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24 May 1918
In Canada an Act to confer the Electoral Franchise upon Women was passed, granting Canadian women over the age of twenty-one the right to vote in federal elections.
January 1885
Scientist and urban planner Sir Patrick Geddes founded the Edinburgh Social Union to undertake the cultural renewal and regeneration of Old Edinburgh using art, beauty and education.
Urquhart, Graham. “Patrick Geddes and the Edinburgh Social Union”. Patrick Geddes.
18 July 1862
The Bishop of London, Archibald Campbell Tait , set apartElizabeth Ferard to be a deaconess in the Anglican Church , and to head an Order of Deaconesses, even though no such order as yet officially existed.
Somewhat blurry black and white photograph of Shuhua Ling, leaning back in a chair, holding an open book with large pages. Her hair is straight, jaw-length, and brushed back; she is wearing a pleated dress with a high neck.

Ling Shuhua

A writer and visual artist active primarily between the 1920s and 1950s, LS published short stories, essays, translations, and a memoir whose reception was shaped by frequently restrictive expectations for women writers of her time...
22 April 1993
Young white thugs made an unprovoked knife attack on a Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence , and a friend with whom he was waiting at a bus-stop in Eltham, south-east London. The pair ran, but Stephen...
January 1817
The Prince Regent , on his way to open Parliament , was the target of (probably) a stone which broke the window of the state coach; like a similar missile hurled at his father on...
November 1895
The University Association of Women Teachers magazine ceased publication in London.
June 1972
Spare Rib, a feminist periodical issued monthly by Spare Ribs from 27 Clerkenwell Close, London, was launched to put women's liberation on the news stands.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
86
1842
Pentonville Prison , based on the American model of convict isolation, opened.
3 May 1858
Rosa Brett made her exhibition debut, showing The Hayloft at the Royal Academy , under the pseudonym Rosarius.
1 January 1983
ARPAnet officially became the Internet, as all members adopted a single protocol.
23 July 1999
A judge defended the right to public speech (even irritating, contentious, provocative public speech) of Ms Redmond-Bate , who was arrested for evangelical preaching.
5 March 1850
Robert Stephenson 's tubular Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits opened for rail traffic to Holyhead on the Isle of Anglesey, off the coast of Wales.
March 1957
The BritishConsumers' Association was officially founded on the model of the Consumers' Union in the USA.
15 March 1917
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated the throne, ending 1,000 years of imperial rule.

Hannah Wolley

HW predates Aphra Behn in making a living by her pen, only in her case her seventeenth-century writings (on cooking, medicine, household skills, and general conduct) aimed to attract students to her other career, which...
November 1915
Women's Police Volunteers were recognized by the Grantham Town Council as members of the local police force, becoming the first paid women police in local forces in Great Britain.
1388
The Statute of Cambridge, popularly known as the Poor Law, was passed, classifying the types of needy and designating responsibility for their care.
By 31 May 1641
Milton entered (anonymously) the ideological battle surrounding episcopacy (government of the Church of England by bishops) with the first of his five anti-prelatical pamphlets, Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England.
7 October 1946
The BBC first broadcast a new programme: Woman's Hour. (It succeeded to a short-lived Women's Hour, first broadcast on 2 May 1923.)
By November 1780
Martin Madan published Thelyphthora: Or, a Treatise on Female Ruin, on the topic of prostitution.
April 1759
Halley's comet appeared over England, confirming the prediction of Edmond Halley in 1682.
1742
Irish physician Fielding Ould gave the first description of an episiotomy in his three-part Treatise on Midwifery.
23 March 1899
The Woman's Signal, a temperance periodical, ceased publication in London.

Elizabeth Baker

Elizabeth Baker 's drama often deals with feminist and economic issues facing struggling middle-class families. Her casts of characters include feisty, independent young women seeking emancipation and sympathetic men burdened with supporting a family on...
13 February 1790
The FrenchNational Assembly decreed that French law would no longer recognise monastic vows.
About 1616
Forceps for use in childbirth were invented by a member of the Chamberlen family, probably Peter Chamberlen the Elder ; they were kept a secret.
1906
The Provision of School Meals Act was introduced, providing free meals in schools.
10 November 1793
The Festival of Reason was celebrated in ceremonials all over France; twelve days later Catholic churches in Paris were closed down.
September 1935
Life and Letters To-Day, edited by Robert Herring and Bryher , produced its first quarterly issue in London.
1966
The sixteen-year-old future first supermodel Twiggy (born Leslie Hornby, later Lawson) participated in her first photo shoot.

Hannah Mary Rathbone

HMR was an early Victorian anthologist, poet, novelist, memoirist, and religious writer, who also contributed to periodicals.
21 October 1882
Queen's College, Belfast, began admitting women to honours classes.
March 1927
The Gaumont-British Film Corporation was founded with studios at Shepherd's Bush, London.
Detail from the long lost, now well-known, painting of Anne Brontë and her sisters by their brother Branwell, c. 1834. She is shown from the shoulders up, at a three-quarter turn, wearing a blue dress. Her loose blonde curls fall around her face. The picture retains the crease marks from its years folded on top of a wardrobe. National Portrait Gallery

Anne Brontë

The youngest of the famous Brontë sisters, AB has had the slightest reputation among the three for her output of poetry and two novels. Recently, however, her fiction's importance and influence has begun to be...
By about 1825
The number of commercially-produced Valentine cards or messages sent in mid-decade in London alone had reached about 200,000.
Flynn, Amanda. “Sweet and Sour Commodities: Nineteenth-Century Valentines in the John Johnson Collection of Ephemera”. Bodleian Library Record, No. 1, pp. 64 - 9.
65
A black and white drawing of Sarah Flower Adams. She looks over her left shoulder at the viewer with a small smile.

Sarah Flower Adams

SFA was a poet, a contributor to periodicals, and a hymn-writer. Over the course of her career she published a dramatic poem, a catechism for children, and fourteen hymns. Her uncollected works include numerous poems...
10 March 1956
An English aircraft piloted by Lieutenant Commmander Peter Twiss became the first to exceed 1,000 miles an hour.
January 1855
Piedmont joined the Allies in the Crimean War.
2 August 1914
The World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches was founded at a conference in Constance, Switzerland.
September 1558
The Emperor Charles V died at Yuste in Extremadura, two years after abdicating from the Holy Roman Empire which he had created.
1832
The New Watercolour Society was established.
October 1940
164 people died in a single bombing raid on Stoke Newington in London, fifty of them when their shelter was flooded as a bomb hit a water main.
2 January 1492
At the battle of Granada in Spain (actually the climax of a three-week siege) Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain defeated the Moors. They expelled the Jews the same year.
January 1805
The Eclectic Review, a Dissenting magazine, began publication in London; it ran until December 1868.
1969
The Divorce Act made divorce easier to obtain; it granted divorce automatically after five years' separation, and introduced the concept of incompatibility. It came fully into operation only in 1971.
11 October 1819
The Theatre Royal , Bury St Edmunds, owned by its architect, William Wilkins , opened as a state-of-the-art modern theatre.
1604
James I published Counterblaste to Tobacco. The king describes smoking as loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.
4 July 1996
A Defamation Act of this date, repealing and amending earlier British acts, has been later attacked as inviting censorship by private interests: a sedition law for millionaires,
Monbiot, George. “The main threat to free speech is legal”. Guardian Weekly, p. 24.
24
because of the huge figures exacted in...
1860
Two French professors of medicine and a prominent chemist published scientific proof that alcohol passed through the body essentially unchanged and therefore provided no nutritional benefits.