles on subjects including the militant suffrage movement at the start of the century. It was at the end of this decade that she began writing children's books, Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1969, and King Monmouth the following year. Subsequently she began to publish crime novels under the name of S T Haymon, the first being Death and The Pregnant Virgin in 1980, followed by Ritual Murde' in 1982, for which she won the Silver Dagger Award. She published seven of these in all, in addition to two volumes of autobiography: Opposite the Cross Keys (1988) and The Quivering Tree (1990). She died, three years after her husband, in Oct 1995.

Hilda M L Squire, born in 1898, was the daughter of J Edward Squire (1855-1917) a wealthy doctor involved in public health and hygiene. Her aunt was Rose Elizabeth Squire (1861-1938) who had a distinguished career as a Factory Inspector at the Home Office. Their grandfather was William Squire (1825-1899) physician to Lord Cardigan. Hilda studied history and biology in 1915 at one of the Oxbridge colleges and in 1917 was educated at Francis Holland Church of England School, where she was Head of her school year. During 1918-1919 Hilda worked as a VAD, after which she studied for the examinations of the National Health Society. She was awarded diplomas in hygiene, physiology, child welfare and tuberculosis. Furthermore, she qualified under the Sanitary Inspectors Examination Board in 1920. Her career in health visiting started with her working at the Royal College of Saint Katherine in Poplar. She worked here for two years as an Infant Health Visitor. In 1926 Hilda was awarded a certificate in Social Science and Administration from the London School of Economics. She also gained a certificate from the Institute of Hospital Almoners. Following on from this, Hilda spent ten years working at Brompton Hospital, during the 1920-1930s, as a hospital almoner. At the same time, she was also a Tuberculosis Visitor and Secretary to the Tuberculosis Committee of the Chelsea Tuberculosis Dispensary. During [1949-1951] Hilda worked at the Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases as Lady Almoner. Whilst here she specialised in neurological illnesses, such as epilepsy. Hilda was involved with various organisations during her busy career. These included the National Association for Mental Health (1943-1953), the British Council for Rehabilitation (1947-1951), the National Association for the Paralysed (1950-1961 also a founder member), the British Epilepsy Association (1950-1951 also a founder member), the British Rheumatic Association (1953), the British Council for the Welfare of Spastics (1955) and the Queen Elizabeth Foundation for the Disabled from 1966. As a representative of the Institute of Almoners, Hilda served on the councils of the Chalfour Epileptic Colony (1948-1957), the Courtauld-Sargent concert club (1932-1936) and the Mobile Physiotherapy Service Association Limited (1956-1958). She died in 1991.

Rose Squire (1861-1938) was born in London, the daughter of William Squire, a surgeon, and his wife Martha Wilkinson. After being educated at home, she trained in 1893 as a lecturer in health and hygiene. She was the first woman to sit for the sanitary inspector's certificate, in 1894, and worked as a sanitary inspector of laundries and workshops. In 1895 she became a lady inspector of factories, working throughout the country. In 1903 she was appointed senior lady inspector, from 1908-1912 she was based in Manchester, returning to London in 1912. From 1906-1907 Squire was a special investigator to the royal commission on the poor laws. During the First World War she worked with the Ministry of Munitions, where she was involved in the promotion of good factory working conditions, and in 1918 was appointed director of their women's welfare department. She received an OBE in 1918. In 1920 she became the first woman to hold an administrative post in the Home Office. She retired in 1926 and died in 1938.

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was born in 1802, the daughter of Thomas Martineau, a textile manufacturer from Norwich and his wife Elizabeth Martineau. Both were Unitarians and were in favour of education for girls. Consequently, Harriet and her two sisters were taught in a similar way to their three brothers until the latter left for university. Harriet became deaf at an early age. She began writing while in her period of 'mourning' when her brother James, to whom she was closest, left for university. Her first article, 'Female Writers On Practical Divinity', was published anonymously in The Monthly Repository in 1821. Whilst in 1823 the Unitarian journal, The Monthly Repository, published her anonymous article, 'On Female Education', which described the differences between the sexes as being caused by differing methods of training. Martineau was engaged to John Hugh Worthington but he died of 'brain fever' before the marriage took place. This, combined with the financial difficulties (resulting from the economic crash of 1826) and death of her father, necessitated her earning her own living and freed her to pursue a writing career. she continued to work for the 'Monthly Repository' to support herself. Additionally, she began writing religious works such as Devotional Exercises for the Use of Young Persons and Addresses for the Use of Families, both published in 1826. Martineau worked as a seamstress, taking in sewing at home (as opposed to working in a 'sweat shop'), sewing during the day and writing at night until the 'Illustrations' was accepted for publication. Harriet's interest soon moved to politics and she created the series of stories entitled Illustrations of Political Economy, in order to popularise the utilitarian theories of Bentham and Priestly and the economic of Smith. When the series of 24 volumes was published in 1832-3, they became a huge success and were followed up by Poor Laws and Paupers illustrated (1834). The profits enabled her to set up home in London and undertake a two-year tour of the United States of America. She based two books on this experience: Society in America (1837) and Retrospect of Western Travel (1838). Martineau remained ambivalent towards women's suffrage, arguing that until women had education, access to professions, and economic independence, their votes would be compromised by the men in their lives. She was, however, keen on the Garrisonian branch of the abolition movement, because it focused on emancipation and included women activists, as opposed to more politically-oriented groups as illustrated in one of her chapters entitled 'The Political Non-Existence of Women'.

In this period despite increasing illness, and in addition to her political and historical works, Martineau began writing different genres. Her only novel Deerbrook was published in 1839; followed by a historical biography The Hour and the Man in 1840; and a series of novelettes for children The Playfellow in 1841.

She moved to Ambleside in the Lake District in 1845. In 1847 Harriet went with friends on a tour of the Near East for eight months, returning with the manuscript of 'Eastern Life Present and Past', published in 1848. The proceeds from this work paid for her to build her own home in Ambleside. The work was well received but the religious views that it presented were treated with some hostility. During this period she also worked on The History of the Peace, which was published in 1849.

The publication of 'Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development' in 1851 was received with more hostility. In this work Martineau advocated agnosticism. The scandal with which it was received was due partly to her insistence that three of the world's primary religions - Judaism, Islam, and Christianity - grew out of the same geographical area and the same, or similar, theological systems, and were not necessarily incompatible. The scandal was also due to her challenge to the dating of human life and cultures, as presented in the scriptures. Martineau, as well as her historical and anthropological sources (Wilkinson, for example) predate the scientific revolution heralded by Darwinism, by nearly twelve years (1859). Martineau's views expressed in 'Letters on the Laws' also destroyed the relationship between her and several members of her family.

Harriet returned to journalism in 1852 as a member of staff at the Daily News where she wrote over 1600 articles during a 16-year period. Harriet also contributed articles for other publications, including pieces on the employment of women for the Edinburgh Review and on the state of girls' education for the Cornhill Magazine. Plagued by invalidism periodically throughout her life, ill health became a problem again in 1855 and she wrote an autobiography in that year in the belief that she was dying. However, she recovered and continued with her career in journalism for approximately another twenty years. Harriet was always interested in and vocal on women's employment, women's education and the legal position of married women. In 1866 she joined Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Emily Davies, Dorothea Beale and Francis Mary Buss in creating and presenting a petition asking Parliament to grant the vote to women. Harriet also campaigned for women's entry into the medical profession. From 1864, and again in 1869, Harriet was active in the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts in which she would later be joined by Josephine Butler. Eventually, ill health began to restrict her public activities during the 1870s, though she continued to write until her death. She died of bronchitis aged 74 in 1876.

Hilda Mary Seligman (fl. 1936-1947) founded the "Skippo" Fund, which supplied the first health vans to serve isolated villages in India and Pakistan. The Fund's 'Asoka-Akbar Mobile Health Vans' were given to the All India Women's Conference to administer. She was the author of three small books: When Peacocks Called (1940), Skippo of Nonesuch (1943), Asoka, Emperor of India (1947).

Judith Hubback was born in 1917, the daughter of Sir John Fisher-Williams. She graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1936 and married Eva Hubback's son the following year. After her marriage she taught until the first of her children was born but later returned to part-time coaching. In the late 1940s, Judith Hubback's mother in law, Eva Hubback, began a survey on housewives which was to have formed the basis for a chapter of a book on contemporary women. However, she died suddenly in 1949 before this could be completed. Judith Hubback took the information that the survey had revealed and analysed the data it contained, then wrote to the Manchester Guardian with the results. By 1950, she began work on expanding the survey and applied for funds from the government to conduct an inquiry into the part-time work available for married women but failed to gain the grant necessary. Instead, she reformulated her study to research the conditions and opinions of married female graduates and received a grant of 50 pounds from the Leche Foundation to carry it out. The survey was conducted from her home, sending out questionnaires to 1500 graduates, and had a 65% response rate. From the data which she received, she wrote the pamphlet 'Graduate Wives' in 1953 and the book Wives Who Went to College in 1957, both of which proved landmark works in the field. Hubback subsequently became involved in Jungian psychotherapy, training to be a psychotherapist at London University College and practising as a Jungian analyst from 1963 to date. She also published a series of articles in this field as well as books of poetry.

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.

Mary Ann Rawle (1878-1964) was born in Lancashire in 1878 and from the age of ten worked in a cotton mill. In 1900 she married Francis Rawle, an iron turner, with whom she had two children. She became active in local industrial politics and was a member of her local branch of the Independent Labour Party at Ashton-Under-Lyne. Six years later she was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and was one of the group of 400 women textile workers who went as a deputation to the Prime Minister on 19 May 1906. During this event, she came into contact with Teresa Billington-Greig, Annie and Jessie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, and accompanied the group who was allowed into the Foreign Office on that occasion. In the autumn of that same year, she assisted Hannah Mitchell when she was appointed a part-time organiser for the WSPU in Oldham. In Mar 1907 she attended the second Women's Parliament (dressed in shawl and clogs) and was arrested in London and sentenced to two weeks in Holloway Prison. In 1907, however, she left the WSPU for the Women's Freedom League and became the secretary of its Ashton-Under-Lyne branch. She moved to Grantham in 1910 and presided at a branch meeting of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies there in 1913. She would later stand as a Labour candidate in the Grantham municipal elections and was chair of her branch of the Women's Co-operative Guild for 17 years. In 1945 she was chair of the Grantham branch of the Old Age Pensions Association. She died in 1964.

Mary Beatrice Crowle (1874- fl 1930) was born in Brisbane in 1874, the daughter of Mr WE Finucane. In her lifetime she was a suffragist, voluntary worker, health practitioner, holder of public office and broadcaster. After her marriage to the naval officer Captain Crowle, she began a series of travels that would eventually end in her settling in England. Crowle was active in the suffrage movement in the pre-war period, becoming a member of the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association by 1913 and the honorary secretary of the Plymouth branch in the following year. During the first year of the First World War she worked with the Red Cross as a nurse and established a Ladies Rifle Club in the naval town. The following year, she was one of the first members of the local branch of the Women's Police Force and began lecturing on the role of her native Australia in the war. In the post-1918 period when women had been given a vote, she became a member of the committee of the Bath and District Women Citizens' Association and was elected to the Bath Union Board of Guardians. During the 1920s she became involved with broadcasting and became a Selborne Society Lecturer, following this activity in the 1930s by joining the League of Nations Union. Towards the end of her life, she became concerned with issues of vivisection and homeopathic medicine.

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.

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.

Margaret Judith Smieton (fl 1919-1925) decided to study for the newly instituted BSc in Horticulture in 1919. However, admission to the course was complicated by the need to obtain other qualifications and apply for grants to take up places on these courses. Her mother undertook an extensive correspondence with the University of London between 1919-1922 to ascertain available types and scope of horticultural degree courses, qualifications for grants, terms of admission etc. Consequently, in 1923, Smieton obtained a Diploma from the Horticultural College in Swanley, and went on to take Parts 1 and 2 of the Final Degree course for the BSc in 1924-1925.

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.

Pat Caplan (fl 1970-) studied Swahili and anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She became an ethnographic expert on Mafia, an island off the coast of Tanzania, and also worked in Nepal, Madras and Britain. Pat Caplan was one of the founding members of the Anthropology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, which she joined as a lecturer in 1977. She became Professor of Anthropology in 1989 and continued to teach until 2003. She is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology. She was also Director of the University of London Institute of Commonwealth Studies 1998-2000 and Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth 1997-2001. Her interests have included gender and social inequality; sexuality; kinship; food, health and risk; reflexivity and anthropological ethics; social justice and human rights. She has carried out fieldwork on Mafia Island, Tanzania since 1965, Chennai (Madras) since 1974, and West Wales since 1992. She has authored five books and edited or co-edited six others, as well as writing numerous articles, both academic and non-academic; she has also produced a video and website (both about Mafia Island), a digital data archive about food and health, and an archive on her Nepal research. Caplan became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement in the early 1970s, being a member of several local reading and consciousness-raising groups in north London. She also worked as a volunteer for two days a week at the Women's Research and Resources Centre (WRRC) in the mid 1970s, when it was still located in its first home at the Richardson Institute in Gower Street. Pat was a member of the (General) Collective and of the Publications Collective. Like many women academics at the time, Pat initially found it difficult to obtain a full-time university job. Many female academics held only part-time or temporary posts and this was often the experience of members of the WRRC. Pat attended the National Women's conferences held throughout the 1970s, and also conferences in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s concerning the teaching of women's studies (mainly in universities). As an academic she has remained active in feminism, and has taught a number of courses on women and gender as well as carrying out research in this area. She is currently a Trustee of the development charity Action Aid, and has responsibility on the Board for women's rights.

Sarah Madeleine Martineau (1872-1972) was a successful Arts and Crafts jeweller. She was born in Clapham, London on 2 May 1872, to Utilitarians David and Sarah Martineau. Sarah, known as Lena, and her two unmarried sisters probably remained together in the family home until the 1940s, living near or with each other in South London until their deaths. Lena began her education boarding at Roedean School in Sussex. She initially attended Clapham Art School, and subsequently attended Westminster School of Art with her sister Lucy and Sophie Pemberton, a Canadian artist. By autumn 1897 Lena and Lucy had found a studio to rent and in 1899 and 1900 Lena concentrated on submitting pictures to the Royal Academy, all of which were rejected. Later that year she sat a modelling design exam, passing first class, and a life exam which was awarded a book prize in the National Competition run by the Science and Art Department of the Committee of the Council on Education and entered by thousands of art students. In 1902 she decided to commit to metal work, buying a muffle furnace and a year later studying metal work at Sir John Cass Technical Institute in Whitechapel. She was also a member of the Sir John Cass Arts and Crafts Society. By 1904 she was an established jewellery maker, and in 1906 she had had two pendants accepted for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the Granfton Galleries. By 1909 she was showing her jewellery at various galleries and exhibitions, including the Society of Women Artists and was featured in 'Studio' magazine for various achievements. By the 1916 Arts and Crafts Exhibition her work was not exhibited suggesting she no longer actively participated in the arts and crafts scene. She died in 1972.

Lady Stella Reading (1894-1971) was born Stella Charnaud in 1894 in Constantinople where her father worked for the British Foreign Service. She was educated in Europe before becoming a secretary. She was posted to India as the secretary of the new Viceroy's wife before becoming part of the Viceroy's secretariat in Delhi. There, she met John Isaacs, the Marquis of Reading whom she would marry after the death of his wife in 1931. He died in 1935, soon after their return to England. Lady Reading became increasingly involved in social work such as the Personal Service League (PSL) and was elected to a number of committees as well as becoming a magistrate. Her work with the PSL meant that it was her that the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, approached to set up the Women's Voluntary Service for Air Raid Precautions in 1938. The organisation, which soon became known as the simply the Women's Voluntary Service or WRS, recruited and organised female volunteers before and during the war. After 1945, Lady Reading and the organisation continued their work and it was for this that she was created a Life Peer in Jul 1958, becoming the first woman to take her seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Swanborough. She died on 21 May 1971.

Una M Heler (fl 1977-1981) worked in the advertising industry for most of her life. She appears to have been a member of staff at the Rumble, Crowther and Nicholas Ltd advertising company working on a drink survey carried out between May and Jun 1949 and she was still working for Impact Stationers Ltd into the 1980s. In this capacity, she became a member of the Women's Advertising Club of London and sat on its Executive Committee at the end of the 1970s. In 1977 she took over the position of representative of the Advertising Club on the Standing Committee of the Advisory Council to the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, a position which she held until at least 1981.