John Coakley Lettsom ran a private practice in London from a house in Basinghall Street. In 1770 he became licentiate of the College of Physicians and FSA; in 1773 he was elected FRS.
Robert McCormick was born in 1800 near Great Yarmouth; his father, also Robert McCormick, was a naval surgeon of Irish ancestry. McCormick junior studied surgery at Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals, London, under Sir Astley Cooper (1768-1841) and gained his diploma in 1822, becoming a naval surgeon in 1823 and being posted to the West Indies. In 1827 he sailed with the expedition of the Hecla, under the command of William Edward Parry (1790-1855), to the north of Spitsbergen. In the ensuing years he was assigned to the West Indies, Brazil, the blockade off Holland and the West Indies once again before leaving active service and going onto half-pay in 1829. During the period 1829-1839 he devoted himself to the study of geology and natural history. In 1839 he joined the Antarctic expedition of the Erebus, under the command of James Clark Ross (1800-1862), as surgeon and naturalist; the expedition concluding in 1843. During 1845-1848 he was assigned to ships based at Woolwich Dockyard and came into conflict with the Admiralty over promotion. During the search for the expedition of Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), lost in the Arctic, McCormick argued that an open boat might profitably search up the Wellington Channel and in 1852, as surgeon of the North Star, he was able to undertake this: he returned to England in 1853 and in 1854 published his Narrative of a Boat-Expedition up the Wellington Channel in the Year 1852 (London: Eyre and Spotteswoode, 1854). McCormick was not subsequently active as a naval surgeon and again spent time in conflict over promotion. He was placed on the retired list in 1865 and died in 1890.
The author obtained his MD at Edinburgh in 1874 and was a Fellow of the Geological Society. After retirement from practice in London, he lived in Guernsey and was elected Jurat of the Royal Court: he died at Bournemouth.
James McGrigor was born in 1771 and entered the Army as a Surgeon in 1793. He served in Flanders, the West Indies and India. In 1801 he was Superintendent Surgeon in Egypt, in 1809 Inspector-General of Hospitals, and in 1811 Chief of the Medical Staff of Wellington's forces in the Peninsula. From 1815 to 1851 he was Director-General of the Army Medical Department. He died in 1858.
Patrick Manson was born in 1844 and studied medicine at Aberdeen University, passing M.B. and C.M. in 1865. In 1866 he became medical officer of Formosa for the Chinese imperial maritime customs, moving to Amoy in 1871. Here, while working on elephantoid diseases, he discovered in the tissues of blood-sucking mosquitoes the developmental phase of filaria worms. From 1883 to 1889 he was based in Hong Kong, where he set up a school of medicine that developed into the university and medical school of Hong Kong. Returning to London, he became physician to the Seaman's Hospital in 1892. He played a central role in the development of tropical medicine as a distinct discipline, publishing on tropical diseases, being instrumental in the setting up of the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1899, and becoming physician and advisor to the Colonial Office in 1897. He propounded the theory that malaria was propagated by mosquitoes, a theory to be proved by Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932). He was made F.R.S. in 1900 and K.C.M.G. in 1903; he died in 1922.
The writer has not been identified though he seems to have been at Leyden University, where he studied under Franciscus [Deleböe] Sylvius [1614-1672], who was Professor of Medicine there from 1658 to his death. [Cf. p. 412.] But a careful search through R. W. Innes Smith's 'English-speaking Students of Medicine at the University of Leyden' 1932, has failed to suggest an appropriate name. The author appears to have practised at or near Watford, and on pp. 118-121 he has an entry on 'Epidemic diseases in and about Watford in 1717'. He also speaks on p. 923 of 'my father [in law?] Berrow': a John Berrow was Vicar of Watford who died in 1713.
Not available.
Horatio Nelson was born in 1758 in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, the son of the rector, and entered the Royal Navy in 1770. In the early part of his career he served in various stations, rising up the ranks with occasional periods on half-pay. By 1797 he had risen to Commander and his role in the Battle of St. Vincent in that year led to his promotion to Rear-Admiral. In 1798 he annihilated the French fleet at the Battle of Aboukir Bay. In 1801 he was promoted to Vice-Admiral, led the British attack on Copenhagen, and was made Viscount Nelson. In 1803 he was appointed to head the Mediterranean fleet, eventually coming into conflict with the French and Spanish at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, in which he was killed in the course of the British victory.
The compiler was MD of Aberdeen University, and later Professor Emeritus of the same university. He was President of the BMA 1914, 1915 and Hon. Col. RAMC to the Highland (Territorial) Division in the First World War, serving in Serbia in 1915, and in Italy during the following two years.
Not given.
Pasteur's research on fermentation and rabies led to his discovery that most infectious diseases are caused by germs, the 'germ theory of disease'. He invented pasteurisation and his work became a key influence on developments in bacteriology and microbiology as well as in gerenal medical practise; The Pasteur Institute was founded in 1887 by Louis Pasteur; Louis Pasteur's grandfather was Jean Henri Pasteur, and his aunt Jeannette Pasteur, were both of Vuillafans, near Besançon. A cousin, Maximien Buchon, was of Salins;
Magnan family correspondence includes letters Marie and Louise Pasteur, Jules Raulin, Eugène Magnan, and Mathilde Magnan (afterwards Fournery); Jules Raulin (1836-1896), was Pasteur's first assistant, afterwards Sous-Directeur of Pasteur's Laboratoire de Chimie Physiologique at the Ecole Normale and Professor of Chemistry at Lyons. 1862-1884 and n.d; Louis Pasteur's assistant Fernand Boutroux, was the brother of Jeanne Pasteur; Henry Debray (1827-1888) and Eugène Viala were also assistants to Pasteur; Jules Vercel was a school friend of Pasteur's from Arbois.
Not given.
Not given.
The compiler was lecturer on chemistry at Bedford College from 1881 to 1888, and was elected FRS in 1890: he was later Director of the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm.
Sir D'Arcy Power was surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital and a distinguished medical historian.
The author qualified at Leeds University in 1924, and was pathologist at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford. His signature is found inside the upper cover of the 1935 volume.
William Saunders was physician to Guy's Hospital 1770-1802, and his lectures were very popular [see the Dictionary of National Biography].
Heinrich von Laufenberg was born, 1391; priest in Freiburg (Breisgau), and later dean of the cathedral; entered the cloister of the Knights of St. John, 1445; died, 1460.
The author is mainly distinguished for his association with the Wiener medicinisches Doctoren- Collegium, of which he became the head. He was later raised to the nobility and became K.K. Ober- Sanitätsrath and K.K. Medicinalrath. His chief publication was the Arzneimittellehre ... des Kindlicher Alters (Vienna, 1857).
G. Sisco was the first Professor of Clinical Surgery and Forensic Medicine at Rome University, and was appointed in 1788 by Pope Pius VI: he had held the Chair of Anatomy from 1781.
Unknown
Sir Thomas Grainger Stewart was MD Edinburgh in 1858, and appointed Professor of the Practice of Physic at the University in 1876; he was knighted in 1894 [see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography].
Dr Albert Wilson [1854-1928] was Medical Superintendent of the Essex County Asylum at Walthamstow, and in 1908 published 'Education, Personality and Crime' and 'Unfinished Man' in 1910.
G. W. Issac qualified at Edinburgh in 1882, and had a large practice in Bloomsbury, London [cf. B.M.J. 1931, ii, p. 681.].
Unknown
André Thoüin (1747-1824), head of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, also elected a Member of the Academie des Sciences in 1795; André's 3 younger brothers: Jacques Thoüin (1751-1836); Gabriel Thoüin (d 1829); Jean Thoüin (d 1827); Their nephew Oscar Leclerc [Thoüin] (1798-1845). Oscar was the son of their sister Louise Thoüin (b.c.1764) and the writer and Revolutionary activist Jean-Baptiste Leclerc (1756-1826).
All were linked with the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and the worlds of botany and agriculture in some capacity and the papers reflect this as their main concern; for more details on the various individuals see Le jardin des plantes á la croisée des chemins avec Andre Thoüin, 1747-1824, edited by Yvonne Letouzey (Paris, 1989).
Luca Tozzi obtained his MD at Naples in 1661, and was Professor of Medicine and Mathematics. He was later appointed Physician to the Kingdom of Naples, and in 1695 succeeded Malpighi as Papal Physician. He was a follower of the chemiatric theories of Van Helmont and Sylvius.
Gabriel François Venel was an eminent physician and chemist. He obtained his MD at Montpellier in 1742, took up the study of chemistry, and in 1757 was appointed professor of materia medica and chemistry at his old university, a post which he held until his death in 1775.
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).
Isobel Denby (fl 1905-1912) was an author active at the end of the nineteenth century. She appears to have undertaken a correspondence with a clergyman from 1905 to 1911. From this emerges a woman who is critical of the contemporary teaching of the Church of England on women. She specifically suggests revisions to the marriage service and advances thoughts on the role of women in the economic system of the time and in the ministry. The intense intellectual relationship between the author and the clergyman seems to have been ended in 1911 through the intervention of a female friend and the correspondence was published the following year as 'Unconventional Talks with a Modern DD Letters Sent and Unsent'.
Unknown.
Kay Pilpel (fl 1930s) grew up in the Jewish community of Stamford Hill, London, in the 1930s as the daughter of a lithographer. She attended Tottenham High School for Girls.
Louie Luker (1873-1971) was born in Kensington in London in 1873 to a family of artists. She studied art in Bushey, in Hertfordshire, under Hubert von Herkomer from 1900-1903 but emigrated to South Africa in 1904. There she worked as a painter before marrying Philip Burrell, only returning to Britain in 1908 for the birth of her daughter, Philippa. Her husband died in Durban before being able to join her. In London, she resumed her career as a portraitist and achieved considerable success as a society artist. She was also the General Secretary of Artists' Suffrage League. She became ill in 1912, subsequently recovering during a trip to Canada. Her career in Britain ended abruptly in 1914 when commissions stopped as the First World War began. In the light of this, she travelled to California where she spent the rest of the war and where she found a new audience. She returned to London in 1919 but was unable to find work. Instead she rented out rooms and became a cook until 1923 when she came to the attention of Mrs Stanley who became her patron. She travelled to India in 1928 where she painted members of the ruling classes including the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, and Field Marshall Sir William Birdwood. However, her career ended soon after due to ill health. She died in 1971.
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.
Mildred Anna Rosalie Tuker (1862-1957) was born in Apr 1862, the daughter of Rosalie du Chemin and Stephen Tuker. She was educated privately before studying moral sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1880 to 1883. Her work appears to first have been published in 1887 and she would continue to work as a writer until the period just before the outbreak of the Second World War. She spent the period in 1893-1910 mainly in Rome, which became her second home. Her most important works were The School of York in 1887, The Liturgy in Rome in 1897, Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical Rome in 1897-1900, Cambridge in 1907, Ecce Mater in 1915, The Liturgy in Rome in 1925 and Past and Future of Ethics in 1938. In the early part of the twentieth century she became involved with the women's suffrage movement as well as the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church. Her articles on Catholicism were published in a wide range of periodicals such as Hibbert's Journal and the Fortnightly Review. By 1911 she had become a member of both the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society and the Women's Social and Political Union. She published a number of articles in the pages of Votes for Women, signing herself MART, as well as being asked by Christabel Pankhurst to lobby MPs on a number of occasions. She took part in the series of major marches that took place in London in 1908 and 1910 and was in the Joint procession that took place in 1911. In addition to her suffrage and theological activities, she was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Arcadia, Rome and a Lady of Justice of the Order of St John of Jerusalem as well as being on the expert adviser's panel of the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women in 1927. Her writing focused on the historical position of women, particularly in the Christian religion, and the theological and ethical rationale for this. She died in Mar 1954.
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 Eliza Haweis née Joy (1848-1898) was the eldest daughter of the Victorian portrait artist Thomas Musgrove Joy and his wife Eliza. She herself painted and exhibited. She illustrated books, designed book covers and many of her woodcuts appeared in Cassell's magazine. However, she is best known as an important figure in the female literature of household taste that flourished in the 1880s, her most famous work being The Art of Decoration (1881). She wrote several books and also contributed widely to contemporary women's magazines, mostly on women's clothes and interior design. In 1867, aged 19, she married Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838-1901), popular preacher, musician, lecturer and incumbent of St James, Marylebone. The couple lived in Welbeck Street and later in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, at the centre of an intellectual, scientific and literary circle. The marriage was a difficult one, with her husband's extra-marital affairs causing pain to Mary Eliza. They had three children Lionel (b. 1878), Hugolin and Stephen (who was delivered by the female doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson). Mary died in 1898.
Lady Mary Gertrude Emmott (1886-1954) was born Mary Lees in Oldham in 1866. She was the daughter of John William Lees and Elizabeth Lees and was educated at Queen's College in London. She married the Liberal MP Lord Alfred Emmott in 1887, with whom she had two daughters. She became the Mayoress of Oldham in 1891, the same year that she became one of the original members of the Board of the Oldham branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This social welfare work was to continue through her life, she was the first woman to be elected to the Oldham Board of Guardians in 1898 and went on to represent the Women's Industrial Council on the Council of the National Association of Women's Lodging Houses in 1910. During the First World War she was involved in organising aid to Belgian refugees and in its aftermath she was appointed to the Chair of the Women's Subcommittee Advisory Council by the Ministry of Reconstruction. Her interest in housing was continued by her work as a member of the Housing Advisory Council overseen by the Ministry of Health, membership of the Advisory Council of the Local Government Board on Housing in 1919, membership of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association from 1932-3 and presidency of the Women's Homes Association in the 1930s. Emmott was also active in the area of women's status. She helped establish a branch of the National Council of Women in Oldham in 1897 and became the vice-chair of the Women's National Liberation Foundation. Later she would be successively a member of the Executive committee, president of the London branch and the Chair of the National Council of Women's Parliamentary Legislation Committee before being appointed acting vice-president in 1927 and president from the following year until 1938. She was also closely associated with the London Society for Women's Suffrage, as a member of the Executive Council from the end of the nineteenth century to its transformation into the Fawcett Society in 1951, of which she was elected President months before her death in 1954.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929) was born in Suffolk in 1847, the daughter of Newson and Louisa Garrett and the sister of Samuel Garrett, Agnes Garrett, Louise Smith and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. The sisters' early interest in the issue of women's suffrage and commitment to the Liberal party were heightened after attending a speech given in London by John Stuart Mill in July 1865. Though considered too young to sign the petition in favour of votes for women, which was presented to the House of Commons in 1866, Millicent attended the debate on the issue in May 1867. This occurred a month after she married the professor of political economy and radical Liberal MP for Brighton, Henry Fawcett. Throughout their marriage, the future cabinet minister supported his wife's activities while she acted as his secretary due to his blindness. Their only child, Philippa Fawcett, was born the following year and that same month Millicent Garrett Fawcett published her first article, on the education of women. In Jul 1867, Millicent Garrett Fawcett was asked to join the executive committee of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage and was one of the speakers at its first public meeting two years later. She continued her work with the London National Society until after the death of John Stuart Mill in 1874, when she left the organisation to work with the Central Committee for Women's Suffrage. This was a step which she had avoided taking when the latter was formed in 1871 due to its public identification with the campaign for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Fawcett, despite her support for the movement's actions, had initially believed that the suffrage movement might be damaged by identification with such controversial work. However, the two groups later merged in 1877 as the new Central Committee for Women's Suffrage and a new executive committee was formed which included Fawcett herself. Her influence helped guide the group towards support for moderate policies and methods. She did little public speaking during this period but after the death of her husband in 1884 and a subsequent period of depression, she was persuaded to become a touring speaker once more in 1886 and began to devote her time to the work of the women's suffrage movement. In addition to women's suffrage Millicent Garrett Fawcett also became involved in the newly created National Vigilance Association, established in 1885, alongside campaigners such as J Stansfeld MP, Mr WT Stead, Mrs Mitchell, and Josephine Butler. In 1894 Fawcett's interest in public morality led her to vigorously campaign against the candidature of Henry Cust as Conservative MP for North Manchester. Cust, who had been known to have had several affairs, had seduced a young woman. Despite marrying Cust's marriage in 1893, after pressure from Balfour, Fawcett felt Cust was unfit for public office. Fawcett's campaign persisted until Cust's resignation in 1895, with some suffrage supporters concerned by Fawcett's doggedness in what they felt was a divisive campaign. In the late nineteenth century, the women's suffrage movement was closely identified with the Liberal Party through its traditional support for their work and the affiliation of many workers such as Fawcett herself. However, the party was, at this time, split over the issue of Home Rule for Ireland. Fawcett herself left the party to become a Liberal Unionist and helped lead the Women's Liberal Unionist Association. When it was proposed that the Central Committee's constitution should be changed to allow political organisations, and principally the Women's Liberal Federation, to affiliate, Fawcett opposed this and became the Honorary Treasurer when the majority of members left to form the Central National Society for Women's Suffrage. However, in 1893 she became one of the leading members of the Special Appeal Committee that was formed to repair the divisions in the movement. On the 19 Oct 1896 she was asked to preside over the joint meetings of the suffrage societies, which resulted in the geographical division of the country and the formation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She was appointed as the honorary secretary of the Central and Eastern Society that year and became a member of the parliamentary committee of the NUWSS itself. It was not until the parent group's reorganisation in 1907 that she was elected president of the National Union, a position that she would retain until 1919. By 1901, she was already eminent enough to be one of the first women appointed to sit on a Commission of Inquiry into the concentration camps created for Boer civilians by the British during the Boer War. Despite this, her work for suffrage never slackened and she was one of the leaders of the Mud March held in Feb 1907 as well as of the NUWSS procession from Embankment to the Albert Hall in Jun 1908. She became one of the Fighting Fund Committee in 1912 and managed the aftermath of the introduction of the policy, in particular during the North West Durham by-election in 1914, when other members opposed a step that effectively meant supporting the Labour Party when an anti-suffrage Liberal candidate was standing in a constituency. When the First World War broke out in Aug 1914, Fawcett called for the suspension of the NUWSS' political work and a change in activities to facilitate war work. This stance led to divisions in the organisation. The majority of its officers and ten of the executive committee resigned when she vetoed their attendance of a Women's Peace Congress in the Hague in 1915. However, she retained her position in the group. During the war, she also found time to become involved in the issue of women's social, political and educational status in India, an area in which she had become interested through her husband and retained after the conflict came to an end. She remained at the head of the NUWSS when the women's suffrage clause was added to the Representation of the People Act in 1918 and attended the Women's Peace Conference in Paris before lobbying the governments assembled there for the Peace Conference in 1919. She retired in Mar 1919 when the NUWSS became the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship but remained on its executive committee. She also continued her activities as the vice-president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, to which she had been elected in 1902, for another year. After this she became the Chair of the journal, the 'Women's Leader', and appointed a Dame of the British Empire in 1925. It was in that year that she resigned from both NUSEC and the newspaper's board after opposing the organisation's policy in support of family allowances. She remained active until the end of her life, undertaking a trip to the Far East with her sister Agnes only a short time before her death in 1929.
Margaret Heitland (1860-1938) was born in 1860, the daughter of the Rev WH Bateson DD, Master of St John, College, Cambridge University, and his wife Anna Aitkin. Margaret was educated at Highfield School, Hendon and in Heidelberg, Germany. She and her two sisters, Anna and Mary Bateson were involved with the women's suffrage movement alongside their mother. When the Cambridge Women's Suffrage Association was formed in 1884, Margaret Bateson was appointed the first honorary assistant Secretary. However, her main interest was journalism and she entered the profession in 1886. Two years later she began working for the Queen magazine, where she remained for most of her career. In Jan 1888 she organised a campaign of meetings in various towns for the Women's Suffrage Society and in 1895 she was editor of a collection of interviews, which was published under the title of 'Professional Women upon their Professions'. She married William Emmerton Heitland MA, Fellow of St John's College, in Jul 1901 but continued her work after this time and was elected to the executive committee of the Cambridge Association of Women's Suffrage the following year. She supported the Association financially, paying the costs of a Secretary for seven months in 1905. In Dec 1908 she was asked to speak at a private meeting in Bedford which led to the founding of the Bedford Society for Women's Suffrage. It was in Bedford in 1912 that she also spoke to members of the local branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in support of the national organisation's Election Fighting Fund which was aimed at supporting Labour Party candidates in seats where an anti-suffrage Liberal candidate was standing. By 1913 she was the president of the Cambridge Women's Suffrage Association, a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies Executive committee and vice president of the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women, which she had helped to found and on whose behalf she had lectured on women's employment since 1906. In 1920, Heitland was a member of the standing committee of the Cambridge branch of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. She died in 1938.
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.
Philippa Strachey (1872-1968), known as Pippa, was born in 1872 to Lady Jane Maria Strachey and Major Richard Strachey. She was brought up first in India, where her father was a leading figure in the administration, and then in London, where the family moved in 1879. Her mother was active in the movement for women's suffrage and both Philippa and her siblings were encouraged to contribute to this work. In 1906 she became a member of the executive committee of the Central Society for Women's Suffrage and the following year she was elected the secretary of its successor the London Society for Women's Suffrage. In 1906 she joined the London Society for Women's Suffrage, succeeding Edith Palliser as secretary the following year. It was also in 1907 that she joined her mother Lady Jane Maria Strachey in organising what became known as the 'Mud March' at the instigation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and which went from Hyde Park to the Exeter Hall to demand the vote. During the First World War she was deeply involved in various war works, from being the secretary of the Women's Service Bureau for War Workers to participating as a member of the Committee for the London units of the Scottish Women's Hospital from 1914-1919. This war work began her lasting involvement with the issue of women's employment and she remained the secretary of the Women's Service Bureau after 1918 when it became concerned with helping women thrown out of jobs on the return of men from the Front. She remained there until its dissolution, which came in 1922, caused by a financial crisis in the parent organisation. However, subsequently Strachey helped to found a new group to fill the gap, becoming the secretary and then honorary secretary of the Women's Employment Federation. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, family problems took up much of her time as she nursed both her mother and her brother Lytton until their deaths. However, all through this time she remained active in the London Society for Women's Service and when it was renamed the Fawcett Society in 1951, she was asked to be its honorary secretary. It was that year that she was awarded the CBE for her work for women. She subsequently was made a governor of Bedford College. Increasing ill-health slowed the pace of her work and blindness finally forced her to enter a nursing home at the end of her life. She died in 1968.
Nina Popplewell (1890-1979) took the Social Science Certificate Course at London School of Economics (LSE) (1913-1914) and gained a Bsc Econ in sociology / social psychology in 1916. She was Professor Hobhouse's sole honours student and contemporary with Mary Stocks, Lord Piercy and Sir Theo Gregory. She was tutored by Clement Attlee and taught by Sidney Webb. After hearing a speech by Mrs Pankhurst in 1911, she began work at the offices of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Lincoln's Inn Fields, sorting letters, making tea and helping at fund-raising bazaars. She started her career by undertaking care committee work in Whitechapel and Stepney and became Vice-Chair of Stepney Juvenile Advisory Committee and a member of the main Employment Committee. Following her degree she worked at the Trade Boards as an assistant secretary and was the only woman on the staff. After five years in post, she was compelled to retire on her marriage to Frank Popplewell, although she was able to return for a year at the end of the First World War. She was later Secretary of the Equal Pay Campaign Committee and active in the National Council of Women and the Fawcett Society. Nina Popplewell was a volunteer in the Fawcett Library and as a lover of cricket.
Dr Patricia Shaw (fl 1948-1965) was employed by the Boots Pure Drug Company and investigated the health of shopworkers.
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.
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.
Winifred Adair-Roberts (fl 1910-1974) was brought up in Hampstead, the seventh child of a family of nine; all girls bar one. Her parents were Irish and her father co-owned a chemical works (Boke, Roberts) in Stratford. It moved to Walthamstow in 1974. Winifred was educated at private schools including, briefly, St. Felix, South Wold and Polam Hall (Durham). Winifred also attended a short course at the Gloucester Domestic Science College. She did voluntary work with the 'Women's Voluntary Reserve' in the First World War but did no paid work as she seems to have suffered lifelong poor health. In an interview conducted by Professor Brian Harrison, c 1974, Winifred was thought to be well into her eighties. In the interview she described her family background. All seven sisters went to school (several boarding schools are specified) and to college. She also recalled selling Votes for Women standing in the gutter on Finchley Road, near John Barnes store and stewarding at large Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) meetings. She claimed to have brought hot dinners (cooked at home in Hampstead) to Mrs Pankhurst, hiding out in the WSPU office at Lincolns Inn. They were smuggled in under the noses of the police. Her eldest sister, Muriel, a doctor, was imprisoned as part of the suffrage protests. Ethel, a PE specialist, was apparently good at helping to hide Mrs Pankhurst, who apparently looked like 'Dresden China'.
Between 1974-1981 Brian Harrison, then of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, undertook an oral history project financed by Social Science Research Council (he later extensively used these interviews in his book Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of British Feminists between the Wars Oxford University Press 1987). The original aim of the project was to provide material to supplement documentary sources on the Edwardian women's suffrage movement in Britain and to make these interviews available to scholars subsequently working in the field. Interviews were conducted with surviving Edwardian women's movement campaigners, their sons, daughters, relatives and employees. During the course of the project the chronological scope was widened to include those active in the women's movement after women's enfranchisement. Thematically the scope was also widened to encompass those who were active in various women's organisations, including international and religious organisations, and to cover themes including women's employment and birth control. 205 interviews with 183 individuals were completed.
The issue of women in the Church in Great Britain was one that had its origins in the Reformation. Convents were included in the abolition of the English monasteries and with their disappearance women lost the only ecclesiastical role open to them until the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century women in the Church of England began to campaign for women's work in the church to be acknowledged by allowing them to hold positions in its hierarchy.