Herstory Revisited

If, like me, you have spent the last week binge watching the new series of Sex Education on Netflix you may have caught Mrs Sand’s passing reference “Helen Brook would be disappointed”. I immediately clicked that this may be someone I should know about. I jumped onto google and discovered that Helen Brook’s work is very relevant for our time, when American states are criminalising abortion and women everywhere still lack control over their bodies and sexual rights. In 2016, Helen Brook was voted 2 nd out of 7 women who have had the biggest impact of women’s life in the last 70 years on the Woman’s Hour Power List. She was second place to Margaret Thatcher, one of the most famous women in British history – so why as no one heard of Helen Brook? Hopefully we can change this, although even the online information about her is scant! Helen Brook , CBE (1907 – 1997) was a British family planning adviser who in 1964 founded the Brook Advisory Centres with the primary aim of reducing the ...

A day late wishing a happy birthday to Bhikaiji Rustom Cama! Also known as Madam Cama, Bhikaiji (1861 –1936) was one of the prominent figures in the  Indian independence movement, as well as a staunch feminist and supporter of religious pluralism. Bhikaiji Cama was born in  Bombay  (now  Mumbai )to a large, affluent  Parsi   Zoroastrian  family. Her   father  Sorabji —a lawyer by training and a  merchant  by profession—was an influential member of the Parsi community so the family was well known in Bombay. Like many Parsi girls of the time, Bhikhaiji attended  Alexandra Girls' English Institution, where she proved a conscientious, disciplined pupil with an aptitude for languages. On 3 August 1885, at the age of 24, she married Rustom Cama, a wealthy, pro-British lawyer who aspired to enter politics. Unsurprisingly given their opposing ideologies, it was not a happy marriage, and Bhikhaiji spent most of her time and...

Sorry to do ANOTHER post about Anne Boleyn but i just finished this and not going to lie I was SO disappointed. I LOVE alison weir (and told her so when I met her!) and although she’s never been the most sympathetic to Anne, she’s always treated her fairly and herself wrote a whole book culminating in proving that Anne was innocent and framed for her supposed crimes (which I’ve written about here and would highly recommend). Given this, I was intrigued to see how Weir would write from Anne’s point of view, especially having just read her amazing portrayal of Katherine of Aragon. I suppose it makes sense that she would approach this less sympathetic to Anne having lived so long in Katherine’s head, but in my opinion this was just a terribly unjust imagining of Anne. Here, Weir portrays Anne as a vindictive and unfeeling schemer, who never loved the King and who was prepared to trample anyone and everyone who came between her and the throne. SPOILER ALERT (if you can have spoilers for hi...

Just finished the first of Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen .  Most know little of Katherine’s life before Anne entered the picture – only that she was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, that she was Arthur’s wife first, that she defeated the Scots (eyyy) and that she had lost many children during her long marriage to the King, so this book was a really important read for me to get to know Katherine beyond her role as the discarded queen and wife. I wish more was made of as that Queen, the pregnant regent riding on horseback to defeat the Scots, the Katherine travelling from her homeland at the tender age of 15 but never questioning her duty. The intelligent and highly educated scholar. The Katherine who acted as the first female Spanish ambassador in England, and stood up to a king that even the fine lords of the land were afraid of. The loyal friend, patron, mistress. The Katherine who had to say goodbye to six beloved children, and ...

Local herstory time!! #OTD in Edinburgh history: Maggie Dickson (aka Half Hang’it Maggie) was hung – and survived to tell the tale! Maggie Dickson was born and raised in Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, in about 1702. She married a fisherman but he soon left her after either joining the Royal Navy or goig to work in Newcastle (the stories differ, but the result is the same, Maggie was left alone). In 1723 Maggie found work at an inn in Kelso, and subsequently "fell pregnant" after a relationship with the innkeeper's son. This was a terrible fate for a woman in those days, who would be viewed as an adulteress despite having been abandoned by her husband. Consequently, Maggie concealed the fact of her pregnancy and the baby was born prematurely. It is unclear whether the baby was stillborn or died shortly after birth, and if the latter how it died. Regardless, Maggie abandoned the body on the banks of the River Tweed. When the body was found, Maggie was arrested and subse...