Celebrating Women with Bristol Connections
List of women
The Book "100+ Women of Bristol Book" written, edited and designed by Shirley Brown was launched at the International Women's Day celebrations on Saturday 9 March, 2002. It is currently on sale priced £1.95 from libraries, museums, the tourist information office and selected local bookshops.
Kate Adie, OBE
1945 -
Born in Sunderland, this popular English radio and television news journalist and war correspondent graduated from the University of Newcastle in Scandinavian Studies. She joined the BBC, working in local radio as a studio technician specialising in farming and arts programmes. The BBC recognised her skills and promoted her to Director of Outside Broadcasts in Bristol , later assigning her as a regional reporter at BBC Plymouth.
In 1979 she joined the BBC TV national news covering general news in Britain and abroad. After the mid-80s she specialised as a foreign reporter, making her own the unique calm and balanced style in her reports from many dangerous hot spots. Among memorable stories, Adie covered the student uprising in China, and civil wars in Rwanda, Bosnia and Northern Ireland.
Among her many awards are three RTS Television Journalism Awards [1971, 1987 and 1989], and the Monte Carlo International Golden Nymph Awards in 1981 and 1990. In 1989 Adie was appointed Chief News Correspondent by the BBC. She was voted Reporter of the Year in 1992 and awarded an OBE in 1993.
She was raised as an orphan and only discovered her biological parents when she was an established journalist.
Freda Bacon
Bacon rehabilitated Jewish children from concentration camps after war. She died at the Avenue House Elderly Peoples Home in Bristol's Redland.
Mary Biddlecombe
1945 -
Born in Greatham, trained in art and business studies at Norwich School of Art, South Bristol College, and Bristol Polytechnic and now resident in Bristol , this innovative abstract painter was Artist in Residence at Bristol Cathedral in 1994/5, was featured in the Royal West of England Academy's Annual Show, the Bristol Corporate Art Show, and the Festival 25 Art Exhibition in Clifton. Biddlecombe was the first recipient of the Derek Crowe Memorial Award in 1990.
She work primarily in oil on canvas, describing her work as a reflection of "formal, spatial relationships using random, minimal or commonplace things. The process of abstraction enables me to use lines and shapes in a symbolic way."
Biddlecombe has also received acclaim for her illustrations and sculpture.
Elizabeth Blackwell
1821 - 1910
Born in Counterslip, Bristol , Elizabeth moved with her family to 1 Wilson Street in St Pauls three years later. Her father, a sugar refiner, encouraged education for women, ensuring his daughters as well as his sons were tutored. All the family engaged in reading and discussions.
In 1832 the Blackwells emigrated to New York City. After their father's death, the three eldest daughters opened a school. Blackwell used her teaching money to enrol at Geneva Medical School [now known as William Smith College], graduating in 1849 as a qualified physician. A short time later she moved to Paris for further training in surgery, but tragically lost the sight of one eye. Though this prevented her practising as a surgeon, she went to work at St Bartholomew's in London.
In 1851 Blackwell's attempts to set up a practice back in New York drew hostility from the male medical establishment. She persevered and, with her sister Emily, opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children with an all-female medical staff, the first of its kind in the world. The facility is still going under the name of the New York Infirmary. in 1868 the infirmary expanded with a medical college for women which later became affiliated with Cornell University Medical College in 1898.
With the success of the infirmary, Blackwell returned to London in 1869, becoming the first woman enrolled on the British Medical register. Still feeling threatened, the men decided to exclude anyone who had gained their qualifications outside the United Kingdom, as a precaution against any more women being enrolled.
Meanwhile, Blackwell co-founded the National Health Society of London and the London School of Medicine for Women, where she taught Gynaecology from 1875 to 1907. She authored many medical works for women including The Physical Education of Girls in 1852, and Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women published in 1895. Blackwell spent many years campaigning for women to achieve medical degrees and other reforms in the medical profession. Her work frequently brought her back to Bristol . She died in 1910.
Julie Burchill
1959 -
Bristol -born Burchill was taken on by the NME as a "hip young gun-slinger" in 1976 and subsequently wrote for most of the major English press including the Spectator, Daily Mail, and the Sunday Times .
She married fellow journalist Tony Parsons and had one son. After their divorce she married another journalist, Cosmo Landesman, giving birth to another son. Squeaky-voiced, outspoken Burchill was the Founding Editor of The Modern Review and authored such books as the blockbuster Ambition , followed by No Exit and her autobiography I Knew I Was Right . Worshipped by some, detested by others, Burchill currently writes a weekly column in the Guardian .
Her columns have been heralded as ironic, surprising and witty while managing to be charming, down-to-earth and wickedly happy and bright.
Fanny Burney [d'Arblay]
1752-1840
This English novelist and diarist was the daughter of musical historian Charles Burney. She was born in King's Lynn and according to the custom of the day, was self-educated.
Her first novel, Evelina , is set contemporaneously in the Hotwells district of Bristol , and was published anonymously in 1778. After admitting to being its author Burney was taken up by literary society, particularly Samuel Johnson and members of his Literary Club.
Between 1786 and 1791 Burney held the title Keeper of the Robes for Queen Charlotte. In 1793 she married General Alexandre d'Arblay, a French Royalist refugee, and moved with him to France in 1802; they remained there for 10 years.
Burney is best known for her diary, which she kept for 17 years beginning on May 30, 1768. The diary was published posthumously in two sections: The Early Diary of Frances Burney [1768-1778, 1889] and Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay [1778-1840,1842-1846] which was edited by her niece Charlotte Barrett. Burney's work provides an invaluable picture of contemporary customs and court life as well as people, most particularly Dr Johnson and David Garrick, the playwright who did much to restore the popularity of Shakespeare.
Burney's other novels include Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress [1782], Camilla, or A Picture of Youth [1796], and The Wanderer, Female Difficulties [1814]. Each borrows from established male authors such as Richardson and Fielding. All her work can be classed as sentimental but is saved by her witty descriptions of innocent young women entering society. In later years Jane Austen found inspiration in Burney's novels.
Dame Clara Butt
[1872 - 1936]
Born in Bristol this celebrated English contralto was not only distinctive in her achievements, at 6'2" she towered over her fellow performers. She spent some of her childhood years in Sydney Terrace, Totterdown and off Coronation Road in Southville. A Blue Plaque has been added to the house she occupied in Bellevue Road, Totterdown.
Butt studied with Mr. Rootham in Bristol , subsequently winning a competition organised by The Royal College of London in 1889. In 1892 she appeared in the title role of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice , performing the same role at the Lyceum Theatre in London. She also studied in Paris and later with the celebrated soprano Etelka Gerster in Berlin.
Saint-Saëns wanted her to study Delilah, but British laws at the time forbade the representation of biblical subjects onstage. From 1895 she concentrated on giving concerts. Her repertory included Bach, Handel, and Lieder, but her public demanded most the popular ballads of the day such as The Lost Chord, There is No Death, Abide With Me . Elgar composed Sea Pictures especially for her. Her sole opera role was as Orfeo.
Butt is said to have possessed one of the greatest and most powerful contralto voices, ranging from C below middle C to high B flat. She's described as having vast and baritonal bottom tones and a lighter toned pure top. According to Sir Thomas Beecham, "You could have heard her across the English Channel"!
Nearly every English household thrilled to her recording of Land of Hope and Glory . Butt triumphed on concert tours to Australia, Japan, Canada, the United States and throughout Europe. She married baritone Kennerley Rumford and, in 1920, she was created Dame of the British Empire for her charitable services during the war. Butt’s three sisters were singers as well, and included Ethel Hook who made some superb solo recordings.
In later life Butt was dogged by tragedies. Her elder son died of meningitis whilst still at school, the younger committed suicide. During the 1920s she became seriously ill of cancer of the spine, and she made many of her later records seated in a wheelchair. Clara Butt died in 1936.
Mrs Patrick Campbell
1865 - 1940
Born Beatrice Stella Tanner in London, this English actress took her husband's name for the stage.
By all accounts she was a deft performer, equally at home with comedy and tragedy. She toured England in various roles, including Rosalind in a unique performance of As You Like It at Bristol Zoo Gardens in 1890.
Campbell's first important stage success was in 1893 in the title role of Sir Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray .
Her portrayals of such Shakespearean heroines as Juliet, Ophelia, and Lady Macbeth drew near universal praise. She also tackled controversial new work such as the title role in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in 1907. When she was 47 George Bernard Shaw wrote leading role in Pygmalion for her in 1912. Shaw was smitten with her and reaped praise on her work in his capacity as theatre critic. Their many letters, bristling with wit and affection were collected and published in 1952.
Campbell toured America on several occasions before retiring from the stage in 1938. Her autobiography, My Life and Some Letters was published in 1922.
Princess Caraboo
[Mary Wilcocks]
In the Spring of 1817, a young woman arrived in a distressed state, dressed in strange attire of oriental fashion, at Almondsbury in Gloucestershire speaking in a language which the villagers could not understand. Given shelter in the home of a local dignitary she soon became a focus of attention. People came from far and wide to gaze upon her.
One man claimed he could interpret her gestures and sounds, declaring her name was Caraboo, a Javasu Princess who'd been abducted by pirates in the Indian Ocean and sold to a brigand. While sailing with him, she jumped overboard and swam to shore, landing near Bristol . She had apparently wandered around in a daze for several weeks before appearing in Almondsbury.
Her story soon made the local Bath and Bristol papers. But the publicity came to the attention of people who actually knew her as the daughter of shoemaker Thomas Wilcocks and Mary Burgess of Witheridge in Devon. She was alleged to have been married and so was also known as Mary Baker.
The Bristol couple who'd taken her in, and who may have been profiting by exhibiting her to the public as an East Indian Princess, gave her an ultimatum. They'd pay her her passage on a boat to Philadelphia. They booked her passage in her mother's name of Burgess to avoid further scandal. It's thought she may have returned to Bristol
in the 1820s. Bedminster records show that one Mary Burgess married Richard Baker in 1828. This may or may not have been the same Baker she'd married originally. She earned a meagre living selling leeches to Bristol infirmary and died in Bedminster in 1864.
More of her story can be found in the book Caraboo, A Narrative of Singular Importance , written in 1817 by Bristol newspaper editor J M Gutch, and published by Baldwin, Craddock and Joy of London. An American film entitled Princess Caraboo was made in England in the mid-90s which was co-written by John Wells. That same year Macmillan Pan published Princess Caraboo , a paperback of her story also by Wells.
Mary Carpenter
1807 - 1877
Born in Exeter and eldest of six children, Carpenter grew up in Bristol's Lewins Mead district, where her father served as Minister of the Unitarian Chapel from 1780 to 1840. Like all the family she cared passionately about social justice, though she shied away from joining formal movements or organisations. With her like-minded sister Anna she opened a school for girls in 1829. With their mother in charge, the school flourished for over 20 years, after which Carpenter established her own so-called ragged school for Bristol's disadvantaged. She also set up night classes for adults, presaging what is today known as life-long learning.
So in her early 40s she devoted the rest of her life to prison reform and reformatory school, seeing her duty to bring hope to what were termed "Gutter Children." Her cogent pamphlets published during the 1850s, argued against prison for child offenders, and her influential conference on the subject led to a parliamentary enquiry on reform schools. The Reformatory Schools Act of 1854 was a direct result of her work.
That same year she published Juvenile Delinquency , a book which continued her argument for the socio-cultural conditions of child criminals. She also opened a reform school for Bristol girls which was housed in the Red Lodge.
Carpenter had taken over that lovely Elizabethan building, restoring it from the sad disrepair which it had fallen into. The Red Lodge was built at the end of the 16th century for Sir John Younge, on a steep hill in the extensive grounds of his mansion, the Great House.The mansion no longer exists, but the site now houses the Colston Hall.
During this era she lived with social reformer Frances Power Cobbe. In later years Carpenter's horizons widened to include the plight of Indian women, and she travelled frequently to India. There she disseminated her ideas on prison reform and tried to establish training schools for women teachers. An original signatory of J.S. Mill's suffrage petition, Carpenter became a tireless proponent of the women's suffrage during the 1870s, continuing her campaign for women to enter higher education and the professions.
Angela Carter
1940 - 1991
Much lauded novelist, short-story writer and essayist, Carter was born in Sussex and educated at Bristol University where she read English. After spending two years in Japan, she was made a Fellow in Creative Writing at Sheffield University for two years from 1976. From 1980 to 1981 she was visiting professor in the Writing Programme at Brown University, Rhode Island, and writer in residence at the University of Adelaide, South Australia in 1984.
The New Society published her series of essays about her experiences in Japan which she later published in book form as Nothing Sacred in 1982. Carter's first novel, Shadow Dance , [1965] is set in the student-land of Clifton. Two years later Carter brought out The Magic Toyshop a good example of the magic realism movement. Her story Company of Wolves , later filmed by Neil Jordan, is a powerful re-telling of the roots of the werewolf myth as a female adolescent adjustment to menstruation. Much of her work features almost Gothic fantasy, with characters who change role and even gender, in a tradition begun by Virginia Woolf. Feminism is implicit in her work, underpinning and challenging contemporary attitudes with wit and literary skill.
Among her works are Heroes and Villains [1969], Nights at the Circus [1984], and Wise Children [1991], published shortly before her tragic death in February 1992. She also authored three collections of short stories: Fireworks [1974], The Bloody Chamber [1979], and Black Venus [1985], and Expletives Deleted , a collection of non-fiction. This was published posthumously in 1993, along with two further anthologies of short stories, American Ghosts and Old World Wonders .
Veronica Cartwright
1950 -
This Bristol -born actress won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1980 for the film Alien , directed by Ridley Scott. She was subsequently nominated two years running for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series; the honours recognised her work in the hit US television series The X-Files in 1998 and 1999.
Dame Agatha Christie
1891 - 1976
This prolific writer of detective fiction was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in Torquay. Her writing career began with The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920 heralding decades of best-sellers.
She married Captain Archibald Christie in Bristol at Emmanuel Church, Clifton on Xmas eve 1914, but sadly the marriage ended in divorce in 1928. In 1930, while travelling in the Middle East, Christie met the noted English archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan and they were married that same year. Christie always accompanied her husband on his annual trips to Iraq and Syria, gaining material for future books.
She's internationally feted for her clever and surprising plot twists, and her two unconventional fictional detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple who have become classics. Poirot is the hero of many of her works, including The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in 1926 up to the final Curtain in 1975, which charts the detective's demise.
Her travels provided authenticity to such tales as Murder in Mesopotamia in 1930, Death on the Nile [1937], and Appointment with Death [1938]. Christie's work for the stage includes the phenomenal success The Mousetrap , which has been running continuously in London since 1952, and the 1953 production of Witness for the Prosecution , which was filmed in 1957 with Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich, and for which she received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for 1954-1955. Her stories have also been fashioned into a number of television and radio series.
Christie also wrote romantic novels under the pen-name Mary Westmacott. In 1971 she was made a DBE.
Stephanie Cole
1941 -
Born in Solihull, Warwickshire on 5 October, this popular television and stage actress knew she wanted to act. The family moved to Bristol where she attended Clifton High School. When she was just 15 she was accepted into the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, then into the company. Two years later she began her career at age 17 playing a 90 year old woman, and she has specialised in creating believable characters older than herself.
A prolific character actress, Cole's many West End stage credits include Rose, Noises Off and Steel Magnolias . In 1995 she starred in the premiere of A Passionate Woman first at the Theatre Royal Bath then on the West End. On television she starred as Peggy in Keeping Mum and featured in Tenko, Open All Hours, A Bit of a Do and Waiting for God , for which she won the British Comedy Award for Best Actress. She won acclaim for her portrayal of Muriel in Alan Bennett's television monologue Soldiering On , part of his Talking Heads series. Cole's most recent television appearance is as Richard Wilson's co-star in the BBC1 series Other Animals.
She continued the Bristol connection in 2000, when she appeared as the 85-year-old Alice in So Long Life which is not only set in the city, but written by Bristolian Peter Nichols.
Helen Dunmore
Poet and author of the widely praised novel Talking to the Dead, in 1996 Dunmore was chosen as the first recipient of England's prestigious Orange Prize, awarded for the year's best novel by a woman writer.
Among her many other novels are Burning Bright , Brother Brother, Sister, Sister , With Your Crooked Heart , Ice Cream , and The Siege . Dunmore currently resides in Bristol .
Jo Durie
1960 -
Born in Bristol , in 1983 Durie ranked as Britain's Number One Ladies Tennis Player, and 6th in the world.
Amelia Edwards
1831 -1892
Born in London and buried in Henbury Churchyard, Bristol, the intrepid Edwards combined three careers as journalist, romantic novelist, and Egyptologist. She founded the Egypt Exploration Society and conducted an ongoing campaign against the destruction of antiquities, serving as the real-life model for the character Amelia Peabody in the popular Elizabeth Peters mystery novels.
Daughter of an ex-Army officer who had become a banker, Edwards was taught at home by her Irish mother who noted the young girl's literary potential. She published her first poem at the age of 7, her first story at 12. More of her work appeared in various magazines including Chamber's Journal , Dickens's Household Words and All the Year Round . She became a journalist, her articles featured in The Saturday Review and The Morning Post .
Edwards' published My Brother's Wife , her first full-length novel, in 1855, receiving immediate success. But it was in 1864 with Barbara's History , her daring account of bigamy, that ensured her literary reputation until her final work Lord Brackenbury in 1880, which was so successful it ran to 15 editions. All her books were meticulously researched. She travelled wherever she'd decided to set them, spending years in preparation.
Today Edwards' reputation rests with her traveller's tales. From the time of her parents' death in 1861, she documented the people and customs of foreign lands with great humour and enthusiasm. On most of her journeys she was accompanied by a female companion, and there is every reason to suppose the two were lovers. Edwards documented their first trip in Sights and Stories: A Holiday Tour Through Northern Belgium in 1862. She followed that some eleven years later with Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys , revealing the little-known region of the Dolomites, which she and her companion traipsed by mule.
But it was the women's third trip up the Nile to Abu Simbel which changed Edwards' life forever. She spent six weeks excavating at the Temple of Rameses II, describing her adventure in 1877 in A Thousand Miles Up the Nile . At first she admits being shocked at having to excavate the dead to uncover the artefacts of the past. But her fascination with Egyptology helped her overcome any initial revulsion. She was also wary of the growing and illegal trade in such high-class grave-robbing, dangling irresistible payment in front of the poor local people who acted in complicity.
It was as witness to such desecrations that Edwards determined to place Egyptology firmly in the realm of scientific investigation rather than digging for treasure. With the archaeologist Reginald Poole, and using her access to the press, she put her energies into co-founding the Egyptological Society, which held its first meeting at the British Museum in June 1880. Two years later it took on the name of the Egypt Exploration Fund, with Edwards and Poole serving as joint honorary secretaries.
In addition to her campaigns in the press, she conducted a series of lectures throughout England and the United States. In 1891 the lectures were published under the title Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers . Concentrating completely on disseminating her love of Egyptology Edwards abandoned her successful novel writing. For her archaeological work she received three honorary degrees from Columbia University, Smith College, and the College of the Sisters of Bethany. She was also awarded an English civil list pension for "her services to literature and archaeology." Despite such plaudits, she found the administration of the Egypt Exploration Fund proceeded without reference to her, though she continued to work on its behalf. Increasing ill-health was complicated by the death of her companion in 1892, and later that year she also succumbed to influenza.
She left her extensive library of Egyptology and a collection of Egyptian antiquities to University College, London, along with £2,500 to establish the first English chair in Egyptology.
Queen Elizabeth I
1533 - 1603
Last of the Tudors, Elizabeth was born in London on 7 September to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Unusually for a girl of the time she received an extensive classical education from such noted scholars as Roger Ascham. After her mother's beheading and her father's subsequent marriage to Catherine Parr, the young Princess was favoured by her step-mother. Elizabeth was imprisoned at the age of 21 she was put into prison on a false charge of supporting the rebellious Thomas Wyatt.
Though an adherent of her father's adopted Protestantism, Elizabeth professed the Catholic faith to heal rifts with her sister Mary who died in 1558. After the funeral Elizabeth ascended the throne, reverting to her Protestant beliefs and overseeing Britain's embrace of the Church of England. The Queen visited Bristol in 1574. She was most impressed with St Mary Redcliffes, calling it "the fairest, the goodliest and most famous parish church in England." Shakespeare made numerous references to her in his work, and by all accounts she was well thought of by the people.
In addition to the religious divide, the country was engaged in a long-standing war with France which was severely depleting state coffers. One of her acknowledged triumphs was the sense of unity she brought to the country. Throughout her life she received a succession of eager suitors, including Robert Dudley the 1st Earl of Leicester, Sir Walter Raleigh, and her favourite, Robert Devereux the 2nd Earl of Essex. When he led a revolt against her in league with the Irish, Elizabeth felt doubly betrayed and had him executed in 1601. She had declared she would live and die a virgin; in any case she died unmarried and is still known as The Virgin Queen. Her reign witnessed a cultural blossoming, particularly in literature, unrivalled to this day.
Anna Maria Falconbridge
18th century
This independent spirit and world traveller used her personal wealth to indulge her passion for colonial reform. From an aristocratic Bristol family, in 1791 Falconbridge defied her parents to marry the surgeon Alexander Falconbridge, who had invited calumny by his exposé of Bristol's part in the slave trade. The couple sailed to Sierra Leone to help rescue a group of stranded colonists and bring some order to the country.
Falconbridge was moved by the way both the Africans and imported colonists were treated, and she began to write down her thoughts with the clear aim of publication. In due course she completed her observations under the unfortunately long-winded title: The Distresses and Proceedings of the Settlement with a Description of the Manners, Diversions, Arts, Commerce, Cultivation, Customs, Punishments etc, and Every Interesting Particular Relating to the Sierra Leone Colony and Also the Present State of the Slave Trade in the West Indies and the Improbability of its Total Abolition.
Falconbridge was particularly exercised by the treatment of East End London women who'd been kidnapped and shipped out as prostitutes for the colonists. She took up their cause in A Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone 1791-93 , which she dedicated to the people of Bristol , and which takes the form of a series of letters to a fictional friend. Published in 1794, it contrasted the hard labour of the native women and the piety of the Africans, to the immoral behaviour of the Europeans.
The life of despair affected the couple, with Alexander succumbing to alcoholism in 1792. Perhaps because of her husband's decline, Falconbridge grew further away from his abolitionist cause, going so far as to indulge in liaisons with slave traders. She remarried Isaac DeBois very soon afterward, and returned home, via Jamaica, where she again had the opportunity to study the slave trade. She termed her time abroad “an unusual enterprise for an Englishwoman.” There have been posthumous claims that her interest in the plight of the slaves indicated that Falconbridge herself may have been partly of African descent.
Brenda Fricker
This versatile Irish actress lived in Bristol's Totterdown district while filming her running role in the BBC medical drama series Casualty . Among her film credits is her role as Daniel Day-Lewis's mother in My Left Foot , for which she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1989.
Subsequent film roles include as Mike Myers' Scottish mother in So I Married an Axe Murderer , and as the Pigeon Lady in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York .
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, née Nehru
1917-1984
Prime minister of India between 1966-1977 and again from 1980-1984 Gandhi was born in Allahabad on 19 November, into the wealthy Nehru family who had made their reputation as lawyers. An only child she was sent abroad to be educated, first at Bristol's Badminton School where her fellow students included Iris Murdoch, and later at Oxford University, after first obtaining a degree from Viva-Bharati University in Bengal.
Gandhi's mother died in 1936 and she took on the role of companion to her father. Both father and daughter were passionate about Indian politics as active members of the National Congress party which fought for Indian independence.
In 1942 she married the lawyer Feroze Gandhi who shared her interest in politics. Five years later India won its independence and her father Jawaharlal Nehru became the country's first Prime Minister. Since he was a widower, his daughter was recognised as Official Hostess. She accompanied him on foreign visits and he confided in her about affairs of state. Gradually Gandhi's political involvement resulted in her election tot he Executive of the Congress Party, and in 1959 she became Party President.
In 1964 Nehru died and Gandhi joined the government as Minister of Information and Broadcasting. Her liberal agenda included a reduction in censorship and the introduction of a television-based family planning campaign. Gandhi succeeded Shastri as Prime Minister when he died in 1966, continuing in the post with an increasing mandate until 1977, fighting off accusations of electoral fraud.
By then some of the mud had stuck and Gandhi was voted out amid charges of an increasing tyrannical hand. But she made a remarkable comeback just three years later, forming a new majority government.
Personal tragedy marred the victory when her son Sanjay died in a plane crash; she'd hoped he was going to be her political heir. She began to focus all her attention on her older son Rajiv. Politically the north of the country was plagued by religious acrimony between the Sikhs and Hindus. When she intervened in the Sikh storming of the Golden Temple of Amritsar, Sikh members of her own security guard assassinated her in 1984. Rajiv carried on in his mother's place for another five years.
Charlotte Keel
This Bristol -born city activist became an Alderman. St Werbergh's Health Centre is named after her.
Hannah More
1745 -1833
Born in Bristol's Stapleton district into the cultured family of a headmaster, More was one of five daughters, all with a fondness for literature. They were educated by their father, who encouraged More's entry into London literary and bluestocking circles. A friend of the great actor/manager David Garrick, who is credited with the revival of Shakespeare as the national playwright, More herself wrote both drama and poetry.
A devoted evengelical Christian, More considered it her duty to help those less fortunate. When her cook introduced her to a milkmaid with a penchant for poetry, More took up young Ann Yearsley's cause, encouraging her literary efforts, though the two woman later fell out. More continued to devote herself to good works, including both political and financial support for the anti-slavery campaign.
She resided at 43 Park Street, where she ran an Academy for Young Ladies, and also lived at 4 Windsor Terrace in Clifton. Her writings were primarily socio-political tracts underpinning her philosophy of fighting poverty with moral values, fighting political radicals exemplified by the French Revolution, and railing against those British reformers who wanted to restructure society.
Deborah Moggach
1948 -
One of four sisters from a writing family, Moggach attended Bristol University in the 60s. The Clifton district of the city became the location for her first novel You Must Be Sisters , published in 1978.
Her subsequent work includes Close to Home, Porky, The Ex-wives and Stolen . Close Relations became a well-praised television series, and her latest novel Final Demand was published by Heinemann in June 2001.
Dame [Jean] Iris Murdoch
1919 -1999
Born in Dublin on 15 July as the only child of a father in the civil service who'd served as a cavalry officer in WWI and a mother who'd trained as an opera singer. From 1928 Murdoch attended schools in Hammersmith and Chiswick when the family moved to London, though the family made frequent visits back to Ireland. In 1932 she became a pupil at Badminton School in Bristol , where Indira Gandhi was her contemporary. She described herself as a compulsive writer since she was nine, putting down her need to invent characters to being an only child. Murdoch graduated from Somerville College, Oxford where she studied classics, ancient history and philosophy. Her early dabblings with the Communist Party ended after a period of disillusionment, and she moved progressively to the right, finally supporting Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
After a brief stint with the Treasury Department, from 1944-46 Murdoch worked in London, Belgium and Austria for the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. During this time she met Jean-Paul Sartre who became one of her many lovers, including novelist and mathematician Raymond Queneau, and novelist Elias Canetti, upon whom she based the character of Peter Mir in The Green Knight .
Undoubtedly as a result of her membership of the Communist Party the US refused Murdoch permission to complete her post-graduate studies. Undaunted she was awarded the Sarah Smithson Studentship in philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge, studied philosophy with Wittgenstein in 1947, and the following year was elected a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, where she became a tutor from 1948-63.
While at Oxford she met and married John Bayley, a Professor of English, with whom she shared the remainder of her life, though the open nature of the relationship was later revealed in their diaries and books.
In 1957 Murdoch enjoyed a month-long fellowship at Yale, in 1962 she taught at McMaster University in Canada, and between 1963-7 she lectured at the Royal College of Art. She won the Whitbread Prize in 1974 for her novel The Sacred and Profane Love Machine , followed two years later with a CBE. In 1978 her novel The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Prize.
Her books have been described at smart philosophical soap operas whose characters often indulge in adultery, some undergoing a crisis of faith, all playing out a battle between Good and Evil. She peopled her books with archetypes of near-saint, failed priest, love-prisoner, haunted child, literary figure, and radiant woman, according to the late Malcolm Bradbury. Recurrent in her works are images of drowning, recalling her own traumatic incident in the 1970s. Some of her work has been filmed for the cinema and television including A Severed Head with Lee Remick and Richard Attenborough, and The Sea, The Sea .
Always her first passion, Murdoch's devotion to philosophy challenged post-modernists such as Jacques Derrida, contending to the deconstructionists that fact could not be separated from value. She sought to place moral inquiry back at the heart of philosophy. In 1992 she published Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals which was not entirely well-received by the academic world.
In 1998 Bayley revealed that Murdoch had been suffering from Alzheimers Disease. After her death the following year friend and author A.N. Wilson said that she'd been appalled by the financial success of her books and frequently gave her royalty cheques to various charities.
Emma Paterson née Smith
1848 - 1886
Paterson trained as a bookbinder and was disheartened at the working conditions she found in factories and small workshops.
This important figure in the Trades Union movement founded the first women's trade union the Women's Protective and Provident Association in 1875 in the city of Bristol. The union represented a wide range of workers including dressmakers, upholsterers, bookbinders, artificial-flower makers, feather dressers, tobacco, jam and pickle workers, shop assistants and typists.
The illustration shows the insignia of the National Federation of Women Workers; the shield reads: To fight, To struggle, To right the wrongTwo years later Paterson became the first editor of the union's official publication The Women's Union Journal , which was distributed between 1877 and 1890. In 1903 the union later changed its name to the Women's Trade Union League.
Cathie Pilkington
The new harbourside devlopment in Bristol has been enhanced with the unexpected and amusing addition of Pilkington's sculpture which graces the forecourt of at-Bristol. The piece consists of life-sized Jack Russell dogs carved in bronze. They're swimming in a pool of rubber while a third dog stands alone watching. Pilkington used to live in Edinburgh where she noticed how the landmark statue of a terrier, Greyfriars Bobby, is a frequent meeting point for both residents and tourists. She hopes her Jack Russells will acquire the same point of focus for Bristol.
Helen Reid
The women of Bristol , from the 18th century to the present, are celebrated and honoured in the book Go Home And Do The Washing! co-authored by ex-Western Daily Press journalist Helen Reid and Lorna Brierley. The arts, politics, education, medicine, and social reform are all addressed courtesy of some amazing women with connections to the city. One unexpected discovery was the amount of businesswomen during the early 19th century operating as landladies, shopkeepers, hoteliers, and even a plumber! Ironically, as this enterprising merchant class prospered, their daughters were educated and encouraged to marry into a higher class, leaving the field almost exclusively to men. Some of these newly wealthy women used their economic freedom to fund philanthropic ventures both within the city and abroad. Many became devoted to social reform, women's rights, and the emerging labour movement.
Now retired after nearly 40 years as chief feature writer on the Daily Press, Reid still freelances for the paper in between indulging her passion for local history.
Miranda Richardson
1958 -
Born in Southport, Lancashire the daughter of a marketing executive and his wife, this talented stage and screen star had intended to become a vet, but decided to indulge her talent for mimicry when she was accepted at the Bristol Old Vic. Richardson has chosen roles which reveal her as a consummate performer of both drama and comedy. Equally revealing are the parts she's turned down, including the woman in Fatal Attraction which she considered espoused "regressive attitudes."
Among a bevy of arresting performances are the dotty Queen Elizabeth I in the Black Adder television series, the ill-fated Ruth Ellis in Dance With a Stranger , Mrs. Victor in Empire of the Sun , and very contrasting roles as Jude the IRA terrorist in The Crying Game , guest roles in Absolutely Fabulous and Alas Smith and Jones , the voice of calculating Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run , her Oscar-nominated portrayal of the disturbed wife of TS Elliott in Tom and Viv , Pamela Flitton in the television series Dance to the Music of Time , and in Spider , the film by David Cronenburg.
Rolinda & Ellen Sharples
1769 - 1849 & 1793 - 1838
Bristol artists Ellen and James Sharples both made a great success as portrait painters and miniaturists when they emigrated to Washington, DC. The family subsequently lived in New York where their daughter Rolinda was born. Ellen's reputation grew; even George Washington sat for her.
Ellen returned as a wealthy woman to Bristol after James's death and her daughters came with her. Rolinda specialised in painting scenes of the city, but included the self-portrait with her mother.
Ellen left her fortune to found The Royal West of England Academy in 1844. Rolinda's portrait of Ellen hangs in the Academy.
Enid Stacy
1868 - 1903
Enid Stacy was born in Weston-super-Mare, the eldest child of Henry Stacy, the Irish artist, and his wife, the daughter of a Midlands hardware merchant. Both parents were avid Christian socialists, introducing Stacy at an early age to concepts of social and moral justice. When the girl was 13 the family moved to Bristol .
Eventually she found work as a tutor at Redland High School for Girls, but her social conscience was being raised by conditions in the city. 1889-90 witnessed a period of labour unrest, and Stacy joined the Gas Workers and General Labourers Union. She became a keen union organiser, taking part in several strikes, including the cotton workers' strike of 1890.
She took on the role of honorary secretary of the Association for the Promotion of Trade Unionism among Women. By this time her circle of socialist friends included members of the Bristol Socialist Society and national figures such as Edward Carpenter and Eleanor Marx. Stacy got fired from her job as a tutor when her participation in strikes resulted in increasing clashes with police.
Undaunted she devoted her time to propounding socialism and women's rights. She was among those at the founding meeting of the Independent Labour Party and soon gained a reputation as an powerful speaker. The party put her on the payroll in 1895 as a travelling lecturer, and she was elected to the National Administrative Council for three years running.
Whether speaking in public or in her writings Stacy consistenly twinned ideas on socialism with women's rights. Her articles for the socialist journal Clarion developed her ideas into a coherent theoretical framework which culminated in the chapter she entitled A Century of Women's Rights included in the influential socialist anthology Forecasts of the Coming Century , edited by Edward Carpenter.
Aged 29 she married Percy Widdrington, and soon afterward their son was born. Tragically Stacy died suddenly from an embolism, ending her glittering career. It was the labour movement's loss, and her colleagues mourned her as deeply as her family.
Rosie Tanner
This erstwhile opera singer of the 1930s subsequently ran the White Horse pub on Bristol's Spike Island. The pub later changed its name and is now called the Orchard.
Frances Mary Trollope
1780 - 1863
Not only a prolific author in her own right, Trollope gave birth to the more famous Anthony [1815-1882].
This clergyman's daughter was born in Hampshire, later moving to Bristol with her husband. When she was in her early 50s the family's fortunes turned and Trollope started writing novels to pay off her husband's debts.
In accordance with her views on human rights, her books explore such social ills as slavery and corruption in the church. Nearly 60 she began to campaign against child factory workers, researching at various plants in Manchester and Bradford. Despite those who criticised her novels for dealing with the vulgar and low-bred, she documented her observations of child labour in Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy . One critic suggested she be imprisoned for peddling such disrupting anti-capitalist ideas.
Of her forty novels the most highly praised were The Widow Barnaby and The Widow Married .
Dame Eva Turner
1892 - 1990
Though born in Oldham Turner was raised in Bristol , continuing her ties with the city throughout her life. While a pupil at St Anne's Infants School which she attended between 1901-06, she was taken to a Bristol performance of the Carl Rosa company and determined to become an opera singer.
Turner began to study singing with Daniel Rootham, who had also tutored Dame Clara Butt. Rootham successfully prepared her for a scholarship entry to the Royal Academy in 1911 where she studied for four years. Then it was back to Bristol to join the chorus of the very same Carl Rosa company.
Turner made her solo debut the following year in Tannhauser , singing the role of the page. Her soprano range was further tested as Aida, Tosca, and Madame Butterfly. In 1924 Ettone Paurezza was so impressed, he arranged for her to sing the role of Freia at La Scala Milan, with Toscanini. The maestro soon promoted her to leading dramatic soprano of the company, and two years later she premiered the role of Turandot , recordings of which still survive, revealing her emotional as well as her musical range.
She returned to Bristol with the Welsh National Opera's productions at the Hippodrome and sang at Covent Garden with the Royal Opera until the Second World War, during which she presented concerts for the troops.
In 1949 Turner left for the US to take up a teaching post at the University of Oklahoma; she subsequently returned to teach at the Royal Academy. Turner was made a Dame in 1962. By the time of her death nearly 30 years later, all her recordings had been re-issued on CD.
Queen Victoria
1819 - 1901
Daughter of Victoria Mary Louisa, and Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III, Alexandrina Victoria was born on 24 May in London's Kensington Palace. As the niece of William IV who had no legitimate heirs, at his death the Princess was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 20 June 1837 and Empress of India in 1876.
As a child Victoria is said to have played along the path between Clifton and Hotwells in Bristol , and she lodged at The Assembly Rooms and Hotel in The Mall, Clifton in 1830. When she was Queen she returned in 1900 to open the maternity hospial on the Downs. Her devotion to her husband Prince Albert is well-documented as is her devastation at his death, and the solace she found subsequently in the friendship of her gilly John Brown.
From her relative obscurity at her coronation, by her death she'd become a beloved if somewhat misunderstood royal figure with a reputation which circled the globe. Her reign was the longest in British history, and introduced many of the traditional customs enjoyed today, including Christmas celebrations and many trappings of wedding ceremonies.
Ann Cromartie Yearsley
1752 - 1806
Born to Ann and John Cromartie in the Clifton district of Bristol , young Ann like her mother before her delivered milk from door to door. She was hungry for knowledge, begging her brother to teach her to read and write. Soon she began composing verses and earned the nickname Lactilla or "the poetical milkwoman." When she was 22 her parents encouraged her to marry John Yearsley, and the couple had six children within seven years, one of whom died.
In 1784 Yearsley was introduced to the philanthropist and author Hannah More by a friend who worked as More's cook. The rich woman not only provided books for Yearsley, but arranged publication of her poetry. Yearsley's first volume was Poems on Several Occasions , and thanks to More over a thousand people subscribed for copies, bringing much needed revenue to the household.
Yearsley balked, however, when More assigned Elizabeth Montague as a trustee for her money, and the women quarreled. Montague allocated some of Yearsley's money earned from her first work toward opening a circulating library at Bristol Hot Wells.
Yearsley took control of her work in 1789, publishing another two volumes of poetry and a play, Earl Godwin . Though it was performed, this depiction of the French Revolution never proved popular.
Yearsley was helped with her collection Poems on Various Subjects by Anna Seward, another benefactor. She wrote with sadness and wit about restrictions meted out to the working class who dare dabble in high culture. In 1795 Yearsley published her only novel, The Royal Captives . Among additional collections of poetry was Stanzas of Woe and The Rural Lyre . Many of her verses reveal her deep faith in an afterlife which mitigates the poverty and deprivation on earth. She extols the qualities of friendship and freedom from authoritarian society. In poems such as Jephtha's Vow Yearsley reveals the religious basis of her dilemma between spiritual freedom and the acceptance of a fundamentally tyrannical relationship between women and their fathers and husbands. Essentially a conservative, Yearsley promotes a somewhat simplistic analysis of such complex social issues as slavery, preferring to concentrate on the personal stories of individuals.
Her later years were dogged by an unfortunate incident in which two of her three sons were horsewhipped by a footman of the mayor of Bristol . Charges were dropped against Mayor Eames because Yearsley had no money to fight the case. Her health deteriorated, and she took badly the death of her husband and sons. She described herself as "unadorned by art, unaccomplished by science." She died in Melksham, Wiltshire at the age of 54.
Emily Hilda Young
1880 - ?
Under the name E.H. Young this Bristol author published many novels, all set in Upper Radstowe [a fictionalised Clifton]. She and her husband lived at 2 Saville Place in Clifton, but she moved to London after his death. She lived for many years in a ménage à trois with the headmaster of Alleyn's School in the 1920s & '30s.
Young published 11 novels between 1910 and 1947. In the '30s her work caught the attention of several contemporary literary figures including Virginia Woolf who wrote in her diary, "I bought a book for 6d in the Penguins called William by E.H. Young, and, for a wonder, enjoyed it greatly. She knows how to put in, and yet remain readable: so minute and yet so alive. And as it's the kind of book I generally dislike, I think she must be a very good novelist, and wonder she's not far more famous than dear old voluble Hugh, and Wells and so on."
In 1931 Young won the James Tait Black memorial prize for her novel Miss Mole which Woolf described as "fair but soft." Among her other works are Celia, The Curate's Wife, and Hannah, which was made into a four-part television serial by the BBC in 1980, adapted by Lee Langley, starring Helen Ryan and Buster Merryfield [of Only Fools and Horses fame], and produced by Colin Tucker. It was described as "a romantic serial" in which "a young girl falls in love whilst holidaying in a seaside town."
