junosmith

There is no Woman of the Day but if there was, militant suffragette Catherine Corbett (1869-1950) of Surrey would be a contender. Her speciality was “pestering politicians”, and better still, ensuring their dismissive replies were picked up by the press. It was an Edwardian precursor to Let Them Speak. Catherine was born in in India; her father was in the Madras Civil Service. The campaign for women’s enfranchisement was very much a family affair. Her sister and nieces were suffragettes and she married a man whose barrister brother was a member of the Men's League For Women's Suffrage. At first, she was drawn to the moderate National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies but disillusioned with the lack of progressm she joined the more militant Women’s Social and Political Union. By 1908, she was all in, fully committed. On 28 April 1909, Catherine and Surrey-born suffragette Olivia Fargus* were photographed by the Daily Mirror walking along Downing Street on either side of Prime Minister HH Asquith with Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey looking on, attempting to reason with him on the subject of votes for women. She told a reporter that Asquith was a "little surprised and reserved but he showed no resentment…but he did add: ‘I think you are very silly’.” On 29 June 1909, Catherine was one of seven leading suffragettes — including the two Emmelines, Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence — chosen to lead a deputation to the House of Commons. It started as a peaceful protest but became a fractious affair for which “nearly 3,000 police had been drafted from all parts of London with Rochester Row and Cannon Row stations as early as five o'clock in the afternoon...Inspector Scantlebury handed [Mrs Pankhurst] a message from the Premier's private secretary, stating that it was not possible for Mr Asquith to see them, as he had already expressed opinion upon the subject...A long conversation ensued, and then a scrimmage, during which Inspector Jarvis was rather roughly handled. Mrs Pankhurst it is alleged, striking him violently on the face with her hand. Immediately the police closed round the women, who were taken into custody, struggling violently." On 19 October 1909, Catherine appeared at Dundee Police Court charged with disorderly behaviour and a breach of the peace after she and Scottish suffragette Helen Archdale, accompanied by others, grabbed the attention of passers-by by jumping off a tram, waving ribbons in suffragette colours and marched down Reform Street towards Kinnaird Hall shouting “Follow me. Force the barricades. Votes for women”. Catherine encouraged the by-now sympathetic and enthusiastic Dundonians to rush the barricades set up to keep people out of a meeting at which Winston Churchill was speaking and from which women were expressly excluded. The Dundonians obliged and three hours of disorder followed. “They would not stop until they got the barricades down, they were glorious." The protest was quelled after the police used batons and police horses to disperse the crowd and locked up some of the protestors in the basement. Compare and contrast with the kid glove treatment afforded for such a long time to anti-Jewish protesters in London these days. The Dundee Courier quoted Churchill: they were "a band of silly, neurotic women". Catherine responded by publicly thanking the police for their “kind behaviour” to her and praised the people of Dundee “for the very splendid way in which they stood up for the women, showing that they were entirely in sympathy with them, and not with the Government of Mr Churchill.” She and the other suffragettes made a lengthy speech in court, were sentenced to ten days’ imprisonment and went on hunger strike, maintaining that they were political prisoners. “I was removed to a cell in which there was not furniture, but a log fixed on the floor and a shelf fixed into the wall. Afterwards I was taken into a ward and dressed by force in prison clothes. In contrast to Holloway Prison, the baths were spotlessly clean. On my return to my cell I started a hunger strike, and took no water until 10.30 on Friday, when I was suffering a great pain and becoming so ill that I was visited every two hours. I took a little water, which brought me great relief. The nights were terrible, and I could not sleep. Every persuasion was used to make me take food, but I refused always." Catherine was not force fed — none of the women were on that occasion — but she was released after four days. The Governor of Dundee Gaol had consulted the prison medical officer and decided not to authorise force feeding, partly because “owing to local feeling”, and because he thought it unlikely ‘more than one or two nurses' would assist. By 1910, Catherine’s support for the WSPU waned when Christabel Pankhurst changed tactics towards arson and other criminal acts. She drew the line at that. In any case, her health was starting to be a concern. She died in 1950 at the age of 80. *Footnote. Sadly, Olivia Fargus was the last victim of John George Haigh, the Acid Bath Murderer, in 1949. She was 68.

The Woman of the Day is Agnes Mylles of Wiltshire, the first West Country woman to be executed as a witch. She was hanged after the Witchcraft Act became law in England in 1562. Scotland passed its own Act the following year. Properly titled an ‘Act agaynst Conjuracons Inchantments and Witchecraftes’, it was England’s second witchcraft statute and formally criminalised a fact-defying nebulous belief that required no definition and no measurable evidence beyond subjective accusation or outrage. The Act directed that anyone believed to "use, practise, or exercise any Witchcraft, Enchantment, Charm, or Sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed", was guilty of a felony without benefit of clergy, and was to be put to death. This was during the reign of Elizabeth I when her court was gripped by fear of Catholic plots to topple the Queen. The Act was a consequence. It was fundamental to all of the English witch-trials that followed during that period. Agnes was accused of using witchcraft to murder the infant son of Wiltshire MP Sir Edward Bayntun and his wife, also named Agnes. How the child died is unknown but infant mortality in those days was high and about 30% died before their first birthday. It left Sir Edward without a direct heir, meaning his considerable estate would in time pass to his half brother and wife Dorothy. Agnes was accused of being commissioned jointly by Bayntun’s aunt-by-marriage Dorothy and the Devil himself in order to clear the way for Dorothy’s husband to inherit the Bayntun family fortune. Very little is known about Agnes including what she was supposed to have done or why she was allegedly chosen for the job, but I’d say that she was probably fell foul of a number of politically correct expectations. She was a Catholic, she was a widow, and she was poor and elderly. That would be sufficient in those days to portray her as that most dangerous of women, a witch-for-hire. How did anyone be sure she was responsible? Simple. All that was required was accusation and outrage. The heartbroken parents approached the Bishop of Salisbury and local magistrates with their suspicion that their infant son’s sudden death could only be explained by witchcraft. It was just a suspicion but by luck or chance, someone mentioned to the visiting Assizes judges that Jane Marsh, a widow in Somerset, was “of such skill and knowledge that she could detect persons who used witchcraft”. (That skill in itself sounds remarkably similar to “witchcraft” to me, but I digress…) Mistress Marsh was invited to travel to Salisbury and promptly identified Dorothy Bayntun as the instigator and the hapless Agnes Mylles as the perpetrator. Utterly compelling, don’t you think? It was certainly good enough for the Assizes judges. In April 1564, Agnes was tried, convicted and hanged at Fisherton near Salisbury. Jane Marsh’s reward was to be consigned to prison too while the wealthy Dorothy went free. Had Dorothy been content to enjoy her wealth, nothing more might have been known about the case but in May 1565, she and the Bishop of Salisbury (yes, him again. He keeps popping up) pressured the bereaved parents into complaining to the Court of Chancery about Jane Marsh’s incarceration. After all, she was only helping out. The only way Jane could regain her freedom was to retract her accusation, so she did, but it was thirteen months too late for poor Agnes. Just to bring you full circle, a key apologist for the Elizabethan religious settlement and arguably one of the main movers behind the Witchcraft Act was a bloke called John Jewel. Yes, the Bishop of Salisbury. Witch trials were conducted in England from the 15th century until the 18th century. About five hundred people were executed, about 90% of them women. All you had to do to avoid attention under this all-compassing Act that visited terrible punishment on innocent people on the subjective word of an accuser was to follow the rules. Don’t be older or “crone-like” (for which read: showing signs of age or a hard life); Don’t be poor; Don’t upset anyone; And above all, don’t be a woman. By now, you might well think that I am in any way drawing a parallel with the latest iteration of Conversion Therapy Bill, with its own reliance on a nebulous belief that requires no measurable evidence beyond subjective outrage. That’s purely in your imagination of course. And possibly mine. If it passes in what used to be regarded as the Mother of Parliaments but now seems to be occupied by a large cohort of one-term ideologues with a “progressive and inclusive” agenda, just remember that to avoid accusation, you need to follow the rules: Do not hold or express the lawful view that there are only two sexes and that same-sex orientation is not only valid but really does mean same-sex, not “gender” (whatever that is); Do not be a concerned therapist, social worker, teacher, medical professional or anyone else for whom safeguarding is a duty and a priority; And above all, don’t be a responsible parent who just wants to reassure their confused and vulnerable child that it’s perfectly OK to accept and love the body they’re in.