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Fleet Street House was a publishing premises at 147 Fleet Street in London, England, at which a number of radical publications were produced. It was described as the 'Central Office and Depot of the Publications of the Promoters of Freethought, directed by George Jacob Holyoake.

Life
Nathaniel Wedd was born in Northumberland in 1864, though he was raised in London. His father died while Wedd was still young, so he was principally raised by his mother. Both of his parents were freethinkers, and encouraged this in Wedd. From the City of London School, he went up to King's College, Cambridge in 1883. There, he excelled, taking firsts in both parts of the classical tripos, and was made a Fellow of King's in 1888.

Wedd's contemporaries at Cambridge included Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, E. M. Forster, and Oscar Browning. Wedd was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, a secret society, alongside Roger Fry and J. M. E. McTaggart. Wedd was highly regarded as an inspirational teacher and a devoted scholar, who put his own intellect at the service of others. Publishing little of his own besides a translation of Euripides' Orestes, he is credited with playing a significant role in the reinvigoration of classics at Cambridge during his time there, and - with Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson - fostering 'the atmosphere of inspiration and individuality that dominated the college at the turn of the century'.

Wedd was 'the decisive influence' on the young E.M. Forster. Forster himself wrote that it was 'to him rather than to Dickinson - indeed to him more than to anyone - that I owe such an awakening as has befallen me.' He later recalled:"Wedd... helped me by remarking in a lecture that we all know more than we think. A cry of relief and endorsement arose from my mind, tortured so long by being told that it knows less than it pretended to know."Wedd was his classics tutor, and imbued a love for Greece and for the classics, as well as with his own social and political ideals, that stayed with Forster. As a character, Wedd was fondly described by his contemporaries, and by subsequent biographers of them. He was noted for possessing the:"gift of winning the confidence of the most reserved....He understood undergraduates of all kinds and cared to see only their merits, of which he was always the first and sometimes the only discoverer; and once he knew his man, he knew exactly how best to help and stimulate him."In 1903, a group that included Wedd, Dickinson, and G. M. Trevelyan founded The Independent Review, in Forster's words:"to advocate sanity in foreign affairs and a constructive policy at home. It was not so much a Liberal Review as an appeal to Liberalism from the left to be its better self."In 1906, Wedd married Rachel Evelyn White (1867-1943). White had been educated at the Collegiate School in Aberdeen, followed by University College, Dundee, and Newnham College, Cambridge. She taught classics at Newnham until December 1906. In his biography of Forster, Wilfred Stone describes Wedd as 'openly and scandalously anti-God,' this facet of his character providing 'some amusing bits of King's folklore': "To complaints about his playing croquet on Sundays, he replied, 'I deplore a faith so fragile that it can't survive the click of croquet balls heard on the way to Chapel.'"Upon finding the South Place Institute in Finsbury, Wedd wrote admiringly of the American Moncure Conway, and the freethinking and inclusive atmosphere of South Place:"There, the appeal was to reason solely, to reasonableness, to humanity. Instead of lessons from the Prayer-book or chapters from the Bible, he read passages from Plato, from Positive philosophy, from Buddhist writers, from Confucius and Zoroaster, from Hindu philosophers... The effect of attending South Place Institute was that I became a strong partisan of the Cause of Freedom of Thought, and a correspondingly strong opponent of organised religion as an institution for limiting freedom."Wedd died in Hereford at the age of 76, on 27 September 1940. He was described in his obituary in The Times as serving King's College 'down to the last weeks of his life... with his whole heart and rare gifts of mind and spirit.' It described his 'genius for teaching', as well as his being 'something of a firebrand':"... indeed throughout his life his wit, his vigorous independence, and his fine audacity of language, always used in the service of his quickening sympathy with youth, made him provocative as well as stimulating, a kindler of live sparks in many stubbles."

= Lilian Lyle =

Lilian Lyle (16 March 1867 - 6 May 1953) was a British teacher, botanist, and phycologist who collected and published on a number of algae species during the 1920s. Lyle was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London on 17 June 1915.

Life
Lilian Lyle was born in Hackney, London in 1867, the daughter of Henry B. Lyle, a general practitioner, and Frances S. Lyle (née Bluett).

In Guernsey, Lyle built on the earlier work of Ernest David Marquand to systematically record marine algae. While living in the Channel Islands 1888-1895, Marquand and his wife had recorded the presence and distribution of 236 seaweeds, increasing this to 252 by 1901. Among these were four species previously unrecorded in Britain, including Liebmannia leveillei. Lyle recorded this rarely found species during her own work in 1911, and it has not been found in the UK since.

In 1920, Lyle published her The Marine Algae of Guernsey, adding 46 species to Marquand's records for the island. The publication of this had been delayed by the war, but over the course of the following decade, she published several further papers on the seaweeds found among the Channel Islands. Despite their being studied by others, Lyle stated that “one need never despair of making new discoveries” around the Islands, where “in no two years does it seem possible to find all the same algae”. This was partly due to the regular arrival of new species, such as Colpomenia peregrina, a brown seaweed not native to the British Isles. Her records in Guernsey were published in the Transactions of the Guernsey Society of Natural Science (later La Société Guernesiaise).

In October 1921, Lyle discovered a new genus of algae, which she wrote about in 'Antithamnionella, A New Genus of Algae', published in the Journal of Botany in 1922. The species bears her name.

Lyle explored Guernsey's marine ecology in detail, and later compared it that found elsewhere. In 1926, for example, Lyle was involved in counting and recording algae growth on hulls, near Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. The vessels studied were from a salvaged fleet of German warships, an opportunity 'so unusual as to be valuable' despite the number of years passed since their sinking. The following year, Lyle discussed her experiences examining the fleet before the Linnean Society, illustrating her talk with lantern slides.

Though collecting, pressing, and presenting flowers and seaweeds was a popular pastime during the Victorian period in particular, leading to a number of albums finding their way into museum collections, Lyle's represents the 'one serious academic collection' in the Guille-Allès Museum of Guernsey. Lyle presented this album - containing mounted dried specimens and microscope slides - to the museum, and also donated material to the British Museum and the National Library of Wales.

In her later life, Lyle was still sharing her observations: the Natural History Museum holds a letter written to Dr John Ramsbottom on 18 Apr 1947 containing a list of flowers found in Tintagel and the surrounding area between 1941-1945.

Death
Lilian Lyle died on 6 May 1953 in a nursing home in Bromley, aged 86.

Selected writings

 * 'Developmental Forms of Marine Algae', The New Phytologist, Vol. 17, No. 10, December 1918
 * 'Antithamnionella, A New Genus of Algae', Journal of Botany: British and foreign, Vol. 60, No. 6, 1922
 * The Marine Algae of Guernsey (1920)
 * 'Marine Algæ of some German Warships in Scapa Flow and of the Neighbouring Shores', Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, Vol. 48, No. 321, April 1929
 * 'Some Preliminary Notes on the Driftweed around Worthing', Journal of Botany, Vol. 76, 1938

Life
Elizabeth Hussey Whittier was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts on 7 December 1815, the youngest child of four born to Abigail (née Hussey) and John Whittier. The family were Quaker.

Elizabeth and her elder brother John Greenleaf were very close, and she was described as his 'intimate literary companion'. Their relationship has been compared to other sibling collaborators such as Charles and Mary Lamb, and William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Following the death of their parents, Elizabeth remained at the Haverhill home to keep house for her brother. It was noted that her 'vivacity and... readiness of speech' complemented her brother's greater reserve, and that it was she who 'led the brilliant conversations that made the Whittier home a centre for the great writers of that period.' Thomas Wentworth Higginson described Elizabeth's 'gay raillery', which was 'unceasing, and... enjoyed by him [John] as much as anybody, so that he really appeared to have transferred to her the expressions of his own opinions.'

Other close friends of Elizabeth's were Lucy Larcom and Harriet Minot, who described Elizabeth as:"a sweet rare person, devoted to her family and friends, kind to everyone, full of love for all beautiful things, and so merry when in good health that her companionship was always exhilarating."Elizabeth's delicate health was one reason for her devotion to home and family. John Greenleaf Whittier wrote:"Always in delicate health there was a constant solicitude on my part — a constant watchfulness over her — and for this perhaps I loved her all the more... She loved home, quiet and all beautiful things — enjoying as well as suffering much from her delicately sensitive temperament. No one ever had warmer friends."Elizabeth Whittier was active in the abolitionist movement, and present at a meeting of the Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1835, when a mob interrupted the meeting and dragged William Lloyd Garrison into the street. She was noted for using her notability and her sex to help protect visiting anti-slavery speakers from attack, by shepherding them through hostile gatherings. On moving to Amesbury, Whittier quickly became president of the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society there, and her diaries suggest that she actively aided the escape of enslaved people to Canada.

Death
Whittier died in Amesbury, Massachusetts at the age of 48, on 3 September 1864. She was remembered as 'a lady of rare culture and fine poetic gifts'. John Greenleaf Whittier, 'accustomed to submit to her all that he wrote', described to a friend how without Elizabeth's influence he could 'hardly tell whether what I write is good for anything or not.'

John Greenleaf Whittier published a number of Elizabeth's poems in his collection, Hazel-Blossoms (1875). In an introductory note, he wrote:"I have ventured, in compliance with the desire of dear friends of my beloved sister Elizabeth H. Whittier, to add to this little volume the few poetical pieces which she left behind her. As she was very distrustful of her own powers, and altogether without ambition for literary distinction, she shunned everything like publicity, and found far greater happiness in generous appreciation of the gifts of her friends than in the cultivation of her own. Yet it has always seemed to me, that had her health, sense of duty and fitness, and her extreme self-distrust permitted, she might have taken a high place among lyrical singers."

Life
Edith Abigail Purer was born in Illinois on 11 December 1895, the daughter of William Alexander and Emily A. Purer (née Koupal). She attended Northwestern University and Chicago Normal College, whose 1918 yearbook described her as:"The most 'high' brow of us all, and also, we believe, the most 'Socially Efficient' in practice."Her 1921 Master of Science thesis, with the University of Chicago, was on the ecology of the Douglas fir. Purer gained her PhD in 1933 from the University of Southern California; her thesis title was Studies of certain coastal sand dune plants of southern California. In 1936 published a book about the plants and wildflowers native to Silver Strand Beach State Park: Plants of Silver Strand Beach State Park... a visitors' handbook. She used the book to advocate for state parks generally, and throughout the following years sought to publish her research alongside working as a high school science teacher.

Purer published at least eight scientific articles in the distinguished journals of the Ecological Society of America, as well as presenting research at the ESA's annual meetings - one of very few woman to do so during the 1930s. The ecosystems on which much of Purer's work was focused (coastal sand dunes, salt marshes, and vernal pools) are particularly rare and threatened in California and the wider United States, leading to renewed interest in her work in recent years. Her studies have been used by subsequent ecologists to consider the impact of human activity, for example the loss of particular wildflowers in the vernal pools of San Diego County. She also made significant contributions to the herbarium of the San Diego Society of Natural History.

Purer was also a painter of landscapes, especially of California, where she exhibited regularly and became well-known. She studied art alongside her teaching in the Chicago and San Diego school systems, and sketched on travels around Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the United States. She was a winner of the American Association of University Women's creative art award and certificate of merit.

Edith Abigail Purer died on 20 June 1990.

Selected published works
'Studies of Certain Coastal Sand Dune Plants of Southern California' in Ecological Monographs, Vol. 6: 1 (1936)

'Ecological Study of Vernal Pools, San Diego County' in Ecological Monographs, Vol. 20: 2 (1939)

Life
Minta Bosley was born in Nashville, Tennessee on 13 February 1875, the only child of John Beal Bosley (a businessman) and Catherine Harding Bosley. From 1889 to 1893, she attended Fisk University, and later the New York School for Social Work.

In 1895, she married Henry W. Allen, a railroad mail agent, with whom she had three children: Catherine (b. 1896), Marian (b. 1899), and Henry (b. 1903). Towards the end of 1903, Henry Allen was killed in a train accident, and the widowed Minta spent time in Europe with her children, before moving to Brooklyn, New York in 1908. Time in France and Germany contributed to the children's early - and in many ways exceptional - education, with Catherine Allen noted for speaking both French and German.

In 1911, Minta married William Frederick Trotman, a prominent real estate agent who represented W. E. B. Du Bois. Minta herself became actively engaged in the community, involved in the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the Young Women's Christian Association, and the Brooklyn Urban League. For two decades, she lectured, fundraised, led, and campaigned for a host of political and social causes. She was closely associated with, and active alongside, her friend and fellow suffragist Addie Waites Hunton, with whom she attended the national meeting of the NACW in 1912. Minta was a founding member, and the inaugural president, of the Urban League's 'Big Sister Club', which focused on girls. For this, she travelled extensively throughout the country, lecturing on the organisation's behalf. When women gained the vote in 1917, she continued to work for women's increased participation in civic life as president of the Women's Civic League in Brooklyn.

In 1927, she served on the executive committee of the Women's International Circle of Peace and Foreign Relations, which was largely responsible for organising the fourth Pan-African Congress, held in New York. The committee included Hunton and Nina DuBois.

In addition to her community and activist work, Minta keenly supported the protection and promotion of African-American culture and heritage. She was actively involved in the preservation of the Frederick Douglass House, and was a collector of African folk art.

Minta Bosley Allen Trotman died on 3 May 1949 from a heart attack. She was survived by her husband, and two children (Marian and Henry). Catherine Allen Latimer had died the previous year.

= Ruth D. Todd = Ruth D. Todd (1878- ? ) was an African-American writer, who contributed short stories and a serialised novella to The Colored American Magazine, but about whom scant biographical information has been discovered. She is noted for providing an 'interesting counterpoint to... the "domestic fictions" written by her more well-known contemporaries.'

Life
Biographical information about Todd was never printed alongside her published work, so facts about her life have been deduced by research into census records by later scholars. Elizabeth Ammons identified Ruth D. Todd on the 1900 census, described as a 'black servant working in the house of George M. Cooper in Philadelphia.' This record indicates that Todd was born in September 1878 in Virginia. Another census entry, for 1880, suggests that as a young child, she lived in Fairfield, with her parents Edward P. and Mattie Todd. In 1910, Todd is recorded in Philadelphia, working as a self-employed seamstress and living with another Virginian, chambermaid Alice Byers, after which she seems to disappear.

Writing
Between 1902 and 1904, three short stories and one serialised novella by Todd were published in the Colored American Magazine. All of these, writes Amy L. Blair, 'fly in the face of stock "tragic mulatta" storylines.

1903's 'The Folly of Mildred', Christine Palumbo-DeSimone has written, touched on a range of issues including: the 'call to combat negative stereotypes concerning black women's virtue, the need for black women to help fallen "sisters", the bitter irony of color discrimination among blacks, [and] the dire consequences for black women of social vices'. Palumbo-DeSimone compares Todd's story to Frances Harper's 'The Two Offers' (1859), noting that while 'The Folly of Mildred' in some ways echoes Harper's much earlier story, it makes 'the context of the black female community and its role in women's "uplift"... more overt.'

Carrie Tirado Bramen has also set works by Harper and Todd side by side (Harper's Iola Leroy and Todd's 'The Octoroon's Revenge' ) to argue that the story, 'in which a biracial subject's blackness triumphs over her whiteness,' serves to unsettle 'dominant assumptions about the desirability of whiteness.' Bramen argues that rather than telling the 'traditional tale of the tragic mulatta', Todd:"incorporates a constructivist notion of black identity... with a biologically inherited one... to argue against passing for the 'white Negro.' Happiness can be found through the (surprisingly) unpainful process of self-outing."

Works
Published in the Colored American Magazine and collected in Short fiction by Black women, 1900-1920, ed. Elizabeth Ammons


 * 'The Octoroon's Revenge' (March 1902)
 * 'Florence Grey: A Three-Part Story' (August, September, October 1902)
 * 'The Folly of Mildred: A Race Story with a Moral' (March 1903)
 * 'The Taming of a Modern Shrew' (March 1904)

Life
Sara A. Underwood was born Sara A. Francis in Penrith, Cumbria, moving with her family to Rhode Island while still a young child. She married Benjamin Franklin Underwood on 6 September 1862, the partnership described as 'a union of kindred minds as well as hearts'.

Both Underwoods became well-known figures in freethinking circles and on the lecture circuit over the course of following decades. Towards the end of the 1880s, the couple moved to Chicago to serve as editor and manager (Benjamin) and associate editor (Sara) of the journal The Open Court. The Open Court was 'devoted to the work of establishing ethics and religion upon a scientific basis.'

Work
As a lecturer, Sara A. Underwood became widely known 'for espousing liberal religious thought' for over three decades. Between 1880-86 she was a co-editor of the Boston Index, the organ of the Free Religious Association. She was the editor of the Psychical Science Congress' journal, the Philosophic Journal 1893-95, and chair of the Congress of Evolutionists.

Underwood spoke and wrote in the cause of equal rights for women, and was treasurer of the National Woman Suffrage Association of Massachusetts.

Death
Sara A. Underwood died in a sanatorium in Jacksonville, Illinois in the early hours of 16 March 1911.

Life
Constance Eliza Maria Fanny Plumptre was born in Kensington, London in 1848, the daughter of barrister Charles J. Plumptre, and christened at St James' Church, Norlands in Notting Hill. The dedication of her 1888 work Natural Causation, thanking her father for being 'unfailing in his encouragement and sympathy' and for his 'interest' in her earlier works, suggests that Plumptre's family supported her writing.

Described as a 'perceptive thinker and author', Plumptre wrote widely on philosophy and religion, 'deliberately seeking out and championing persecuted and obscure thinkers of the past such as Giordano Bruno and Lucilio Vanini.' Her General Sketch of the History of Pantheism, was initially published anonymously, only later reprinted using her name. It has been described as providing 'an erudite but accessible introduction to Oriental, Greek and modern Pantheism'. Of Vanini, and other freethinkers who suffered persecution for their unorthodoxy, she wrote:"The wonder was, not that men like Servetus or Vanini should have momentarily yielded to the temptation of denial or equivocation, but that the love of knowledge should have been sufficiently strong to render them courageous enough to prosecute it at all."Her only work of fiction was a historical novel, Giordano Bruno (1884), about the Renaissance philosopher and mathematician burned for heresy in 1600. Frederick James Gould, in his Chats with Pioneers of Modern Thought, published in 1898, wrote of it that 'all the ascertained facts of his career are exposed with sufficient interweaving of fiction to render the story of his life eminently readable'.

Beliefs
Plumptre defended the position of agnosticism as the logical result of careful inquiry into the truths of various systems of belief:"If after devoting our best energies and highest endeavours to the investigation of the arguments of Monotheism, Dualism, Polytheism, Pantheism, and Atheism, we find none entirely convincing, there is no cowardice involved in the admission. On the contrary, it becomes our highest duty to confess that all our labour has been without fruit or reward. Though we have fervently sought we have failed to find. We are sceptics or agnostics, and recognise the fact that, even should one or other of these five interpretations of the mystery of existence be accepted as its true solution it is but a proximate solution and thus but removes the essential mystery but a step further back."

Death
Constance E. Plumptre died on 4 January 1929 in St John's Wood. Her last publication was an essay 'On the Neglected Centenary of Harriet Martineau', which appeared in the Westminster Review in December 1902.

Works

 * General sketch of the history of pantheism (1878)
 * General Sketch of the History of Pantheism, Volume 2, From the Age of Spinoza to the Commencement of the Nineteenth century (1879)
 * Giordano Bruno: a tale of the sixteenth century (1884)
 * Natural causation; an essay in four parts (1888)
 * Studies in little-known subjects (1898)
 * On the progress of liberty of thought during Queen Victoria's reign (1902)

Life
Emilie Michaelis was born in Thuringia, Germany, and was a pupil of Bertha von Marenholtz-Bülow, who had herself been a student of Friedrich Fröbel.

Michaelis travelled to England in the 1870s, intending to promote the principles of kindergarten education. In 1875, she was a founding member of the Froebel Society of London, on a committee which included Emily Shirreff, Maria Georgina Grey, Frances Buss, and Adelaide Manning. She was president of the Society 1897-1900.

In 1891, Michaelis started a kindergarten and training college for kindergarten teachers in Notting Hill, which became the Froebel Educational Institute in West Kensington. The Froebel Educational Institute, on Talgarth Road, West Kensington, officially opened on 20th September 1894. Emilie Michaelis was its first principal, retiring four years before her death. Following her retirement, she continued to actively promote the values of Froebelian education, lecturing and examining widely.

Emilie Michaelis died on 30 December 1904.

Life and work
Alice Gruner was born in Estonia in 1846, moving to England with her sister, Joan, at the age of 18. She became a naturalised British subject in 1896.

Between 1883-1886 she was a student at Newnham College, Cambridge. Gruner tutored Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones for the Girton College entrance exams, on the recommendation of Emily Davies. Joan Gruner, Alice's sister, had been a student at Girton 1874-1877, as well as at Trinity College, Dublin, and was a school principal.

In 1887, Gruner was among the founders of the Women's University Settlement, Southwark. Alongside Gruner and other Cambridge University graduates, the original committee included educationist Helen Gladstone and social reformer Octavia Hill. Following the example of the growing University Settlement movement, their aim was to "promote the welfare of the poorer districts of London, more especially of the women and children, by devising and advancing schemes which tend to elevate them, and by giving them additional opportunities in education and recreation".

For twenty years, Gruner was also Secretary to the Association of University Women Teachers, founded to protect the interests and improve the position of women teachers at the university level. Here, her 'experience and untiring devotion to the work made her a most valuable adviser both to those who offered and those who were seeking educational posts.' Her obituary in The Times noted that in this role 'she helped to raise the status of women teachers, and the standard of education in schools'. Gruner also worked for the cause of women's suffrage.

Alice Gruner died on 29 December 1929.

= Lillie Boileau = Lillie Mabel Boileau (1869-1930) was an English suffragist and active member of the Union of Ethical Societies (now Humanists UK). One of the earliest members of the Women's Freedom League, Boileau was one of five women arrested in 1909 attempting to present a petition to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.

Early life
Lillie Mabel Boileau was born in India to Major General Neil Boileau, but moved to England as a child, where she remained.

Women's suffrage
In 1909, Boileau was arrested along outside 10 Downing Street with Charlotte Despard, Anne Cobden-Sanderson, and a number of others in the course of a 'picketing campaign for the Women's Freedom League'. Boileau was reported to have thrown a cardboard roll at Prime Minister Asquith when he refused to accept a petition.

Boileau's name appears on the Roll of Honour of Suffragette Prisoners 1905-1914. She is also noted as among the arrested on a handbill from 1909.

Boileau was one of 156 women who signed up to sit on the British committee for the Women's International Congress at The Hague in 1915, however restrictions on travel introduced by Winston Churchill meant that only three were able to attend: Chrystal Macmillan, Kathleen Courtney, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence.

The Vote recorded that after votes for women were achieved,"Miss Boileau organised many meetings at her own house, where subjects were discussed dealing with Women Police, Factory Legislation, Housing, Women in India, etc."

Ethical Movement
Lillie Boileau was actively involved in the humanist Ethical Movement for over three decades, and served on the council of the Union of Ethical Societies from 1906. In The Ethical Movement in Great Britain, Gustav Spiller wrote that in Lillie Boileau 'the Ethical Union found one of its most intelligent, loyal and sympathetic collaborators.'

Death
Lillie Boileau died suddenly on 15th August 1930, 'whilst engaged in tending the flowers in her old-world garden at Highgate'. She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, with a service led by Harry Snell. In his address, Snell said:"Her life was useful and commendable; she was gentle, with a firm will; she had a strong mind which was not yet closed or narrow, and, above all, not vague nor undecided. She had administrative gifts of a high order, and a tried and practical wisdom. She was a great servant and a great lady."

= Presidents of Humanists UK =

Example

Displays as

Tarkington, Booth. "Booth Tarkington letter to George Ade" (May 8, 1924) [Textual record]. George Ade Papers, 1878-2007, Series: Correspondence, ca. 1882-1947, Box: Tarkington, Booth, ca. 1905-1943, File: Correspondence, Sto-U, ca. 1894-1943. West Lafayette, IN: Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center, Purdue University.

Citation template for annual reports of the Union of Ethical Societies

= Josephine Macalister Brew = Josephine Macalister Brew (18 February 1904 - 30 May 1957) was a British educationist and youth worker. A 'pioneer of social groupwork as a vehicle for social education,' her 1946 work Informal Education was the 'first text to deliberately employ the term' and the first solo-authored work on the subject.

Life and work
Josephine Macalister Brew was born Mary Winifred Brew in Llanelli, Wales, the daughter of Frederick Charles Brew, a boot and shoe dealer. She studied history at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and graduated in 1925, after which she became a history teacher at Shaftesbury High School for Girls, Dorset. In 1932, Brew moved to Cardiff to study for her Doctor of Law.

In Cardiff, Brew began her lifelong involvement in youth and community work, working with the Butetown Women and Girls' Club, and South Wales educational settlements. She later became a youth officer in Lincoln, where she acted as secretary of the Lincoln Federation of Girls Clubs. Subsequently, Brew served on the executive committee of the National Association of Girls' Clubs (later the National Association of Girls' Clubs and Mixed Clubs) for whom, following a comparatively short period as youth officer for Oldham, she was appointed Education Secretary in 1942. Among her colleagues there were Eileen Younghusband and Pearl Jephcott. The National Association of Girls Clubs and Mixed Clubs boasted, in 1944, 108,000 affiliated clubs, described as 'a training-ground for citizenship, giving a foretaste of the responsibilities and joys of an adult life, as well as an experience of community life.' Brew herself was a vocal advocate of mixed clubs, arguing for their benefits to young people and the society in which they lived.

Brew also played a key role in creating the pilot Girls' Award (launched in 1958), part of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme, initiated two years earlier in 1956.

As well as active youth work, Brew was a sought after speaker, and contributor to numerous publications. These included pieces for the Times Educational Supplement, as well as national newspapers. Brew's writing has been described as having 'a characteristic flowing style that moves between erudition and the plain talking of a sensible aunt.'

Philosophy
Brew believed that society had a responsibility to prepare its young people for their role as future citizens in a rapidly changing world. In 'Why Clubs at All?' (1943), she argued that:

They are the citizens of tomorrow, and to them the community has a double responsibility. Firstly, to provide each one of them with the possibilities of full and harmonious development, and secondly, to try to ensure that they are fitted to be members of the community of the future.

In her preface to Informal Education, published in 1946, Brew wrote: "Perhaps nothing will matter more in the next fifty years than the ability of the common man to adapt himself to the changing world - a world in which material prosperity may be just around the corner, but where there are still vast acreages of barren land in the intellectual, emotional and spiritual field."For Brew, the function of youth work was educating 'individual personalities with powers of judgment who will indulge in group living in the service of a social ideal'. She believed that involvement in youth clubs, and opportunities for association with others, would best equip young people for the requirements of active citizenship; that 'it is in the interplay of social relationships that real and full individuality is attained'. This preparation would act as a counterbalance to a society in which, Brew wrote, 'we educate our children for the first fourteen years of their life as though there were no such thing as industry, and then surrender them to industry as though education had never been.'

Death and legacy
Josephine Macalister Brew died on 30 May 1957 at Woodford Green, Essex. A funeral service was held at the City of London Crematorium on 3 June.

In an obituary in Nature, John Wolfenden wrote that 'there can be few people who have lived so fully, so usefully, or so serviceably' as Brew. 'She would', he concluded, 'prefer to be remembered as one who never lost her astringent affection for hundreds of 'crazy mixed-up kids'.' Dame Isobel Cripps described Brew as a 'constructive force', whose 'great gift to us all is that she has built into the fibre of our nation something which will live on in the generations to come.'

On 13 June 1957, as part of the Queen's Birthday Honours, Brew was appointed CBE.

Publications

 * Clubs and Club Making (1943)
 * In the Service of Youth, a practical manual of work among adolescents (1944)
 * Informal Education; Adventures and Reflections (1946)
 * The Young Idea (1956)
 * Youth and Youth Groups (1957)
 * 'Group Work with Adolescents' in Social Group Work in Great Britain, ed. Peter Kuenstler (1954)

Life
Zona Vallance was born in Stratford, London on 6 February 1904, the daughter of a Thomas James Vallance, a doctor, and Lucy (née Skipper). At 30, she was a founding member of the East London Ethical Society (launched in 1890), described as 'devoted and enthusiastic' by fellow worker Frederick James Gould in his Life-Story of a Humanist. From her earliest involvement with the Ethical Movement, Vallance spoke widely on its behalf, advocating the development of moral ideas and action distinct from theological or supernatural beliefs. A central principle of the movement was that 'the love of goodness and the love of one's fellows are the true motives for right conduct; and self-reliance and co-operation are the true sources of help.' Vallance herself wrote that 'Salvation consists in the surrender of the private for the public weal'.

Zona Vallance was the first Secretary of both the Union of Ethical Societies and the Moral Instruction League, which advocated for non-theological moral education for the young. She contributed regularly to the journal the Ethical World, writing on women's rights and suffrage, keeping up 'a commentary on Parliament, the courts, and on women's societies'. Her significance to the movement is noted by Gustav Spiller in his history of the Ethical Movement in Great Britain, who wrote"The name of Miss Vallance recurs repeatedly in this History as Secretary to the Ethical Union and to the Moral Instruction League, and in other capacities. She contributed frequently to the columns of The Ethical World, wrote leaflets and pamphlets, lectured, and assisted in numerous other ways, and stressed more especially justice to women in the social and political sphere."

Work for the Union of Ethical Societies
Vallance was secretary of the Union of Ethical Societies 1895-1899, and the Moral Instruction League from December 1897 to January 1900. She was also an organiser in the Union's Moral Instruction Circle, which worked to convince 'numerous London teachers and parents that moral instruction could be interestingly and effectively given.' As part of this, in June 1899 Vallance and others from the Union of Ethical Societies (including J. R. MacDonald) presented a petition to the London School Board challenging the use of the Bible in schools, and arguing that 'the supposition that parents are pleased with the present Bible teaching is quite unfounded in fact'. The Committee suggested that"It is universally admitted that various motives concur to hinder parents from availing themselves of the 'Conscience Clause' of the Education Act. In addition to the fears for themselves or their children which deter them, many parents are influenced by the knowledge that the hour devoted to theological teaching is also the only time set apart for systematic instruction in morals, and many who disapprove the former are nevertheless unwilling to deprive their children of the latter."In 1901, Vallance was assigned a one-year lectureship by the Ethical Lecturers' Fund Committee, which consisted of Leslie Stephen, A. Vernon Harcourt, G. F. Stout, J. H. Muirhead, and Stanton Coit. This Committee arose 'from a conviction... that a great national good might be done by a thorough teaching and preaching of moral principles among the people,' undertaken by those in sympathy with the principles of the Union of Ethical Societies. The following year, Vallance undertook a lecture tour of the United States, speaking at various societies and clubs. Among these was Hull House, a settlement co-founded in 1899 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, where she gave a talk entitled 'The Economic Dependence of Man upon Women'. In it, she argued that women must agitate for political rights, and that they deserved to be compensated through some form of national tax for their services in the household. At the conference of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, Vallance lectured on 'Women and the Ethical Movement', stating that 'all self-respecting women' should 'be found in the vanguard of self-assertion today' and lead the way in ethical reforms. She also spoke in praise of women's trade unions as an example of the way 'the woman of ethical culture persuasion should bend her energies to the enlightenment ... and industrial emancipation of women in the busier walks of life'.

In addition to lecturing, Vallance produced a number of pamphlets for the Union of Ethical Societies, including 'Reason in the Ethical Movement', 'The Ethical Movement and Women', and 'The Ethical Movement and the After Life'. She wrote at length on the role of women in a chapter for the 1900 collection Ethical Democracy: Essays in Social Dynamics, published by the Society of Ethical Propagandists and edited by Stanton Coit. Other contributors to the volume included G.H. Perris, J. R. MacDonald, J. H. Muirhead, F. J. Gould, Margaret McMillan, and Christen Collin.

Women's Rights
Vallance's socialism, humanism, and feminism were deeply intertwined. In 1902 she contributed an article to the International Journal of Ethics on the position of women entitled 'Women as Moral Beings'. This was summarised in Mind as arguing that '[u]nless intelligent women have more rights as against their husbands they may refuse the burdens of marriage. They should be put more on a financial and legal equality, and should be remunerated for the duties of motherhood. Vallance 'looks forward to a women’s movement that advocates such reforms in recognition of both the “tyranny of limiting all women to family occupations” and the “pernicious effects of expecting a domestic worker to be also a market earner”.' In 'Women as Moral Beings', she asked"Can our world be so re-modelled that women no less than men shall have free scope for the satisfaction of many-sided human nature and aspiration? ... What is right for finite beings to do always depends on what is possible; and yet the very Hall-mark of Humanity is to sit in judgement upon the possible."Ian MacKillop argues that as the lead writer on women's issues in the Ethical World from 1899 until her death in 1904, Vallance was by no means 'preaching to the converted', but 'had to justify female suffrage from the beginnings'. He notes that Vallance took particular aim at 'the socialist of good-will who simply could not understand the relevance of the woman question to analysis of capitalism'. For her, the individualistic ideology of capitalism and the idea of men as inherently dominant, contributed to the ongoing subjugation of women in social and political life.

Of Vallance's focus on motherhood, which was read by some as counter to progressive feminist ideas, MacKillop writes that"She made much of the mother-figure because of the place it occupied for her in an evolutionist's myth of origin which replaced the Christian myth of patriarchy. Under theology-based systems of ethics woman was passive, unenquiring and obedient, until sinful. Under a post-Darwinian system woman was, in a quite literal sense, capable of being held responsible for the 'ethical movement' of mankind... It is not meant to decree a retreat into solo responsibility for child-care in twentieth-century woman. On the contrary, Zona Vallance thought that husband and wife should act as partners, a collaboration between genders which contested the Christian single gender model of paired authority, that between Father and Son."

Death
Zona Vallance died in Kensington on 15 December 1904, at the age of 44. Of her, fellow suffragist, socialist, and ethical society member Dora Montefiore wrote"The cause of Humanity lost on December 16 [sic] one of its most devoted workers in the person of Zona Vallance, writer and lecturer, who, after a short but painful illness, is now at rest. A woman fellow-worker writes of her: “She recognised clearly and fully that every worthy motive for right living remained the same, whether life lived ‘for evermore,’ or ceased with the parting breath; and the less she concerned herself for a personal immortality the more she strove for the well-being and the moral progress of the race. ‘Progress,’ writes a modern author, consists in human souls, taught to know their dignity, and the vast Universe of their inheritance.'"Zona Vallance’s significant contributions to the Ethical Movement were acknowledged in Stanton Coit’s Ethical Church with a plaque designed by Ernestine Mills, a fellow Ethical Society member and women’s rights advocate. In a pamphlet describing the secular church, Coit wrote"The first memorial tablet to be placed in our Church is the one to the left of our pulpit. It is a testimonial of the high esteem in which Miss Zona Vallance was held by all her colleagues in the Suffrage and Ethical Movements. It is a splendid enamel by Mrs Ernestine Mills, representing a Joan of Arc figure bearing an ensign of purple, green and white, the colours of the Women’s Social and Political Union, and memorialising Miss Vallance’s enthusiastic welcome to this more aggressive organisation, concerning the latter developments of which she did not live to form a judgement."A bequest by Vallance 'for the promotion of the cause of all women's political, professional and financial equality with men' caused consternation among her executors and next of kin. In 1945, the Gloucester Citizen reported that although the National Council of Women had claimed the gift, a judge ruled that it was 'invalid for uncertainty', stating that he 'had no notion how a trust to promote the cause of equality with men or womenhood in general, wherever they might come from and whatever their race or colour, could be executed by the Court.'

Life
Austin Holyoake was born in Birmingham on 27 October 1826 to George Holyoake (a printer) and his wife Catherine Groves (a horn-button maker). Taking an early interest in the ideas of Robert Owen and the Owenite movement, Holyoake worked for various radical papers as a printer in Birmingham and London, before taking charge of printing The Reasoner (his brother George Jacob's periodical) in 1847. The two brothers entered into a partnership, acquiring their own premises at 147 Fleet Street in 1853.

At these premises, known as Fleet Street House, The Reasoner was produced and Austin Holyoake acted as secretary. Edward Royle describes how"The work of the Fleet Street House was divided into three business departments. In 1856 these were Publishing, under Frederick Farrah; the News Agency, under Thomas Wilks; and Printing, under John Watts. [George Jacob] Holyoake was the Director, and his brother Austin, secretary and general assistant...The printing and publishing business was taken over by Austin in 1859, lapsed in 1862 when the Fleet Street House was sold, but was revived as 'Austin & Co.' at 17 Johnson's Court in 1864. This business then passed successively to Charles Watts, Charles Albert Watts and the Rationalist Press Association."Austin Holyoake was a member of multiple radical and reformist groups, including the Reform League, and the author of many tracts and pamphlets. A member of the Association for the Repeal of Taxes on Knowledge, he was the last printer in England prosecuted under the Newspaper Stamp Act. Holyoake was sub-editor of Charles Bradlaugh's National Reformer from 1866 to his death, also co-editing with Bradlaugh the Secular Almanac. The two were 'intimate friends and co-workers.' Holyoake was a vice-president, and the first treasurer, of the National Secular Society, founded by Bradlaugh in 1866.

Though he did lecture for the secularist movement on occasion, much of Holyoake's work was undertaken behind the scenes:"Austin was, said the Secular Chronicle in 1872, 'one of those quiet, unostentatious workers who are the real bone and sinew of the Secular body - like the stage manager, without whose work the play would be incomplete, but who seldom comes before the curtain to receive the plaudits of the audience.'" In 1859, he assisted the founders of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women in establishing the suitability of printing as an occupation for women. His employment by Bessie Parkes and Emily Faithfull for this purpose, helped to pave the way for Faithfull's Victoria Press at Great Coram Street, London, which opened in 1860.

Family
Holyoake's first wife, Lucy Pettigrew, died in childbirth in 1855 after four years of marriage. He married his second wife, Jane Baker, in 1858 and had a son and a daughter. Jane was a professional singer, who performed under the name Alice Austin.

Death and Legacy
Austin Holyoake died from consumption on 10 April 1874 at Johnson's Court, and was buried at Highgate Cemetery with the secular service he had composed. He was 47 years old. Along with its announcement of his death, The National Reformer printed Holyoake's 'Thoughts in the Sick-Room', which stated his continuing absence of belief in any god or afterlife:"As I have stated before, my mind being free from any doubts on these bewildering matters of speculation, I have experienced for twenty years the most perfect mental repose; and now I find that the near approach of death, the 'grim King of Terrors,' gives me not the slightest alarm."In 1878 The Secular Chronicle printed a profile of Holyoake, written by Harriet Law, describing 'a career of usefulness cut short'.

During a debate in the House of Lords in 1876, the Marquess of Salisbury used the example of Holyoake's service as a warning about changing the rules concerning nonconformist burials "I hold in my hand a burial service by Austin Holyoake, one of the first sentences of which is directed towards a repudiation of the doctrine of immortality. I may quote a single verse from a hymn - 'parsons may preach and the fanatics rave / Of existence beyond the dark grave. / Their heaven, they say, is far up above, / But mine is on earth, and I call it Love.'"In 1882, Holyoake's close friend, the poet James Thomson, was buried in the same grave with an adaptation of the burial service written by, and given for, Holyoake.

Life
May Louise Seaton-Tiedeman spent the early years of her life in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Alfred Herbert and Hannora Seaton. As a teenager, she moved with her family to England. In 1886 she married Dutch journalist and editor Frederick Henry Lewis Tiedeman, with whom she had one son, Henry Seaton Tiedeman. Based in London, the couple travelled widely, socialising with a large group of influential and reformist friends. Frederick Tiedeman died in 1915, ending a happy marriage of nearly three decades. The following year, May married a longtime family friend, Edward Woolf Abrams, a metal mining agent. This marriage too lasted nearly 30 years, until Abrams' death in 1945.

Seaton-Tiedeman was a devoted suffragist, as well as a longtime campaigner for changes to divorce laws in the United Kingdom. She served for many years on the executive committee of the Union of Ethical Societies (today Humanists UK) and, at the age of 70, spoke in Hyde Park for women's suffrage celebrations.

Work for the Divorce Law Reform Union


Despite her own happy marriages, May Seaton-Tiedeman was extremely active as the honorary secretary of the Divorce Law Reform Union. The Union advocated for changes to existing divorce laws, achieving some of its aims with the passing of A. P. Herbert's Matrimonial Causes Act of 1937, which extended the grounds for divorce to include cruelty, desertion and incurable insanity. Although eclipsed by the Union's more famous figureheads, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Lord Birkenhead, Seaton-Tiedeman worked tirelessly for the cause. She was described as 'a woman of tremendous dynamism and drive'. In the year of the Act's passing, friend and colleague A. D. Howell Smith wrote to The Times to redress her lack of recognition, noting"the strange silence of so many newspapers on the long sustained work of Mrs. Seaton-Tiedeman, the union's hon. secretary, without whom Mr. Herbert's Bill might well have miscarried. For 25 years, in season and out of season, by lectures and debates in many places (nearly every Sunday she has advocated her cause in Hyde Park), by correspondence in the Press, and by innumerable interviews, Mrs. Seaton-Tiedeman has worked for divorce law reform, sparing neither her health nor her purse."In addition to lecturing and debating, Seaton-Tiedeman edited the quarterly paper of the Divorce Law Reform Union, The Journal, from 1919 to 1931. An active member of the Union of Ethical Societies, she spoke regularly at meetings of the Women's Group of the Ethical Movement, and assisted with the Ethical Societies' Chronicle. Cordelia Moyse notes that Seaton-Tiedeman was motivated"by her belief that immorality, injustice, and unnecessary human suffering were not to be tolerated... her secular humanism found its fullest expression in the divorce reform movement not least because the primary ideology of opponents of reform was Christianity."Seaton-Tiedeman sought 'fair conditions for marriage and parenthood,' which she argued would be 'more efficacious than all the scolding we have heard from the pulpits of late years.'

A focus on lessening the suffering of women in the case of marital breakdown and desertion could be clearly seen in Seaton-Tiedeman's writing in the cause of divorce law reform. In 1920, she argued that without amendments to the laws that disadvantaged them"Women will go on being deserted without the remotest possibility of being able, in a vast number of cases, either to trace the man or prove adultery — desertion which may cover long periods of years, with immense suffering to them, and which keeps them for ever tied to a husband who has gone out of their lives, leaving them often with his children to support."In a deputation to Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in March 1924, Seaton-Tiedeman presented a case study 'typical of thousands of the cases that come to us':"A woman asked if she could get a divorce from her husband, and obtain the custody of her two children. She is 33, her husband has not co-habited with her since the birth of the second child, telling her that he has no further use for women, and boasting of his friendships with young men, but defying her to prove anything... Her health is breaking under this abominable cruelty... Her grief and horror were great when I informed her than not only could she not get a divorce, but that if she established the vice of her husband he might be committed to penal servitude for a period of years."Even after the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937 was passed, the Union resolved to 'continue to agitate and organize for further amendment of the law... to give reasonable and equitable divorce.'

Society for the Abolition of Blasphemy Laws
May Seaton-Tiedeman was part of delegations in 1924 and 1929 in which a case for the repeal of British blasphemy laws was presented to the Home Secretary. The Society believed that"The law of blasphemy is an attack on opinion; punishment for blasphemy becomes virtually a punishment for lack of education or taste; the law cannot prevent blasphemy; only the Church of England is protected by the law; many clergymen favour the repeal and genuinely indecent language would still be subject to ordinary law relating to disturbance of the peace."

Trial of The Sexual Impulse
In 1935 Seaton-Tiedeman testified in defence of Edward Charles' An Introduction to the Study of the Psychology and Physiology and Bio-Chemistry of the Sex Impulse among Adults in Mental and Bodily Heath, a work facing prosecution under obscenity laws. The book included 'an exposition of coital technique intended for the ordinary educated man and woman'. Seaton-Tiedeman stated that 'in the light of fifty years' experience as a social worker, during the last twenty-three years of which she had had a special acquaintance with wrecked marriages as Honorary Secretary of the Divorce Law Reform Union, she considered the book of immense value for the preservation of marriage.'

Death
After 1937, Seaton-Tiedeman continued to campaign for further reforms, the Union feeling that it must continue 'till other grounds [for divorce] were admitted', but retired during World War II. She died at Friern Hospital on 22 October 1948, and was cremated four days later. A memorial meeting was held for her at Conway Hall, led by H. J. Blackham. Tributes described Seaton-Tiedeman as an 'energetic worker for Divorce Law Reform', as well as 'an enthusiastic supporter of the Ethical Movement and other humanist activities.'

Category:Divorce law in the United Kingdom Category:Activists by nationality Category:Ethical movement Category:Secular humanists Category:Humanists Category:Lecturers

= Gladys Miall-Smith = Gladys Miall-Smith (1888-1991) was a British doctor, and a notable case in the fight to remove the marriage bar for women. During WW1, she was a doctor for the French Red Cross, and worked in the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont 1918-19. She was the first doctor in Welwyn Garden City.

Early life and education
Gladys Mary Miall-Smith was born in St. Pancras, London in 1888. Her parents were George Augustus Smith, a millinery warehouse man, and Hilda Caroline Smith (née Miall). Her mother, Hilda Caroline (born 1861) was a graduate of University College London and trained to teach at the Maria Grey Training College. She was also politically active for the Liberal and Labour parties, and a member of the London School Board. Gladys was educated at the North London Collegiate School, where she was secretary of the debating society and a contributor to the school's magazine.

In 1914, having obtained her BSc at UCL and the London School of Medicine for Women, she was appointed to the Gilchrist Studentship for Women. The same year, as 'part of her medical experience', she worked at a dressing station in France. After qualifying in 1916, Miall-Smith took up a post as House Surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital. On 26 June 1918, she returned to France to work at the Scottish Women's Hospital in Royaumont, where she remained until January 1919. Frances Ivens was then the hospital's Chief Medical Officer.

Following the war, Miall-Smith studied obstetrics at the Royal Free Hospital, becoming its House Physician and the Assistant Medical Officer for Maternity and Child Welfare for St. Pancras Borough Council. She took the Diplomate in Public Health in 1921, and married Hubert John Fry (a pathologist) in Paddington in the same year.

Marriage and dismissal
In 1921, following her marriage to Dr John Fry, Miall-Smith received a letter anticipating her resignation as the Assistant Medical Officer for Maternity and Child Welfare with St. Pancras Borough Council. Miall-Smith refused to tender her resignation, citing the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 and its stipulation that 'a person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function... or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation.' Louise A. Jackson has noted that although strong support from all women within the profession might have been expected, the reality was more complicated:"Married medical women found themselves pitted against their single, often younger, peers, many of whom felt that their married colleagues, who 'had [their] living assured by [their] husbands' earnings', had 'no right to take posts which might otherwise fall to the lot of younger women who have to earn their own living'."

Miall-Smith did, however, receive support in the form of letters from (among others) the Women's Co-operative Guild, The Women's Local Government Society, the Council of the British Medical Association, the Society of Medical Officers of Health, the Federation of Medical Women, the National Association of Local Government Officers, and the London Society for Women’s Service Nevertheless, the decision was upheld. On 20 October 1921, The Times reported that the 'St. Pancras Borough Council last night decided, by 45 votes to three, to adhere to their decision dismissing Dr. Gladys Miall-Smith from her appointment as assistant medical officer for maternity.' The Medical Woman's Journal wrote:"It appears that the council's decision is mainly based on the theory that, because there is widespread unemployment, married women whose husbands are able to support them should not compete in the labor market. This argument is ancient and musty and in respects an economic fallacy. The belief is that people with private means ought not to work because they 'take the bread out of the mouth' of those who are compelled to work for a living... It is instructive to note that five women councillors attended the meeting, but only two voted in favour of the woman doctor."The Women's Freedom League organised a protest meeting against the dismissal, held at the Working Men's College, with speakers including Louise McIlroy, Winifred Cullis, Helena Normanton, Agnes Dawson, and Leslie Burgin. The following year, St. Pancras appointed Dr. Stella Churchill to replace Miall-Smith. Helena Normanton, writing to The Woman's Leader, criticised this decision, noting that in hiring a widow 'St. Pancras has now obtained precisely what it wanted all along - a woman celibate.' Normanton believed that 'as long as Dr. Miall-Smith's shameful dismissal stands unredressed and unvindicated, so long do all women stand rebuked and humiliated; and the marriage state dishonoured.'

Influenced in part by Miall-Smith's case, as well as other examples of married women's dismissals, the Medical Women's Federation established the Standing Committee for the Defence of Married Medical Women. They requested an amendment to the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, but were working against prevailing societal attitudes towards working married women. The situation continued for many years following Miall-Smith's dismissal.

Welwyn Garden City
In 1922, Dr. Gladys Miall-Smith and her husband Dr. Hubert John Fry went to the growing town of Welwyn Garden City (founded 1920), becoming the town's first doctors, working mostly alongside volunteers. In Welwyn Garden City, Miall-Smith became 'a much respected GP with a special interest in women & children.' In the year of their arrival, Miall-Smith and Fry formed the town's Health Council (with Dr. C. H. Furnival), creating provision for first aid and infant care. She established its first infant welfare clinic, where she was medical officer, and the couple instituted an insurance scheme for patients in 1924 to support their medical care. Alongside others, including the wife of Richard Reiss, Miall-Smith 'worked tirelessly to improve health standards in the town,' before the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948, and afterwards.

Miall-Smith was widowed in 1930, when Hubert Fry died from blood poisoning after scratching himself while carrying out a postmortem examination. They had three children.

Retirement and death
Following her retirement, Miall-Smith travelled widely, rendering service in maternity hospitals in Ghana and Zimbabwe. Gladys Miall-Smith died 3 January 1991 in Northampton. She was 102.

= Dora Mayer = Dora Mayer (12 March 1868 - 7 January 1959) was an activist, essayist, and intellectual, who championed the rights of indigenous people in Peru.

Early life
Dora Mayer was born in Hamburg, Germany, the daughter of Anatol Mayer, a merchant, and Mathilde de Loehrs.The family moved to Callao, Peru in April 1873. Educated at home, Mayer was a motivated autodidact, reading widely, and writing novels, plays, essays, and articles.

Activism
Mayer wrote on women's rights, philosophy, social concerns, and 'extensively in denunciation of the endless abuses of landowners and authorities, and the absence of effective labor legislation' for the indigenous people of Peru. As a journalist, she contributed to numerous publications and edited four herself: El Deber Pro Indígena, La Crítica ,Concordia and El Trabajo.

Like many other pro-indigenous activists of the time, Mayer was influenced by Manuel González Prada. In his 1905 manifesto Nuestros Indios (Our Indians), Prada had argued that indigenous Peruvians had been ravaged by exploitation and discriminatory attitudes and practices, rather than inherently doomed by their perceived racial inferiority. In 1909, Mayer co-founded the Asociación Pro-Indígena, or Pro-Indigenous Association, with philosopher Pedro Zulen and sociologist Joaquín Capelo. According to Frank Salomon, the Association worked principally through legal assistance and research, and 'invoked the Indians' status as legally entitled, though disenfranchised, citizens in order to win them such rights as protection from debt imprisonment.' Though 'humanitarian, altruistic, and moral,' the organisation was 'unable to solve the problem of indigenous exploitation'. The group ultimately devolved in 1917. It was, however, a notable precursor to the burgeoning Indigenismo movement, which gained momentum in the 1920s. Mayer was later a supporter of the Tahuantinsuyo Indigenous Rights Committee (active 1919-1925).

In 1911, Mayer prepared a paper for the First Universal Races Congress in London concerning the treatment of indigenous people in Peru. The abstract of her paper, as described in a pamphlet produced for the Congress, read in part:"The natives of Peru have been accused of dishonesty, hypocrisy, and idleness. It is a fact that modern civilisation has corrupted, rather than improved, them. European employers have done nothing, either from the material or moral point of view, to uplift and civilise them; on the contrary, they have merely set them an example of immorality... The Peruvians, nevertheless, have all the qualities of the cultivator; if they were given the means of developing these qualities and exploiting the natural wealth of their soil, it would mean their salvation, and further the progress of the country."In 1913, in her capacity as President of the Press Committee of the Pro-Indigenous Association, Mayer published The conduct of the Cerro de Pasco mining company. In it, she notes that although the initial operations of the North American mining company were legitimate"as the company became initiated into the secrets of the judicial and political habits of the country, it made up its mind to take advantage of the frailties which unfortunately are to be found in our social system, and entered fully into the ways of fraud, bribery and violence... We would make no remark upon the easy corruption of the businessmen who arrived here, if the Anglo-Saxon peoples did not brag so much about their moral superiority over the South-Americans and started in their diplomacy from the idea that, whilst protecting their countrymen in the exterior, they were defending the cause of civilization and morality."Mayer went on to describe the company's 'inhumane conduct towards the aboriginal workmen' it employed. She was a staunch critic of the abusive or exploitative practices of transnational companies, from both social and environmental angles.

Women's rights
On the role of women in society, Mayer prized the role of the homemaker, but acknowledged the disadvantages for women of domestic work being insufficiently recognised. She argued that:"In the current moment power depends on economic conditions, and in this respect women once again find themselves at a disadvantage, because their labor as homemaker is not assigned mercantile value […] It may be indispensable to give wives and mothers a wage in order to make men understand that they are not simply ‘giving’ women half of their fortunes, but rather that work done in the feminine world is as important as that of the man’s."

Relationship with Pedro Zulen
Pedro Zulen, 22 years younger than Mayer but for many years her 'partner in indigenista activism', reportedly rebuffed her romantic advances repeatedly. Nevertheless, she was public in her passion for him, and in published works from 1920 onwards, used the name 'Dora Mayer de Zulen'. This appears also on her tombstone.

Death and legacy
Dora Mayer died in Peru on 7 January 1959, at the age of 91. In 2019, philosopher Joel Rojas edited a collection of Mayer's writings entitled The Sun that Dispels the Clouds: Essential texts, and an exhibition was held in Lima about her life and work. In the same year, the National University of San Marcos embarked on a project to digitise Mayer's materials held in their archives.

Life
Janet May Buchanan was born in Glasgow in 1866, the daughter of George Buchanan and Janet Shaw (née Blair). Buchanan was educated at a private school in Cheltenham. On her father's death in 1906, she inherited a substantial sum, enabling the pursuit of her own interests. Among these was Egyptology.

Buchanan was the founder of two organisations for the purpose of supporting excavations: Egypt Research Students Association (with branches in both Glasgow and Edinburgh), and the Glasgow Egypt Society. In 1912, she curated Glasgow's first exhibition of Egyptian material, held at the Kelvingrove Museum. Although Buchanan was killed in a car accident just three weeks after the exhibition's opening, it continued for six months and welcomed 10,000 visitors a week.

Death
Janet May Buchanan died on 8 December 1912.

Category:Egyptologists Category:Scottish women Category:Women academics Category:Women collectors

= Susannah Wright = Susannah Wright was an English woman imprisoned on charges of Blasphemous libel for selling works from the shop of radical publisher Richard Carlile. In total, Wright served two years in Newgate and Coldbath Fields prisons, gaining a level of notoriety as the 'She-Champion of Impiety'.

Life
Susannah Godber was born in Nottingham in 1792, and made her living as a lace worker. By 1815, she was living in London, where she married William Wright on 25 December. Before her arrest in July 1821, Wright was already active in radical politics, publishing a number of inflammatory works with her husband, in his name, and associating with a wide circle of radicals. When Richard Carlile, his wife Jane, and subsequently his sister Mary-Ann, were imprisoned for selling blasphemous works from his shop, Susannah Wright took over its management. Arrested and acquitted once, she was prosecuted successfully following her second arrest, and joined the Carliles in Dorchester prison.

Wright appeared in court on 8 July 1822, where she conducted her own defence. Despite a lengthy and carefully prepared speech, Wright was ordered to spend (along with her infant child) to an initial ten weeks in Newgate jail. Newspapers castigated her as 'wretched and shameless', accusing Wright of having 'shunned all the distinctive shame and fear and decency of her sex'. At sentencing, on 6 February 1823, the Judge ordered Wright to 18 months in Coldbath Fields prison, Clerkenwell.

Carlile published a report of Wright's trial from Dorchester Prison, dedicating it:"To the Women of the Island of Great Britain; this Specimen of Female Patriotism, Love of Liberty, Bold and Honest Daring, to Tyrants and Hypocrisy, and Virtuous Disinterestedness for All but Virtue, and Human Amelioration; For their example, consideration, approbation, and remuneration, is respectfully inscribed by the advocate of their emancipation from these worst of slaveries, ignorance and idolatry, R. Carlile."Wright was released from Coldbath Fields in July 1824, having lost the sight in one of her eyes, and with various other ailments. William Wright died eighteen months later.

In 1826, Wright established her own radical bookshop in her native Nottingham, 'trading in politically extreme and heretical publications'.

Wright also 'made strong demands for educational rights for women and full participation in the cultural benefits society could offer', writing in radical newspaper The Republican.

Legacy
In a biography of her father, Theophila Carlile Campbell described Susannah Wright as a 'plucky little woman' to whom Richard Carlile 'paid... the highest tribute for her enthusiasm, perseverance, coolness, and dauntlessness.' In a letter printed in the work, Carlile wrote that 'there is scarce another woman in England who would have done for me what that woman has done, and from my knowledge of her in 1817-1819, I know that a love of principle has been her ruling motive.'

Wright's date of death is unknown.

= Anti-Persecution Union = The Anti-Persecution Union was an organisation established by the freethinkers George Jacob Holyoake and Emma Martin in 1842, to aid in defending individuals accused of blasphemy and blasphemous libel. Its object was 'to assert and maintain the right of free discussion, and to protect and defend the victims of intolerance and bigotry'.

Formation and purpose
Described as a 'militant freethought league,' the Union came on the heels of a number of prosecutions for blasphemy. As such, its efforts were 'defensive as well as propagandistic'. Following the prosecution of Charles Southwell, and building on the 'Committee for the Protection of Mr. Southwell' established for him, The Oracle of Reason encouraged its readers to assist in the formation of a Union"whose great and glorious objects shall be to abolish all law or legal practice which shackles expression of opinion, and to protect and indemnify all, or whatever persuasion, whether Jew, Christian, Infidel, Atheist, or other denomination in danger of similar tyrannies."David Nash has noted that, despite the inclusion of all denominations and none, the Union was 'clearly aimed at freethinkers'.

By the Union's first meeting, at the radical John Street Institution on Tottenham Court Road, London, the prosecutions of Southwell, Holyoake, and George and Harriet Adams were discussed. The meeting's first resolution, moved by Emma Martin, expressed 'strong disapprobation of all legal interference with the free expression of opinion' and 'emphatically deprecate[d] the recent prosecutions for the alleged crime of blasphemy, as unjust and impolitic.' Martin's own atheism was infamous, causing division and disapproval among many of her own socialist associates. It was, Barbara Taylor has suggested, in part her anger at this absence of support that she and Holyoake formed the Union.

The Union published its activities in The Oracle of Reason (1841-43) and The Movement and Anti-Persecution Gazette (1843-45). For four months it circulated The Monthly Circular of the Anti-Persecution Union, edited by Holyoake. Reports of the trials of Holyoake, Matilda Roalfe, Thomas Finlay, and Thomas Paterson were also published on the Union's behalf by Henry Hetherington and Paterson.

Other groups
A Scottish Anti-Persecution Union was also established, responding to prosecutions in Scotland. An appeal in The Oracle of Reason stated that the Union was:"made up of individual professors of almost every kind of opinion - political, religious, and irreligious... [and] formed for the sole purpose of setting free the tongue and the press; therefore, all who are persecuted for expressing, or otherwise publishing their opinions, will have a legitimate claim to its support."In February 1844, a Leicester Committee of the Anti-Persecution Union was formed. Its first secretary, William Henry Holyoak, had received permission the previous year, as reported in The Movement. Multiple members of the Leicester Committee were later part of the Leicester Secular Society, the world's oldest, founded in 1851.

Life
Virginie Traut was born on 18 October 1814 in Colmar, France.

On 7 April 1849, she married Jean Griess, a travelling salesman who shared her interest in phalansterian social organisation (inspired by Fourierist principles of self-sufficiency and cooperation. ). Both took the name Griess-Traut. In the same, the couple left France for Algeria, where they remained for twenty-five years. Settling in Algiers, they formed a community with likeminded individuals, setting up a bakery, grocery store, and establishing a Froebelian kindergarten.

At the outset of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Griess-Traut took to the press to call on her fellow women to join together in denouncing the war, initiating lifelong involvement with pacifist activism. Over the following decades, Griess-Traut was active in numerous pacifist organisations, including the International League for Peace Freedom, French Society for Arbitration, Society of Peace, and the Association of Women for Peace. She was vice-president of the Society for Peace through Education and an advocate of the idea that 'European forces be made over into groups for public works development', transforming the standing armies of Europe into 'productive organisations'.

In the mid-1870s, Griess-Traut and her husband returned to Europe, living first in Switzerland and then in France. In 1877, Griess-Traut issued a Manifesto of Women Against War. Jean Griess-Traut died in 1882.

In 1889, at the French and International Congress of the Rights of Women in Paris, Griess-Traut spoke in support of co-education. She was also a vice-president of the Congress.

Death and legacy
Griess-Traut died in 1898, and is remembered as being 'a loyal supporter of progressive, republican, feminist, and peace causes during her long life'.

Life and death
Elleine Smith was living in Maldon, Essex, when she was accused, tried, and sentenced to death for witchcraft in 1579. She had at least two children, a son and a daughter. Smith, whose mother had also been executed for supposed 'murder by witchcraft', was accused of killing a child, and suspected of causing the death of her stepfather, who she had recently argued with. She was also said to have attacked a neighbour with a toad spirit. Among Smith's accusers, as was frequent in witch trials at the time, was her own son. He claimed that Smith 'kept three spirits': 'Great Dick in a wicker bottle, Little Dick in a leathern bottle, and Willet in a wool-pack.' One of the incidents over which she was accused, was bewitching her neighbour, John Estwood, for refusing alms to her son. In retaliation, it was alleged, she caused Estwood to have 'very greate paine in his bodie'.

The case of Elleine Smith is described in A Detection of Damnable Driftes, Practized by Three Witches Arrainged at Chelmifforde [Chelmsford] in Essex, at the Late Assizes There Holden, Which Were Executed in Aprill, 1579, held by the British Library. An introduction to the anonymously authored pamphlet warns readers of the dangers of Satan, and advocates prayer as a means of protection.

Smith was hanged in Chelmsford in April 1579.

= Emily Palmer Cape = Emily Palmer Cape (1865-1953) was an artist, writer, sociologist and freethinker, and the first woman admitted to Columbia University. She became a close friend and editorial assistant to Lester Frank Ward, as well as writing a number of her own works. Cape was described as 'an agnostic and an ardent humanitarian'.

Life
Emily Palmer Cape (née Palmer) was born in New York City in 1865. In 1884, she enrolled at Columbia University (then Columbia College), answering a call from the university's president Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard for applications from women. Due to prejudice against their studying at the university, she was not allowed to attend lectures, and had to undertake laboratory work at night at the College of Pharmacy. She graduated in 1887. In 1890, she married Henry Cape, a lumber merchant, and had two children : Henry Cape, Jr. and Mary Story Cape.

After hearing a lecture by the sociologist Lester F. Ward, Cape visited him and proposed that she assist him in preparing a compilation of his works. Ward drew the admiration of many women, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman, particularly drawn to his 'free thought and women's rights views'. Becoming an intimate friend and devotee of Ward, Cape co-edited, with him, a multi-volume collection of Ward's writings entitled Glimpses of the Cosmos. She also became Ward's literary executor on his death in 1913, and in 1922 published a memoir of him. In it, she described Ward as having 'the mind of a sage, the heart of a woman, and the soul of a poet.'

A talented artist, Cape was a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, studying at the National Academy of Design as well as under various individual artists. As a supporter of women's suffrage, Cape was a member of the Equal Franchise Society and the Political Equality Society. A freethinker, she was a member of rationalist and positivist societies in London.

Emily Palmer Cape died on 27 December 1953 at home in Sarasota, Florida.

Life
Ellen Gottschalk was born in Paris in 1904 to Oscar Gottschalk, a diplomat, and his wife Edele (née Frizler). She attended school in Cologne, where she excelled in music and singing. The First World War mobilised Gottschalk against 'the absurdity of hostile patriotisms', and the militarism which accompanied them. She became involved in radical politics, and joined the German Communist Party in 1927.

Gottschalk first met M. N. Roy in 1928. The pair exchanged letters during his imprisonment ('on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the state' ) between 1931-1936, during which time Gottschalk fled Berlin for Paris, escaping Nazi rule. These were published as Letters from Jail in 1943, and have been described as 'as a document of revolutionary intimacy'. During his imprisonment, Ellen organised an 'international letter-writing campaign' which demanded the release of Roy, to which Jawaharlal Nehru and Fenner Brockway contributed.

Roy was released from prison in 1936, and the following year Gottschalk moved to India and settled in Dehradun with him. They married in March 1937. Together, they organised the Radical Humanist group during the 1940s, and she continued to run it following his death in 1954. The importance of her support and collaboration to her husband's achievements has been widely acknowledged, with biographers noting that the 'voluminous writing that Roy did would not have been possible without Ellen.' She took an active role in the humanist movement, and saw her internationalism as arising in part from her upbringing, as well as from her socialism:"When you are born in one country and your mother belongs to another, and your father to a third, and endowed with his citizenship, you are a foreigner in every country where you have grown up and studied and... lived and worked, and yet you feel at home in all of them; if you then marry an alien from a different continent... and become at home there too... you see the good and bad in all countries and peoples."Ellen Roy wrote Radical Democracy and, with Sibnarayan Ray, In Man's Own Image.

Murder
Roy was found murdered in her home on 14 December 1960, at the age of 52. With no signs of robbery, it was speculated that there might have been political motivations. Her murder was later attributed to a local man who had been known to both Ellen and M. N. Roy.

Life
Alma Haas was born Alma Hollaender in Silesia, today part of Poland. She was the daughter of music teacher Isaac Hollaender (1809-1898) and Rosalie Pappenheim (1814-1882), a pianist. At ten years old, she went to music school, and made her first public performance at 14, with Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto in G minor. In 1862, she followed her eldest brother, the composer and pianist Alexis Hollaender to Berlin, where he had been studying. She continued her studies there from 1862 to 1867, and the following year performed at Leipzig's Gewandhaus. She toured the major German cities, and in 1870 played a season in London. In 1872 she married Dr. Ernst Haas, a professor of Sanskrit at University College London. They had two children: Elsa (b.1876) and Paul (b. 1878). On Ernst Haas' death in 1882, Alma Haas donated her husband's book collections to SOAS University of London. Between 1876-1886 she taught at Bedford College, London as well as at the Royal College of Music. Among her pupils was Liza Lehmann. In 1886 she became head of the music department at King's College London. In 1922, she gave a pianoforte lesson to Infanta Beatriz and Infanta María Cristina of Spain, in the presence of their mother, the Queen of Spain.

As a performer, Haas was described as 'quiet' and 'artistic', The Times noting in 1911 that she:"is never content with the stereotyped programme that critics know so well and dislike to intensely; her choice of pieces is always interesting, and she presents them always in a fresh light and as if she were enjoying them as much as any one."She earned a reputation as an 'outstanding Beethoven interpreter', and was noted for her broad repertoire. After 1914, Haas largely ceased her concert career, but continued to teach. In that year, she became the third president of the Society of Women Musicians, of which she had been a founding member.

Alma Haas died at home on 12 December 1932.

Early life
Clara Gottschalk was born in 1837 in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of the seven children of London-born Edward Gottschalk and Aimée (née Bruslé). The Gottschalk and Bruslé families were slave owners, and the children were raised in part by a nurse named Sally, who the Bruslés had taken with them as chattel from Saint-Domingue, and from whom they heard Creole legends and lullabies. Their maternal grandmother was also from Saint-Domingue, and between the two women its music 'was a constant and and vital presence in the Gottschalks' family circle'.

In 1847, Aimée Gottschalk left her husband and moved with six of the children to Paris, France, where Louis Moreau was already studying music. Aimée was 'reputed to have believed that all the Gottschalk children would be musically gifted', and although not all of them went on to be as acclaimed as Louis Moreau, 'all did perform publicly and/ or compose at one time or another'. The youngest brother, Louis Gaston Gottschalk (1845-1912), was an eminent opera singer and vocal teacher. Clara and Blanche Gottschalk were both professional pianists, and Celestine and Augusta Gottschalk also performed.

Marriage and Notes of a Pianist
In 1880, Clara Gottschalk married Dr. Robert E. Peterson in Philadelphia. In 1881, she published a collection of Louis Moreau Gottschalk's travel notes and diaries, entitled Notes of a Pianist, with 'a long biographical preface gathering many testimonials and reviews from newspapers (all elogious)'.

It has been speculated that Clara may have bowdlerised her brother's writings in efforts to preserve his reputation. However, it is generally accepted that her reliance on published versions of the gathered texts means that omissions were Louis Moreau's, rather than hers. In his biography of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, S. Frederick Starr argued that:"The one major flaw in her edition of the Notes is that the English translation by her husband, Robert E. Peterson, is an appallingly anaemic rendering of Gottschalk's pungent French prose."He adds that Clara's work 'enabled the public to peer behind the mask of aloofness that Gottschalk invariably wore before the public', revealing him to be 'an ironic commentator on everything from politics to religion.' Clara assumed responsibility for memorialising Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and 'for the rest of her life campaigned to confirm her brother's standing as the bard of Creole New Orleans' :"It was she who encouraged a drab New Orleans insurance man, William H. Hawes, to collect every scrap of Gottschalk memorabilia and present them to the City of New Orleans. The bewildered mayor had to endure endless visits from Hawes, who doggedly checked to make sure that Gottschalk's bust was displayed prominently in City Hall."

Creole Songs
In 1902, Clara published Creole Songs from New Orleans in the Negro Dialect. Transcribed from memory, she stated in the collection's introduction that:"Dr. Dvořák has claimed that there is in time to be a native school of American music based upon the primitive musical utterances of the Indian and the negro among us. Then truly these melodies of the Louisiana negroes, which, quaintly merry or full of a very tender pathos, have served to rock whole generations of Southern children, are historical documents of some interest to the student and lover of music."The influence of the songs gathered by Clara on Louis Moreau Gottschalk's compositions was also noted, with some being based on them directly.

Death
Clara Gottschalk Peterson died at her home in Asbury Park, New Jersey on 25 July 1910. The New York Times noted that her house had been:"for many years the gathering place of Asbury Park's musicians, and even during the past Winter, despite her failing health, she gave musicales at which she played her brother's compositions."She was survived by two step-children and her sister, Celestine Gottschalk, with whom she had lived for a number of years.

Life
Harry Bellerby Lowerison was born in Great Lumley, County Durham on 13 July 1863, the son of a coalminer. He left his family home as a result of disagreements over religion, and trained as a teacher at St Bede College, Durham. He became active in socialist circles, becoming 'widely recognized as a very hard-working socialist propagandist' and wrote prolifically for The Clarion. He was also, by 1891, joint secretary of the largest London branch of the Fabian Society, which met at Lowerison's home in Homerton. In the same year, he joined the Society's national executive committee. In July 1892, Lowerison married Alice Mabel Dutton, a Post Office clerk.

Between 1894-1899, Lowerison was employed as a teacher at Wenlock Road School in Hackney, where he experienced a sense of disgust at both the 'overcrowded and filthy' surroundings and the religious character of the school's curriculum. His attempts to improve the situation of the school's pupils, and encourage more progressive attitudes among his colleagues, led Lowerison to assist in establishing the London School Swimming Association, and to try setting up a London schools rambling club. In November 1899, following a series of letters to The Clarion entitled 'My Ideal School', Lowerison was dismissed from Wenlock Road without a reference. The ideals contained in these letters formed the basis of his own school.

In 1898, Lowerison published In England Now, which Robert Blatchford (writing in The Clarion in 1907) described as being 'as like him [Lowerison] as a book can be like its author'. In 1899, he published Field and Folklore, 'a naturalist's handbook for children'. The book contained a chapter by publisher and folklorist Alfred Nutt, who 'conceived the idea of inserting a chapter on folklore, and so introducing the young wildlife observer to the pleasures of detecting and recording traditions.'

In 1910, he adopted the forename Bellerby (given on his birth certificate). In 1913, he oversaw the excavation of ruins at St. Edmund's Point on the Hunstanton cliffs: part of a 12th century chapel said to stand at the landing place of Edmund the Martyr.

Ruskin School Home
Lowerison's letters to The Clarion in 1899 stated his vision for an ideal school, donations for the establishment of which came from its readers. Lowerison imagined:"We will pitch our house in the country, where skies are blue and grass is green, and the young minds and lives entrusted to us shall bud and develop amongst the sweetest and most gracious surroundings and we will take for our basis John Ruskin's educational ideal."This ideal included 'Health and the Exercises', 'Habits of Gentleness and Justice,' and finding and developing 'the natural capabilities and talents of each individual child... so that the child may follow, happily and naturally, as far as may be, the calling by which he or she is to live.' Following his dismissal from Wenlock Road School, with funds donated by Clarion readers, Lowerison opened his Ruskin Home School in Hunstanton, Norfolk. In 1902, it moved to nearby Heacham. Lowerison and his wife ran the school together, combining 'their great love for children' with 'forward looking ideas on education.' Lowerison's educational approach was cross-curricular, linking diverse subjects in an effort to excite children's imaginations. He outlined his approach in 1906's From Palaeolith to Motor Car and 1911's Star Lore for Teachers. In Cassell's Magazine, Lowerison described his techniques:"It is far better to take the child straight to Nature. He will detest an algebraic symbol; but take a flower, and how he will delight when he is shown the symbol of its delicate petals... Nothing can be more practical than reading, writing, arithmetic, Euclid, history, geography, French, and German. Only I try to dovetail the subjects one with another as well as I can."In line with his socialist values, Lowerison 'structured the school so that it was as deinstitutionalized as possible', allowing pupils significant freedom 'to roam the countryside and develop their own interests'. A. S. Neill, the Scottish educator and founder of Summerhill School, visited Ruskin School Home, and was likely influenced by it. Lowerison's friend Robert Blatchford, recalling a visit to the school, wrote:"So there is the impossible Harry, in his impossible school: a success for all to see. Ha! It is only a few weeks since I was there, and heard the children sing. They sang freshly and with elation; they sang all the lot of them as with one voice... O, most unpractical Lowerison, thou has made a school out of nothing, and behold the young lives growing therein like flowers."Between 1909-10, with fifty pupils, the school was at its busiest. After World War I, however, the school declined, and was closed in 1926.

Retirement and death
Lowerison retired with the closure of Ruskin School Home, moving to Houghton, near Huntingdon. He died there on 6 June 1935. He was survived by his wife, Alice Mabel Lowerison, a son and a daughter.

Life
Frida Mond was born Frederike Löwenthal in Cologne, Germany in 1847, the only child of Adolf Meyer Loewenthal. In 1866, she married her cousin Ludwig Mond, a chemist, manufacturer, and art collector, and the couple moved to England. Ludwig and Frida had two children: Robert Ludwig (1867-1938), who became a chemist and archaeologist, and Alfred Moritz (1868-1930), a company director and politician.

Though Frida and Ludwig had been raised in the Jewish faith, once in England they relinquished religion, including banning the Bible from their household 'because its cruel stories and allegories were considered unsuitable reading'. Frida's close friend and former schoolmate, Henriette Hertz joined the family in England, participating in their cultural, artistic, and intellectual pursuits, and providing vital company for Frida.

'Ludwig’s scientific eminence and curiosity were matched on Frida’s part by an equally passionate enthusiasm for literature and art', and the trio led 'a lavish life of travelling, entertaining and collecting', regularly spending winters at the Palazzo Zuccari, Rome. Frida was a member of The Folklore Society and the English Goethe Society.

On Ludwig's death in 1909, Frida was became a wealthy widow. The following year, she wrote to her friend Israel Gollancz, secretary of the British Academy and a professor at King's College London, to offer: "for the acceptance of the British Academy, the sum of £500 a year for at least three years, to form the nucleus of a Fund (which it is hoped will be augmented by others donors, so that in time an annual income of about this amount may accrue) to be devoted to the furtherance of research and criticism, historical, philological, and philosophical, in the various branches of English literature, including the investigations of problems in the history and usage of English, written and spoken, and textual and documentary work elucidating the development of English language and literature."Mond intended the fund to be used to establish an annual ‘Shakespeare oration or lecture', as well as a lecture on English poetry 'to be called the Warton Lecture, as a tribute to the memory of Thomas Warton, the first historian of English poetry'. The inaugural lectures in these series were delivered in 1911 and 1910 respectively. In 1920, Mond offered a further £1200 as an additional 'contribution towards the English Language and Literature Fund’.

Legacy
In her will, Frida Mond bequeathed to the British Academy:"two thousand pounds for the endowment of a Lecture & Prize on subjects connected with Anglo-Saxon or Early English Language & Literature, English Philology, the History of English Literature and cognate studies."She wished the fund associated with her Gollancz, who delivered the first lecture on the subject of ‘Old English Poetry’ in 1924. The inaugural ‘Biennial Prize for English Studies’ was awarded to philologist Joseph Wright the following year. On Gollancz's death in 1930, the lecture and prize were renamed for him (as Mond has wished).

Frida Mond bequeathed 300 books relating to German literature, particularly Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to King's College London, as well as statues of Sappho and Sophocles. The gifted collection also included letters, portraits, busts, photographs, and other relics associated with Goethe and Schiller, as well as with Charlotte Buff, a friend of Goethe's.

Frida also left a lifetime annuity of £300 per year to her friend, the sculptor Anna Dabis, who had created a bust of Mond (now in the collection of King's College London).

In 2014, a 'legacy club' was established by the British Academy, and announced by its President Lord Stern. The club was intended 'to recognise and thank those who have pledged a legacy to the British Academy in their will', and was named the Mond Society.

= Lady Elizabeth Swann = Lady Elizabeth Swann (1855-1914) was an active worker for Liberal, progressive, and philanthropic causes, and the wife of Sir Charles Ernest Swann MP. In 1896, she chaired the inaugural Annual Congress of the Union of Ethical Societies (now Humanists UK).

Life
Elizabeth Swann was born in Manchester, the daughter of David Duncan. She married Charles Ernest Swann (then 'Schwann') on 20 September 1877. The couple had four sons and one daughter: Charles Duncan, Harold, Laurence Averil, Geoffrey, and Elizabeth Kathleen Mildred.

Described as 'full of enthusiasm for good causes', Swann became actively involved in a number of progressive organisations, including the Women’s Liberal Federation. Swann was the first Honorary Secretary of the Manchester and Salford Women's Trade Union Council, established in 1895. The previous year, she had chaired a meeting of the Manchester and Salford Federation of Women Workers, and remained active in encouraging trade unionism.

In 1895, Swann was one of a group of woman who - as the Association for the Compulsory Registration of Midwives - petitioned for a bill to regulate midwifery. The Association for the Compulsory Registration of Midwives and the Midwives Registration Association were organisations founded in 1893, and 'cooperated in the campaign for definitive legislation' in the practice of midwifery. The Midwives Act came into force in 1902. In 1904, Swann was signatory to an open letter requesting financial support for the training of midwives working from, and working with, women of the working class. The association aimed: "to assist, by means of loans, grants, and free training, the education of the midwives whose services are so urgently demanded by the law and for public safety."

Death and legacy
Elizabeth Swann died at home in London on 14 April 1914. An obituary in the Manchester Guardian noted that as the wife of an MP:"she entered with exceptional ardour into all movements that concerned the welfare of the district. She was a good speaker, and by her public addresses, no less than by her attractive personality, she contributed much to her husband’s success in the constituency."The Manchester Daily Citizen, similarly reported that:"In all causes, whether social or political, Lady Swann displayed the utmost zeal and enthusiasm, and it was always believed that the great help she gave her husband, together with her personal popularity, contributed in no small degree to his political success."

= Ruth Homan = Ruth Homan (8 August 1850-6 November 1938) was an educationist and women's welfare campaigner, who worked for many years on the London School Board. She was also active in Liberal politics, and a supporter of progressive social policies. The Women's Library, London holds a collection of Homan's scrapbooks and albums.

Life
Ruth Homan was born in Hoxton, London to Sir Sydney Waterlow, a philanthropist and politician, and Anna Maria (née Hickson). In 1873, she married Francis Wilkes Homan, but widowed in 1880. The couple had one daughter.

Work for the London School Board
Her family had been politically active, and friends of her father included Thomas Henry Huxley. When she ran for the London School Board in 1891, she had prepared herself through stints as a school manager, a probationer at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and with the County Holidays Fund (a charity). She also took cooking classes at the South Kensington School of Cookery. She was elected to the School Board as the representative for Tower Hamlets, and held the role until the School Board was abolished in 1903.

A supporter of the Liberal Party and advocate of progressive policies, Homan 'endorsed the development of the higher grade and evening continuation schools, the teaching of temperance principles in board school, and special teaching for 'afflicted' and delicate children.' In addition to her work on the School Board, she was prominent in other charitable organisations, including the Poplar Board School Children's Boot and Clothing Help Society and the London Schools Dinners Association. Homan was also a member of council of the Women's Industrial Council, a vice-president of the Pupil-Teachers Association, and a member of a Club of Working Girls in the City.

Homan was president of the Cornish Union of Women's Liberal Associations, as well as of the Hammersmith Women's Liberal Association. Alongside other liberal, upper-middle class London women, she was a member of the feminist Women's Local Government Society (WLGS).

From 1910, for 11 years, Homan served as a poor-law guardian for Ewell, Surrey.

The Ethical Movement
With Stanton Coit, Leslie Stephen, and Corrie Grant, Ruth Homan was a founding member of the West London Ethical Society in 1892, one of the formative bodies of the Union of Ethical Societies (which became Humanists UK). The West London Ethical Society, part of the early Ethical movement in the UK, appealed:"To those who have no longer a place in established religious organisations, but who yet consider that there is as good need as ever for the exposition and inculcation of the meaning and worth of the moral and inward life... to provide a centre where those who share that conviction may regularly meet, listen to, and exchange thoughts on the themes that concern human wellbeing in the widest and highest sense, unhampered by tradition and conventions that have spent their force."

Death
Towards the end of her life, Ruth Homan lived in Cornwall, where she was president of the Tintagel Nursing Association and her local branch of the Women's Institute. She also established the village's social hall. She died on 6 November 1938 and was cremated at Plymouth Crematorium.

= Margaret Boileau = Dr. Margaret Lucy Augusta Boileau (18 July 1867-17 September 1923) was an English doctor, surgeon, suffragist and philanthropist. On her premature death from cancer in 1923, she was widely lauded for having shown 'devotion to the cause of knowledge' in carefully recording the course of her disease in the name of medical research.

Life
Margaret Boileau was born in Ketteringham, Norfolk, on 18 July 1867, to Sir Francis George Manningham Boileau and Lucy Henrietta Nugent. Her brother was Sir Maurice Boileau. For the first thirty years of her life, Boileau travelled widely with her father, starting to study medicine only in her thirties. She qualified as a doctor in 1906, having studied at the London School of Medicine for Women. Boileau worked at the New Hospital for Women and at Ravenscourt Park Hospital

Boileau was a supporter of women's suffrage (described as 'ardent but not militant') and of the Labour Party. She was also an active supporter of Hellesdon Hospital, the Girl Guide movement, the Church Missionary Society, and the Young Women's Christian Association. Boileau was said to have 'devoted herself to public, philanthropic, and social work'. During World War I, she cared for wounded soldiers at Ketteringham Hall, Norfolk and was commandant of the Voluntary Aid Detachment hospital at Swainsthorpe.

Death
When Boileau was diagnosed with cancer, she 'gathered at her bedside a band of devoted women', to whom she 'daily described her symptoms in the interests of medical research'. She died on 17 September 1923 at the age of 56. On her death, Boileau left £200 'to the Norfolk and Norwich Staff of Nurses, Ltd.', and £100 each to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, the Royal Free Hospital, and the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.

Life
James was born in Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica, and moved to England in 1961, as part of the Windrush generation. Following the end of her marriage, James raised her children as a single parent, 'an experience that later informed her work on the Social Services committee.' James worked first in catering and dressmaking, in order to support herself and her family, before becoming a nurse with the British Red Cross for eight years.

James was elected to Islington Council in 1986, and became Mayor two years later. In order to take up the post, James took early retirement from her existing job, affecting her pension, and was additionally unable to claim councillors' attendance allowances because mayoral duties did not leave enough time to carry out the functions required of a councillor. In order to support herself financially, James worked from 5.30am as a cleaning supervisor, before the start of her working day as Mayor.

While Mayor, in 1989, James founded a Sickle Cell Support Group in Camden, which was 'primarily set up to be a forum for people with sickle cell and thalassaemia diseases to meet and get to know and support each other.'

In 2018, as part of the LDN WMN initiative celebrating 100 years since the first women gained the vote in Britain, a photograph of James by her granddaughter, the artist Phoebe Collings-James, was displayed on the outside of The Peel Institute, Islington. The artwork 'celebrates the cultural impact left by James on the Borough and is located close to the estate where she lived all her life'.

Life
Lolita Roy was born in Calcutta, India in 1865. She married Piera Lal Roy, a barrister and director of public prosecutions in Calcutta, in about 1886, and the couple went on to have six children: Leilavati, Miravati, Paresh Lal, Hiravati, Indra Lal, and Lolit Kumar. By 1900, Roy and her children were living in West London.

In London, Roy was active in multiple social and activist associations for Indians, including as president of the London Indian Union Society and a member of the committee of the National Indian Association (founded by Mary Carpenter in 1870). The London Union Society helped to support Indian university students in London (of which there were then around 700). In 1909, she helped to found the Indian Women's Education Association, which sought to raise funds to bring Indian women to Britain to train as teachers.

On 17 June 1911, the Women's Social and Political Union organised a Women's Coronation Procession, using the coronation of King George V to demand the vote. Jane Cobden and Roy gathered a small Indian contingent in advance of the procession, forming 'part of the 'Imperial contingent' and intended to show the strength of support for women's suffrage throughout the Empire'. A photograph from the procession includes Roy, Mrs. Bhagwati Bhola Nauth, and Mrs. Leilavati Mukerjea (Roy's daughter). Writing of their presence on the march many years later, Indian politician Sushama Sen recalled:"At this time the Women’s Suffragette movement who were fighting for their votes, was at its height. In those days there were few Indian women in London. Hearing of me they sent me an invitation to join their demonstration at Piccadilly Circus, and to march with them led by Mrs Pankhurst to the Parliament House... It was a great experience for me, at the same time it was a novel sight for a single Indian woman amidst the procession, and I was the subject of public gaze."Activist and theosophist Annie Besant also marched with the Indian suffragists.

In 1912 and 1913, Roy assisted in the production of several Indian plays staged in London and Cambridge, offering advice and helping performers with traditional clothing such as turbans and sari s.

During World War I, two of Roy's sons saw active duty. Her eldest, Paresh Lal Roy served in the Honourable Artillery Company for the duration of the war. On his return to India in the 1920s, he played a key role in popularising the sport of boxing. Her middle son, Indra Lal Roy (1898–1918), joined the Royal Flying Corps, and was killed in action. Lolita Roy served as honorary secretary of the Eastern League, which had been established to fundraise for the Indian Soldiers' Fund, providing clothing, food, and other items to Indian soldiers. In 1916, along with other suffragists, Roy helped to organise a 'Ladies Day', where items were sold at Haymarket, London to raise money for the cause.

As well as her work for suffrage in Britain, Roy worked actively for women's right to vote in India. This included petitioning the British government, taking part in a deputation to the secretary of state for India, attending a meeting at the House of Commons, and public speaking in support of the Indian women's suffrage. Throughout the 1920s she continued to work for suffrage in India, including through the All-India Women’s Conference

Lolita Roy's death date is unknown.

Legacy
In recent years, historians and activists have sought to give greater recognition to the contributions of people of colour within the suffrage movement, including Lolita Roy. Dr. Sumita Mukherjee, a historian of the British Empire and the Indian Subcontinent, has sought to challenge 'pre-existing ideas surrounding the suffrage movement particularly in relation to the public commemoration in 2018 of the Centenary of the Representation of the People Act which, in 1918, gave some women the right to vote in the UK'. She argues that 'Western popular beliefs have largely ignored the roles of women of colour in bringing about this change'. Mukherjee’s research has focused on the role of Indian suffrage campaigners, 'revealing that there was a thriving suffrage movement in the Indian subcontinent and that these women forged global networks with other suffrage campaigners transnationally'.

In April 2018, a plinth was erected underneath the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square, which featured the images of two women of Indian origin: the Norfolk-born goddaughter of Queen Victoria, Sophia Duleep Singh, and Lolita Roy. In the same year, an exhibition was staged at Hammersmith Town Hall featuring an artwork celebrating Roy's work in the suffrage movement.