The story of Ethel Haslam of Ilford, a suffragette campaigner, has been written.

And there’s a walk around Ilford on August 30 celebrated her life.

Great to see!

(Thanks to Alan for the tip.)

Yesterday at a CND commemoration for the Hiroshima anniversary I heard Rose Hacker, billed by the Camden New Journal as the “world’s oldest columnist” speak.

And it was as good a speech as you’ll hear in many a day, built around the theme of 100-year anniversaries, and delivered without notes.

Unfortunately I was juggling a camera and couldn’t take notes, but one particular line struck home: this year marks the 100th anniversary of women in the England and Wales being allowed to stand for local councils.

She wondered how it was that in the century since, women have made so little progress in politics.

Not at all bad going at age 101 for Rose anyway, if not for women in politics.

In a magazine essay on “Woman”:

“It’s very unnatural to love those who are neither of a tender or delicate disposition; but n the contrary are of a bold, impudent deportment. What a grovelling soul must he have who can mix his passions with any thing so odious! … Courage in that sex is to me as disgustful as effeminacy in men.”

Now there’s a man with psychological problems…

Quoted in The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History, which well deserves its good reviews, even though irritatingly this quote is not footnoted… but we are presumably talking latish 18th century.

You’ll often meet them here (there are so many more than you might have thought), but this time I’m talking medieval Japan, specifically the six women who between them were ruling Japan eight times between 592 and 770: Suiko, Kogyoku/Saimei, Jito, Abe, Gemmei and Gensho.

A piece (PDF) just posted on Medievalists.net tells their story.

Its thesis is that while traditionally they have been regarded as simply keeping the seat warm for male relatives, in fact most of them were powerful, active sovereigns in their own right.

Also just up there is a nice piece on 13th-century noble English widows (PDF), who seem to have also been a notably strong-minded lot.

She mightn’t look like much now, but archaeologists are claiming to have identified the mummy of the pharoah Hatshepsut, the only woman to have ruled pharonic Egypt in her own right, and almost certainly the most powerful woman in the pre-common era (ie. BC).

Of course, listening to Radio 4 some other archaeologists are questioning this, and the evidence doesn’t look particularly strong, but it would be nice if true.

This is the sort of Australian history I should have been taught in school, but never was….

“As a shirtmaker, in 1890 Emma Miller helped to form a female workers’ union, mainly of tailoresses. In 1891 she gave evidence to the royal commission into shops, factories and workshops and marched with shearers’ strike prisoners when released. She was the first woman to travel west organizing for the Australian Workers’ Union and was the first woman member and a life member of the Brisbane Workers Political Organization. Emma Miller championed equal pay and equal opportunity for women and was foundation president of the Woman’s Equal Franchise Association …

And the bit this quasi-official doesn’t tell you is that she is “is remembered for sticking her hatpin into the horse that bore the Police Commissioner during the 1912 General Strike” – which I learnt from the always wonderful Born on this Date women’s history email list – thanks Penny!