Michael Murfin "Some English women who should be more famous"

The speaker was Michael Murfin, a historian who gave us a very interesting talk on “English Women who should have been more famous”

 Sarah Biffen

Sarah Biffen was born in 1784 to a family of farmers and she was born with no arms and only vestigial legs and despite her handicap learned to read and later was able to write using her mouth. When she was 12, her family apprenticed her to a man who exhibited her in fairs and sideshows

His name was Emmanuel Dukes and it was he who taught her to paint, holding the brush in her mouth. She held exhibitions of her paintings and sold paintings. She drew landscapes or miniatures and sold them for three guineas each.

 The Earl of Morton sponsored her once he was convinced of her artistic talent and the Royal Family commissioned her to paint miniature portraits as a result of which she became very popular and set up a studio in London. She later ran into financial trouble when her manager used most of her money. She retired to her private life in Liverpool and some of her work can be seen at the Walker Art Gallery.

 Kitty Wilkinson

She was born Catherine Seaward in County Londonderry. At the age of 9, she was coming to Liverpool with her parents, when the ship ran aground in the Mersey and her father and younger sister drowned. At 12 years of age she went to work in a cotton mill in Lancashire and returned at the age of 20 to live with her mother in Liverpool.

She later married and her husband drowned at sea. She then set up a laundry service in the house she rented. In 1832 cholera broke out in Liverpool and she took the initiative to offer the use of her boiler to neighbours to wash their clothes at a penny a week and showed them how to use chloride to get them clean and the boiling killed the cholera.  For her work against cholera she was commemorated with a stained glass window when she died in 1860

Josephine Elizabeth Grey

   She was a Northumberland cousin to Earl Grey of the tea fame. She was a highly intelligent good looking woman and had no career and lived at home

In 1852 she married the Reverend George Butler who was an Anglican. They had three children, 3 boys and a girl Eva who fell from the top landing and died. George Butler was appointed the head of Liverpool College

   Josephine now became involved in higher education for women and she had also been closely involved with the welfare of prostitutes and regarded the women as

being exploited victims of male oppression, so when the Contagious diseases act was begun in 1869 she was the obvious woman to lead it.

Women seen around the dockyards were getting arrested and Josephine was so outraged at this that she forced parliament to change the law . She died in 1906

  Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

   Born 1836 and was the first female doctor to qualify in England. She opened a school of medicine for women’s medical education in Britain. She was one of 12 children born to a pawnbroker but she was given a good education. She failed to get into medical school and enrolled as a nursing student at the Middlesex hospital. She attended classes with male colleagues but was barred after complaints.

   She took the Society of Apothecaries exam and qualified in 1865. She later attained her medical degree in Paris and was responsible for a women only hospital. She died in 1917 and in her memory was The Elizabeth Gareth Hospital.

  Annie Wood

Annie did not believe in the teaching of the Anglican Church and she married a man who had no religious beliefs. She tried to bring in contraception to poor women and in 1888 heard of the plight of the women workers in the Bryant and May factory who were suffering from phosphorous burning of their mouths and hair because there were no facilities to wash their hand and the phosphorous was contaminating their mouths when they ate. The women went on strike and Annie spoke for them and lobbied parliament and the law was changed to provide washing and lunch facilities.

Edith Cavell.

  Edith was the World War 1 nurse who was celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers from all sides. She and Belgium and French colleagues helped over 200 allied soldiers to escape from German occupied Belgium.

 She was arrested, tried with 33 others by a military court and found guilty of assisting men to the enemy and she was shot by a German firing squad on October 12th 1915.

                                                     Keith Chesters.