Discovering stars in 1911

I've been wondering for a while about the reason for this blog - not the obvious reason, that time travel has not been invented yet and somebody has to try to compensate, but the deeper one: why anyone would want to time travel in the first place.

And it struck me the other day that I'm looking for role models.  Obviously, the challenges facing women today aren't what they were in 1911. But as I've researched this blog it's become clear that things weren't as different back then as I had thought. I've also realised that it's not been a few charismatic, controversial leaders who have moved women's liberation forward: it has been a crowd of people taking each a small step, from the hundreds of women who persuaded reluctant fathers to send them to university to the thousands today pushing through to the highest ranks of the professions while working out how to balance that with family lives.

Many of those small steps have gone little remembered. Last week I found the story of Williamina P Fleming. Her obituary was published a hundred years ago this month. As Curator of Astronomical Photographs at Harvard she spent thirty years working with a catalogue of very early glass plate photographs of the night sky. She analysed images of over ten thousand stars, discovering ten entirely new ones. And she faced the question of what stepping into a male sphere does for your essential likeability as a woman. Annie Cannon, the author of Fleming's obituary in Science, (Vol 33(861), 987-88, June 1911), gives full credit to her discoveries and to her thorough, systematic approach to a library of 200,000 fragile glass plates. She then concludes that ...'of a large hearted, sympathetic nature, and keenly interested in all that pertains to life, [she] won friends easily, while her love of her home and an unusual skill in needlework prove that a life spent in the routine of science need not destroy the attractive human element of a woman's nature'

Williamina P Fleming was one of many who demonstrated, through living out her life,  that female and scientist were not mutually exclusive. We no longer use needlework to make that proof, and thanks to Fleming and hundreds more we don't have so many exclusions to eliminate.  But I think we are still facing that challenge on some fronts.

The woman who saved the children

How had I not heard of Eglantyne Jebb? 105 years older than me, in 1911 she was touring the Tyrol with her sick mother, writing passionate letters to a former colleague and wondering about her social purpose. Two years later, affair over, she set off for the Balkans (a war zone) to oversee the distribution of aid, including investigating the truth of a massacre. The information she uncovered was so sensitive she sewed it into her clothing for safety.

It's what Eglantyne did six years later that makes me think I should know her: just after the First World War she founded Save the Children. With her team - including one of her equally interesting sisters - she organised relief for children all over Europe, including those in 'enemy' countries. What she did there has left a legacy, not only in lives saved and an organisation of international standing, but in the whole way we think about children at war.

I've just finished her biography - The Woman Who Saved the Children, by Clare Mulley. Amazed by Eglantyne's achievements, I enjoyed following her through her life - finding empathy with her frequent depression and her feelings of purposelessness, and finding hope in the fact that she did, eventually, figure it all out.

I am inspired - but also outraged. How many other eminent, impressive women have I never heard of? The 1920s-30s are a period I studied at GCSE: I know about Lloyd George and Clemenceau but had not once heard of the parallel, influential peace movement, with its often female leaders.

I will go in search of further such women. Meanwhile thank you Clare Mulley - I recommend this book to everyone.

That old census is quite interesting

Census day. A hundred years ago, many women were boycotting the census, and Emily Davison had taken it one step further, hiding out in a cupboard of the Houses of Parliament so as to claim it as her place of residence on the form.  I'm mooching round at home, hoping that shows how far women's lives have come.

I was rummaging round the 1911 census site (there are two, incidentally) trying to find more information about the boycott, boycott parties, and so on, when it occurred to me to use it for its intended purpose. I looked up my name - not there. I was boycotting, it seems.

There's more information available on the 1901 census. Here are the occupations of Sophie Smiths a hundred and ten years ago:

Five Juveniles (1,7,8 and 11 and 15) - three of them living in London
One Nurse Girl, Domestic, 12
One Elementary Teacher, 12
Five Domestic Servants, 14 and up, from the general to the 'Vegetable Maid'
One Housekeeper (26) and a Domestic Cook (34)
Two Pupil Teachers, 17 and 18
A Shirt and Collar Ironer, a Draper's Assistant, a Millinary Buyer, in their 20s
Mysteriously - a Foreman Brush Works, a Pedlar Hawk
Thirteen women giving no occupation at all, mostly over 30.
Two women 'Living on Own Means.'

Not exactly a statistically valid sample but - four major differences. One, reduction in child labour; two, near disappearance of domestic servants; three, more education needed to become a teacher and four, a wider range of roles for women. For everyone, I suspect.

Right, time to look up my address... enjoy being counted, everyone...