Random Biographies

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2011-12-08T14:47:00.001-08:00

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Historically Off Center With Nan hawthorne
http://historicallyoffcenter.blogspot.com/

Jadwiga, Woman King of Poland, (1373 – 17 July 1399

2011-12-05T18:53:00.000-08:00

Jadwiga (pronounced Yad-veega) was one of King Louis of Hungary. When he was dying, the sonless Louis decreed that the three kingdoms he ruled, Poland and Hungary should be ruled by one of his daughters. Jadwiga, who was only nine at that time, was crowned "Rex" or "King" by the Polish nobles. In Poland at that time, sons and daughters inherited equally. She remained King of Poland until she married, at which time she and her husband ruled jointly.

The Poland that Jadwiga inherited was beset on many frontiers The Teutonic Knights were using the excuse of traveling to Lithuania to oust the pagan king of that country and convert its people to Christianity to overwhelm and take over Poland as well. In addition, besides pagan Lithuania , Poland was beset by Muscovy, the Mongols and Tartars on the east. At home Jadwiga was threatened by descendants of Poland's former king, Casimir. Because of the threats from all sides, the nobles made her renounce her betrothal to a prince of Austria, and to marry the King of Lithuania, Jagiello, who was "an old man" three times her age. For the sake of her country, she agreed, so on the understanding that he converted to Christianity. This suited the nobles just fine, since it would weaken the cause of the opportunistic Teutonic Knights. They were married in February 1386. He adopted the name Wladyslaw.

Jadwiga, now Queen of Poland, was active in affairs of State, becoming known as a peacemaker. Though she only lived for a dozen more years, dying as a result of giving birth to a daughter who also died, she accomplished much. She supported the Church in Poland, strengthened the University of Krakow, the oldest in Eastern Europe, which she helped finance by selling her own jewels. On the diplomatic stage she bringing about the reconciliation and conversion of his cousin Witold with her husband Wladyslaw. When she met with the master of the Order of Teutonic Knights, she is said to have so shamed him he made the order cease their predatory ways.

She died on July 17, 1399, at the age of 26.

Her body has been exhumed three times to move it to more suitable locations. The latest exhumation moved her intact skeleton, along with a mantle and a cap, to a carved sarcophagus which is at what used to be called the Krakow Academy, now Jagiellonian University. She is represented with a dog at her feet, symbolizing her faithfulness to her people and the Church. Her modest orb and sceptre are on display next to her burial place.

Maxwell Perkins - Patron of Writers

2011-11-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Maxwell Perkins

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and this blog's editor will be reaching out valiantly towards the goal of 50,000 words in thirty days. Since that means virtually everything else i do will be on the back burner, I have selected Maxwell Perkins (thanks, Norse) to be the full month's Random Bio. Why? Because Perkins did more to encourage a whole generation of novelists than any other editor of the 20th century. So as NaNoWriMo is all about encouraging novelists, here's to Max Perkins and the folks at NaNoWriMo.org! And join us... my member name is nan_hawthorne.

William Maxwell Evans Perkins was born in New York City in 1884 . Though he received a degree in economics from Harvard University, his passion was literature, and after college he took a position at Charles Scribner and Sons as an editor.

Scribner was a highly respected publishing house with a stable of such worthies as Edith Wharton, Henry James and John Galsworthy. After he joined them Perkins battled the stodgy old guard of the New York literary establishment to encourage and support such authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was definitely not Scribner's cup of tea, and his first novel, which came to be called This Side of Paradise had been firmly rejected. Perkins was the only editor who recognized the brilliance and worked hard with the writer to revise the novel and finally got his company to publish the work. in 1920.

This Fitzgerald novel was the first of a new generation of authors. Fitzgerald had introduced him to Ernest Hemingway whose The Sun Also Rises had been rejected because of its prof amity. Perkins got it accepted and published also in 1920. Its huge sales meant he had less resistance to publishing Hemingway's next novel, A Farewell to Arms.

Thomas Wolfe was a much more difficult writer for Perkins to work with. He wrote prolifically but resisted all efforts to edit him and especially to make him cut his overlong novels. While Perkins made sure Wolfe's first two novels got out and were successes, Wolfe resented him and left Scribner soon after.

Other writers Perkins championed include:

Ring Lardner
J. P. Marquand
Erskine Caldwell
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, whose The Yearling (1938) won a Pulitzer Prize.
Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country (1946)
James Jones , From Here to Eternity (1951)

Not only did Perkins champion these and other authors, he was often their close friend, a highly attentive editor, and able to see the genius in and guide an author's greatest work.

You can learn more about Perkins in a biography written by A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. Many volumes exist of his correspondence with the great authors he worked with.

Perkins died in 1947.

Random Biographies will return to weekly posts on December 1, 2011.

Julia Le Grand Waitz - Diarist

2011-10-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Julia Le Grand

Julia Le Grand Waitz and her sister Virginia were caught in New Orleans in late April of 1862 when the city was captured by Union Forces. A would-be novelist, she started a diary to keep track of the events of this period to provide her niece in Texas with a moving eyewitness account. The result was a sometimes angry, sometimes humorous, and often deeply sad story of loneliness, loss and pride.

Le Grand was born in Anne Arundel County, Maryland in 1829 of socially prominent patents. She and her sister were very close. Both were very cultured, intellectual and genteel, When their father planned to relocate his family to Louisiana, the children, including two sons and two other daughters as well, moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where Mrs. Le Grand died. After moving to the home their father established in Louisiana, Julia was betrothed to Charles Theodore Horlon of Vicksburg. Holton was poor but had a promise of land in Mexico. He disappeared during a trip there to claim his property. He appeared as the hero of a novel Le Grand wrote but never published.

In 1861 Julia and her sister, Virginia, had moved together into a small cottage in New Orleans. The sisters' brother, Claude Le Grand, was a Confederate officer who neglected an arm wound to help other injured soldiers get to the camp hospital, His wound grew infected, resulting in the amputation of his arm. Throughout Le Grand's diary a constant refrain is of worry for her brother's welfare and a longing to hear from him.

Le Grand's stories run the gamut. She tells of daily activities and ills, of visits to friends' homes, and travels to visit other friends on a plantation, but she also recounts the events taking place in New Orleans, of the boorishness of one commanding officer and the chivalry of another. She recounts how a young black girl she and her sister took into their home stole money from them, egged on, Le Grand claims, by her dishonest grandmother. She tells of women she knew whose husband's were held prisoner in the city jail under quite miserable conditions and of the commander's unwillingness to listen to the wife's complaints.

Le Grand prided herself on her lack of prejudice, but her diary is full of judgment of both African Americans and of people from the North. To give her credit, her experiences were very bad. Former slaves in Union-occupied New Orleans took advantage of their newly freed status to taunt their former owners as a group, and some of the Union officers took acted with anything but honor towards the people of this former Confederate city. Still, the very fact that she "doth protest too much" about her lack of bias gives it the lie. Her contention, ameliorated by her assertion that someday they might improve, that without the care and guidance of whites, black people cannot organize themselves or behave in respectable ways. The desire to put Frederick Douglass in a debate with her is strong.

the Le Grand sisters longed to go to Texas to join her family but were unable to go there directly. They traveled first to Jackson, Mississippi, fleeing when Vicksburg fell to the Yankees, then suffered many close calls and frights on their way ultimately to Florida where they were able to get passage on a steamer across the gulf to Galveston, Texas, and a reunion with their brother and the rest of the family. She married Adolph Wairz of Galveston, "a gentleman of fine abilities and attainments."

Julia Le Grand Waites passed away in in 1881, leaving behind her two unpublished manuscript novels and the portions of her New Orleans journal..

Perhaps the great accomplishment of this diary is that it is a rich primary source for historical data. Yet the journal was almost lost. Afraid of its discovery by enemies, Le Grand burned it, not realizing some pages of it were hidden, mixed in the pages of a novel she read to her companions on the journey.

Read The Journal of Julia Le Grand, New Orleans 1862-1863.

Capture of New Orleans by Yankees in April 1862.

James Brooke - Rajah of Sarawak

2011-10-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

James Brooke

James, Rajah of Sarawak, KCB (born James Brooke; 29 April 1803 – 11 June 1868) was the first White Rajah of Sarawak. His father, Thomas Brooke, was English; his mother, Anna Maria, was born in Hertfordshire, the illegitimate daughter of Scottish peer Colonel William Stuart, 9th Lord Blantyre, and his mistress Harriott Teasdale. James Brooke was born in Secrore, a suburb of Benares, India.

Early life

James stayed at home in India until he was sent, aged 12, to England and a brief education at Norwich School from which he ran away. Some home tutoring followed in Bath before he returned to India in 1819 as an ensign in the Bengal Army of the British East India Company. He saw action in Assam during the First Anglo-Burmese War until seriously wounded in 1825, and sent to England for recovery. In 1830, he arrived back in Madras but was too late to rejoin his unit, and resigned. He remained in the ship he had travelled out in, the Castle Huntley, and returned home via China.

Sarawak

James Brooke's ship being attacked by natives in Sarawak

He attempted to trade in the Far East, but was not successful. In 1833, Brooke inherited £30,000, which he used as capital to purchase a 142-ton schooner, The Royalist. Setting sail for Borneo in 1838, he arrived in Kuching in August to find the settlement facing an Iban and Bidayuh uprising against the Sultan of Brunei. Offering his aid to the Sultan, he and his crew helped bring about a peaceful settlement. Having threatened the Sultan with military force, he was granted the title of Rajah of Sarawak on 24 September 1841, although the official declaration was not made until 18 August 1842.

Brooke began to establish and cement his rule over Sarawak: reforming the administration, codifying laws and fighting piracy, which proved to be an ongoing issue throughout his rule . Brooke returned temporarily to England in 1847, where he was given the Freedom of the City of London, appointed governor and commander-in-chief of Labuan, British consul-general in Borneo and was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB).

Brooke became the centre of controversy in 1851 when accusations against him of excessive use of force against natives, under the guise of anti-piracy operations, ultimately led to the appointment of a royal commission in Singapore in 1854: its investigation did not confirm the charges, but the accusations continued to haunt him.

During his rule, Brooke faced threats from Sarawak warriors like Sharif Masahor and Rentap, but remained in power.

Having no legitimate children, in 1861 he named Captain John Brooke Johnson-Brooke, his sister's oldest son, as his successor. Two years later, while John was in England, James deposed and banished John from Sarawak because John had criticised him. He later named another son of the same sister, Charles Anthoni Johnson Brooke, who did indeed succeed him.

In November 1862, Brooke rescued several civilians from the Moro Pirates after a pitched naval battle off the coast of Mukah. During the fighting, Brooke's steamer named Rainbow sank four prahus and damaged one other with cannon fire. Over 100 pirates were killed or wounded in the engagement while Brooke, and his Sarawakian followers, were mostly unscathed.

Brooke ruled Sarawak until his death in 1868, following three strokes over a period of ten years. He is buried in Sheepstor church near Burrator, Plymouth, as are his successors.

Personal life

Throughout his life, Brooke's principal emotional bonds were with adolescent boys, though his biographer and contemporary Spenser St. John gives an account of his love for and brief engagement to the daughter of a Bath clergyman. He also left a son (see below). Among his more notable relationships with boys was the one with Badruddin, a Sarawak prince, of whom he wrote, "my love for him was deeper than anyone I knew." Later, in 1848, Brooke fell in love with 16 year old Charles T. C. Grant, grandson of the seventh Earl of Elgin, who reciprocated. Victorian interpretations of these events differ from the accounts here cited.

Brooke was influenced by the success of previous British adventurers and the exploits of the British East India Company. His actions in Sarawak were clearly directed to both expanding the British Empire and the benefits of its rule, assisting the local people by fighting piracy and slavery, and securing his own personal wealth to further these activities. His own abilities, and those of his successors, provided Sarawak with excellent leadership and wealth generation during difficult times, and resulted in both fame and notoriety in some circles. His appointment as Rajah by the Sultan, and his subsequent knighthood, is evidence that his efforts were widely applauded in both Sarawak and British society.[citation needed]

Although he died unmarried, he did acknowledge one son. Neither the identity of the son's mother nor his birthdate is clear. The son was brought up as Reuben G. Walker in the Brighton household of Frances Walker (1841 and 1851 census, apparently born ca.1836). By 1858 he was aware of his Brooke connection and by 1871 he is on the census at the parish of Plumtree, Nottinghamshire as "George Brooke", age "40", birthplace "Sarawak, Borneo". He was married (in 1862) and had seven children, three of whom survived their infancy. The oldest was called James; he died, travelling steerage to Australia, in the wreck of the SS British Admiral[6][7] on 23 May 1874. A memorial to this effect – giving a birthdate of 1834 – is in the churchyard at Plumtree.[8]

Fiction

Fictionalised accounts of Brooke's exploits in Sarawak are given in Kalimantaan by C. S. Godshalk and The White Rajah by Nicholas Montserrat. Another book, also called The White Rajah by Tom Williams was published by JMS Books in 2010. Brooke is also featured in Flashman's Lady, the 6th book in George MacDonald Fraser's meticulously researched Flashman novels; and in Sandokan: The Pirates of Malaysia (I pirati della Malesia), the second novel in Emilio Salgari's Sandokan series. Additionally, Brooke was a model for the hero of Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim, and he is briefly mentioned in Kipling's short story "The Man Who Would Be King".

Charles Kingsley dedicated the novel Westward Ho! (1855) to Brooke.

Burial

A memorial stained glass window in St Leonard's Church dedicated to those from Sarawak who died in World War II. It depicts a butterfly, a moth, and pitcher plants, two of which were named after James Brooke.

All three White Rajahs are buried in St Leonard's Church in the village of Sheepstor on Dartmoor.

Honours

Some Bornean species were named in Brooke's honor:
Rhododendron brookei, Rhododendron, named by Hugh Low
Rajah Brooke's Pitcher Plant, Nepenthes rajah, a pitcher plant named by Joseph Dalton Hooker
Trogonoptera brookiana, birdwing butterfly, named by Alfred R. Wallace
Brooke's Squirrel, Sundasciurus brookei

Reprinted from Wikipedia.

He's a She - Women Who Chose To Live As Men

2011-10-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Jennie Hodgers

Sarah Emma
Edmonds

Moll Cutpurse

Many women in history have chosen to pass themselves off as men. They have had many reasons, not the least of which are: to minimize personal danger; to get access to education or other opportunities denied to women: to serve in the military; or just because they identified more strongly as male than female.

Portrayed above are three we have covered here on Random Biographies. left to right, soldier Albert D. J. Cashier, spy Sarah Emma Edmonds, and Mary Frith, better known as criminal Moll Cutpurse.

Billy Tipton

Dorothy Tipton/Billy Tiptom

December 29, 1914 – January 21, 1989

Billy Tipton was born Dorothy Tipton in Oklahoma City. In the 1930s , knowing he could not be accepted as a jazz pianist and band leader, he took his father's nickname and passed as a man. At first he only lived as a man in his performances, but later he began to live as a man in his private life as well. Tipton had numerous substantial relationships with women. He told his later partners that he had had a disfiguring accident to his genitals and had to wear a binder around his chest because of injuries to his ribs. When he died in 1989 the paramedics discovered he was anatomically female. This fact came as a complete surprise to his most recent partner, Kitty, and their adopted sons.

Catalina de Erauso/Francisco de Loyola
1592-1662

De Erauso was the daughter and sister of Basque soldiers in Spain. She was forced to join a convent, but was so unhappy she escaped, dressed as a man, called herself Francisco de Loyola, and traveled as a soldier to South America where she served for many years. She courted women and nearly was married to a rich widow's daughter. When the authorities sought her for various gambling problems, she took sanctuary with the bishop in Lima, Peru, coming out as a woman to avoid prosecution. She was sent back to Spain. She was ordered as penance to write a full confession, later published as Lieutenant Nun: The Confession of a Basque Transvestite in the New World. (See bottom of page.) de Erauco managed to convince the Pope to let her continue to dress as a man although this was strictly forbidden by the Church.

Deborah
Sampson

Deborah Sampson/Robert Shurtlef Sampson
December 17, 1760 - April 29, 1827

After a childhood of poverty and a few years as an indentured servant, eighteen year old Deborah Sampson joined the Continental Army. She was wounded in battle but managed to hide her thigh wounds from the army surgeon. When she developed a fever the doctor sent to treat her discovered she was a woman but kept her secret. She received an honorable discharge aafter the Threat of Paris in 1783.. She married Benjamin Gannett , and together they had three children and adopted a son. Like other women who served in the military as a man, she was denied both back pay and a pension. She succeeded with gaining the first through petitioning Congress and Paul Revere himself advocated for her to receive the pension. She lectured widely about her experiences in the army and helped bridge gender gaps in recognition of female service to the country. She died in her 60s of yellow mountain fever.

^{Dr. James Barry
Mary Anne Buckley/James Barry
c. 1789-1799 – 25 July 1865
Barry lived his entire adult life as a man, achieving a medical degree, becoming surgeon general for the British army, winning honors for his achievements. It is widely believed he was born Mary Anne Buckley and that he donned a male persona in order to be allowed to attend medical school in England. A generally rather irascible and argumentative fellow, even engaging in several duels, he was a champion of sanitary conditions and good nutrition for soldiers and civilians alike. When after retirement he returned to England and died of dysentery his housekeeper discovered that he was anatomically a woman.

Mary Ann Talbot
Mary Ann Talbot/John Taylor
February 2, 1778 – February 4, 1808
Mary Anne Talbot first donned boys' when her captain lover had her sign on his ship as his cabin boy, John Taylor. When he was killed in a battle in which she also fought, she remained a sailor, fought in battles during the Napoleonic Wars. In spite of wounds, her true gender was not found out until she was press ganged and had to reveal it. She pressed the English government to honor her naval pension and succeeded. Thereafter she went to work for the publisher Robert S. Kirby who published her tale in The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Anne Talbot published after herdeath (1809). She wore male attire from the attempted press gang to her death in 1808.
Nadezhda Durova
Nadezhda Durova/Alexander Durov, Alexander Sokolov and Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov
September 17, 1783 – March 21, 1866

Raised among soldiers in the Russian Imperial army Nadezhda Durova put on men's clothing to run away from her husband and son to join the army herslef. She served in several battles during Napoleon's invasion of Russian, acting so heroically that when Czar Alexander I, learning from her family that she was a woman, awarded her the Cross of St. George. The writer Alexander Pushkin encouraged her to write her autobiography, the first one written in the Russian language. When she died, having dressed as a man even after being revealed as a woman, she was buried with full military honors.
To learn about others, visit Grrlz2Men on Squidoo.

Also, check out these books!
My Last Skirt: The Story of Jennie Hodgers, Union Soldier
The Mysterious Private Thompson: The Double Life of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War Soldier
Moll Cutpurse: Her True Story
Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton
Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World
Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier
The Secret Life of Dr James Barry: Victorian England's Most Eminent Surgeon (See all Biographies & Memoirs of Medical Professionals)
THE LADY TARS: The Autobiographies of Hannah Snell, Mary Lacy and Mary Anne TalbotThe Cavalry Maiden: Journals of a Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies)}

Prince Rupert of the Rhine - The Very model of a Cavalier

2011-09-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

Prince Rupert of the Rhine

Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, 1st Duke of Cumberland, 1st Earl of Holderness, was a prominent figure in the English Civil War, the Restoration, a scientist and artist, and the very model of the dashing and daring Cavalier. He was so appealing that he became the "poster boy" for English royalists and a symbol of royalist decadence for the parliamentary forces of Fairfax and Cromwell.

Rupert was born in Prague in 1619, the son of Frederick V, Elector Palatine and Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of England. His family was forced to flee to the Netherlands during the Thirty Years War. Rupert was almost left behind but was saved by a household retainer just in time. He was extremely talented as a student and became a soldier by the time he was fourteen. When his father died while traveling, Rupert’s mother asked her brother, Charles I of England, to take her children under his protection.

Rupert was on the continent when King Charles was on the run from Parliamentary forces in 1642, and he managed to break through a blockade to land in England at Newcastle and managed to travel across the country to find his kinsman, the King. He was immediately put in charge of a significant part of the army, which he himself managed to pull together, but while his dashing and reckless leadership and familiarity with modern European battle tactics made him a celebrity, his youth resulted in rash dealings with other commanders, and he was removed from his position.

The period between the establishment of the Commonwealth and the Restoration of the monarchy in England saw Rupert involved in one dramatic adventure after another. He returned to service for his nephew, Charles II, in his battle to retake the throne. He gained a reputation for ruthlessness and rapacity, though this was simply more consistent with European practice. By the end of the war both sides had taken desperate measures.

Rupert had a dog he called "Boy" who went everywhere with him until the dog's death at Marston Moor. Parliamentary propagandists accused Rupert of being a witch and Boy of being his familiar or, indeed, the very devil himself, with amazing powers such as invulnerability and being able to intercept bullets meant for his master in his mouth.

Upon the Restoration of the monarchy in England in 1662, nephew Charles II made Rupert admiral of the Royal Navy. He is credited with much of the development and organization of the navy. He was put in charge of the Hudson Bay Company in Canada.

Rupert was also famous for his inventions, was an experimental scientist and one of the founders of the Royal Society dedicated to scientific explorations. Among his inventions are a gun that could fire multiple rounds in quick succession, a rotating chamber for bullets for pistols, various alloys of metal used in casting guns and shot, grapeshot for use in cannons, a submersible capsule for retrieving sunk items from the ocean floor, numerous improvements on surgical equipment, and as well as a way to paint on marble that, when polished, was permanent. He was a mathematician as well.

Rupert dabbled in the arts as well, and some of his mezzotints are regarded as among the best of the era. See below.

He was the most famous lover of last week's biographee, Margaret Hughes, the first English stage actress. Though he never married her, he acknowledged their daughter Rouperta as his own and left the bulk of his estate to the two women upon his death at 62 years of pleurisy on 29 November 1682.

The Executioner, a mezzotint by Prince

Rupert.

Margaret "Peg" Hughes - First English Stage Actress

2011-09-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

Margaret Hughes

Ironically it was a different flavor of "puritanism" from the Puritan ban on the theater in general and the longstanding ban on women acting in plays that brought about the entry of women actresses to the English stage. In 1662 after his restoration to the throne, Charles II issued a royal warrant that women's roles must be played by women to prevent the spread of male homosexuality in the theater. The first woman to act professionally on the English stage was Margaret "Peg" Hughes, who is also know for having been the mistress of prince Rupert of the Rhine, a notorious soldier of the English Civil War and later admiral of the English navy. (See next week's Random Biographies for a look at this redoubtable fellow.)

'A mighty pretty woman'" Diarist Samuel Pepys

In 1660 Peg Hughes took the role of Desdemona in Sir Thomas Killigrew's King's Company production of Shakespeare's Othello. It was one of these performances that Pepys saw her in. She also played St. Catherine in John Dryden's Tyrannick Love and Panura in John Fletcher's The Island Princess. She is said to have played in several other well known productions of the period.

Hughes was romantically linked to dramtist Sir Charles Sedley and even with Charles II himself. She is best know, however, for being the morganatic wife of the famous general and admiral, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a member of the English royal family. (See next week's biography.) Though never married to Hughes, Rupert acknowledged their illegitimate daughter, Ruperta, as his own child.

When Rupert died in 1682 he left a vast sum and considerable property to Hughes and their daughter. Hughes was unable to manage her widowhood and sold off many of her treasures and the house Rupert had built for her. She died in 1719.

During her life, Peg Hughes was the subject of several paintings by famous portraitists, such as Sir peter lelly.

George H. Devol - Professional Gambler

2011-09-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

George H. Devol

George H. Devol was born in Marietta, Ohio in 1828 the son of a ship builder and his wife.

He was, by his own self promotion, the greatest riverboat gambler on the Mississippi and later worked the railroads between Kansas City and Cheyenne.

At the age of ten, Devol ran away, serving as a cabin boy on a river boat steamer. He quickly learned to play “Seven-Up” and soon he could deal seconds, palm cards and recover the cut. When he returned home some years later he joined his brother in an unskilled trade, but one day threw down his tools and announced he was going to become a gambler and never work again. When he returned to this life, hater as a teenager he preferred to play Faro and Rondo. He teamed up with Canada Bill Jones, Bill Rollins, and Big Alexander as well as others.

Devol claims to have won around 2 million dollars over his 40 year as active gambler, but died penniless. During the last years he focused on selling his book., Forty Years A Gambler On The Mississippi , an entertaining autobiography with plenty of room for a skeptical interpretation. The book is a fascinating acccount of the riverboats and their routes and the sort of gambling and hijinks that went on. It generally disppels many of the myths about riverboat gambling, for instance revealin that most captains did not countenance the activity which therefore had to be done clandestinely in staterooms or the barber shop.

Debol died in Hot Springs, Arkansa, in 1903.

Maud Gonne MacBride - Actress and Revolutionary

2011-09-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Maud Gonne MacBride was an eccentric and spirited English-born supporter of Irish independence and an actress whose beauty was much admired by poet W. B. Yeats. She was born on 21 December 1866 in Tongham near Farnham, Surrey, When her mother died when Maude was a child, her father, a professional soldier of Scots extraction, sent her to school in France. He sent for her when he was posted to Dublin in 1882. This move influenced her political life as, when she spent time in France after a bout of tuberculosis, she became involved in efforts to free Ireland and to return Alsace-Lorraine to France with her lover Millevoy. She met poet W. B. Years when she returned to Dublin, and he promptly fell in love with her.

Continuing to travel to and from France, she joined a magical organization called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. She and Millevoy had two daughters together, Back in Ireland, Maude fought for preservation of Irish culture, history, literature and language. Facing resistance from male revolutionaries, she founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann ("Daughters of Ireland"), to provide a home for Irish nationalist women who, like herself, were considered unwelcome in male-dominated nationalist societies.

Gonne's first acting role was in Yeats's play Cathleen Ní Houlihan. She portrayed Cathleen, the "old woman of Ireland", who mourns for her four provinces, lost to the English colonizers.

Yeats continued to propose marriage to her but she turned him down because she considered him insufficiently nationalist. She married Major John MacBride in Paris in 1903. Their marriage ended after the birth of their son Seán when allegations of domestic violence and molestation of maude's then 11 year old daughter. She raised their son Sean in Paaris until her former husband was executed after the Easter Rising in 1916.

In Yeats haunting poem about the Rising, Easter 1916, he makes reference to McBride thus:

This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

In 1918 she was arrested in Dublin and imprisoned in England for six months. During the War of Independence she worked with the Irish White Cross for the relief of victims of violence.

Maud Gonne MacBride published her autobiography in 1938, titled A Servant of the Queen. Her son, Seán MacBride, was active in politics in Ireland and in the United Nations. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

She died in Clonskeagh, aged 86 and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

W. B. Years called Maude his muse, and many of his poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking." He wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen Ní Houlihan for her. His poem Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven ends with a reference to her: "I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. "

Judasa All - Villains of History

2011-08-28T00:00:00.001-07:00

Of course, you have heard of Benedict Arnold, whose very name has come to mean "traitor", but have you heard of these "second tier" betrayers of friends, organizations and countries?

Match these infamous betrayers of history with those they betrayed.

Andronicus Dukas
Wang Jingwei
Sir John de Mentieth
Jane, Lady Rochford
Jean de Luxembourg,

Benedict Arnold

a. Appointed Governor of Dumbarton Castle by King Edward I of England, turned William Wallace over to English forces on August 5, 1305.
b. Imperial relative of Byzantine Emperor Romanus Diogenes failed to provide the planned military support at Manzikart in 1071, resulting in the Emperor's capture by Turkish general Alp Arslan.
c. Despite his wife's pleas not to betray her, he sold Joan of Arc to the English for 10,000 gold livres after her capture by the Burgundians in 1430 outside the French town of Compiegne.
d. A supporter of and successor to Sun Yat Sen, he secretly helped the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.
e. After eleven years of marriage to George Boleyn, she testified at his treason trial that he and his sister, Queen Anne Boleyn, had been sexually involved, apparently out of spite since no other evidence of this has ever come forth.

Mary Frith - Criminal and Cross-dresser

2011-08-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Mary Frith, "Moll Cutpurse"

Better known as "Moll Cutpurse", Mary Frith was a notorious common criminal and cross-dresser in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in England. She was also called the "Roaring Girl", from "roaring boys", an appellation for young men who frequented taverns and raised hell wherever they went.

Frith was born in about 1584. She habitually went about in baggy pants and a doublet. her nickname is a pun, "moll" meaning a young woman of dubious character and "cutpurse" a type of pickpockedt, her profession. She first came to the attention of the public in London when she was arrested for stealing the staggering sum of two shillings eleven pence on August 21, 1600. She became so celebrated that in the ensuing years two plays were written about her, John Day's The Madde Pranckes of Mery Mall of the Bankside (1610) and The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker (1611). Though not particularly complimentary to Frith, these plays helped fuel the proliferation of outlandish stories about her

Not that Frith needed legends to add to her fame. She was allowed to perform on-stage at the Fortune Theater where she sang, played the lute and bantered, no doubt obscenely, with the audience. She did not always get away with her antics. In 1611 she was arrested for dressing indecently and sentenced to perform a public penance. Her performance was three hours long and heartfelt and maudlin, though it was discovered later that she had been quite drunk.

Frith married playwright Gervase Markham's son Lewknor Markham in a sham marriage only intended to keep her from being described by the authorities as a "spinster".

By the 1620s she was in business, by her own admission, as a pimp and fence. She not only provided men with female prostitutes but also young men for the beds of middle aged women.

One legend has her jailed for shooting General Fairfax during the English Civil War.. Another tells of her confinement in Bedlam and subsequent cure and release.

She reputedly stated no interest in sexuality of any kind.

Mary Frith died of dropsy in London on 26 July 1659.

There is a novel based on her life called Moll Cutpurse, Her True History: A Novelby Ellen Galford.

Guinefort - Canonized Canine

2011-08-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

St. Guinefort, Holy Dog

By Jim Tedford

Guinefort was a 13th century greyhound who lived in France, and was purported to have healing powers. There are a number of variations on the Guinefort myth: one of the most common has him being the faithful canine companion of a French knight who lived near Lyon. The knight went hunting one day, leaving his infant son in care of Guinefort. (Why he wouldn’t take his specifically-bred-for-game-flushing dog on a hunt is never explained.) Upon the knight’s return, he found the nursery in shambles – the cot was overturned, blood was spattered on the walls, and Guinefort was missing. Shortly after, the hound showed up, with blood all over his jaws and coat. Thinking that Guinefort had eaten his son, the knight drew his sword and killed the dog. He then heard a child crying from under the cot. Turning it over, he found his son safe and sound, along with the body of a viper. Guinefort had protected the child by killing the snake.

Realizing his mistake, the knight buried the dog in a well, and in the old tradition of establishing a shrine, planted a grove of trees around it. The shrine soon became a destination for those inspired by Guinefort the martyr’s noble deed and innocent death. Locals began coming to the shrine to pray for healing of the sick, especially children, and before long Guinefort was considered a saint for the protection of children. Peasants would bring their sickly children to the shrine, sometimes leaving them there in the hope that they might be healed. Some children were injured or even killed by being accidentally dropped down the well. Enterprising grifters were attracted to the site; mothers hoping to heal their children could easily be convinced to buy “rituals” which would boost Guinefort’s medical effects. Some of the rituals invovled tossing children between two old women, surround the child with candles, and other stunts that ended up in more injuries or deaths.

Around 1261 a Dominican friar named Etiennede Bourbon (also known as Stephen of Bourbon) was preaching in the Lyon area, and heard from various local women about taking their children to the shrine. Intrigued, he investigated, assuming this was a shrine to some lesser-known saint, of which there were many in the 13th century. Displeased once he discovered that people were venerating a dog, Etiennede ordered the dog’s bones disinterred, the grove cut down and the everything burned. An edict was issued prohibiting gathering and worshipping at the site. Like most such edicts, it was ignored, and despite the friar and his fellow Inquisitor’s best efforts, more than a few pilgrims and peasants continued to make their way to Guinefort’s old shrine to pray for their sick children to be restored to health. (Too bad Etiennede wasn’t a Franciscan.) To this day the myth persists, and one can in Lyon find directions to the beatified bowser’s burial place.

Readers of bernard Cornwell's "Grail Quest" trilogy will recognize the talisman Thomas of hookton wore, a dog's tooth he pretended was a relic of St. Guinefort.

Gongyla - Queen and Sappho's Lover

2011-08-07T00:00:00.001-07:00

(Pctured, model Roanne Nesbit)

Transposed by the author from SAPPHO SINGS by Peggy Ullman Bell
ISBN-10: 1438214316
ISBN-13: 978-1438214313

I am Gongyla. It is appropriate that you choose to pronounce my name gone-guy-la for I am indeed gone from your sphere these many millennia for I lived before your common era by a full 600 years.

Some said I was a slave but that was never true. Lord Kerkolos of Andros to whom I traded my life in exchange for food for my people never let anyone living in our era think of me as slave. Queen I was and Queen I stayed even after my heart became enslaved by his fascinating young wife. Psappha she called herself in her own soft AEolean dialect. Later, much later long after she was dead men would dub her Sappho Mazculo, indicating incorrectly that she wrote like a man.

Psappha could not write like a man because no man could write like Psappha. Her words were a woman's words, expressing thoughts and feelings only a woman's mind could grasp. I suppose that is why men worked so hard to silence her voice; to destroy her life's work; to keep it from you her daughters many generations removed. But I get ahead of my story.

You asked about me. So did she the day I strode into her cabin aboard Lord Kerkolos' merchant ship. Taller than most men, I had to bend my neck to pass the doorframe without conking my head. Now I ask you, how undignified would that have been for a Queen?

She was tiny, was Psappha. Bearly rib high; her skin the color of fresh cut olives ripened by the sun; clear contrast to my cinnamon bark flesh and twice as soft I imagined the first time that I saw her. The first time that I saw her - hmmm - she did not see me. The first time I saw her Lord Kerkolos was pulling her weakened form from the seat; she barely filled the net. It took me scant seconds to snatch her from the net and whix=sk her into the captain's cabin before the crew could realize that she was naked.

“If it pleases you," she said the next afternoon when I strode into her cabin the following afternoon. "If it pleases you, I’d
like to know your name.” Her voice was tremulous; timid; holding a tremor that I never heard from her again. It was almost as if she still shivered from her victory over the sea. Even then I knew it was a mighty battle. Even then I knew her a match worthy of Poseidon. Why else would he have deposited her in the saftey of Lord Kerkolos' sturdy net?

“I am called, Gongyla, milady.”

"You needn’t call me milady, Oh Queen. I am Psappha.”

I chuckled. In her uncharacteristic shyness she had left the aristocratic ‘of Lesbos’ off her introduction. I learned of that later. From Lycos. Isn't it just like that imp to insert his pert nose into my story. We will ignore him. At least for now.

“How came you here, oh, queen?” Psappha asked, her voice deep and vibrant as my favorite drum.

I fought a frown and failed.

“There was a war, little dove. My people fought bravely. I, myself, killed many of our enemies with my bow, but victory gained us nothing. My people were hungry. If not for Lord Kerkolos, my people would have sold themselves to the slavers. I could not let them be sent to the market
beyond Tyre.”

Unsurprisingly, she shuddered. All had heard of the market beyond Tyre. Rumor had it that no one ever returned from there: The men went
to the mines to die slowly, the women to brothels to live, though their souls were dead.

"Tell me of thy country, oh Queen,” she said, the lilt in her warm voice coaxing a smile.

I pulled myself up straighter, taller. “My land is far, milady: A green land, past a white land, behind the land of the Carthaginians; near the birthplace of the river Niger.” Sadness mixed with pride in my voice as I continued. “My people are as free as eagles in flight. The women are strong and fleet of foot; the men as gentle and watchful as the great cats with whom we share the hunt.

“There are birds in my country with plumage brighter than Egyptian brocade. And small animals like creeping children that fill the air with endless chatter like gynakeoni.”

Psappha’s brow furrowed. “Gynakeoni?”

“You will see,” I told her, smiling softly; my gaze letting her know I would pursue that topic no more this day.

She touched my palm, her hand scarce bigger than my middle finger. This time her tone sent shivers the full length of my pride-stretched spine. “What of thy gods, thou hunter, are they gentle like
the little animals or fierce like thyself?”

“We worship no gods, Ivory-one. We worship only Cybele, whom you call Queen of Heaven.”

“You know The Lady,” she joyfully exclaimed.

“What lady?”

“Not lady, Oh queen. THE Lady; Cybele, Isis, Asherah, Astarte,
Artemis, The Lady of a Thousand Names, The Lady by whatever
name. My mother was her priestess.

“I, too, am a priestess,” I said, wanting more of the delightful tingle her voice evoked. “and what of you?”

She shuddered, and I wished I had not asked. “I'm an exile,” she whispered, head down, blushing. I could not tell if her heightened color stemmed from shame or if she too felt a shiver of attraction. I vowed that I would make the second reason true, knowing it might take much time and patience to make it so.

I succeeded beyond my wildest imaginings for one day I heard a poem in an Egyptian marketplace. I had left her you see. Left her over a trifling twit who should not have mattered. I dreaded a life empty of Psappha. I was sure she would not have me back. Then I heard her precious words flowing from the mouth of a street poet in Thebes.

"Come back to me, Gongyla, here tonight,
You, my rose, with your Lydian lyre.
There hovers forever around you delight:
A beauty desired.
Even your garment plunders my eyes.
I am enchanted: I who once
Complained to the Cyprus-born goddess,
Whom I now beseech
Never to let this lose me grace
But rather bring you back to me:
Amongst all mortal women the one
I most wish to see."

Sappho - Translated by Paul Roch

See review of Peggy Ullman Bell's Sappho Sings at Bosom Friends.

Rory O'More - Rebel

2011-07-29T21:43:00.000-07:00

Rory O'More

Rory O'More, also known as Rory Oge O'More (Irish: Ruairí Óg Ó Mórdha) (died 1578), was an Irish rebel.

Early life

He was the second son of Ruairí Ó Mórdha, captain of Leix, and Margaret, daughter of Thomas Butler, and granddaughter of Pierce or Piers Butler, eighth earl of Ormonde. Sir Henry Sidney once called him ‘an obscure and base varlet,’ but his family was one of the most important of the minor Irish septs, and also one of the most turbulent.

Family background

Ruairí Ó Mórdha (fl. 1554), the father, was the son of Connell Ó Mórdha (d. 1537), and early acquired the character of a violent and successful chieftain. On the death of Connell a fierce dispute broke out between the three sons — Lysaght, Kedagh, and Ruairí — and their uncle Peter the Tanist. Peter was for the time a friend of the Butlers. Consequently the deputy, Lord Leonard Grey, supported the sons; and, although Peter was acknowledged chief, Grey got hold of him by a ruse, and led him about in chains for some time, Kedagh then seems to have secured the chieftainship, Lysaght having been killed; but he died early in 1542, and Ruairí, the third brother, succeeded.

He, after a period of turmoil, agreed on 13 May 1542 to lead a quieter life, and made a general submission, being probably influenced by the fact that Kedagh had left a son of the same name, who long afterwards, in 1565, petitioned the privy council to be restored to his father's inheritance. Like other Irish chiefs of the time, Ó Mórdha was only a nominal friend to the English. In a grant afterwards made to his eldest son his services to King Edward VI are spoken of; but they must have been of doubtful value, as an order of 15 March 1550-1 forbade any of the name of Ó Mórdha to hold land in Leix.

At some uncertain time between 1550 and 1557 Ruairí Ó Mórdha was killed, and was succeeded by a certain Connell Ó Mórdha, who may be the Connell Oge O'More mentioned in 1556 in the settlement of Leix . He was put to death in 1557

In 1556 Queen Mary approved an Act "..whereby the King and Queen's Majesties, and the Heires and Successors of the Queen, be entituled to the Counties of Leix, Slewmarge, Irry, Glinmaliry, and Offaily, and for making the same Countries Shire Grounds." This shired the new counties of Queen's County (now County Laois) and King's County (now County Offaly), thereby dispossessing the O'More clan and starting the Plantations of Ireland.

Ruairí Óge and Callagh

Rory left two sons, Callagh and Ruairí Óge. Callagh, who was brought up in England, was called by the English ‘The Calough,’ and, as he describes himself as of Gray's Inn in 1568, he may be assumed to be the John Callow who entered there in 1567 (Foster, Reg. of Gray's Inn, p. 39). In 1571 Ormonde petitioned for the Calough's return, and soon afterwards he came back to Ireland, where in 1582 he was thought a sufficiently strong adherent to the English to receive a grant of land in Leix.

A dangerous rebel

Ruairí Óge Ó Mórdha, the second son, was constantly engaged in rebellion. He received a pardon on 17 February 1565-6, but in 1571 he was noted as dangerous, and in 1572 he was fighting Ormonde and the queen at the same time, being favoured by the weakness of the forces at the command of Francis Cosby, the seneschal of Queen's County, and the temporary absence of Ormonde in England. In this little rebellion the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds were united against him; but when, in November 1572, Desmond escaped from Dublin, it was Ruairí Óge Ó Mórdha who escorted him through Kildare and protected him in Queen's County He was mixed up in Kildare's plots in 1574, and taken prisoner in November. But he was soon free, and Sidney, when on his tour in 1575, wrote of him: ‘Rory Oge O'More hath the possession and settling-place in the Queen's County, whether the tenants will or no, as he occupieth what he listeth and wasteth what he will.’

Submission and war

However, Ó Mórdha was afraid of the deputy, and when Sydney came into his territory, he went to meet him in the cathedral of Kilkenny (December 1575), and ‘submitted himself, repenting (as he said) his former faults, and promising hereafter to live in better sort (for worse than he hath been he cannot be).’ Hence we find a new pardon granted to him on 4 June 1576 (ib. p. 179).

But in the next year he hoped for help from Spain, and, pushed on by his freind, John Burke, he made a desperate attack on the Pale. He allied himself with some of the O'Connors, and gathered an army. On 18 March 1576-7 the seneschal of Queen's County was commanded to attack Ruairí Óge and the O'Connors with fire and sword. There was good reason for active hostilities, as on the 3rd the insurgents had burned Naas with every kind of horror. Sidney wrote to the council the same month: ‘Rory Oge O'More and Cormock M'Cormock O'Conor have burnt the Naas. They ranne thorough the towne lyke hagges and furies of hell, with flakes of fier fastned on poles ends’

Later in the year Ó Mórdha captured Harrington and Cosby. They were rescued by a ruse. Ó Mórdha's wife and all but Ó Mórdha himself and one of those who were with him were killed. Infuriated at being caught, Ó Mórdha fell upon Harrington, ‘hacked and hewed’ him so that Sidney saw his brains moving when his wounds were being dressed, then rushing through a soldier's legs, he escaped practically naked.

Death

He soon afterwards burned Carlow; but in an attempt to entrap Barnaby Fitzpatrick, baron of Upper Ossory, into his hands, he was killed by the Fitzpatricks in June 1578, and his head set up on Dublin Castle.

From Wikipedia.
Song: Rory O'More

Young Rory O'More courted Kathleen Bawn
He was bold as a hawk and she soft as the dawn
He wished in his heart pretty Kathleen to please
And he thought the best way to do that was to tease.

"Now Rory be easy," sweet Kathleen would cry
Reproof on her lip but a smile in her eye
"With your tricks I don't know in troth what I'm about
Faith you've teased till I've put on my cloak inside out.

"O jewel," says Rory, " that same is the way
You've thrated my heart for this many a day
And tis plaz'd that I am and why not to be sure
For tis all for good luck." says bold Rory O'More.

"Indeed then," says Kathleen," don't think of the like
For I half gave a promise to soothering Mike
The ground that I walk on he loves I'll be bound."
"Faith," says Rory," I'd rather love you than the ground."

"Now Rory I'II cry if you don't let me go
Sure I drcam every night that I'm hating you so"
"Oh," says Rory," that same I'm delighted to hear
For dhrames always go by contrairies my dear."

"O jewel keep dhraming that same till you die
And bright morning will give dirty night the black lie
And tis plaz'd that I am and why not to be sure
Since tis all for good luck," says bold Rory O'More.

"Arrah Kathleen my darling you've teased me enough
Sure I've thrashed for your sake Dinny Grimes and Jim Duff
And I've made myself drinking your health quite a baste
So I think after that I may talk to the priest."

Then Rory the rogue stole his arm round her neck
So soft and so white without freckle or speck
And he looked in her eyes that were beaming with light
And he kissed her sweet lips don't you think he was right.

"Now Rory leave off sir you'll hug me no more
That's eight times today and you've kissed me before"
"Then here goes another," says he, " to make sure
For there's luck in odd numbers." says Rory O'More.

From the Grieg-Duncan Folk Song Collection

Isabel MacDuff - Kingmaker

2011-07-21T00:00:00.001-07:00

By Laura Vosika, Author of The Bluebells of Scotland

Isabel MacDuff did not much care for her lodgings at Berwick Castle.

Isabel MacDuff

Isabel MacDuff is a woman who deserves more attention than she has gotten, at least on this side of the Atlantic. Although a minor player in history, her courage, strength, and patriotism put her on a level withthe greats. Her story officially begins withher birthin 1286, within months of the fateful death of Alexander III, which threw Scotland into such turmoil. Thus, she would have grown up in the days of upheaval, of Edward Longshanks, Hammer of the Scots' invasions of Scotland, through the days of the Guardianship-- her father, Duncan MacDuff, was one of the Guardians-- and John Baliol's failed kingship, through the events of William Wallace's uprisings against England.

In an explanation of the events to follow, it is important to know that the MacDuff clan held a hereditary right to crown the Kings of Scotland. In a more direct explanation of Isabel's Scottish patriotism, her mother, widowed when Isabel was about three, re-married one Sir Gervase Avenel, who gave his fealty to Robert the Bruce early on.

What complicated matters for Isabel, and tested her determination and courage, was the fact that her brother was growing up as a ward fo the English court, perhaps even as a companion of the young Edward II. Moreover, in 1306, aged 19 or 20, Isabel married John Comyn, Earl of Buchan. John Comyn was a supporter of John Baliol and enemy of Robert Bruce. It was John's cousin, also John Comyn, but Earl of Badenoch, whom Robert Bruce stabbed to death before the altar of Greyfriars Church in Dumfries on February 10, 1306, cementing the Comyn family's hatred of Bruce.

This incident, perhaps, changed Isabel's life.

Bruce, knowing he would be excommunicated for killing a man on holy ground, and knowing an excommunicated man could not be crowned king, did the only sensible thing in a time without e-mail: he dashed for Scone, the traditional crowning place of the Scottish kings, in a race against the messengers flying to the Pope with news of the Greyfriarsmurder and the messengers speeding back equally hastily with news of his excommunication.

Isabel, however she heard the news of Bruce's flight to Scone for coronation, determined that, as her young brother was in England, unable to claim the MacDuff family's right, she would do so herself, against the obvious wishes of her new husband. One story says she stole her husband's horses. Other sources say that, as Lord John was in England at the time, there was no need for deception, and she merely rode off. The first story is more interesting, though perhaps less accurate.

Isabel Crowns Bruce

Despite her best efforts, Isabel actually arrived in Scone the day after Bruce's coronation. However, her efforts meant a great deal to him. He'd already been deprived, by Edward I, of the traditional coronation stone, the Stone of Scone (which contrary to appearances does not rhyme: it's pronounced scoon). Without the traditional elements of coronation, the Stone and a MacDuff to crown him, he worried that his kingship would be viewed as less than completely legitimate. Therefore, the coronation ceremony was re-enacted on the 25th of March, 1306, when Isabel MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, set the crown on the head of Robert the Bruce, making him (for the second time in two days) King of Scotland.

(Just to be as accurate as possible, other sources put the re-crowning on March 27, 1306.)

Having no future withher husband after this act, Isabel stayed on with the Bruce's. However, Scotland was a country under attack. Bruce was a man very badly wanted by Edward, and not well liked by the vast reaches of Clan Comyn and their allies, either. In July 1306, he sent his wife, sisters, daughter, and Isabel to Kildrummy Castle for safety, under the protection of his brother Nigel (or Neil as he was also known).

Unfortunately, Bruce had many enemies. Kildrummy was attacked in September of 1306. Though the women escaped the castle, they were captured by William, Earl of Ross, while fleeing north, and taken to Edward Longshanksin England. Bruce's wife, Elizabeth, was treated perhaps the most kindly, the fortunate result of her also being the daughter of Edward's ally, the Earl of Ulster. But Bruce's ten year old daughter, Marjory, was from his first marriage, and therefore no concern to Edward; she was incarcerated at Watton Priory. His sister, Christina, was locked in a nunnery for years. Nigel met the most unpleasant face, being publicly tortured and executed in most barbaric fashion by Edward I.

Remains of Berwick CastleBruce's other sister, Mary, received more of Edward's wrath. She and Isabel were both ordered by Edward I to live in cages hung on castle walls. Mary spent several years suspended on the outer walls of Roxburgh, and Isabel, for the crime of placing the crown on Bruce's head and defying her husband, was likewise suspended on the walls of Berwick castle.

This site on Edward II gives the clearest description I have yet found on the conditions Isabel suffered. It describes the cage as made of lattice wood and iron hinges. It was open for all to see, allowing her only the privacy of a privy. She was exposed to the elements and the ridicule of the English people, though allowed two women to bring her food and drink. This page gives the date of her release as June 1310-- nearly four years in a cage.

Having been quite cold while I was in Scotland in late May and early June, I can hardly imagine what it must have been like to live exposed to the elements, even through winter, for four years. She was reputedly held in continued captivity even after her release from the cage. Sources differ as to whether she died in captivity or survived it.

I am pleased to have found that there is a novel written about Isabel MacDuff. Barbara Erskine's Kingdom of Shadows focuses on the life of this fascinating woman. I had recently been told about Barbara Erskine's novels set in medieval Scotland, and planned to find some and start reading, anyway. Now, I have double reason to do so.

Blue Bells of Scotland by Laura Vosika

Shawn Kleiner has it all: money, fame, a skyrocketing career as an international musical phenomenon, his beautiful girlfriend Amy, and all the women he wants-- until the night Amy has enough and leaves him stranded in a Scottish castle tower.

He wakes up to find himself mistaken for Niall Campbell, medieval Highland warrior. Soon after, he is sent shimmying down a wind-torn castle wall into a dangerous cross country trek with Niall's tempting, but knife-wielding fiancee. They are pursued by English soldiers and a Scottish traitor who want Niall dead.
Thrown forward in time, Niall learns history’s horrifying account of his own death, and of the Scots’ slaughter at Bannockburn. Undaunted, he navigates the roiled waters of Shawn’s life-- pregnant girlfriend, amorous fans, enemies, and gambling debts--- seeking a way to leap back across time to save his people, especially his beloved Allene. His growing fondness for Shawn’s life brings him face to face with his own weakness and teaches him the true meaning of faith.

Blue Bells of Scotland is both a historical adventure and a tale of redemption that will be remembered long after the last page has been turned.

John "Jack" Donohoe - Bushranger

2011-07-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Jack Donohoe

John "Jack" Donohoe (sometimes called Donohue) was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1804. He became involved with the Irish rebel movement early and in 1823 was arrested and sentenced to transportation to Australia, arriving in Sydney Cove.

Donohoe was assigned to a series of masters from whom he escaped one by one. In 1827 he finally formed a hang of bushrangers, similar to bandits or highwaymen, called the Stripper Gang, so called because they waylaid well off landowners and the like and stripped them of everything they carried, including the clothes they wore.

In 1830 Donohoe was hunted down with hiss fellow gang members, Kilroy (Kilray or Gilroy) and Smith. buy the army. In the ensuing battle Donohoe was shot in the head and died.

Like m any another outlaw Donohoe became a hero to his countrymen. There are at least twosongs said to be about him, Bold Jack Donohoe and The Wild Colonial Boy.

Bold Jack Donohue

Come all you gallant bushrangers who gallop o'er the plains
Refuse to live in slavery, or wear the convict chains.
Attention pay to what I say, and value if I do
For I will relate the matchless tale of bold Jack Donohue.

Come all you sons of liberty and everyone besides
I'll sing to you a story that will fill you with surprise
Concerning of a bold bushranger, Jack Donohue was his name
And he scorned to humble to the crown, bound down with iron chain.

Now Donohue was taken all for a notorious crime
And sentenced to be hanged upon thw gallow tree so high
But when they to him to Bathurst Gaol, he left them in a stew
For when they came to call the roll, they missed Jack Donohue.

Now when Donohue made his escape, to the bush he went straight way.
The squatters they were all afraid to travel by night and by day
And every day in the newspapers, they brought out something new,
Concerning that bold bushranger they called Jack Donohue.

Now one day as he was riding the mountainside alone
Not thinking that the pains of death would overtake him soon.
When all he spied the horse police well on they came up into view
And in double quick time they did advance to take Jack Donohue.

"Oh Donohue, Donohue, throw down your carbine.
Or do you intend to fight us all and will you not resign?"
"Surrender to such cowardly dogs is a thing that I never would do,
For this day I'll fight with all my might", cried Bold Jack Donohue

Now the sergeant and the corporal, their men they did divide
Some fired at him from behind and some from every side.
The sergeant and the corporal, they both fired at him, too.
And a rifle bullet pierced the heart of Bold Jack Donohue.

Now nine rounds he fired and nine men down before that fated ball
Which pierced his heart and made him smart and caused him for to fall
And as he closed his mournful eyes, he bid the world adieu,
Saying "Convicts all, pray for the soul of Bold Jack Donohue."

The Wild Colonial Boy

Come, all my hearties,
we'll roam the mountains high,
Together we will plunder,
together we will ride.
We'll scar over valleys,
and gallop for the plains,
And scorn to live in
slavery, bound down by iron chains.
It's of a wild Colonial Boy,
Jack Doolan was his name,
Of poor but honest parents,
he was born in Castlemaine.
He was his father's only son,
his mother's pride and joy,
And so dearly did his parents love
the wild Colonial Boy.
When scarcely sixteen years of age
he left his father's home,
And through Australia's sunny shores
a bushranger did roam.
He'd rob the largest squatters,
their stock he would destroy,
a terror to Australia was
the wild Colonial Boy.
In sixty-one this daring youth
commenced his wild career,
With a heart that knew no danger,
no stranger would did he fear.
He bailed up the Beechworth roll mail-coach,
and robbed Judge MacEvoy,
Who trembled and gave up his gold to
the wild Colonial Boy.
He bade the judge "Good morning",
and told him to beware,
That he'd never rob a poor man
who wafted on the square,
Three mounted troopers came in sight
Kelly, Davis and Fitzroy,
who thought that they would capture him,
the wild Colonial Boy.
"Surrender now, Jack Doolan,
you see were three to one".
Surrender in the queens name
you daring highwayman,"
Jack drew two pistols from his belt,
and waved them proud and free
"I'll fight, but not surrender,"
cried the wild Colonial Boy.
He fired at Trooper Kelly
and brought him to the ground,
And in return from Davis
received a mortal wound.
All shattered through the jaws he lay
still firing at Fitzroy,
And that's the way they captured him-
the wild Colonial Boy.

Sigrid Storråda - Norse Rebel and Queen

2011-07-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sigrid Storråda

Name: Sigrid Storråda
Born: Circa 955(?), Sweden

Died: Circa 1010(?)

Married to: 1. Erik Segersäll
2. Svend Tveskägg (Fork-beard)
Children: At least three sons

Occupation: Queen

To be quite honest, the authenticity of this woman has been disputed, and the jury is still out on whether or not she really existed - but today's historians generally seem to believe there might be some truth to her existence.

Sigrid is mentioned in the Icelandic sagas, but not Adam of Bremen who lived closer in time (but perhaps could not always keep straight the complicated family relations among the Nordic kings) - but how much of what is written there is a historical truth is open for debate.

She is supposed to have been the daughter of a local noble man, Skoglar Toste, but her birth-date is unknown. Somewhere around 975 she married the Swedish king Erik Segersäll (the victorious) and with him she got a couple, or so, children - among them Olof, who would later get the epithet Skötkonung (the meaning of this word is unclear). But Erik was not happy with his wife and divorced her - for unknown reasons, it was obviously not because she could not have children. She would later remarry, this time the king of Denmark Svend Fork-beard, and is supposed to be the mother of Canute the Great.

A couple of legends connected to Sigrid includes one that says that she was engaged to be married to Olav I of Norway. But things came to an end when she told him that she refused to become a Christian. He then hit her and said he refused to marry a heathen. After this she became a bitter enemy of the man and persuaded both her second husband and her son Olof to go to war against Olav - which would eventually end with the death of the Norwegian king. It is unclear if it should be seen as a twist of irony or a sign that the story really can not be true, since her own son was the first Swedish king to become Christian (and remain that till his death). Another story tells about how Sigrid, after being divorced from her first husband, got courted by minor kings - which annoyed her and in the end she had a couple of them killed through burning down the house they were staying in. That kept unwanted suitors away from her - though obviously not Svend.

Her epithet 'Storråda' means the one that makes great plans. In English she is often referred to as 'the Haughty' - based on her actions.

Reprinted from the blog Pride and Sensibility by DameBoudicca.

Calico Jack Rackham - Pirate

2011-06-28T00:05:00.000-07:00

John Rackham, "Calico Jack"

John Rackham, popularly known as "Calico Jack" Rackahm, was not only a famous pirate during the first part of the eighteenth century, but was also the man who first used the "Jolly Roger" flag, a skull with two crossed swords below, now associated with all pirates, and was the lover of one of the two best known female pirates, Anne Bonny. He was nicknamed "Calico" Jack for his choice in clothing.

He was an Englishman born in Jamaica in about 1682. The first documented reference to him has him gaining the support of the crew of Ranger, a ship that engaged in piracy off the coast of New York and causing their captain, Charles Vane, to be put on a sloop with nineteen members of the crew and provisions. Rackham then became captain of the ship.

Calico Jack's short career was plenty eventful. He chose to sail to Jamaica to take advantage of a general pardon for pirates issued by the British government who hoped to enlist them in fighting the Spanish Navy in the Caribbean. Jack received the pardon but was not commissioned to fight because Governor Woods Rogers did not believe he could take on a Spanish man of war. In the meantime Jack met and became the lover of a married woman named Anne Bonny. When her husband discovered the affair, he had her publicly whipped. Jack offered to pay for her divorce but she refused to be bought.

The two lovers then stole a ship and ran from Jamaica, nullifying Jack's pardon. Bonny dressed as a man, and it was said the crew did not realize her gender. When Jack captured a Dutch merchant ship, one of the crew members he welcomed to join his own was in fact another woman disguised as a man named Mary Read. Later Jack caught Anne and Mary in bed together.

Calico Jack Rackham was captured in 1720. At his trial in Port Royal, Anne Bonny stated , "If he had fought like a man, he need not have been hanged like a dog". He was hanged on what is now known as Rackham's Quay off Port Royal.

Calico Jack Rackahm is a major character in George MacDonald Fraser's spoof novel, The Pyrates: A Swashbuckling Comic Novel by the Creator of Flashman.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Humanist and Author

2011-06-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

By Chi

Born in 1860, Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an author, sociologist, and humanist who created a path for future feminists with her fierce attitude and tireless spirit. She lectured widely in support of women’s rights, advocating for equality during a time when favoring patriarchy was the societal norm. More than 75 years after her passing, women are still engaged in the fight for equal treatment, which is difficult in the midst of an androcentric culture.

Gilman likely developed her passion for activism from relatives who encouraged her to be fearless in the face of adversity. Her childhood wasn’t ideal given that her father, Frederic Beecher Perkins, abandoned his family when Gilman was still a baby. Unable to support the family, Gilman’s mother, Mary Perkins, moved the family between relatives’ houses, including Gilman’s paternal aunt, author Harriet Beecher Stowe. In Gilman’s autobiography, she notes that her mother rarely showed affection. Gilman filled the solitude with educational pursuits.

After studying at Rhode Island School of Design, Gilman married her first husband, Charles Walter Stetson, despite her reluctance towards conforming to the gender roles prescribed for women. Not long after marrying, Gilman gave birth to a daughter, Katharine, and found herself trapped in the kind of life she had rallied against. Unfortunately, the birth of the child exacerbated the depression from which Gilman had long suffered, eventually resulting in postpartum psychosis. Her condition worsened to the point that Gilman began expressing suicidal ideations, her recovery likely hampered by her doctor’s “rest cure,” which advised her to not write, to embrace her domestic life, and to spend no time apart from her daughter. For the sake of her sanity, Gilman and Stetson eventually divorced and the author recovered after spending time in both Rhode Island and California.

Gilman’s most famous work, a short story entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper,” was a semi-autobiographical account of the author’s struggles after she delivered her daughter. In the story, the speaker slowly descends into madness, convinced she can see people moving around in the wallpaper that covers the room she is essentially confined to by a familiar-sounding “rest cure.” Thankfully, Gilman did not meet the fate that her character did.

In the years following her recovery, Gilman wrote prolifically and remarried. Her work included articles that she submitted for publication and her own magazine, The Forerunner, which often featured her fiction. Following the death of her mother, Gilman married her second husband, Houghton Gilman, who was also her first cousin. They were married for 22 years and enjoyed a relationship quite unlike the tumultuous years the author spent with her first husband. The male Gilman died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage two years after his wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer. In 1935, the female Gilman chose to end her own life by overdosing on chloroform rather than being bested by a long and painful illness. Though her life occasionally bordered on tragedy, her refusal to kowtow to societal edicts reminds present-day feminists to keep fighting.

Chi is a writer and visual artist who likes painting, poetry, and memoirs. She hopes to pursue an administration degree this fall. She has recently blogged for www.artroommelody.com .

Adam de la Halle - Poet and Musician

2011-06-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Adam de la Halle

By Joyce Elson Moore

The Tapestry Shop, a Five Star/Gale/Cengage book, is an historical novel based on the life of Adam de la Halle. Adam, one of the French poet/musicians of the thirteenth century was, like most of the trouvères, an aristocratic music-maker and an educated member of the upper classes. He is best known for his secular play, Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion (The Play of Robin and Marion), the earliest penned version of what later developed into the Robin Hood legend. Adam, born in Arras, a city in northern France, spoke the langue d’oil, the same dialect used at the Norman court in England, and his play may have been performed there. Adam’s pastourelle centered on Robin and Marion, and Robin’s cousins play a vital part in the play; it is those cousins who may have eventually become the “merry men” in today’s Robin Hood.

Little is documented about Adam’s life, but from what the extant records reveal, Adam was probably born in Arras sometime in the middle of the thirteenth century, and later became a member of a confraternity called the Puy d’Arras, a literary organization which held poetic competitions. His father was Maistre Henri, a municipal clerk who worked for the local magistrates. Much of Adam’s life is conjectured from his Le Jeu de la Feuillée, considered by some musicologists to be autobiographical, and while certain dates and events are elusive, it is almost certain that he was exiled for a period to Douai, that he went to Paris to study, and that he was patronized by Count Robert d’Arras, King Louis’ nephew, who lived in Arras during his early life.

Adam leaves behind an impressive amount of work. Besides the Play of Robin and Marion, he also wrote 36 chansons, 46 rondets de carole, 18 jeux-partis, 14 polyphonic rondeaux, at least 5 motets, and La Chanson du roi de Sicile (Song of the King of Sicily), of which only fragments remain.

Music of Adam de la Halle.

Joyce Elson Moore has won numerous awards for her writing, most recently the Bronze Medallion from Florida Book Awards. The Tapestry Shop can be purchased at amazon and your favorite bookstore, or ask at your local library. Joyce can be contacted from her website, www.joycemoorebooks.com .

Lizzie Johnson - Texas Schoolteacher

2011-06-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Lizzie Johnson

Texiana – A Woman’s Place

By Celia Hayes, author of Daughter of Texas & The Adelsverein Trilogy

I have always had the sneaking feeling that circumstances peculiar to the Western frontier significantly enabled the successful American struggle for female suffrage. The strangling hand of Victorian standards for feminine conduct and propriety, which firmly insisted that “ladies were not supposed to be interested in such vulgar doings as business and politics” was just not able to reach as far or grip so firmly. There was simply no earthly way for a woman traveling in a wagon along the Platte River, pushing a hand-cart to Salt Lake City, living in a California gold-rush tent city, or a log house on the Texas frontier to achieve the same degree of sheltered helplessness thought appropriate by the standard-bearers of High Victorian culture. It was impossible to be exclusively the angel of the home and hearth, when the hearth was a campfire on the prairie and anything from a stampeding buffalo herd, a plague of locusts or a Comanche war party could wander in at any time.

Life on the frontier was too close to a struggle for bare survival at the best of times. No place there for passengers, no room for the passive and trimly corseted lady to sit with her hands folded and abide by the standards of Boston and Eaton Place. The frontier was a hard place, the work unrelenting, but I have often wondered if some women might have found this liberation from the stifling expectations of the era quite exhilarating. I have also wondered if the men of the West – who had quite enough on their plates already, in just surviving - didn’t find it a little bit of a relief, to deal with a woman who was strong and competent and could hold up her end, rather a bundle of simpering, fluttering helplessness in crinoline. Curiously, the very first American female law officer was a westerner. The first few licensed female doctors gravitated to the frontier west, where the relative rarity of medical talent made for a less picky clientele and the first state to grant women the right to vote was Wyoming… in 1869. When it came right down to it, the struggle for women to gain the right to vote did not meet the fierce resistance in America as it did in Britain. Perhaps the concept did not rattle the masculine cage in Cheyenne quite as violently as it did in Westminster, or arouse a backlash anywhere near as vicious; curious, since the American west is supposed to be the high holy of aggressive masculinity.

But someone like Lizzie Johnson could have had the life and career that she did, nowhere else. She was born in Missouri in 1840, and came to Texas with her parents six years later. Her father, Thomas Jefferson Johnson was a schoolteacher and devout Presbyterian, who brought his growing family to Texas. Eventually he set up a boarding school in Hayes County, south of Austin and some distance from San Marcos, which drew pupils from the area – and astonishingly, a fair number from other Southern states. Lizzie’s father, known as the Professor had originally intended it to be a boys school but so many girls applied that it morphed into a coeducational secondary school. The school prospered, and Lizzie (along with her brothers and sisters) taught classes – including bookkeeping. Lizzie turned out to be particularly gifted at mathematics.
This talent would have an unexpected bearing on her later career, which began to blossom in the decade following the Civil War. She taught school in a couple of small towns near Austin before opening her own primary school there in 1873; in a two story house on property she had purchased in her own name. She did more than teach school, though: complaining of boredom with the same old teaching routine and social affairs in letters to her brother, she had begun to write popular fiction under various pen names for the weekly Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper… and she also did bookkeeping. Her brother John had kept the books for the Day brothers, who had extensive ranching interests in Hays County, and were old neighbors of the Johnson family. There were seven Day brothers; inevitably they were known as the “Weeks”. John never entirely recovered from battlefield injuries incurred during his service as a soldier, and when he died, Lizzie took over in his stead. Her father had kept a small herd of cattle to supplement his income from the school, and Lizzie was now in possession of an income of her own, which she could invest in whatever she chose.
And she chose to invest in real estate, and in cattle, about which she became startlingly knowledgeable, for a maiden lady schoolteacher. By the time she opened her own school; she had registered her own brand, owned land and cattle, and was sending substantial herds north to the Kansas railheads. Her life seems astonishingly modern, the farthest thing imaginable from the repressed and constrained fictional women in contemporary novels by serious writers like Henry James and Edith Wharton. She worked at what pleased and rewarded her, and no one – not her father or other male relative had anything to say about her household, her income, and her considerable business interests. Well, her surviving brothers - all younger – might have had a lot to say, but apparently little enthusiasm for attempting any means of control over a formidable woman like Lizzie.

I think of her as the anti-Lily Bart. Another astonishingly modern touch – she married well beyond the age that a woman was expected to have committed in matrimony, and it was not for lack of serious suitors. For Lizzie was – to judge from contemporary formal daguerreotype portraits of her, in which the length of film exposure made any facial expression except the kind you could hold for some length of time out of the question – a rather attractive woman. Victorian standards of beauty differed considerably from the modern one, admittedly; they favored round-faced blondes, and Lizzie was dark-haired and looked rather like a 19th century Demi Moore. She was no frump, either, but dressed elegantly and in the latest fashion. She was courted assiduously over several years by one of the Day brothers and a number of other prosperous men, every one of whom knew her as a woman of property… and moreover, exactly how she came by it. Brains, beauty and business sense apparently had considerable allure.

At the age of 39, this frontier Kate married her Petruchio. He was a handsome and raffish widower with several children, named Hezekiah Williams. Although a retired Baptist preacher, and a moderately unsuccessful rancher, he was also a bit of a gambler and drinker. Sensibly, Lizzie married him with the equivalent of a prenuptial agreement in place. She would control her own property acquired before the marriage, as well as anything she acquired in her own name after it.

It seems that Lizzie Johnson Williams chose as well in her marriage as she did everything else, for they maintained a devoted and happily competitive relationship, both in business and in their personal life for thirty-five years. They went up the cattle trail to the northern railheads three times, Lizzie and Hezekiah each with a separate herd; it is thought that Lizzie was the only woman rancher who trailed cattle that she herself owned wholly, in the post-war cattle boom. When she died in 1924, ten years after Hezekiah, her neighbors were astonished to find out that she owned property worth a quarter of a million dollars. She had lived in a modest, not to mention miserly style since the death of her husband. She did not marry into money, or inherit through her family; every dollar of her estate she had earned herself, by teaching, writing and bookkeeping, and parlaying those earnings into land and cattle investments, using her own best judgement. A thuroughly
modern woman, a hundred years before such women were more the norm.

Celia Hayes is the author of five historical novels set on the 19th Century American frontier. Her latest, Daughter of Texas, is the story of a woman's life in early Texas. The sequel, Deep in the Heart, will be published in December, 2011. See her Author Page on Amazon.com.

Thomas Cochrane - Naval Commander

2011-05-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Capt. Thomas Cochrane, the Sea Wolf

Thomas Cochrane (1775 - 1860)
The Sea Wolf

By Chris Dayt, Unsung Heroes

Thomas Cochrane was the 10th Earl of Dundonald. He had an extremely distinguished naval career, full of extraordinary exploits and derring-do. In my opinion, his name should vie with those of the Elizabethan Sir Francis Drake and great Lord Horatio Nelson, his near-contemporary. He was a swashbuckling figure of the Napoleonic Wars and was so notorious and feared among the French that they dubbed him 'Le Loup des Mers' (Wolf of the Seas).

His exploits were more amazing than fiction. It was the naval actions and exploits of Thomas Cochrane that inspired such novelists as C. S. Forester (Horatio Hornblower) and Patrick O'Brian (Jack Aubrey) and, thereby, Peter Weir (the film maker of 'Master and Commander' fame). Followers will recognise the escapades from Cochrane's real life, that made those works of fiction so colourful.

He contended that he could have rid the Iberian Peninsula of Napoleon's army with just a few frigates and his coastal warfare skills, without the might of Wellington's army that was later deployed for the job. Who knows whether he was right but his incredible exploits and successes, with just two frigates off the coast of Spain, certainly lent credence to the idea.

He was a contemporary of Admiral Horatio Nelson (who died at Trafalgar in 1805) but did not serve in that famous naval battle. That sort of 'slogging match' was not his forte. He was a master of mobility and sleight.

In 1806, he had what was perhaps one of his most glorious actions and one of his starkest clashes with a superior officer, during the The Battle of the Basque Roads. In that action his outrageous ingenuity and unrivalled audacity were displayed to the full, to devastating effect on the hapless French fleet.

Taking place in 1809, another of his daring exploits is recounted at: The Cordouan Light, showing the effect both of his audacious actions and his poor relationship with the naval hierarchy.

He was a champion of the serving seaman and of moral rectitude, campaigning against the corruption in the British Navy, that was rife at the time.

He was also an innovator/inventor of some note, winning a prize for a new-style 'convoy lamp' in 1805 (the year of Trafalgar) and a 'tunnelling shield' in 1818, along with Marc Isambard Brunel (father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel). This was used in the building of the Thames Tunnel (1825-43).

After distinguishing himself nobly in the Napoleonic Wars, falling foul of the establishment and being falsely imprisoned, he went on to become successively Admiral of the Chilean Navy, The Brazilian navy and the Greek Navy, helping each country in its fight for independence.

In 1832, he returned to grace in England, under William IV, and was given high rank in the Royal Navy.

His life is recorded in annals and little-known books but he has lately been honoured with a page in the Royal Navy's website: Thomas Cochrane

Why did he not achieve great historic recognition? It was probably because of his fight against the corrupt but all-powerful naval establishment, his inability to suffer superior fools gladly and the fact that Nelson's achievements were so great and significant for the British people that Cochrane was overshadowed.

He died at the somewhat surprising age of 85, considering his lifestyle, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

If you like naval adventures and the tales of the Napoleonic Wars, this hero's for you. I have put some links at the bottom of this lens

Editor's note: Cochrane is a swashbuckling chaaracter in Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Devil.

Women of the Crusade of 1101

2011-05-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

Researching the Crusade of 1101 for my novel, Beloved Pilgrim, I asked the wuestion, "Were women involved at all in the crusade?" My protagonist, after all, was a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to fight as a knight. I put together a short essay on the topic for Christopher Gortner's Historical Boys blog called "Women Fighters in the Crusades".

The vast majority of women who went on crusade were peasant women and women from religious orders. Some of them fought, though not as part of the formal military. Nevertheless three noblewomen stand out for their connections to this devastating event in history.

Ida of Formbach-Ratelnberg, Margravine of Austria

Little is known about the Austrian Margravine Ida, born Ida of Formbach-Ratelnberg. She was born in 1055 the daughter of Rapoto IV of Cham, also known as Itha, and married to Leopold II, Margrave of Austria. Their son, Leopold III, was a deeply religious man who gave a great deal to the Church and was later canonized a saint. Ida was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in Europe in her youth. She was in her mid-forties when she decided to travel with Duke Welf of Bavaria’s contingent in the Crusade of 1101. In the Turkish ambush of this party at Heraclea in September 1101 Ida was either killed or captured. Nothing is known of her fate other than a rumor that she became part of a harem and was the mother of the great Turkish leader Zengi. This is, however, not possible as Zengi was born before the Margravine even came to Turkey.

Anna Komnena, Byzantine Princess and Historian

One of the first female historians in the West, Anna Komnena was born on December 1, 1083, to Byzantine Emperor Alexios I and his wife, Irene Doukaina. She was the author of an account of her father’s life, The Alexiad. She was extraordinarily highly educated in history, mathematics, science and Greek philosophy, and, although against her parents’ strict instructions, also in the lusty folktales and legends of her people. Her books are full of anecdotes about the famous people of her time, full of her personal observations of such men as Bohemond of Taranto, whom she called “a habitual rogue”, and Raymond de St. Gilles, whom she liked. She was married at 14 to Nikephoros Bryennios, a fellow scholar and historian, with whom she had a long – 40 years -- and fruitful marriage.

Anna believed she was the rightful heir to her father’s throne, being the firstborn, crowned at her birth, and having her mother’s strong support for herself and her husband. Legend has it that her younger brother John took the imperial ring when he came to bid his dying father goodbye. The Church declared him Emperor John II. Anna and her husband twice attempted to overthrow John and were possibly part of the attempted murder plot against him at his coronation. They were unsuccessful. After her husband’s death, Anna retired to the convent of Kecharitomene, founded by her mother, where she lived until her own death in about 1153.

Anna’s unique contribution to the history of the Crusades comes not from eyewitness accounts but from her relationship with members of her own family who fought in the First Crusade and her ability to record the Byzantine concerns over the excesses of the crusaders whom they feared would overrun the empire.

Adela of Normandy, Countess of Blois

Adela was the daughter, sister and mother of four kings of England, William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders being her parents. Her brothers, William I Rufus and Henry I were not the only other kings, as her son, Stephen of Blois, seized the crown before Henry’s daughter, Matilda, could be crowned.

Her only role in the Crusade of 1101 is her reputed insistence that her husband, Henry-Stephen of Blois, one of the riches men in Europe, return to the Holy Land after failing to fulfill his oath to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Some have claimed he had shown cowardice at the Siege of Antioch, but this is not certain. He did however abandon the mass of the pilgrims during the Battle of Merzifon in 1101. He subsequently was killed at the Battle of Ramleh in 1102.

During her husband’s long absences and after his death Adela acted as an able regent. She died on March 8, 1137, at the convent where she had retired. Her son Stephen, King of England, was not her most accomplished progeny, as Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, was one of the m most acute statesmen and patron of architecture and more of his time.

Elisabeth von Winterkirche and Maliha may be fictitonal, but you can read their story and see one theory of what happened to Margravine Ida in Beloved Pilgrim, by Nan Hawthorne, now available in print and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk and as an ebook on Smashwords.

William Mompesson and Thomas Stanley - Clergymen

2011-05-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Rev. William Mompesson

In August 1665 a crate of clothing was delivered to the tailor in a town in Debyshire, England, named Eyam. The crate came from the country's capital, London, and brought with it fleas that carried the plague. In less than a week, the tailor was dead and buried, just the first in a rash of deaths from plague. During the winter the disease slowed to a halt, only to return stronger in the spring. In May 1666 the townspeople turned to the two clergy men in the town for how to deal with the rapid rate of contagion.

Plaque dedicated to Thomas Stanley.

These two men were William Mompesson, the Anglican rector the parish church of St. Lawrence, and Thomas Stanley, a Puritan minister. Stanley had refused to agree to the Act of Conformity of 1652 and as a result was deprived of his church, nevertheless he was paired with Rev. Mompesson when the town was in dire need. The two clergymen developed a list of measures to take entirely to prevent the spread of the disease beyond their town. The most dramatic and indeed best known was the decision to quarantine the entire village. Town people agreed not only not to allow anyone into the town, but they also caged themselves and their entire families. After a year, when the first people visited Eyam, they found that less than one quarter of the towns 350 population and that those who survived had lived in contact in every case with those who contracted the disease and died. One woman, for example, who had buried six children and her husband within a week, lived. Though seemingly heroic, the quarantine was not in fact complete. Those with money were able to make other arrangements. In fact, Mompesson himself sent his children away during the month prior to the establishment of the quarantine. His wife refused his request to leave as well and died of the plague. Mompesson himself survived and went on to remarry and have a respectable career in the church. He died in 1709. The fate of Thomas Stanley was not recorded. The quarantine of Eyam has been immortalized in several novels, most notably Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders, as well as plays, musicals, operas, poems and songs. One of the plays is performed every year in Eyam. The folk singer Beau (John Trevor) recorded his own song,The Roses of Eyam, from his album, Beau. The song's lyrics are below.

The Roses of Eyam

The earth beneath the surface dust is cold and damp and raw
And, holding but/back? the memory of what has gone before,
Can almost be forgiven for remembering the dream
Of the wall of stones around the homes of the villagers of Eyam

The villagers of Eyam In August 1665 along the cobbled roads
Between the houses dark and high, the carriers with their loads
Were leaving, for the northern towns, the capital and Crown
And also leaving far behind the plague of London town
The plague of London town

George Vicars was a tailor to the village life of Eyam
And to his house a case of clothes from London town was seen
To be delivered one fine day in September '65
And never more was tailor Vicars ever seen a live
Ever seen alive

The scars upon his face and chest were many to behold
And, lying by his fevered body, now so very cold,
The case from London opened wide, the clothes all neatly hung
And from the bell upon the church the knell of death was rung
The knell of death was rung

There followed sixty scarred and bleeding, buried in their grave
And Thomas Stanley stood above and told them Jesus saved
But Stanley was a Puritan, an enemy to heed
To Mompesson, the Anglican, who held the rector's creed
Who held the rector's creed

The differences between these men, which were so very wide,
Were shattered by their desperate need and rudely cast aside
The voices of these two were joined, their words were not in vain
They told the villagers of Eyam the plague must be contained
The plague must be contained

The village people took their word, agreed to stay and die
They built a wall around the hamlet not so very high
But high enough so they would know that though it mean their lives
The plague must stay behind the wall with children, friends and wives
With children, friends and wives

For six long months the wall did stand and honest to their word
The families died, the Fryths and the Syddals never more were heard
The Thornleys, Hancocks and the Torres were buried in the ground
The Coopers and the Vicars never made another sound
Never made another sound

The dawn that rang the final bell left thirty three alive
From three hundred and sixty in September '65
The villagers rebuilt their lives with those who still remained
The name of Eyam can still be seen, the plague had been contained
The plague had been contained

Antonietta Meo - Child Saint

2011-05-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Antonietta Meo at her confirmation.

Venerable Antonietta Meo was born in 1930 in Rome and died just seven years later. She was the youngest daughter of Michele and Maria Meo. Her family was upper middle class, and she attended a parochial school in Rome where she was extremely popular with her teachers and fellow students because of her kindness, sense of humor and joyful outlook on life. When she was five, her family discovered that she had an aggressive form of bone cancer when she hurt her knee. It would not heal and she had to have her leg amputated. For some time she was able to play with other children with the artificial leg she was fitted with.

She was both a cheerful and otherworldly child who wrote hundreds of letters to Jesus and the Virgin Mary and had visions where she would ask Jesus to "come play with me". At first she dictated her letters through her mother, then began to write them herself and to write poems which she lay at the foot of her crucifix.

Dear baby Jesus, you are holy, you are good. Help me, grant me your grace and give me back my leg. If you don't want to, then may your will be done.

Dear Jesus, I love you very much. I want to abandon myself in your hands. I want to abandon myself in your arms. Do with me what you want. Help me with your grace. You help me, since without your grace, I am nothing.

She once told her father, "I am very happy that Jesus gave me this problem so that I may be his dearest one. Pain is like fabric, the stronger it is, the more it's worth." Other sayings of her statements included, "For an instant I lie down on my wound, so as to offer more pain to Jesus," and "When you feel pain, you have to keep quiet and offer it to Jesus for a sinner. Jesus suffered so much for us, but He hadn't committed any sin: He was God. How could we complain, we who are sinners and always offend him?"

Just days before her death she wrote one last letter to Jesus that concluded "your little girl sends you lots of kisses." She told her mother when she was about to die, "I was supposed to die in a few days, but St. Theresa said 'It's enough.'"

Efforts to make Antonietta Meo a saint began soon after her death in 1937. Seventy years later Pope Benedict XVI approved the process of canonization by praising her "heroic virtues". In order to be canonized two miracles must be attributed to her. A woman in Indiana says she was cured of Hepatitis C when she prayed to the little girl. Although the Vatican Congregation for Saints previously required that a candidate for sainthood reach some level of maturity, it relaxed those rules in 1981, and declared that "It is possible to speak of a human being precocious in their sense of good and evil."

If she is canonized, St. Antonietta Meo will be the youngest person so honored by the Catholic Church.

Her shrine is in Gerusalemme in Rome, the church where she was baptized and spent much of her time in meditation. Antonietta's body was moved inside the church in 1999. Her feast day is July 3.

Joe McDonnell - IRA Member and Hunger Striker

2011-04-28T00:00:00.001-07:00

Joe McDonnell

Joe McDonnell was born and raised in Belfast in Northern Ireland. After his marriage he went to live in an area that had only two Catholic households, including his own, both of which sustained frequent attacks. When the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary launch Project Demetrius to capture and inter people they considered paramilitaries with trial, McDonnell was one of 342 taken and imprisoned, in his case on a prison ship. When he was released he returned to Northern Ireland and joined the Irish Republican Army. He was caught after an IRA bombing on a furniture company along with Bobby Sands who, while a prisoner, was elected as a Member of the British Parliament. McDonnell was interred in the infamous "H Block" with Sands and other men who went on a hunger strike for the following rights as political prisoners:

The right not to wear a prison uniform;
The right not to do prison work;
The right of free association with other prisoners;
The right to organize their own educational and recreational facilities
The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week

McDonnell died on July 8, 1981, after a 61 day hunger strike. Joe McDonnell is the subject of a rebel song performed by Triskelle. Joe McDonnell O me name is Joe McDonnell from Belfast town I came That city I will never see again For in the town of Belfast I spent many happy days I love that town in oh so many ways For it's there I spent my childhood and found for me a wife I then set out to make for her a life But all my young ambitions met with bitterness and hate I soon found myself inside a prison gate And you dare to call me a terrorist while you looked down your gun When I think of all the deeds that you had done You had plundered many nations divided many lands You had terrorised their peoples you ruled with an iron hand. And you brought this reign of terror to my land Through those many months internment In the Maidstone and the Maze I thought about my land throughout those days Why my country was divided, why I was now in jail Imprisoned without crime or without trial And though I love my country I am not a bitter man I've seen cruelty and injustice at first hand So then one fateful morning I shook bold freedom's hand For right or wrong I'd try to free my land And you dare to call me a terrorist while you looked down your gun When I think of all the deeds that you had done You had plundered many nations divided many lands You had terrorised their peoples you ruled with an iron hand. And you brought this reign of terror to my land Then one cold October morning trapped in a lion's den I found myself in prison once again I was committed to the H-blocks for fourteen years or more On the Blanket the conditions they were poor Then a hunger strike we did commence for the dignity of man But it seemed to me that no one gave a damn But now, I'm a saddened man I've watched my comrades die If only people cared or wondered why And you dare to call me a terrorist while you looked down your gun When I think of all the deeds that you had done You had plundered many nations divided many lands You had terrorised their peoples you ruled with an iron hand. And you brought this reign of terror to my land May God shine on you Bobby Sands for the courage you have shown May your glory and your fame be widely known And Francis Hughes and Ray McCreesh who died unselfishly And Patsy O Hara and the next in line is me And those who lie behind me may you're courage be the same And I pray to God my life is not in vain Ah but sad and bitter was the year of 1981 For everything I've lost and nothing's won.

Biddy Mason - Slave, Entrepreneur and Community Worker

2011-04-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Bridget "Biddy" Mason

She was born simply "Bridget" in Georgia in 1818, an African American slave. Given as a wedding gift to Robert Smith. She went with him and his family to Mississippi where Robert met a group of members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Though the Church urged Smith to free his slaves, he declined, and took Biddy and his other slaves with him to Illinois to ;join the great Mormon exodus to the West. Even when in Utah Brigham Young himself told Smith to free his slaves, he refused. Biddy and her children were still with Smith when Young sent him with a group of Church members to San Bernadino, California. When that state became a free state when Texas joined the Union as a slave state, Biddy and several other of Smith's slaves tried to escape. He overtook them, but a posse caught him as he was attempting to take them to another place. It was at this time in 1856 that Biddy petitioned the court for her emancipation, which was granted, and she took "Mason", the middle name of the then mayor of San Bernadino, as her surname. Something about freedom sparked an entrepreneurial spirit in Mason who amassed an amazing fortune through her careful saving of money from her nursing and midwifery and purchases of land in Los Angeles. She was always generous with her wealth, helping the poor wherever she could. In 1872 she founded the First African Methodist Episcopal in Los Angeles, also donating the land on which it was built. Her work was enhanced by the fact that she learned to speak Spanish fluently. She set up several homes for the homeless, sick, and old.

Mason is an honoree in the California Social Work Hall of Distinction. She is also celebrated on Biddy Mason Day on November 16.

Primrose and West - Entertainers

2011-04-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

George Primrose and Billy West

In the musical, White Christmas, there is a set called the "Minstrel Number" with these two last lines:

When Georgie Primrose used to sing And dance to a song like this

That was the first time I ever heard of George Primrose, and it inspired me to do this brief Random Biography on him and his song and dance partner, Billy West. George Primrose (1852-1919) and William H. "Billy" West (1853-1902) started out as entertainers in the "blackface" style of what was called a minstrel show , made up of low comedy and "plantation" black theme music and dance. They almost singlehandedly developed the broader, more refined style of minstrelsy. Primrose and West were working for J. H. Haverlys "United Mastodon Minstrels" in 1877 when their demands for more money were not met and they both quit. They decided at that time to start their own troupe, copying their former employer's elaborate sets and spectacle, similar to the "Mandy" number in White Christmas. They were so well-regarded that they were featured in the entertainment publication The Clipper, an honor reserved usually for famous actors and actresses. In 1881 they became aware of British style of minstrelsy that involved classical music, ballet, and no blackface humor. They adopted the same style of production, added touches of their own, easing out blackface humor, and made it a standard in the United States. While some critics said it was "taking all the fun out of minstrelsy" but their popularity continued to grow. They came to be known as the Millionaires of Minstrelsy". Primrose was particularly noted as a talented tap dancer. West was the first Caucasian owner of a minstrel troupe made entirely of African American performers. These troupes made an effort to spread awareness of and scholarship about African American traditional music and dance and raised money for scholarships to African American colleges. On West's gravestone in a Bronx cemetery is inscribed "None Knew Him But To Love Him . None named him save in praise".

Big Minstrels, an African American minstrel show.

Gertrude Abbott - Hospital Founder

2011-04-07T00:00:00.001-07:00

A popular actress of the time reads to a small boy at
St. Margaret's Hospital for Women in Sydney, Australia.

Gertrude Abbott (1846-1934)
Founder of St Margaret's Hospital for Women

By Melisande, author of History of Women blog - see belwo
Gertrude Abbott began life as Mary Jane O'Brien in Sydney (1846). Her father was a school teacher who moved from New South Wales to Dry Creek, SA and took up farming. "Gertrude" entered Sister Mary McKillop's congregation at Penola, South Australia (1869) and became Sister Ignatius. Influenced by Father Julian Tennison-Woods, she and another young nun claimed to have had visions - there was a scandal when the other nun was found to have faked her visions. Sister Ignatius was blameless but left the congregation (July 1872) two months after she had made her final vows.

She returned to Sydney - but not under her own name, instead she became Gertrude Abbott. She leased a house in the Sydney suburb of Surrey Hills and gathered about her a group of pious women. They lived by dressmaking and adopted the rule of contemplative congregation. Gertrude hoped that the Roman Catholic Church would give the group the status of a religious order.

However, one fateful night, things took a different turn. On that night (1893) a policeman presented a young women at her door. Gertrude had no money or food herself, yet she took the girl in, and one hour later a baby was born. Soon other girls can to her home, and so began what would become St Margaret's Hospital for Women, the third largest obstetric hospital in Sydney.

In the first years of St Margaret's Hospital, Gertrude took in 9 married and 23 unmarried women, and trained 3 nurses in midwifery with the help of her great friend and certified nurse Magdalen Foley (who took a degree in pharmacy so as to dispense medicines). Regarded as a quasi-religious community, the women eventually acquired status within the Catholic Church as their services to the community were recognised. The Hospital was run on donations.

The Hospital began to treat the diseases of women (1904). Soon it had outgrown its present buildings and was forced to move to larger premises in Darlinghurst which Gertrude leased and then bought. Her friend and mentor Father Tennison-Woods died in her care (1889) and left her his entire estate, as did her friend Magdalen Foley (1926). Despite the growth of the hospital she was still quite lonely. Gradually she withdrew as matron and manager.

Gertrude died 48 years after that fateful night, aged 88yo. In the year of her death, the Hospital recorded 760 patients treated, 619 births registered and no maternal deaths. In her will, she passed her Hospital into the hands of the Sisters of St Joseph, whose order she had left unhappily 62 years before.

Visit Women of History from which this article was taken with permission, and find a dedicated slate of fascinating and unusual articles on everything from famous women to articles revealing aspects of women's lives through history. melisande is the pen name for the author and is to be commended for her breadth of topic and her devotion to it.

G. A. Henty - Novelist and War Correrspondent

2011-03-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

One of the delights of discovering all the public domain books one can read online and via ereaders is the simultaneous discovery of the many historical novels of George Alfred Henty. A quick search of Amazon.com's Kindle Store, OpenLilbrary and The Gutenberg Project will produce an ample harvest of free downloads of his mostly young adult historical adventures set in Europe, the American West, India, south America and in Africa.

Henty lived from 1832 to 1902 and was a very popular author as well as a foreign correspondtn. he was born near Cambridge in England in 1832. As a result of a sickly childhood, he became an avid reader. He left Cambridge early to join the hospital commissariat at the start of the Crimean War, the setting of one of his boys' adventure novels, Jack Archer. In fact, his letters home about the conditions in which the soldiers and sailors suffered were what caused him to become a special or war correspondent.

His role as a reporter caused him to travel to many of the world's hot spots on the late 19th century. He met Garibaldi while covering the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and was present at the opening of the Suez Canal. His work took him to India, Africa, China, Russia and and other locations, often during horrendous military conflict.

Henty married in 1859 but lost his wife after only a few years and the birth of four children. His stories came out of those he told his children at the table after supper about his many travels and adventures. He always named the characters in his stories after one or another of his children. He carried on this tradition when he began to write adventure novels, his first being Out on the Pampas in 1868. Though he wrote adult novels and nonfiction, most of his 122 books are aimed at children. He also wrote for boys' magazines.

Henty's novels for children always stressed the intelligence and resourcefulness of his mostly but not exclusively young male characters who, living in difficult times ranging from the Punic War to the American Civil War, are modest and devoted to duty.

He died on his yacht in 1902 and was buried in London.

Just some of his boys' adventure novels most of which are available in various places for a free download are, in addition to the two mentioned above:

You can also find a Kindle version of Classic British Fiction: 70 historical novels by G.A. Henty in a single file, improved 8/26/2010.

These should keep you and your kids busy for years. See a review of at least one of these novels at my review blog, That's All She Read.

Irène Joliot-Curie - Scientist

2011-03-21T00:00:00.001-07:00

Irène Joliot-Curie

Reprinted from Wikipedia.

Irène Joliot-Curie (12 September 1897 – 17 March 1956) was a French scientist, the daughter of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Jointly with her husband, Joliot-Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. This made the Curies the family with most Nobel laureates to date. Both children of the Joliot-Curies, Hélène and Pierre, are also esteemed scientists

Biography

Early years

Joliot-Curie was born in Paris. After a year of traditional education, which began when she was 6 years old, her parents realized her obvious mathematical talent and decided that Irène’s academic abilities needed a more challenging environment. Marie joined forces with a number of eminent French scholars, including the prominent French physicist Paul Langevin to form “The Cooperative,” a private gathering of some of the most distinguished academics in France. Each contributed to educating one another’s children in their respective homes. The curriculum of The Cooperative was varied and included not only the principles of science and scientific research but such diverse subjects as Chinese and sculpture and with great emphasis placed on self expression and play.

This arrangement lasted for two years after which Joliot-Curie re-entered a more orthodox learning environment at the Collège Sévigné in central Paris from 1912 to 1914 and then onto the Faculty of Science at the Sorbonne, to complete her Baccalaureat. Her studies at the Faculty of Science were interrupted by World War I.

World War I

Initially, Joliot-Curie was taken by her mother to Brittany, but a year later when she turned 18 she was re-united with her mother, running the 20 mobile field hospitals that Marie had established. The hospitals were equipped with primitive X-ray equipment made possible by the Curies’ radiochemical research. This technology greatly assisted doctors to locate shrapnel in wounded soldiers, but it was crude and led to both Marie and Irène, who were serving as nurse radiographers, to suffer large doses of radiation exposure.

After the War, Joliot-Curie returned to Paris to study at The Radium Institute, which had been built by her parents. The institute was completed in 1914 but remained empty during the war. Her doctoral thesis was concerned with the alpha rays of polonium, the second element discovered by her parents and named after Marie’s country of birth, Poland. Joliot-Curie became Doctor of Science in 1925.

Research

Irène and Frédéric, 1934 at LondonAs she neared the end of her doctorate in 1924 she was asked to teach the precise laboratory techniques required for radiochemical research to the young chemical engineer Frédéric Joliot whom she would later come to wed.

From 1928 Joliot-Curie and husband Frédéric combined their research interests on the study of atomic nuclei. Though their experiments identified both the positron and the neutron, they failed to interpret the significance of the results and the discoveries were later claimed by C.D. Anderson and James Chadwick respectively. These discoveries would have secured greatness indeed, as together with J. J. Thomson's discovery of the electron in 1897, they finally replaced Dalton’s theory of atoms being solid spherical particles.

Finally, in 1934 they made the discovery that sealed their place in scientific history. Building on the work of Marie and Pierre, who had isolated naturally occurring radioactive elements, Joliot-Curies realised the alchemist’s dream of turning one element into another, creating radioactive nitrogen from boron and then radioactive isotopes of phosphorus from aluminium and silicon from magnesium. For example, irradiating the main natural and stable isotope of aluminum with alpha particles (i.e. helium nuclei) results in an unstable isotope of phosphorus : 27Al + 4He > 30P + 1n. By now the application of radioactive materials for use in medicine was growing and this discovery led to an ability to create radioactive materials quickly, cheaply and plentifully. The Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935 brought with it fame and recognition from the scientific community and Joliot-Curie was awarded a professorship at the Faculty of Science.

Irène’s group pioneered research into radium nuclei that led a separate group of German physicists to discover nuclear fission; the splitting of the nucleus itself and the vast amounts of energy emitted as a result.

The years of working so closely with such deadly materials finally caught up with Joliot-Curie and she was diagnosed with leukemia. She had been accidentally exposed to polonium when a sealed capsule of the element exploded on her laboratory bench in 1946. Treatment with antibiotics and a series of operations did relieve her suffering temporarily but her condition continued to deteriorate. Despite this Joliot-Curie continued to work and in 1955 drew up plans for new physics laboratories at the Universitie d’Orsay, South of Paris.

Political views

The Joliot-Curies had become increasingly aware of the growth of the fascist movement. They opposed its ideals and joined the Socialist Party in 1934, the Comité de Vigilance des Intellectuels Antifascistes a year later, and in 1936 actively supported the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. In the same year, Joliot-Curie was appointed Undersecretary of State for Scientific Research for the French government where she helped in founding the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

The Joliot-Curies had continued Pierre and Marie’s policy of publishing all of their work for the benefit of the global scientific community, but afraid of the danger that might result should it be developed for military use, they stopped. On 30 October 1939 they placed all of their documentation on nuclear fission in the vaults of the Académie des Sciences where it remained until 1949.

Joliot-Curie's political career continued after the war and she became a commissioner in the Commissariat à l'énergie Atomique. However, she still found time for scientific work and in 1946 became director of her mother’s Institut du Radium, Radium Institute.

Joliot-Curie became actively involved in promoting women’s education, serving on the National Committee of the Union of French Women (Comité National de l'Union des Femmes Françaises) and the World Peace Council. Joliot-Curies were given memberships to the French Légion d'honneur; Irène as an officer and Frederic as a commissioner, recognising his earlier work for the resistance.

Personal life

Frédéric and Irène in the 1940sIrène and Frédéric hyphenated their surnames to Joliot-Curie after they married 1926. Eleven months later, their daughter Hélène was born, who would also become a noted physicist. Their son, Pierre, a biologist, was born in 1932.

During World War II Joliot-Curie contracted tuberculosis and was forced to spend the next few years convalescing in Switzerland. Concern for her own health together with the anguish of leaving her husband and children in occupied France was hard to bear and she did make several dangerous visits back to France, enduring detention by German troops at the Swiss border on more than one occasion. Finally, in 1944 Joliot-Curie judged it too dangerous for her family to remain in France and she took her children back to Switzerland.

In 1956, after a final convalescent period in the French Alps, Joliot-Curie was admitted to the Curie hospital in Paris where she died on 17 March at the age of 58 from leukemia.[6]

Joliot-Curie's daughter, Hélène Langevin-Joliot, is a nuclear physicist and professor at the University of Paris; her son, Pierre Joliot, is a biochemist at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

See Wikipedia article for links, reference, and a list of female Nobel Prize winners.

Jethro Tull - Agriculturalist

2011-03-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Jehtro Tull

By James D. Tedford

Jethro Tull (1674-174) was an English agriculturist whose work was central to the development of mechanized farming and increasing agriculture prodcution. He is particularly well known for devising certain farming implements which increased production amongst English farmers.

Tull was born into an aristocratic family in Berkshire in 1604. He was educated at Oxford and Gray’s Inn universities. Although he evidenced an early interest in farming and plant life (during a youthful trip to Europe he made detailed notes of the farming methods employed in various locales) he originally intended a legal career. After Susannah Smith, he settled on his father’s farm in Howbery where Tull conducted a number of agricultural experiments. Shortly thereafter he contracted a pulmonary infection which caused him to seek a cure in the milder climates of Italy and the South of France. Upon his return to England, he determined to further expand his agricultural studies and experiments.

Tull was a keenly interested in farming methods, most notably planting. In many countries seed planting was done by “broadcasting” (scattering) of seeds over the ground, a method which Tull saw as wasteful and resulted in an inconsistent sowing. He devised a horse-drawn machine he called a “seed drill” which consisted of a series of pipes which bore holes into the ground in which a seed was dropped. The drill allowed the planting of the seeds in long rows which could then be more easily weeded.

The seed drill, despite its obvious advantages, was met with significant opposition from agricultural workers. Prior to its widespread acceptance, a large field would require dozens of seed scatterers to plant; with the seed drill, a single individual with a horse could more effectively plant the field in much reduced time. Landowners, however, saw great advantage in the drill – fewer workers were needed (and needed to be paid) to work a given amount of land.

Tull was also an advocate of cultivation: frequent hoeing of the soil around plants to allow air and moisture to the roots, and removal of weeds that would complete with the crops for soil nutrients. Like many farmers of his day, Tull was not an advocate of fertilizer; he believed that all the nutrients a plant needed was already in the soil, getting a verdant crop was a matter of removing the weeds and pulverizing the soil to release the nutrients. Tull invented a horse drawn hoe which would remove weeds more efficiently than hand-hoeing.

Oxen were the preferred beast of burden for farmers of the 17th century. Tull believed that horses were more suitable, as they were more maneuverable and could operate between rows more effectively. He also speculated that ox dung contained a high concentration of weed seeds. He published a treatise on the topic, The New Horse-Hoeing Husbandry; or, an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation in 1731.

Tull’s theories of mechanized farming were slow to catch on. But a burgeoning population in Europe made increased food production an imperative, and as large landowners began to see increased production and lower operating costs, the controversy around Tull’s methods began to diminish. Various farm implement manufacturers came out with variations on Tull’s weeding plow and seed drill, and numerous universities and agriculture societies published papers on mechanized farming techniques. Interestingly, although he was a lawyer, Tull never patented or otherwise trademarked any of his innovations.

Jethro Tull died in 1741 at his farm in Hungerford and is buried in the churchyard of St Bartholomew's Church in Berkshire. As far as is known, he never asked the Green Man where he comes from.

Artemisia I of Caria - Military leader

2011-03-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

Artemisia I coin

One of several redoubtable female war leaders, Artemisia I of Caria lived in the fifth century BC and fought as a general under the great Persian King Xerxes. She inherited rule of the Kingdom of Ionia in what is modern day Turkey when her husband died.

She was the only female military leader Xerxes had in his command and proved a superior advisor. Unfortunately, the great king did not take her advice and as a result was defeated by his enemies in the famous 480 BC naval battle of Salamis. She alone warned him of the folly of fighting the Greek navy, recommending instead that he launch a combined sea and land battle that, she asserted, would force the Greeks to split up their ships. Though Persia's navy was defeated, Artemisia herself survived with honors as the leader of five of her own ships. With Greek forces bearing down on her, she tried a ruse that not only succeeded but won her praise from the king. She turned and attacked one of the Persian ships and sank it. The Greek navy assumed she was on their side and let her alone. Xerxes, who was watching from the shore, thought she had sunk a Greek ship. When she returned to land after the battle, he famously commented, "All my men have turned into women, and all my women into men."

Artemisia then convinced Xerxes to withdraw , which he did against the advice of his other counselors. He sent her to care for his sons in Ephesus.

A legend that she to cope with a lover's rejection was told by a goddess to throw herself off a cliff into the Aegean is not accepted by historian Herodotus.

Artemisia is a character in the 1962 film The 300 Spartans as well as Gore Vidal's Creation: A Novel.

Sir James "The Black" Douglas - Military Leader

2011-02-28T00:00:00.001-08:00

James the Good, the Black Douglas

By Laura Vosika, author of Bluebells of Scotland Trilogy

1286 - August 25, 1330 at Teba, Spain

The Good Sir James. The Black Douglas. One was the hero of Scotland, Bruce’s right-hand man, a lord and knight reputed to be soft-spoken and gentle. The other was so fierce a warrior, such a terror to the English, that English soldiers hesitated to take command of his conquered ancestral home, that the women of Northumbria, for hundreds of years after his lifetime, threatened their children with him, or lulled them to sleep with the promise: Hush ye, hush ye, do not fret ye, the Black Douglas shall not get ye.

And yet, they were the same man.

James was born in 1286, the same year in which Alexander III, King of Scots, died without heir, thus opening the door to England’s aggression. This aggression would define and rule James Douglas’s life.

His father, William le Hardi, was governor of Berwick at the time of Edward I’s brutal attack and massacre of its citizens, which began on Good Friday of 1296 and lasted for two days. That attack ended only when Edward saw his men butchering a woman in the very act of giving birth.

Le Hardi was taken captive, but eventually set free by Edward, and immediately joined the Scottish patriots. At a time when many Scottish nobles saw William Wallace as beneath them, Douglas’s father was the first of the Scottish nobility to join the rising hero in 1297. Edward I confiscated the Douglas lands and sent the 22-year-old Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, to take Douglas Castle. Instead, Bruce joined the Lady Douglas and her men, and went to meet the patriots—or ‘rebels’ as Edward I called them. Le Hardi was soon after imprisoned for a third time by Edward I, and this time died of maltreatment. James Douglas would have been about eleven years old.

With this background, it is little wonder that one of James’s first acts, on reaching adulthood, was to seek out Robert the Bruce, newly-crowned King of Scots, and offer his services in fighting the English. From their meeting in 1306 until 1314, Douglas led a hard life with Bruce, at times resorting to living in the wilderness, and fighting a guerrilla war of lightning strikes against the English. One of his early exploits was re-taking his family home, Douglas Castle, on Palm Sunday of 1307. While the English garrison was at church, he attacked. The company was beheaded, their bodies thrown on top of the stores from the cellar which Douglas had had piled in the hall, and the whole place set on fire. The event is known even today as The Douglas Larder. Future attempts by the English to hold Douglas Castle were no more successful, until it was seen as a dangerous assignment to be sent as commander to Douglas’s home. Douglas’s exploits in objecting to the English possessing his castle became the basis for Sir Walter Scott’s Castle Dangerous.

In these years, he helped regain Scotland’s castles from the English, often with clever tricks, such as disguising himself and his men as cattle, or with ingenuity. With the help of an engineer, he created the previously unheard-of rope ladder, with grappling hooks at the top to catch the castle walls.

In June of 1314, James Douglas commanded one of the four divisions at the great battle of Bannockburn, in which a small Scottish army routed the much larger and better equipped army of Edward II. Bruce knighted Douglas on the battlefield.

Following Bannockburn, with Bruce now firmly established as King of Scots, and the English largely removed from their country, Scotland demanded that England renounce its claims as overlord of Scotland. Edward II refused. Douglas, now Sir James, became Warden of the Marches, and began a series of raids into Northumberland, collecting protection money from the towns there, or, if the towns failed to pay, burning, taking gold, treasure, iron, cattle, and hostages to hold for ransom. The wealth collected from England was used to finance the continuing war, made necessary by England’s refusal to recognize Scotland as an independent nation.

During the months Robert Bruce joined his brother Edward in the war in Ireland, James Douglas held authority in Scotland. When Edward Bruce was killed in battle in 1318, Bruce named Douglas Guardian of the Realm, should Bruce die without an heir.

About Book One of Bluebells of Scotland Trilogy by Laura Vosika:

Shawn Kleiner has it all: money, fame, a skyrocketing career as an international musical phenomenon, his beautiful girlfriend Amy, and all the women he wants-- until the night Amy has enough and leaves him stranded in a Scottish castle tower.

He wakes up to find himself mistaken for Niall Campbell, medieval Highland warrior. Soon after, he is sent shimmying down a wind-torn castle wall into a dangerous cross country trek with Niall's tempting, but knife-wielding fiancee. They are pursued by English soldiers and a Scottish traitor who want Niall dead.

Thrown forward in time, Niall learns history’s horrifying account of his own death, and of the Scots’ slaughter at Bannockburn. Undaunted, he navigates the roiled waters of Shawn’s life—pregnant girlfriend, amorous fans, enemies, and gambling debts—seeking a way to leap back across time to save his people, especially his beloved Allene.

Thus begins the adventures of the Blue Bells Trilogy. Blue Bells of Scotland came out in September 2009. Coming shortly is the second in the trilogy, The Minstrel Boy, and the story wraps up with The Castle of Dromore.

http://www.bluebellstrilogy.com/
http://bluebellstrilogy.blogspot.com/

Lola Montez (Eliza Rosanna Gilbert) - Dancer and Royal Mistress

2011-02-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, aka "Lola Montez"

A femme fatale of her era, dacer and royal mistress, Lola Montez, was born Eliza Rosanna Gilbert in County Limerick, Ireland, on 23 June 1818 or Grange, County Sligo, Ireland, on 23 June 1818 or 17 February 1821.

Lola was the daughter of the illegitimate daughter of a landowner in Ireland and the army ensign who married her when she was fourteen. Much of her childhood saw Lola shuttled from one home to another in an attempt to turn her into a genteel young lady. The effort was useless, and her determination and violent emotions became her trademarks. She had an exotic beauty from the start, with beautiful slanted eyes and a dark complexion.

She ran away from school at sixteen to marry an army officer, Thomas James, but the couple separated only five years later. She became a dancer, eventually using the stage name Lola Montez. Her debut performances were a success, but she was quickly recognized as "Mrs. James" causing a tremendous scandal. A hilarious fictionalized account of this can be found in Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser. Her career in England was now ruined, so she moved her theater of operations to the continent.

After performing in various European capitals, she settled in Paris, where she was accepted in the rather Bohemian literary society of the time, had an affair with composer Franz Liszt, who introduced her to Gorge Sand, and became acquainted with Alexandre Dumas, père, with whom she was rumoured to have had a dalliance. She left Paris after her banker lover was killed in a duel over her in 1845.

In Munich she met and became the mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria. Her arrogance and ill temper quickly made her unpopular with the people of Bavaria, particularly when Ludwig elevated her to the aristocracy as Countess of Landsfeld. It is believed that his liaison with Lola caused the downfall of the previously well-loved king, who was forced to abdicate during one of the many European revolutions of the mid-19th century.

She hoped to reunite with Ludwig in Switizerland, but when he did not appear, she returned first to Paris and then to London. A marriage to an army officer with a nice inheritance was stopped by prohibitions in both their earlier divorces against remarriage. The couple were forced to flee England to avoid a charge of bigamy brought by his own aunt. They lived in France and Spain, but within two years they separated.

Lola moved next to the United States where she was able to charm Americans with her pretended nobility. She performed all over the Eastern U.S. and in May 1853 traveled to San Francisco where she married newspaperman, Patrick Hull. Though that marriage also ended soon after she remained at Grass Valley, California, their home for the short time they were wed. That house is now a state historical landmark.

Lola was not done shocking people yet. On a tour of Australia she performed her famous erotic "spider dance" at a public performance so alarming the respectable audience by revealing her bare bum that her performances were thereafter boycotted. She attacked an editor who gave her a critical review with a horsewhip. She was however wildly popular at a performance at a mining camp.

Back in America, she did some acting and lectured on gallantry. At the age of 39 she suffered a stroke which left her paralyzed. On her first outing after a partial recovery, she contracted pneumonia and died. She is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn, New York where her tombstone states: "Mrs. Eliza Gilbert / Died Jan. 17, 1861".

From Wikipedia:

Lola Montez has a lake named after her in the Tahoe National Forest in Nevada County, California. Take I-80 east from Sacramento and exit at Cisco Grove. There is also a mountain named in her honor, Mount Lola. At 9,148 feet, it is the highest point in Nevada County, California.

Watch the critically acclaimed 1955 film "Lola Montez" starring Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov, Anton Walbrook, Henri Guisol.

Balian of Ibelin - Crusader

2011-02-14T00:00:00.001-08:00

Balian of Ibelin surrendering the city of Jerusalem to Saladin, from Les Passages faits

Outremer par les Français contre les Turcs et autres Sarrasins et Maures outremarins, c. 1490.

By Richard W. Field, Author of The Swords of Faith

Balian of Ibelin was a key noble during the late Twelfth Century from the Western Christian state of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the eastern Mediterranean. He was best known for organizing the defense of Jerusalem in late 1187, a few months after the disastrous Western Christian defeat at the Battle of Hattin in July of that year. Balian of Ibelin burst into the modern limelight as the main character of Ridley Scott’s movie “Kingdom of Heaven.” Balian of history was a much different person than Balian in the movie. There are longer, more detailed biographies of Balian of Ibelin available on the internet. For this post, my focus will be to supply information about the true Balian, as opposed to the Balian played by Orlando Bloom.

Balian was born in the 1140s, the third son of Balian “the Old,” a rising noble in the Crusader state of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He and his brothers fought in major battles against Saladin during the 1170s. In 1177, Balian married Maria Comnena, widow of the deceased King of Jerusalem, Amalric I. She was grandniece of Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus. Amalric I married her to set an alliance between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Byzantine Empire. Balian’s marriage to Maria Comnena made Balian stepfather of the daughter of Amalric I, the Princess Isabella. Princess Isabella became the key to who would rule as King of Jerusalem at the time of the Third Crusade (the crusade involving Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, right after the events portrayed in “Kingdom of Heaven.”) This placed Balian right in the inner circle of the leading nobles of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and right in the midst of their rivalries.

After the deaths of Baldwin IV, the “leper king,” and his very young nephew, Baldwin V, Balian put forward his stepdaughter Isabella and her husband Humphrey of Toron as king and queen. But Humphrey had no desire to be king, and swore loyalty to Guy of Lusignan and his wife, Sibylla, the oldest daughter of Amalric I (by another wife, Agnes of Courtenay). At that point, Balian had no choice but to swear loyalty to Guy, and served as advisor and intermediary between King Guy of Jerusalem, and Raymond of Tripoli, a rival of Guy. Raymond was another powerful noble whose family had a long history in the Middle East, dating back to his great great grandfather Raymond IV of Toulouse, a wealthy European noble who had come to the area with the First Crusade, 1096-1099. (Raymond IV of Toulouse had been offered the title of King of Jerusalem, but did not want to take such a title in the city where Christ had suffered.) Raymond had never accepted Guy as a man who deserved the throne, or who would be up to the demands of the position. Balian helped effect a reconciliation between Raymond and Guy just before the disastrous Battle of Hattin on July 4, 1187. Balian was a commander of the rearguard during that battle, and managed to avoid capture in the devastating defeat for the Kingdom of Jerusalem at the hands of the Muslim Sultan Saladin.

As Saladin captured many Western Christian positions, including much of Ibelin, Balian fled with others to Tyre. Tyre had come under the command of Conrad of Montferrat, a tough, controversial man with command capabilities, but also with a questionable past. Balian became a close ally of Conrad of Montferrat.

After Saladin had taken possession of much of the Western Christian territory, he turned his attention to taking Jerusalem. Balian’s wife and children were still in the city. Balian asked Saladin for safe passage to get his family out of Jerusalem. Saladin agreed, but only if Balian would swear an oath to stay in Jerusalem for just one night, and also agree not to take up arms against Saladin and his forces. When Balian arrived in Jerusalem, he found the city nearly undefended. The people prevailed on him, an experienced warrior and military commander, to take over the defense of the city. Balian asked Saladin to release him from his oath. In one of those moments that forged Saladin’s reputation for compassion and generosity, Saladin not only agreed to release Balian from his oath, but provided an escort for his wife and children to Tyre. It should also be pointed out that at this time, Saladin had a nominal alliance with the Byzantine Empire, and that Balian’s wife was the grandniece of a previous Byzantine Emperor. But I have not seen it suggested in any of my source materials that this influenced Saladin’s generosity.

Despite Balian’s spirited attempts to defend Jerusalem, the Western Christian defense was completely overmatched. He was able to negotiate the peaceful surrender of the city to Saladin when Saladin was on the verge of taking the city by storm. (This is a far different story than the one offered in “Kingdom of Heaven.”)

After the loss of Jerusalem, Balian continued his alliance with Conrad of Montferrat, preferring him as King of Jerusalem over Guy, who had blundered badly at Hattin. When Queen Sibylla died in Acre a few years after Hattin, Balian and his wife helped engineer the marriage of Queen Isabella to Conrad, first convincing her to annul her marriage to Humphrey of Toron (who again had no desire to be king). This marriage gave Conrad a viable claim to the throne (though there were rumors that Conrad had at least one, maybe two wives back in Europe). Balian represented Conrad in separate negotiations with Saladin while Richard the Lionheart was in the area for the Third Crusade. When Richard, an initial supporter of his vassal Guy of Lusignan, finally agreed that Conrad should be king, Balian joined forces with Richard. When Conrad was killed by two Assassins, Balian joined the new king, Henry of Campagne, as an advisor and combatant. (His stepdaughter married Henry of Champagne to establish his claim to the throne, with the agreement that Conrad’s child with Isabella, about to born, would succeed Henry.) He commanded the rearguard at the famous Battle of Jaffa, one of Richard the Lionheart’s most legendary battle victories during the Third Crusade. And he was on hand to sign the truce between Richard and Saladin that ended the Third Crusade, an agreement Richard was too weak to sign because of illness. Balian was able to restore some of his family’s holdings after the truce.

Balian died a year after the end of the Third Crusade, in 1193.

My novel The Swords of Faith tells the story of the Third Crusade, with some references to the historical Balian. http://www.richardwarrenfield.com/TheSwordsofFaith.htm .

For more on the background history of “The Kingdom of Heaven,” see my article “Kingdom of Heaven”: Sorting Fact from Fiction. http://www.richardwarrenfield.com/essay029.htm .

For an ongoing series of posts about Third Crusade, see my blog, and the “Third Crusade” 820th Anniversary Series, with various posts at http://creativeeccentric.wordpress.com/.

Oodgeroo Noonuccal - Aboriginal Poet and Activist

2011-02-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

Oodgeroo Noonuccal /Kathe Walker

Born on North Stradbroke Island near Brisbane, Australia in 1920, Oodgeroo Noonucca was a poet, actress, writer, teacher, artist and a campaigner for Aboriginal rights. She was known as Kathe Walker rather than as her Aboriginal name for much of her career. She left school to become a domestic servant at thirteen, then volunteered for the Australian Women's Army Service in 1939. Her activities as an activist during the 1960s as Queensland State Secretary of the Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (CAATSI) coincided with her rise in prominence as a poet. She was the first published Aboriginal poet in Australia. Her 1964 poetry collection, We Are Going, sold out in three days. Her second volume of poetry, The Dawn Is at Hand (1966) was followed by My People, a volume of poetry, short stories, and essays published in 1970. These were followed by Stradbroke Dreamtime and several children's books with her son Kabul Oodgeroo Noonuccal in the 1980s , including Father Sky and Mother Earth and The Rainbow Serpent.

Her devotion to the history and stories of her people led Oodgeroo to incvolvement in such organizations as the National Tribal Council, the Aboriginal Arts Board, the Aboriginal Housing Committee, and the Queensland Aboriginal Advancement League.

Much of her highly respected work carries a theme of understanding between the peoples of Australia, both Aboriginal and the descendants of European immigrants.

"But I'll tell instead of brave and fine
when lives of black and white entwine.
And men in brotherhood combine,
this would I tell you, son of mine."

Oodgeroo always attributed her stregnth of spirit and her thirst for the equality of her people from her father, who also instilled in her a love of and respect for Aboriginal culture. She used her fame as a poet to use her voice in all strata of Australian society, giving sometimes as many as ten talks a day. Thanks to her and others like her, Australian Aboliginals gained suffrage in 1966.

In spite of this, conditions were abysmal for Native Australians. Disgusted by her sense that people had stopped listening to her she returned to Stradbroke Island and focused on her family's ancestral rights.

Oodgeroo died in 1998. Her last wishes were for the people of Australia to celebrate her life and continue her work.

Learn more about Oodheroo Noonuccal in Kathleen J. Cochrane's Oodgeroo.

Mercadier - Mercenary Leader

2011-01-28T00:00:00.001-08:00

A mercenary captain.

Little is known about the French leader of mercenaries who fought for Richard the Lionhearted known as Mercadier . The image above is of a generic mercenary leader, because as far as I and my sources know, there is no image of what the man really looked like. Nevertheless, he is a tantalizingly interesting personality, as can be shown by what stories we do know.

If you have encountered Mercadier in your reading, it is most likely in a novel, such as Richard Warren Field's Swords of Faith, Sharon Kay Penman's Devil's Brood, or Jennifer Roberson 's Lady of Sherwood. As well researched as they may be, no one can tell the definitive story of this remarkable and ruthless man.

The first mention of this Provençal adventurer and fighter comes in 1183 in the chronicle of Geoffroi de Vigeoi, who describes him as fighting for Richard against after the death of his older brother, Henry the Young King. He helped Richard quell rebellious lords in Aquitaine, but suddenly disappears from the record when the chronicle ends in 1184. No further record exists of him until 1194, though sometime during the ten year period he received a grant of lands from Richard and may have been fighting for him all along as part of the Brabançn routiers.

It was believed that he had gone to the Third Crusade with Richard, but the document in which he is said to have been sent back to Europe was revealed to be a 19th century forgery. It is unlikely he was with Richard in the Holy Land.

The 1194 mention of the mercenary leader involves lending a fresh horse to Richard during the now King of England's pursuit of Philippe Augustr. He also fought alongside Richard's brother, Count John, was part of the campaign into Brittany, and made various incursions of his own to gain further lands and once raided market fairs and took away a great deal of booty from French merchants.

In 1198 he led the army that routed Philippe's attack on Normandy and was the one who advised Richard to attack the superior forces of France, which ended in triumph for the English king. Richard showed his gratitude to Mercadier in his account of the warfare. Philippe agreed to a truce, but his armies beleaguered Richard's forces, and it was in 1199 that Richard was killed during a siege when he was struck by a crossbow bolt. Mercadier sent his own surgeon to treat the king's wound. Richard ordered the crossbowman released, but after the king was dead, Mercadier vented his grief by having the man flayed alive and hanged.

Now that Richard's brother John was king, Mercadier went to work for him. He aided Eleanor of Aquitaine, the mother of Richard and John, in her efforts to subdue Anjou. It is while fighting for John in Gascony that the excesses of his soldiers earned the attention of the Pope, who commissioned inquiries about his actions.

Little is known about Mercadier the man other than that he married into aristocracy and that he well earned Richard I's recognition of his capabilities, loyalty and ruthlessness and his friendship. He died in 1200, just one year after his king, when he was murdered in Bordeaux by a soldier serving a rival mercenary captain.

Information gleaned from Matthew Strickland 's article on mercadier in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. My thanks to Sharon Kay Penman for her kind assistance.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair - Activist

2011-01-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Madalyn Murray O'Hair was a lifelong activist whose tactics in defense of separation of church and state often appeared erratic but were forerunners of later constitutional reforms. It was inevitable that her focus on the sacred cow of religion would gain her many critics and even enemies, and she did not shrink from her activism in spite of harassment and threats of violence against herself and her sons. She was also an advocate for sexual freedom and sex education in the schools. Beside all this, she was a crude and hostile in her public and personal behavior and committed larceny within her own organization, American Atheists.

O'Hair served in the Women's Army Corps during World War II. Her activism began in the 1960s when she sued the Baltimore City Public Schools policy of requiring prayer and Biblical readings in class. She argued that the practice violated the First Amendment ban on the establishment of a state religion and complained that her son had been victimized for his refusal to participate. Her case was consolidated with Abington School District v. Schempp and won an eight to one decision that effectively ended enforced prayer in public schools.

O'Hair's tendency to histrionic acts threatened the little credibility she was able to garner. For instance, she filed suit demanding that American astronauts, as government employees, not read prayers in public broadcasts during space launches. She also filed suit in Baltimore to require that property owned by the Catholic Church be subject to taxation. She was a speechwriter for Larry Flynt, the notorious publisher of Hustler magazine, in his bid for election to the Presidency., No wonder in 1964 Life Magazine named her "the most hated woman in America".

O'Hair was a founder and first CEO of American Atheists, established in 1963 as a civil liberties advocacy organization. She called herself a "sexual libertarian", believing that interpersonal emotional and sexual relationships should not be the subject of government control. She argued for sex education long before most activists. Her idealism in these areas was made problematic as she could be vulgar in her own behavior and language and had statuettes of animals mating in her home. her older son, William, who later converted to Christianity and became of minister, was unceasingly critical of his mother's political and sexual beliefs.

American Atheists struggled as an organization in its last years, essentially becoming the family business of O'Hair, her son, Jon, and adopted granddaughter Robin. August 27, 1995 the three disappeared. Over the next period of time staff at American Atheists heard from Jon and Robin a few times. At one point Jon requested a large amount of money in gold. After that no more was heard from the trio. The mystery of the disappearance of the controversial O'Hair led to rumors of embezzlement and flight and her own son William refused to look for her saying he did not want to look "for people who do not want to be found". Nevertheless he filed a missing persons report one year to the day of the disappearance. The O'Hairs were subsequently declared dead, and many of their assets were sold to clear up their debts.

A murder investigation focused on David Roland Waters, an employee of American Atheists. He had an extensive criminal background, had admitted to stealing large sums of money from the organization, and had a violent temper. It appeared that Waters was infuriated by an article O'Hair had written criticizing him in the organization's member newsletter. He was said to engage in fantasies of torturing and killing O'Hair. He finally confessed to the murders in 2001, directing investigators to a Texas ranch where O'Hair, Jon and Robin were found chopped into a large number of pieces and buried.

An apparent glutton for hostile attention and for outrageously provocative actions, Madalyn Murray O'Hair was nevertheless a champion for personal liberty and constitutional ideals. Her landmark case that eliminated forced prayer in public schools remains debated today.

Roger de Lacy - Military Leader

2011-01-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

De Lacy Arms

Roger de Lacy - the terror and scourge of the Welsh

Roger de Lacy (formerly Roger Fitz Eustace) was the 7th Baron of Halton and Constable of Chester. His grandmother Albreda was the cousin of Robert de Lacy of Pontefract and when Robert died childless all his lands across Yorkshire and Lancashire passed to her and from her to Roger on condition that he changed his name to de Lacy.

Although the family were Barons of Halton, Roger is recorded as being born at Lincoln around 1171. Roger’s father, John, died in 1190 in Tyre during the crusade and there is speculation that Roger Fitz-Eustace fought with Richard I at the Siege of Acre. Thomas Dunham Whitaker in his History of the Original Parish of Whalley and Honor of Clitheroe, records this as a fact, but I think that it may have been another brother, Richard, that the records refer to, because about that time Roger was entrusted with the castles at Nottingham and Tickhill by William Longchamp, the king’s chancellor who opposed the king’s brother John. Longchamp gave Roger orders to hang the two constables who had conspired to surrender the castles and in retaliation John plundered Roger’s estates including Pontefract Castle.

King Richard I was killed in 1199 after being wounded by a bolt from a crossbow and Roger de Lacy, as he was now named, swore loyalty to John. He found favour with the new king and had Pontefract Castle returned to him. In 1201 he was in command of a hundred knights defending the king’s borders in Normandy and in 1202 he was controlling shipping along the Seine. In 1203, the French king, Philip, besieged him in Chateau Gaillard and although the French eventually managed to capture the outer court of the stronghold, after supposedly climbing in through a lavatory window, they had to starve the defenders into submission rather than take the inner keep by assault and Roger de Lacy is said to have given a heroic account of himself and his role in its defence.

In 1210 Roger and his troops were sent to restore order in the Welsh marches and he is reputed to have become ‘the terror and scourge of the Welsh’ because of his role in their subjugation. A story is told that when he heard that the Earl of Chester was surrounded by a Welsh army at Rhuddlan Castle, Roger gathered minstrels, singers, beggars and vagrants from a fair at Chester and went to rescue the Earl. The Welsh, thinking that they were an army, fled. The incident gave rise to the popular medieval curse: “Roger and by all the fiddlers of Chester!”

Roger died in 1211 at Pontefract Castle and was buried at Stanlow Abbey in Cheshire, which had been founded by his father, John, in 1178. However when his great grandson Henry de Lacy granted permission for the monks to move to Whalley it was on condition that the bodies of his ancestors should be re-interred there. So I’m fairly sure that Roger’s remains now lie beneath the ruins of the abbey church at Whalley in Lancashire.

Elizabeth Ashworth is an author. She writes both non-fiction and fiction. Her local interest books are Champion Lancastrians, Tales of Old Lancashire and Lancashire: Who Lies Beneath? Her recently published historical novel The de Lacy Inheritance explores the story behind the transfer of the de Lacy lands to the barons of Halton. The de Lacy Inheritance is widely available in Waterstone’s bookshops as well as from Amazon and other retailers.

http://www.elizabethashworth.com/
http:elizabethashworth.wordpress.com

Sarah Emma Edmonds/Private Franklin F. Thompson - Spy

2011-01-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

Franklin F. Thompson
born Sarah Emma Edmonds

by Kris Jackson

Sarah Edmonds was one of an estimated 200 women who disguised themselves as men and served as soldiers in the Civil War, but that's just one of her remarkable feats. When a childhood friend was captured as a spy and executed by the Confederates, she, then a soldier known as “Franklin Thompson”, volunteered to take his place. She dyed her skin dark with silver nitrate and passed herself off as a young black man, probably the only transsexual, transracial spy in history. The ruse worked – no white person at the time would claim to be black, and no Confederate officers paid attention to “Cuff”, the young Negro waiting attentively beside the table as they discussed battle plans.

At other times, she was an Irish peddler woman, a Negro seamstress, and a white Rebel soldier. There must have been times when she would have to stop and recall whether she was a man or a woman, a Yank or a Reb, a white or a black person today.
Her spy career came to an end when she contracted malaria. Unable to check into a military hospital – Franklin Thompson couldn't pass a physical – she went into a civilian hospital. When she was discharged, she saw posters proclaiming Franklin Thompson a deserter. She then gave up her career as a spy, a soldier and a man, and served as an Army nurse for the remainder of the war.

She published her memoirs while the war was still on. The tales she told seemed lurid, even incredible, but they have held up to scrutiny by historians. She eventually got an honorable discharge and a pension of $12 a month.

Sarah Edmonds was the inspiration for the character of Clarabel Emmer in Above the Fray, a Novel of the Union Balloon Corps by Kris Jackson. Kris Jackson is a writer and artist living in Massachusetts.

You may also be interested in Albert D.J. Cashier.

Thaddeus Lowe - Inventor and Aviator

2010-12-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thaddeus Lowe

by Kris Jackson

Thaddeus Lowe was an American entrepeneur, inventor and aviator. He is best known as the director of the Union Balloon Corps during the Civil War. He was brilliant and resourceful, but erratic and brittle. At times he could excel in circumstances that would stymie most other men, but at other times he might collapse in despair at a minor setback.

Lowe was raised on a farm in New Hampshire and had little formal education. At the age of eighteen, he saw a lecture by a traveling scientist and was hired by the man on the spot. He developed methods of producing various gases, such as municipal gases, becoming wealthy in the process.

He built a balloon and filled it with hydrogen using a process he invented, and became a self-taught aviator. He offered his services to the Union during the Civil War, and Lincoln appointed him Chief Aeronaut of the United States. He established the Union Balloon Corps, the world's first air force, and staffed it with balloonists from around the country.

The balloonists flew over battlefields, reporting to the ground by telegraph or by notes tied to stones and dropped. Lowe himself was a skilled observer and was able to produce accurate maps while in the air. The Balloon Corps revolutionized warfare, turning the tide in several campaigns. The Confederates hated them, offering great bounties for the capture of a balloon or for Lowe's life. Despite being “the most shot-at man of the war,” Lowe made it through the war unscathed.

The balloonists were an odd mix of technology geeks and swashbuckling adventurers, and they did not take well to military discipline. As a result, the Union Army eventually got rid of them.

Lowe returned to exhibition flying, but soon turned his hand to other endeavors. He invented new methods of producing chemicals such as ammonia and hydrogen, as well as one of the first practical refrigerators. He started banks, created a scenic railroad and wrote an exaggerated account of his Civil War experiences. However, he continually bit off more than he could chew, and ended up bankrupt and mostly forgotten by history.

Thaddeus Lowe is a major character in Above the Fray, a Novel of the Union Balloon Corps, by Kris Jackson. Kris Jackson is a writer and artist living in Massachusetts.

Eadburgh - Queen of Wessex

2010-12-21T00:00:00.002-08:00

Eadburh (pronounced ed-bur) was the daughter of Offa, the man with the best claim as the first king of all England, and his wife Cynethryth. Her birth and death dates are unknown, but she was probably born in the 770's. She was married in 789 to Beorhtric and became the Queen of Wessex.

Eadburh was not content to sit back and look queenly. She held a great deal of influence over her husband. She was jealous of his advisors and favorites, and constantly worked on Beorhtric to convince him that one or another of them was plotting against him. At her insistence the king would either execute or exile the men she distrusted. If he would not comply, Eadburh would simply poison the man herself.

Her clandestine poisonings backfired on her one day in 802 when Beorhtric rfused to send a particular favorite away. She prepared a poison drink for the man which Beorhtric shared with him. Both men died.

Eadburh fled England for Frankia and the court of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor. Her husband's successor, Egbert of Wessex, had also taken refuge there after being exiled from Wessex by Beorhtric. It is said that the great king who came to be known as Charlemagne later was smitten with her. He made her choose between himself and one of his own sons. She chose the son, she said, because of his youth. The emperor is quoted as replying, "Had you chosen me, you would have had both of us. But, since you chose him, you shall have neither."

Charlemagne made Eadburh the abbess of an establishment in Pavia in Lombardy. She was caught in an affair with a Saxon man, however, and turned out of the convent. She died on the streets of Pavia, a penniless beggar.

Eadburh should not be confused with other prominent Saxon women of the same name, including St. Eadburga. Eadburh of Wessex is mentioned in Asser's famous biography of Alfred the Great. There are no depictions of Eadburh of Wessex, but the image above is said to be "an Anglo Saxon queen."

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster - Statesman

2010-12-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

John of Gaunt

by Jeri Westerson

John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster was something of an imposing figure in his day. Born in Ghent (Gaunt) Flanders in 1340, he began his fighting career early and married well to further his holdings. He married his third cousin Blanche of Lancaster, and when his father-in-law died, he inherited the title, becoming the earl of Lancaster, which made him the wealthiest man in England. Later his father Edward III made him a "duke.” He campaigned with his brother Edward of Woodstock (the Black Prince) and fought many battles in the Hundred Years War and in aid to his ally Peter the Cruel of Castile, though many of his more successful battles were in backrooms rather than on a battlefield.

When Blanche died, he married Peter’s daughter Constance or Costanza, and laid claim to the throne of Castile (he liked to be called "Lord of Spain," but I don't know how many indulged him in this title.) He took command of the troops when his brother Edward fell ill, and through backroom and bedroom dealings, gained control of England while his father Edward III declined in health. If Edward of Woodstock had died without an heir, John would certainly have become king. But it is the quirk of the line of succession that fouled that up. Edward might have been quite competent. He was certainly well liked, but he died right before his father himself gave up the ghost and Richard was the next in line.

The “Good Parliament” of 1376 cut Gaunt down to size by stripping him and his cohorts of power, but it wasn’t long until he rebounded, put his friends in place, and put together his own hand-picked Parliament in 1377. At this time his nephew Richard II came to the throne with Gaunt more or less as steward. Gaunt again was the most powerful man in England. He made some decisions that did not always sit well with the people but he wasn't the king and let Richard take the brunt of it. He made darned sure, in fact, that he wasn't associated with any talk of taking the reins from Richard. If he had wanted to do it, he surely could have. One wonders why he did not chose to do so.

In his household, Lancaster had the court poet Geoffrey Chaucer as a loyal friend and servant. Was it because he liked the man or liked his sister-in-law more, for the duke entertained Katherine Swynford as his mistress for many, many years, and even married her a year after Constance died. Does this sound familiar? (This wasn't his first mistress. When he was a young man he took one of the queen's [his mother's] ladies-in-waiting as a mistress, Marie de St. Hiliare, and had a daughter with her, named Blanche Plantagenet). All told, he had about 14 children both legitimate and ill-, with nine living into adulthood. His illegitimate children from Katherine Swynford were made legitimate by King Richard when John finally married her but they were barred from inheriting the throne. But their eldest son John later had a granddaughter, Margaret Beaufort, whose son became Henry VII and took the throne from the last Plantagenet. So never say never.

King Richard later had a falling out with the duke’s son Henry Bolingbroke and kicked him out of the country. But it is Lancaster who gets the last laugh. In 1399, Richard is forced to abdicate and is then left to starve to death on Valentine's Day 1400. Lancaster’s son Henry seized the throne and thus the royal House of Lancaster began, followed by three more kings. Unfortunately, the venerable duke was in his grave by then.

John of Gaunt is a continuing character in the Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series. He served as mentor to my fictional detective. In the latest book, THE DEMON'S PARCHMENT, a Jewish physician, Jacob of Provencal, has arrived from France to the king's court to minister to the queen, even though all the Jews were expelled from England nearly a century before. Jacob wants Crispin to find stolen parchments that might be behind the gruesome murders of young boys, parchments that someone might have used to summon a demon which now stalks the streets and alleys of London.

Gormflaith of Leinster - Queen

2010-12-07T00:00:00.002-08:00

Gormflaith -- pronounced gorm-la -- was the princess of Leinster who married and was the mother of Viking kings of Dublin and the wife of the great High King of Ireland, Brian Boru.

She was born in about 960 AD/CE in County Kildare, Ireland, the daughter of the King of Leinster, one of the four major kingdoms of Ireland at that time.

During this time Vikings had taken over large parts of Ireland including Limerick and Dublin which they used as bases to raid the countryside. Brian Boru was the King of the Dalcassians who sought to unite the Irish to drive them out.

Gormflaith was married to Olaf Cuarn, the Viking king of Dublin and York. She was his second wife, and they had a son, Sitric Silkbeard. Olaf left her and retired to Iona, probably dying as a monk in 981. Gormflaith's second husband was Máel Sechnaill, the High King, who divorced her. She married Brian Boru in 999 as part of a peace deal in which one of Brian Boru's daughters married Gormflaith's son Sitric.

Gormflaith was legendary as the most beautiful woman in Ireland, but she was just as famous for her pridefulness and temper. On more than one occasion her rages interfered with Brian Boru's attempts to bring the leaders of Ireland together to defeat the Vikings. On one occasion she refused to sew a button back on a tunic belonging to the King of Leinster, her own brother, a gift from Brian Boru, instead throwing the costly garment into the fire. This and an insult from Brian Boru's son so enraged the King of Leinster he stormed away without being given leavve, the first of a series of actions that led ultimately to the Battle of Clontarf and Brian Boru's death.

After Brian Boru divorced her she returned to Dublin and urged her son to ally with Norse raiders from Orkney and the Isle of Man fight the combined Irish forces. Though victorious at the pibotal battle of Clontarf in 1014, the Irish were left without Brian Boru and several of his sons. Gormflaith and her son Sitrick survived the battle as they were safe inside the stout Dublin city walls.

Gormflaith died in 1030.

Most of what is known about Gormflaith was recorded in the two part Cogad Gaedel re Gallaib, the War of the Irish Against the Foreigners, a chronicle of the Irish wars against the Vikings.

Gormflaith is a key character in Morgan Llewellyn's epic historical novels, The Lion of Ireland and Pride of Lions.

Rock of Dunmase, originally the setting of a settlement of monks during the period of Viking raids in Ireland.

Victoria Woodhull - Activist

2010-11-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

By Greta Marlow

On the eve of what will be a historic presidential election regardless of the outcome, it seems appropriate to take a moment to remember the first woman who ran for President of the United States - Victoria Woodhull.

Depending on who you ask, Victoria Woodhull was either a brilliant social reformer years ahead of her time or an eccentric radical.

At her birth in Homer, Ohio, Victoria California Claflin seemed destined for a difficult and depressing life. Her family was poor, and they had to leave town when her father was accused of insurance fraud. At age 15, Victoria married 28-year-old Canning Woodhull, who practiced medicine (medical education and a license weren't required to be a doctor at that time). Within a year, Victoria had a son, Byron. Unfortunately, Mr. Woodhull proved to be an alcoholic, and in 1864, Victoria divorced him, despite the social stigma associated with divorce at that time. Two years later, she married Colonel James Blood.

In 1868, Victoria moved to New York City. She and her younger sister, Tennessee Claflin became friends with Cornelius Vanderbilt, who financed their venture into business as the first female stockbrokers on Wall Street. The "Bewitching Brokers" were successful and used their profits to start another business - the journal Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. The newspaper advocated a number of radical social positions, including an 8-hour work day and women's suffrage. In 1872, the paper published the first English translation of Marx's Communist Manifesto. The paper also ran exposes' on the stock market's fraud and corruption. During its six years of publication, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly had 20,000 subscribers.

Victoria had become a strong advocate for women's rights, and in 1871, she addressed the convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association. She was also the second woman to petition Congress in person for the right to vote. In 1871, she attempted to vote but was turned away from the polls. While suffrage advocates like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were initially pleased with Victoria's efforts on behalf of suffrage, Anthony began to see Victoria as more of a liability, perhaps because of Victoria's controversial positions on issues such as "free love." Eventually, Victoria's involvement with the NWSA ended, and she moved on to the Equal Rights Party, which nominated her for president in 1872.

Some people argue that Victoria was not actually a legitimate presidential candidate; for one thing, she was only 34 years old, below the constitutionally-mandated age to run. For another, she was not on the ballot. Finally, the man selected as her running mate, the well-known abolitionist Frederick Douglass, was nominated without his consent. However, Victoria published a series of essays outlining her positions on various issues, she had a campaign biography written by Theodore Tilton (remember him - he's important later), and even a campaign button. She challenged incumbant president Ulysses S. Grant and Democrat nominee Horace Greeley.

We think political campaigns are rough and dirty now; Victoria found the same to be true in 1872. Backlash against her campaign eventually made her and her family homeless. At the same time, Victoria had picked up a powerful enemy - Harriet Beecher Stowe (the famous author of Uncle Tom's Cabin). At one point, Stowe said of Victoria (through a fictional representation in her novel My Wife and I):

"...no woman that was not willing to be dragged through every kennel, and slopped into every dirty pail of water, like an old mop, would ever consent to run as a candidate. Why it's an ordeal that kills a man. And what sort of a brazen tramp of a woman would it be that could stand it, and come out of it without being killed? Would it be any kind of a woman that we should want to see at the head of our government?"

In retaliation, Victoria printed a story in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly that was based on a tip from Theodore Tilton. Tilton said his wife had confessed to an affair with the very prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher, who just happened to be the younger brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Unfortunately for Victoria, she had made enemies of the wrong people. She and her sister were arrested under the Comstock Act for sending obscene material through the mail. They were eventually acquitted, but the legal fees bankrupted them, and Victoria, the presidential candidate, spent Election Eve 1872 in jail, unable to go to the polls and attempt to vote for herself.

The brouhaha with Beecher put a definite damper on Victoria's zeal for public reform. In 1876, she divorced Colonel Blood, and two years later, she and Tennessee moved to England. Victoria continued to champion women's rights, and it was at one of her public lectures that she met her third husband, John Biddulph Martin, whom she married in 1883. She eventually founded another newspaper, but after Martin died, she retired to the country to live out the last years of her life.

Victoria Woodhull, when she's remembered at all, is most often associated with free love and rumors that she was a prostitute. Although she did believe women should have more sexual freedom and more liberty to leave bad marriages, one wonders if the prostitution rumors were "politics as usual" to discredit a voice speaking against the status quo.

Ethelfleda - Military Leader

2010-11-21T00:00:00.001-08:00

Not long ago at a flea market I happily wielded the long sword I had just bought. The man who sold it to me apparently found my pride humorous, and made some remark about a woman hefting a sword. I turned to him with fire in my eyes and said, "You obviously have never heard of Ethelfleda, Sovereign Lady of Mercia!"

Ethelfleda was the eldest child of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex and the man who with his armies successfully prevented Danish invaders from conquering England sea to sea. A wise as well as redoubtable military leader, he knew that the Kingdom of Mercia in central England would be stronger as an ally than as a subject nation. He therefore married his daughter, Ethelfleda, to Ethelred of Mercia , cementing a partnership to stay strong against the Danes.

She was well prepared for her role at Ethelred's side. She was, like other high born Saxon girls, educated not only in academic subjects but as a warrior, learning archery and swordplay. She was mindful of the Saxon people's neighbors, the Celts of Wales, and throughout her life strove for and won the trust and loyalty of many of the Welsh leaders.

On her wedding journey to Mercia Ethelfleda's party was attacked by Danes who sought to kill her and break the alliance between Mercia and Wessex. Though half her force was killed in the first attack, Ethelfleda herself led the defense against the second, using a trench as a fortress and defeating the Danes.

Ethelfleda and her husband ruled Mercia together, and there are charters from their reign signed by her. As Ethelred began to suffer a debilitating sickness, Ethelfleda took over sole command of the Mercian forces. When Ethelred died in battle, King Alfred's daughter took the throne as "Lady of Mercia", the equivalent of Queen. Unlike other Germanic tribes the Saxons respected inheritance from the "spindle" or "distaff" side. In fact when Ethelfleda died, she was succeeded by her daughter Ælfwyn.

Ethelfleda was so great a battle strategist and fighter in her own right, she was held in fear by Danish leaders who had previously defeated her male predecessors. One of many female heroes of the struggle, including an old woman who cut the ropes of Danish ships in one battle, the Lady of Mercia took one fortress and town after another back from the Danes who often surrendered without a fight.

By 919, Ethelfleda had forced the Danes to surrender even their keystone stronghold at York. When she died that year at Tamworth her accomplishments further included the establishment of Staffordshire as Mercia's central administrative town and the rebuilding of the Roman town of Gloucester whose street plan still exists today.

It is said that the rights women of Saxon England enjoyed would not be seen again in England until the 20th century.

Elizabeth Siddal - Artist

2010-11-14T18:47:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth "Lizzy" Siddal's short unhappy life was eclipsed by her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his fellow members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, yet it is her haunting image that is the more familiar. An artist and poet herself, she was the most important and certainly most recognized model for Rossetti and fellow artists and provided the iconic image for Rossetti's famous Beata Beatrix (below).

Siddal was born to a middle class family in London and, though it is unlikely she went to school, she did know how to read and became enchanted with poetry, including writing her own, when she found a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson on a scrap of newspaper. While working as an apprentice to a milliner she was noticed by Walter Deverell, one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists and poets. Her look fit the image of perfect womanhood they drew from their medievalist penchant. She behan to model for him as well as for Holan, Millais and Dante Gavriel Rossetti. Almost all of Rossetti's early paintings of women are of her.

Unlike most artists' models at the time, she was allowed to continue working for the milliner and was treated with dignity and respect by the Pre-Raphaelites. Not long after Dante Gabriel Rossetti met her he stopped using any other models and would not allow the other Pre-Raphaelites to use her as a model. They became engaged and then later, in spite of his many affairs and her ill health, they married. He made many, many drawings and paintings of her, culminating in the beata Beatrix which was completed after her death.

Siddal studied both painting and poetry with Rossetti. Her work, compared to his idealizations of figures, were very harsh and unflattering. Art critic John Ruskin so admired her drawings and the few small paintings she did that he gave her a yearly income to support herself and lectured Rossetti for constantly putting off their marriage. Ruskin also encouraged her to write poetry. Her artwork and poetry were simple and true to the medieval ideal towards which the Pre-Raphaelites strove. She often made Arthurian legend her theme. Her poetry dealt greatly with imp possible love and was dark in vision.

Rossetti appears to have regretted his engagement to Siddal. His family did not approve his marriage to a lower class woman. Siddal became convinced that Rossetti was going to get rid of her and find a younger model, and fell first into depression and then addiction. Either tuberculosis or an intestinal ailment threw her into declining health. Though she traveled to the Mediterranean to rest, her health did not improve for long. She returned to England to marry Rossetti who had broken and remade their engagement several times. Siddal lost her first child at birth. It was in 1862 at the beginning of her second pregnancy that she overdosed on laudanum, killing herself and the child. It is said Rossetti found and burned a suicide note. In guilt and grief he buried his only copy of his poems with her.

After Siddal's death Rossetti too became addicted to alcohol and drugs. He began to write poetry again, but when publishers rejected his later poetry, he had Siddal's body exhumed so he could retrieve the journal of poems he had put in her abundant hair in the coffin. His agent, Charles Augustus Howell, was the only person to attend the exhumation. He reported to Rossetti that Siddal's body was remarkably preserved and her red hair had continued to grow until the coffin was almost filled with it. When the poetry was retrieved, a worm had damaged much of the poetry. The poems, both his old and new ones, were published but were to erotic for the time to be received well.

The following is from Siddal's own poem, Early Death.

Oh grieve not with thy bitter tears
The life that passes fast;
The gates of heaven will open wide
And take me in at last.
Then sit down meekly at my side
And watch my young life flee;
Then solemn peace of holy death
Come quickly unto thee.
But true love, seek me in the throng
Of spirits floating past,
And I will take thee by the hands
And know thee mine at last.

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, with Siddal as the model

Grace O'Malley - Pirate

2010-11-07T00:00:00.001-07:00

Irish Gaelic: Gráinne Ní Mháille

Grace O'Malley was born in Connaught in Ireland about 1530. Her father was chieftain of the O'Malley clan, subject to the Gaelicized Anglo-Norman Burke or de Burgo family who controlled most of what is now County Mayo. The O'Malleys were a seafaring clan and lived in part off taxes collected from those who fished off their coast which included ships from as far off as England.

As a child of a noble family Grace O'Malley was educated, but legend has her sharing many of her father's sea voyages. She was married first to Dónal O'Flaherty, the heir to the ruler of Connaught, now roughly equivalent to County Connemara. When he was killed in battle, O'Malley returned to Mayo with many of O'Flaherty's followers.

O'Malley next married Richard Burke and took up residence in his Rockfleet Castle. It is said she did this in order to gain access to coastline with sheltered harbors near the greatest sea traffic, perfect for lying in wait with pirate ships. She had been involved from a young girl in her father's shipping and sea trade business and continued with the business even through her marriages.

O'Malley was already known for her ability as a battle commander. After her first husband died, she took back Cock's Castle which he had lost to the Joyce clan. The Joyces were so impressed with her that they renamed the castle Hen's Castle. The English besieged O'Malley there some years later. She is said to have had the lead used to roof the castle melted to pour on the heads of the besieging soldiers, and to have set up a system of signal fires beforehand that allowed her to summon help successfully, so she was the victor.

The city leaders of Galway routinely taxed owners of ships who traded their goods in that city. O'Malley decided that she would do the same and began boarding and "taxing" ships that ventured near her coast. If the ships resisted, their crews would be imprisoned or killed. Them O'Malley's ships would disappear into secret coves. She spread her attacks on ships as far south as Waterford and raided several castles along the Irish coast as well.

O'Malley got into the business of recruiting and transporting mercenaries. She brought soldiers from Scotland to Ireland, raiding the coast of Scotland while she was in the neighborhood. She also offered to recruit and train mercenaries for the English in Ireland.

Much folklore surrounds O'Malley. In one story she arrived at Howth Castle and requested hospitality. When she was refused because the "family was at supper" she kidnapped the young heir and held him until Baron Howth promised that the gates of his castle would never again be closed to unexpected visitors and to have an extra place set at every meal. O'Malley is said to have made a lover of Hugh de Lacey, the shipwrecked son of a Wexford merchant whom she had rescued. When he was murdered by the MacMahons O'Malley attacked and destroyed many of their ships and then took Doona Castle from them, executing those who were responsible for de Lacey's murder.

Over her lifetime O'Malley saw the English hold on Ireland tighten. When two of her sons and her half brother were taken prisoner by the English governor of Connaught, O'Malley traveled to England to treat for their release with Queen Elizabeth herself. When they met at Greenwich O'Malley refused to bow to Elizabeth as she did not consider her the sovereign of Ireland. When her rich garb was searched guards found a dagger When O'Malley assured Elizabeth that it was for her own defense, the Queen of England believed her. The two women's meeting was conducted in Latin since neither spoke the other's language. They came to an agreement, Elizabeth agreeing to the release of O'Malley's menfolk, and O'Malley agreeing to stop her support of Irish rebels and attacks on English ships. It should be remembered that both women were in their sixties at the time of the meeting. Redoubtable old ladies indeed!

In spite of the meeting, O'Malley soon returned to her old ways. She most likely died at Rockfleet Castle in 1603, the same year that Queen Elizaveth died.

Matilda of Boulogne - Queen

2010-10-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

A thoroughly unsung heroine in English history, Matilda was the wife of King Stephen, also known as Stephen of Blois. When Henry I, the final son of William the Conquerorm died with only a daughter as heir, his son having famously drowned in the White Ship. Henry had made his barons promise to make his daughter, Maud the monarch, but Stephen got there first, and, with the support of Londoners and the barons, got himself crowned King of England. The Empress (of the Holy Roman Empire) Maud left her unwanted husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, and took what army she could put together to England to win back her rightful crown.

Stephen was a good warrior but tended to overly hallant treatment of enemies. He also tended to get bored during sieges, causing his armies to leave for other fights, allowing the besieged to to resupply and escape. Once when he had captured Maud, he let her go, much to the frustration of his allies.

This is where his wife and queen came in. Matilda was the granddaughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland.. Malcolm of MacBNeth famel the niece of King Baldwin of Jerusalem, the granddaughter of Brian Boru,High King of Ireland, cousin of the Empress maud herself and descendant of Saxon kings as well. When Stephen was captured at the Battle of Lincoln, he was held in chains in the castle at Bristol. Matilda took over the generalship of his armies, with the assistance of William of Ypres, the leader of the Glemish mercenaries Stephen had hired. William became devoted to Matilda and was a chief mourner when she died in 1152.

While Stephen was held in Bristol, Matilda rallied his allies and led the army against the very unpopular Maud. Maud had Stephen's brother, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester under siege, but Matilda manage to trap the Empress and her forces in the castle. When Maud escaped Matilda captured her half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, whom she exchanged for Stephen's liberty.

Maud never became queen of England in her own right, but her son, Henry Fitzempress, later known as Henry II, the king who made Thomas á Becket Atchbishop of Canterbury.

Matilda became Countess of Boulohne in her own right after her father Eustance died in 1151. Stephen's and Matilda's children, two boys and one girl, each succeeded Matilda in this position after her death of a fever at Hedingham Castle, Essex, England and is buried at Faversham Abbey, which was founded by her and her husband.

Readers of Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael mysteries will recognize this period, referred to as The Anarchy. An Excellent Mystery describes the siege of Winchester.

Saigyō Hoshi - Poet

2010-10-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Saigyō Hoshi

Saigyō Hoshi was a tanka poet who lived through the turbulent period in Japan when the samurai came to power. He was born in Kyoto in 1118 AD. The impact of this cultural shiftt, which included the decline of Buddhism in Japan on Saigyō resulted in a melancholy tone.

As a youth he worked as a guard to the retired Emperor Toba, but at 22 he retired from worldly life as well and became a monk. He took the pen name "Saigyō" ("Western Journey"), referring to the Western paradise of Amida Buddhism. took long solitary journeys throughout Japan.

During these periods he wrote his epic works.

He died on arch 23, 1190, at Hirokawa Temple in what is now Kyoto. For historical perspective, this date is within a year of the ascension of Richard the Lionhearted to the throne of England.

His Poetic Works

Japanese poetry at this time was going through a stylistic change that could be likened to the shift from the classical style and themes of Alexander Pope to the romantic style and themes of Buron and Shelley. Whereas it had focused on subjeticve experience, word play and wit, the new poetry was less dependent on flow, allowed for beaks, was more likely to be colloquial and somber, was less subjective and more likely to be concerned with nature and beauty.

Saigyō was a classic poet in the Tanka style

"The classical tanka contains 31 onji (sound-symbols, the smallest linguistic unit in Japanese poetry). Early translators, assuming that onji correspond to English syllables (they do not), decided that the English equivalent would be a poem of 31 syllables divided into 5 lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. This syllable requirement is still very popular in English tanka, although frequent variations occur. Since we tend to think in accentual-syllabic terms, 5 lines containing 2-3-2-3-3 beats, respectively (regardless of the number of unaccented syllables), is probably closer to the original Japanese intent. However, for teaching purposes, the 31 syllable format is a reliable benchmark, so it is convenient to employ it to begin. " From Japanese Poetry Patterns

An example by the poet:

O'ercome with pity for this world
My tears obvscure my sight,
I wonder, can it be the moon
Whose melancholy light
Has saddened me to-night?

Saigyō is a significant influence on both modern Jpanese and English language tanka poets.

See a list of recommended reading on this topic compiled by modern English-language tanka poet, M. Kei.

By Saigyō Hoshi:

Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times and Poetry of Saigyo
The Tale of Saigyo: (Saigyo Monogatari) (Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies)

Ælfthryth, Queen of England

2010-10-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

Queen Ælfthryth (elf-thrith) is one of the rare Anglo Saxon women who have made their way into history for more than just whose daughter, wife or mother she was. The wicked stepmother in all its sinister meaning, her legacy includes, among other dramatics, the martyrdom of King Edward the Martyr.

Ælfthryth was of royal blood on both sides of her family. She was reputed to be so lovely that it is said that the great King Edgar sent Æthelwald, a trusted ally, to go and see for himself and, if the stories were true, to make an offer for her hand on the behalf of the king. Æthelwald, discovering just how beautiful she was, married her himself. he wrote to King Edgar and told him the woman was a hideous beast. Edgar was no fool, and he sent word that he would come to console Ælfthryth for her affliction. Æthelwald begged his new wife to make herself appear as ugly as possible for the king, but she did the opposite. King Edgar fell madly in love with her and murdered Æthelwald during a hunt. That a marriage with so high a noblewoman helped his own standing was all gravy.

King Edgar had been married before and had children with his first two wives. He and Ælfthryth were married in 964 or 965. Although Edward, the son of his first wife, was older, the king declared his first son by Ælfthryth, as his heir. Alas, Edmund died in 970, leaving a little brother, Ethelred, who was born in 968. In 973 Edgar, no doubt to strengthen his claim to being King of England, arranged to be crowned a second time, and he also had Ælfthryth crowned and anointed as queen, the highest status yet held by the wife of the king.

Two years later Edgar died, leaving two sons, Edward by his first and Ælfthryth's son Ethelred. Edward was much nearer his majority and had the support of the archbishops of Canterbury and York Dunstan and Oswald, and the powerful Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, who happened to be the brother of Ælfthryth first, late husband. Though Ethelred had his own strong supporters, Edward was crowned as their father's successor.

In 978 Kind Edward visited his stepmother and brother at Corfe Castle. As he rode into sight, he was attacked and murdered by men believed to be in Ælfthryth's servbice. Ethelred, just a few years old, became King of England, with his mother Ælfthryth in power as regent until he came of age in 984. Ælfthryth, her former allies all dead, retired from court life when her son became king, but wielded influence as the caretaker of the children Ethelred had by his first wife, Ælffigu.

In spite of her legendary murder of her stepson Edward, Ælfthryth was known as a deeply religious woman. She spent many years supporting the cause of monastic reform. She died between 999 and 1001 at the Hampshire village of Wherwell.

Note: Anya Seton's wonderful novel Avalon includes much of Ælfthryth's story.

Robert Weitbrecht - Inventor

2010-10-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Robert Weitbrecht

By James Tedford , ww.radioenthusiast.com

Robert Haig Weitbrecht (1920-1983) was an American engineer, astronomer and inventor. He is credited with developing the hardware and software which allowed digital communication over telephone lines. His work was the technical foundation of the computer modem, a seminal technology which allowed to computer-to-computer communication, and was a major advancement in deaf communications.

Early Life

Robert Weitbrecht was born in Orange, California in 1920. After being diagnosed as deaf as a toddler, his mother taught him to lip read. He briefly attended a school for the deaf, but was mostly educated though a combination of public schools and home schooling.

He showed an early interest in science, especially astronomy. At the age of 18 he won the Bausch and Lomb Honorary Science Award for building a reflecting telescope.

Weitbrecht enrolled at the University of California Berkley, graduating with honors in 1942 with a degree in astronomy. After graduation, he took positions as a physicist with the University of California system, and with U.S. Naval Air Missile Test Center. When the U.S. entered World War II, he became a consulting engineer on the Manhattan Project. Some references erroneously claim that during this time period Weitbrecht invented the Geiger counter. Although his work was contributory to its development, he was not the inventor of that device.

Technological Innovator
After the war, he returned to school, earning a master’s degree in astronomy in 1952. Weitbrecht had an abiding interest in ham radio, earning an FCC amateur license W6NRM. He had obtained a war surplus teletypewriter machine which he modified to allow it to send and receive messages over his ham radio. A friend suggested he devise a way to interface his teletype machine to the telephone lines. After several years of experimentation, he developed an acoustic coupling device which allowed a telephone handset to interface with the teletype machine. Development of the coupler required overcoming many technical obstacles, including persistent echo and feedback inherent in telephone system. In addition to the coupling hardware, Weitbrecht’s invention (also known as the Weitbrecht modem) included an electromechanical communications protocol known as frequency shift keying (FSK) which allowed signals to be transmitted through any feedback or background noise. FSK was one of the first digital transmission methods to find wide use in for both telephone text and digital radio communications.

Weitbrecht successfully demonstrated a TTY (Telephone Teletype) machine in May, 1964. The TTY rapidly gained popularity amongst the deaf, as it gave them a much-desired means of communication. No longer were they only relegated to personal visits or leaving notes if no one was home – deaf people could now call their friends.

Weitbrecht and fellow engineer Andrew Saks (whose grandfather was the founder of the Saks Fifth Avenue retail empire) formed the Applied Communications Corporation (APCOM) to place TTY equipment into the homes of deaf people. APCOM would salvage teletype machines from the Defense Department and junkyards. The machines were repaired, fitted with Weitbrecht’s acoustic coupler, and provided to deaf individuals at cost. Thousands of the machines made their way into homes, schools, and workplaces around the world.

Weitbrecht died in 1983 when he was struck by a car while walking his dog.

Basis Of Modern Digital Communication

Although Weitbrecht is perhaps best known for the hardware portion of the TTY, his development of the FSK modulation scheme has a more substantial legacy. FSK allowed for the transmission of digital information over telephone lines or radio waves, and was the first communications protocol used for communications between computers. Originally an audio process using varying tones to transmit binary information, it was later refined to a purely digital method. FSK served as the basis of modern computer to computer communications protocols, which in itself became the basis of the internet.
FSK in its original form still is being used in various telephone and radio (mostly amateur) applications.

Emma Goldman - Activist

2010-09-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Emma Goldman was a Lithuanian-born self-educated woman who defied the mores of her day. She took stands against military service and homophobia and for free love, contraception, and, most famously. anarchism.

Goldman emigrated to the United States when she was sixteen. Married briefly, she was divorced and went to live in New York City. Her political involvement took a radical turn after the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, where an unknown bomb thrower turned a rally in support of striking workers into a riot and massacre by the police.

Goldman and her lover and lifelong friend and supporter, Alexander Berkman, plotted to kill Henry Clay Frick, an industrialist and "most hated man in America" in retaliation for steelworkers killed by Pinkerton guards sent in to break a strike. Berkman was tried and sentence to 20 years in prison. Though not imprisoned for this crime, Goldman's militant activism on a number of causes resulted in many convictions and jail time over her lifetime. Goldman was a highly effective writer and speaker and could draw literally thousands of people to hear her speak.

In 1901 , Leon Czolgosz, assassinated President William McKinley. Though she and her supporters had been approached by him at rallies, they had kept their distance from him. In spite of this she spoke out against his treatment in jail and at trial. She also offered to nurse the President until he died, saying he "is just a human being". Though her friends, including Nerkman, urged Goldman to keep her distance, she refused to condemn Czolgosz, calling him a "supersensitive being".

After his execution, Goldman ceased her public speaking and campaigning, scorned by her former anarchist supporters for her loyalty to the assassin. She dropped out of the public eye, taking on a series of jobs as a private nurse. When the U.S. Congress passed the Anarchist Exclusion Act which made it legal to deny immigrants with anarchist associations entry into the U.S., a new wave of liberal politics developed and drew Goldman along with it back into the movement. Such civil liberties crusaders as Clarence Darrow were part of the effort to have the law declared a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Free Speech guarantee. The Supreme Court refused.

Goldman and, after his release from prison, Berkman, began the anarchist journal Mother Earth in 1906, which published works from the contemporary anarchist movement as well as reprinting the work of earlier radical philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Mary Woolstonecraft..

Goldman turned her attention to more specific political issues. She met and fell in love with Ben Reitman, an advocate of free love, which brought her into contact with contraception advocates like Margaret Sanger. She longed to speak to other than the converted radicals who came to her rallies, turning to educating poorer people and women. When the United States entered World War I Goldman became a passionate opponent of the draft. The United States government finally deported her to Russia. Initially a supporter of the Bolshevik movement, she explained in her articles My Disillusionment in Russia (1923) and My Further Disillusionment in Russia (1924) how the violence of the Russian Revolution and their repression of opposing ideas destroyed her idealism.

Goldman left Russia, spending the rest of her life in France, England and Canada. In Her writings drew such admirers as Rebecca West, Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wlls, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Goldman supported thee anarcho-syndicalists against the communists. The rise soon after of such leaders as Adolf Hitler, BNenito Musseliini, and Joseph Stalin took waht political verve she had left out of her. She died in Toronto in 1940.

Chang Apana - Detective

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Ah Ping Chang, who worked under the Americanized name Chang Apana , was a colorful police officer and detective in the Honolulu Police Department and the inspiration for the famous fictional Chinese-American detective, Charlie Chan. He was born on Oahu in 1871. He returned to live with his uncle in Hawaii shortly after his parents moved back to China. Illiterate, he was nonetheless fluent in not only English and Chinese but in Hawaiian and Pidgin Hawaiian, At the age of 20 he began wwork as a paniolo, a Hawaiian cowboy. His job working with horses brought him in contact with the Humane Society, then part of the police department.

Apana joined the Honolulu Police Department in 1898 and was the only Chinese-American officer in a department of two hundred. he was known for carrying a bullwhip he had had since his paniolo days, instead of a gun. When he became a detective in the force in 1916 he was assigned to the areas prone to Chinese gang violence called Bloodtown and Hell's Half Acre. His primary cases involved opium smuggling and illegal gambling. He was a character, with his bullwhip , panama hat and Havana cigars, and holds the record for the most individuals arrested and taken into custody by a single officer when he lined up 70 gamblers and marched them to the police station. He was athletic, able to jump from rooftop to rooftop and once landing on his feet after being thrown out a second story window by drug addicts. With his language fluency he had the best network of informant in the force.

Though novelist Earl Derr Biggers stated that Apana was the inspiration for his aphorism quoting murder detective Charlie Chan, it is doubtful that the Honolulu detective alone was the only model. Apoana was slight, prone to anger and never investigated a single murder case in his career, Chan is portrayed as Buddha-like and rotund. Apana's wife said that the only thing Apana and Chan had in common was Chinese descent. It does however appear that newspaper accounts of Apana's career gave Biggers some of his inspiration to create a colorful Chinese-American detective for his novels. Apana himself was only too happy to be the object of attention and to be called XCharlie Chan by his fellow officers.

After 34 years of service Apana was forced to retire after a serious car accident. His health deteriorated, perhaps as a result of diabetes, and he died on December 7, 1933, the day after a gangrenous leg had to be amputated.

Margaret Sanger - Activist

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Margaret Sanger was the sixth child of eighteen born to her mother who was a devout Roman Catholic. Her father, a women's suffrage and education advocate and socialist worked as a stone carber making angels for headstones. Out of this came the most celebrated activist for birth control whose heritage is clouded by her advocacy as well for eugenics.

After her last pregnancy, Sanger's mother became ill with tuberculosis and cervical cancer and died one year later. Sanger contracted TB as well as a result of nursing her, but chose to attend nursing school in spite of her illness. Margaret took a particular interest in the slums of the East Side of Manhattan. She began to circulate pamphlets about "family linitation". At that time (1913) the Comstock Law of 1873 made criminal the disseminating information about or devices for birth control as obscene. She started publishing The Woman Rebel, whose slogan was "No God and no masters" and promoted a woman's right to control whether or not she became pregnant. It was here that she coined the term "birth control". She was indicted for violating U.S. Postal Service obscenity laws. She jumped bail and traveled to England.

In 1916 in Brooklyn Sanger opened the very first family planning clinic. It was raided by police just days later. Sanger appealed the decision, and in 1918 the New York State Supreme Court ruled in 1918 that doctors might prescribe contraception. She wrote two books on female sexuality and reproductive health intended for young women and mothers anad articles for numerous left leaning periodicals. She co-founded the American Birth Control League which would later come to be called Planned Parenthood.

Sanger's passion grew out of conviction that male society purposefully kept women ignorant about sexuality, reproductive health and venereal disease. Opposition from both civic and religious leaders meant that not only was birth control information withheld from women, but also information about diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea. Sanger was in favor of laws requiring people with these diseases to register and their names made public. She was a socialist and an advocate for the rights of the poor and working women of our society.

She was, however, though an advocate of birth control, not an advocate for the free enjoyment of sex by men or women. She believed that sexual flluids contained elements that if retained in the body would be put to use by the brain. She saw contraception as a means to reducing the bad side effects of sex but favored abstinence or self-control as the better strategy. She believed that masturbation was dangerous. Her racism came from her belief that smaller brains resulted in lack of sexual self control and declared that among humans the "inferior" races lacked or were severely deficient in this regard. But this is only the tip of the iceberg of Sanger's belief in using birth control to create superior human beings. She was a proponent of the science of eugenics which asserted that by controlling reproduction of less desirable races and people the human race could be improved. In her work, A Plan for Peace, she wrote:

"A stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring."

She shared this belief with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany and regused to condemn them for using the concept of eugenics to rid the human race of such groups as Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, and all those they deemed inferior to the Aryan peoples. She differed from the Nazi philosophy of eugenics in that she did not believe encouraging superior indibiduals to reproduce was practicable, favoring instead "race hygiene" or "negative eugenics" to prevent future generations of inferiour children and characterized this belief as himanitarian. She did however oppose state-sponsored application of or enforcemt of eugenics.

Sanger was a reluctant supporter of abortion, saying that "no one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable," but she saw access to birth control measures as a "cure for abortion". She spoke throughout her life, often being arrested for the content of her speeches, which led her to be a devout activist for Freedom of Speech. She spoke to a wide range of groups, from cotton field workers to high society charitable associations. She once said that the strangest group she had ever spoken to was a "ladies' auxiliary" of the Ku Klux Klan whom she found so ignorant about sexuality and reproduction that she had to explain everything as if to a small child. Her success with this strategy resulted in hundreds of requests for her to speak from other similar groups.

Margaret Sanger lived to see the release of the birth control pill in the early 1960s and worked until her death to promote its use. She died in 1966 just a few months after the Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which legalized birth control for married couples in the U.S.. It was the pinnacle of her 50 year fight.

"Slender Billy" (William II of the Netherlands) - Military Leader

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William II of the Netherlands

You may be familiar with "Slender Billy", that is, William II of the Netherlands, from the book and film Sharpe's Waterloo, where he was lampooned as a clownish and inept military leader, William, Prince of Orange. While there is some truth to the portrayal, "Slender Billy" did not die at the Battle of Waterloo , nor was he necessarily the fool that author Bernard Cornwell depicts.

"Slender Billy", whose full Dutch name was Willem Frederik George Lodewijk van Oranje-Nassau) was born in The Hague on 6 December 1792, the son of William I of the Netherlands and Wilhelmine of Prussia. His family sought refuge in Englandwhen he was a small child when French troops helped rebels take control of the Netherlands. He grew up at the Prussian court in Berlin and served in the Prussian army before attending Oxford University in England. he enlisted in the British Army and served as aide-to-camp to Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, during the Peninsular War in Portugal and Spain.

"Slender Billy" gained his poor reputation when, at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, his indecisive and unwise leadership led to the deaths of a large number of his infantry. The Duke himself, however, ascribed his failure to inexperience rather than ineptitude. He was indeed wounded at Waterloo, but the idea that he was shot by an allied officer is purely a fictional contrivance.

In 1816 William, Prince of Orange, married Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, youngest sister to Czar Alexander I of Russia. Princess Anna gave birth to their first son, later King William III, the following year. In 1819, he was was blackmailed over an affair with a man named Pererra.

William's father had been crowned King William I of what is now The Netherlands and Belgium. The prince's efforts at diplomacy between the north, later the Netherlands, and the south, now Belgium, was thwarted by his father, resulting in the 1831 Belgian Revolution. French allies of the Belgians forced Prince William's forces north, establishing two separate kingdoms with Leopold of Saxe-Gotha as ruler of Belgium.. Peace between the two kingdoms came in 1839.

"Slender Billy" became King William II of The Netherlands upon the abdication of his father on 7 October 1840. The spirit of democratic reform in Europe led ultimately the revolutions across the continent in 1848. William II, afraid of a revolution in The Netherlands, called for

new constitution which included that the Eerste Kamer (Senate) would be elected indirectly by the Provincial States and that the Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives) would be elected directly. Electoral system changed into census suffrage in electoral districts (in 1917 census suffrage was replaced by common suffrage for all men, and districts were replaced by party lists of different political parties), whereby royal power decreased sharply. That constitution is still in effect today. Wikipedia

"Slender Billy" died quite suddenly in Tilburg just months later in 1849. At his death aged 56 William was King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Duke of Limburg. He was succeeded by his son, William III.