Mary Sophia Allen
Mary Sophia Allen OBE was a British woman who worked for women's rights. She is chiefly noted as one of the early leaders of the Women's Police Volunteers as well as for her involvement in far-right political activity. Allen was born to a well-to-do family in Cardiff in 1878, one of the ten children of Thomas Isaac Allen, Chief Superintendent of the Great Western Railway. Mary was close to her sisters, she was educated at home and at Princess Helena College. She left home at the age of thirty in 1908 after a disagreement with her father about women's suffrage. Allen joined Emmeline Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union, becoming an organiser in the South West, in Edinburgh, she was imprisoned three times in 1909 for smashing windows, including at the Inland Revenue and Liberal Club in Bristol and at the Home Office, twice went on hunger-strike, was force-fed on the last occasion, for which she was awarded a hunger-strike medal by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. Whilst in prison she, with others were sewing prison shirts secretly embroidered messages such as'Votes for Women' in the shirt tails.
At the outbreak of the First World War, militant suffragist activities ceased. Allen turned down an offer of work with a needlework guild and looked around for a more active occupation, she heard that a number of women were trying to set up a women's police force and, in 1914, she joined Nina Boyle's Women Police Volunteers. This was taken over by Margaret Damer Dawson in 1915 and renamed the Women Police Service, with Allen as second-in-command, they opened training schools in London and Bristol. They saw their role as dealing with women and children and rescuing women from "vice" and'white slavery'. Allen served at Grantham and Kingston upon Hull, overseeing the morals of women in the vicinity of army barracks, she went on to police munitions factories. She worked in London, where'khaki fever' was perceived as a problem. Child welfare work led the WPS to set up a home for mothers and babies. Allen was awarded the OBE for services during the War. Allen and Margaret Damer Dawson cropped their hair and assumed a severe military appearance, Allen wore her police uniform in public for the rest of her life.
In 1915 Dawson made a will which left everything to Allen. After the War, the WPS was expected to disband: the authorities saw no further need of that organisation; the Metropolitan Police set up its own women’s division and accused the WPS of masquerading as Metropolitan policewomen. Allen was arrested in 1921 for wearing a Metropolitan Police uniform before it was decided that her activities, which included producing dossiers on left-wing activists, were harmless and she should be allowed to continue wearing it; the WPS changed their name to the Women's Auxiliary Service and, with minor modifications to their uniform, carried on as before, setting up a further training school in Edinburgh. The Government appointed the Baird Committee to investigate the activities of the WAS. Despite no longer being recognised by the authorities, Allen was invited by the Government to travel to Germany and advise on the policing of the British Army of the Rhine; this semi-acceptance encouraged her to represent herself overseas as chief of the British women police.
She travelled in uniform and was welcomed by police authorities in Europe and in South and North America. In November 1922 Allen stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as an Independent Liberal candidate for Westminster St George's. During the General Strike of 1926 Allen was involved with the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies and turned her Women's Auxiliary Service over to the strike-breaking movement. Allen learned to fly, she attended international police congresses in Germany. She visited the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and Brazil, advising on the training of police women, she travelled to Egypt in 1936 on holiday, but was received as if sent by the police authorities in Britain. Her interest in combatting prostitution continued to be a preoccupation, she attended the League of Nations conference in Geneva on the traffic in women. Wherever she went, she was perceived by many as the leading British policewoman, she did nothing to discourage the impression, made contact with police chiefs and political leaders all over Europe.
The Home Office began to take an interest in Allen's activities in 1927. She was becoming an embarrassment and a nuisance to the Government because of her acceptance abroad as representing the British authorities, because she was mistaken for a Metropolitan police officer at home. Home Office records covering the period 1927–1934 reveal that she kept dossiers on people she suspected of activities connected with vice and white slavery, she was suspected of fascist activities, articles by or about her in national newspapers increased the Home Office surveillance. Allen met a number of fascist leaders abroad, including Eoin O'Duffy in Ireland, Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler and Göring in Germany. Although her links to Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists were unofficial until 1939, she engaged in various militant activities, including the formation of the Women's Reserve in 1933, intended to serve the country in the event of subversive forces taking over; the publicity for the Women's Reserve reveals her fascist sympathies, her fear
Thelma Eileen Jarrett
Thelma Eileen Jarrett MBE was an Australian Soroptimist. She was the first non-British person to become vice-president of the Federation of Soroptimist Clubs of Great Britain and Ireland, a position she held from 1969 to 1971, from 1972-73, she was its president. Jarrett was born in Sydney, died in Melbourne, Australia
Sybil Thorndike
Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike was an English actress who toured internationally in Shakespearean productions appearing with her husband Lewis Casson. Bernard Shaw wrote Saint Joan specially for her, she starred in it with great success, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1931, Companion of Honour in 1970. Thorndike was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, to Arthur John W. Thorndike and Agnes Macdonald Bowers, her father was a canon of Rochester Cathedral. She was educated at Rochester Grammar School for Girls, first trained as a classical pianist, making weekly visits to London for music lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, her childhood home in Rochester has been renamed after her. She gave her first public performance as a pianist at the age of 11, but in 1899 was forced to give up playing owing to piano cramp. At the instigation of her brother, the author Russell Thorndike, she trained as an actress under Elsie Fogerty at the Central School of Speech and Drama based at the Royal Albert Hall, London.
At the age of 21 she was offered her first professional contract: a tour of the United States with the actor-manager Ben Greet's company. She made her first stage appearance in Greet's 1904 production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, she went on to tour the U. S. in Shakespearean repertory for four years, playing some 112 roles. In 1908, she was spotted by the playwright George Bernard Shaw when she understudied the leading role of Candida in a tour directed by Shaw himself. There she met her future husband, Lewis Casson, they were married in December 1908, had four children: John, Christopher and Ann. She was survived by her four children and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren when she died, she joined Annie Horniman's company in Manchester, went to Broadway in 1910, joined the Old Vic Company in London, playing leading roles in Shakespeare and in other classic plays. After the First World War, she played Hecuba in Euripides The Trojan Women from 1920 to 1922 Thorndike and her husband starred in a British version of France's Grand Guignol directed by Jose Levy.
She returned to the stage in the title role of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan in 1924, written with her in mind. The production was a huge success, was revived until her final performance in the role in 1941. In 1927, Thorndike appeared in a short film of the cathedral scene from Saint Joan made in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. Both Thorndike and Casson were active members of the Labour Party, held strong left-wing views; when the 1926 General Strike stopped the first run of Saint Joan, they both still supported the strikers. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1931; as a pacifist, Thorndike gave readings for its benefit. During the Second World War and her husband toured in Shakespearean productions on behalf of the Council For the Encouragement of the Arts, before joining Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson in the Old Vic season at the New Theatre in 1944. At the end of the Second World War, it was discovered that Thorndike was on "The Black Book" or Sonderfahndungsliste G.
B. list of Britons. She continued to have success in such plays as N. C. Hunter's Waters of the Moon at the Haymarket in 1951–52, she undertook tours of Australia and South Africa, before playing again with Olivier in Uncle Vanya at Chichester in 1962. She made her farewell appearance with her husband in a London revival of Arsenic and Old Lace at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1966, her last stage performance was at the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead, Surrey, in There Was an Old Woman in 1969, the year Lewis Casson died. Her final acting appearance was in a TV drama The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens, with Anthony Hopkins in 1970; that same year she was made a Companion of Honour. She and her husband were one of the few couples, she was awarded an honorary degree from Manchester University in 1922 and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Oxford in 1966. Dame Sybil's ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1908, Thorndike married Lewis Casson, to whom she remained married until his death in 1969.
The couple had four children, Christopher and Ann. She made her film debut in Moth and Rust, appeared in a large number of silent films the next year, including versions of Bleak House, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Merchant of Venice and The Scarlet Letter, she appeared in a 1927 short film, made in the DeForest Phonofilm process, of her performing as Saint Joan in an excerpt of the play by George Bernard Shaw. Among her notable film roles were as Nurse Edith Cavell in Dawn, General Baines in Major Barbara, Mrs. Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby, Queen Victoria in Melba and as the Queen Dowager in The Prince and the Showgirl, for which she was awarded the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress, she made her last film appearance, in a version of Uncle Vanya, in 1963. Appearances included: 1960 — Sybil Thorndike appeared as the guest in This is Your Life 1965 — A Passage to India as Mrs. Moore 1969 — Join Jim Dale She appears in Tony Harrison's play Fram, played in the premiere by Sian Thomas.
Here she is resurrected from the dead to play herself in one of Gilbert Murray's plays. Her name is used in Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, citing her
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic and political activist. His influence on Western theatre and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond, he wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman and Saint Joan. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success and the Man in 1894. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political and religious ideas.
By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara, The Doctor's Dilemma and Caesar and Cleopatra. Shaw's expressed views were contentious, he courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as culpable, although not a republican, castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period. These stances had no lasting effect on his productivity as a dramatist. In 1938 he provided the screenplay for a filmed version of Pygmalion for which he received an Academy Award, his appetite for politics and controversy remained undiminished. In the final decade of his life he made fewer public statements, but continued to write prolifically until shortly before his death, aged ninety-four, having refused all state honours, including the Order of Merit in 1946. Since Shaw's death scholarly and critical opinion has varied about his works, but he has been rated as second only to Shakespeare among British dramatists.
The word Shavian has entered the language as encapsulating Shaw's ideas and his means of expressing them. Shaw was born at 3 Upper Synge Street in a lower-middle-class part of Dublin, he was the youngest child and only son of Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw. His elder siblings were Elinor Agnes; the Shaw family was of English descent and belonged to the dominant Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. His relatives secured him a sinecure in the civil service, from which he was pensioned off in the early 1850s. In 1852 he married Bessie Gurly. If, as Holroyd and others surmise, George's motives were mercenary he was disappointed, as Bessie brought him little of her family's money, she came to despise her ineffectual and drunken husband, with whom she shared what their son described as a life of "shabby-genteel poverty". By the time of Shaw's birth, his mother had become close to George John Lee, a flamboyant figure well known in Dublin's musical circles. Shaw retained a lifelong obsession; the young Shaw suffered no harshness from his mother, but he recalled that her indifference and lack of affection hurt him deeply.
He found solace in the music. Lee was a teacher of singing; the Shaws' house was filled with music, with frequent gatherings of singers and players. In 1862, Lee and the Shaws agreed to share a house, No. 1 Hatch Street, in an affluent part of Dublin, a country cottage on Dalkey Hill, overlooking Killiney Bay. Shaw, a sensitive boy, found the less salubrious parts of Dublin shocking and distressing, was happier at the cottage. Lee's students gave him books, which the young Shaw read avidly. Between 1865 and 1871, Shaw attended four schools, his experiences as a schoolboy left him disillusioned with formal education: "Schools and schoolmasters", he wrote, were "prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents." In October 1871 he left school to become a junior clerk in a Dublin firm of land agents, where he worked hard, rose to become head cashier. During this period, Shaw was known as "George Shaw". In June 1873, Lee left Dublin for London and never returned.
A fortnight Bessie followed him. Shaw's explanation of why his mother followed Lee was that without the la
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, United States. A major West Coast port city, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the San Francisco Bay Area, the eighth most populated city in California, the 45th largest city in the United States. With a population of 425,195 as of 2017, it serves as a trade center for the San Francisco Bay Area. An act to incorporate the city was passed on May 4, 1852, incorporation was approved on March 25, 1854, which made Oakland a city. Oakland is a charter city. Oakland's territory covers what was once a mosaic of California coastal terrace prairie, oak woodland, north coastal scrub, its land served as a rich resource when its hillside oak and redwood timber were logged to build San Francisco. Oakland's fertile flatland soils helped. In the late 1860s, Oakland was selected as the western terminal of the Transcontinental Railroad. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, many San Francisco citizens moved to Oakland, enlarging the city's population, increasing its housing stock and improving its infrastructure.
It continued to grow in the 20th century with its busy port, a thriving automobile manufacturing industry. The earliest known inhabitants were the Huchiun Indians; the Huchiun belonged to a linguistic grouping called the Ohlone. In Oakland, they were concentrated around Lake Merritt and Temescal Creek, a stream that enters the San Francisco Bay at Emeryville. In 1772, the area that became Oakland was colonized, with the rest of California, by Spanish settlers for the King of Spain. In the early 19th century, the Spanish crown granted the East Bay area to Luis María Peralta for his Rancho San Antonio; the grant was confirmed by the successor Mexican republic upon its independence from Spain. Upon his death in 1842, Peralta divided his land among his four sons. Most of Oakland fell within the shares given to Antonio Vicente; the portion of the parcel, now Oakland was called Encinal—Spanish for "oak grove"—due to the large oak forest that covered the area, which led to the city's name. During the 1850s—just as gold was discovered in California—Oakland started growing and developing because land was becoming too expensive in San Francisco.
The Chinese were struggling financially, as a result of the First Opium War, the Second Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion, so they began migrating to Oakland in an effort to provide for their families in China. However, the Chinese struggled to settle because they were discriminated against by the white community and their living quarters were burned down on several occasions; the majority of the Chinese migrants lived in unhealthy conditions in China and they had diseases, so plague spread into San Francisco though the Chinese were inspected for diseases upon their arrival to San Francisco. In 1851, three men—Horace Carpentier, Edson Adams, Andrew Moon—began developing what is now downtown Oakland. In 1852, the Town of Oakland became incorporated by the state legislature. During this time, Oakland had 75-100 inhabitants, two hotels, a wharf, two warehouses, only cattle trails. Two years on March 25, 1854, Oakland re-incorporated as the City of Oakland, with Horace Carpentier elected the first mayor, though a scandal ended his mayorship in less than a year.
The city and its environs grew with the railroads, becoming a major rail terminal in the late 1860s and 1870s. In 1868, the Central Pacific constructed the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point, the site of today's Port of Oakland. A number of horsecar and cable car lines were constructed in Oakland during the latter half of the 19th century; the first electric streetcar set out from Oakland to Berkeley in 1891, other lines were converted and added over the course of the 1890s. The various streetcar companies operating in Oakland were acquired by Francis "Borax" Smith and consolidated into what became known as the Key System, the predecessor of today's publicly owned AC Transit. Oakland was one of the worst affected cities in California, impacted by the plague epidemic. Quarantine measures were set in place at the Oakland ports requiring the authorities at the port to inspect the arriving vessels for the presence of infected rats. Quarantine authorities at these ports inspected over a thousand vessels per year for plague and yellow fever.
By 1908, over 5,000 people were detained in quarantine. Hunters were sent to poison the affected areas in Oakland and shoot the squirrels, but the eradication work was limited in its range because the State Board of Health and the United States Public Health Service were only allotted about $60,000 a year to eradicate the disease. During this period Oakland did not have sufficient health facilities, so some of the infected patients were treated at home; the State Board of Health along with Oakland advised physicians to promptly report any cases of infected patients. Yet, in 1919 it still resulted in a small epidemic of Pneumonic plague which killed a dozen people in Oakland; this started when a man killed a squirrel. After eating the squirrel, he fell ill four days and another household member contracted the plague; this in turn was passed on either indirectly to about a dozen others. The officials in Oakland acted by issuing death certificates to monitor the spread of plague. At the time of incorporation in 1852, Oaklan
1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état
The 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état – in the Communist era known as "Victorious February" – was an event late that February in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia, marking the onset of four decades of communist rule in the country. The coup's significance extended well beyond the state's boundaries as it was a clear marker along the well-advanced road to full-fledged Cold War; the event alarmed Western countries and helped spur quick adoption of the Marshall Plan, the creation of a state in West Germany, vigorous measures to keep communists out of power in France and Italy, steps toward mutual security that would, in little over a year, result in the establishment of NATO and the definitive drawing of the Iron Curtain until the Revolutions of 1989. In the aftermath of World War II, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was in a favourable position, its powerful influence on Czechoslovak politics since the 1920s, its clean wartime record and cooperation with non-Communist parties, its identification with the Soviet Union, one of the country's liberators, its determination to become the country's leading political force without alarming the West dovetailed with popular opposition to Nazi rule, the longing for real change that followed it, the new political realities of living within the Soviet orbit to produce a surge in membership from 40,000 in 1945 to 1.35 million in 1948.
Moreover, the Soviets viewed the country as a strategic prize: it bordered West Germany and boasted uranium deposits around Jáchymov. Nonetheless, party leader Klement Gottwald said in 1945 that "in spite of the favourable situation, the next goal is not soviets and socialism, but rather carrying out a thorough democratic national revolution", thereby linking his party to the Czechoslovak democratic tradition and to Czech nationalism by capitalizing on popular intense anti-German feelings. During the early postwar period, working with the other parties in a coalition called the National Front, the Communists kept up the appearance of being willing to work within the system. Thus, in the 1946 election, the KSČ won 38% of the vote; this was the best-ever performance by a European Communist party in a free election, was far more than the 22% won by their Hungarian counterparts the following year in the only other free and fair postwar election in the Soviet area of influence. President Edvard Beneš, not himself a Communist but amenable to cooperation with the Soviets, who hoped for restraint by the Allied powers, thus invited Gottwald to be prime minister.
Although the government still had a non-Communist majority, the KSČ had initial control over the police and armed forces, came to dominate other key ministries such as those dealing with propaganda, social welfare and agriculture. However, by the summer of 1947 the KSČ had alienated whole blocs of potential voters; the activities of the police—headed by Interior Minister Václav Nosek, a Communist—were acutely offensive to many citizens. The general expectation was; that September, at the first Cominform meeting, Andrei Zhdanov observed that Soviet victory had helped achieve "the complete victory of the working class over the bourgeoisie in every East European land except Czechoslovakia, where the power contest still remains undecided." This implied the KSČ should be accelerating its own efforts to take complete power. That notion would be reinforced during the Prague Spring, when party archives were opened and showed that Stalin gave up the whole idea of a parliamentary path for Czechoslovakia when the Communist parties of France and Italy stumbled in 1947 and 1948.
The KSČ's number-two leader, general secretary Rudolf Slánský, represented the KSČ at the meeting. He returned to Prague with a plan for the final seizure of power. Slánský remarked, "as in the international field, we have gone on the offensive on the domestic front as well." The KSČ pursued a two-pronged strategy. The party knew it had to maintain the façade of working within the electoral political system and was aware that a revolutionary coup would be unacceptable, it desired to gain an absolute majority at elections scheduled for 1948, but the fracturing of the left-wing coalition made this unrealistic. This pushed the party into extra-parliamentary action; the organization of "spontaneous" demonstrations to "express the will of the people" and continuous visits to parliament by workers' delegations were meant to ensure "mobilization of the masses". During the winter of 1947–48, both in the cabinet and in parliament tension between the Communists and their opponents led to bitter conflict.
Matters came to a head in February 1948, when Nosek illegally extended his powers by attempting to purge remaining non-Communist elements in the National Police Force. The security apparatus and police were being transformed into instruments of the KSČ, according to John Grenville, endangering basic civic freedoms. On 12 February, the non-Communists in the cabinet demanded punishment for the offending Communists in the government and an end to their supposed subversion. Nosek, backed by Gottwald, refused to yield, he and his fellow Co
Lucie Delarue-Mardrus
Lucie Delarue-Mardrus was a French journalist, novelist, sculptor and designer. She was a prolific writer. In France, she is best known for her poem beginning with the line "L'odeur de mon pays était dans une pomme" Her writings express her love of travel and her love for her native Normandy. L'Ex-voto, for example, describes the life and milieu of the fishermen of Honfleur at the opening of the twentieth century, she was married to the translator J. C. Mardrus from 1900 to 1915, she was involved in affairs with several women throughout her lifetime, she wrote extensively of lesbian love. In 1902-03 she wrote a series of love poems to the American writer and salon hostess Natalie Clifford Barney, published posthumously in 1957 as Nos secrètes amours, she depicted Barney in her 1930 novel, L'Ange et les Pervers, in which she said she "analyzed and described Natalie at length as well as the life into which she initiated me". The protagonist of the novel is a hermaphrodite named Marion who lives a double life, frequenting literary salons in female dress changing from skirt to trousers to attend gay soirées.
Barney appears as "Laurette Wells", a salon hostess who spends much of the novel trying to win back an ex-lover, loosely based on Barney's real-life attempts at regaining her relationship with her former lover, Renée Vivien. She was awarded the first recipient of the Renée Vivien prize for women poets in 1936. One admirer wrote stating in part, she sculpts, mounts to horse, loves a woman another, yet another. She was able to free herself from her husband and has never embarked on a second marriage or the conquest of another man." Livia, Anna. "Introduction: Lucie Delarue-Mardrus and the Phrenetic Harlequinade." Delarue-Mardrus, Lucie. Anna Livia; the Angel and the Perverts. New York: New York University Press. Pp. 1–60. ISBN 0-8147-5098-2. Souhami, Diana. Wild Girls: Paris and Art: The Lives and Loves of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-34324-8. Lucie Delarue-Mardus
![A circular, black and white logo with a style suggesting late Art Nouveau or early Art Deco. Soroptimist International describes it as follows: "The emblem consists of a circular disc on which the figure of a woman holds the banner 'Soroptimist' in uplifted arms, spreading sunrays from the background. [From] the banner on one side fall acorns and leaves of oak and on the other side, leaves of laurel. [The] word 'International' completes the outer circle."[1]](/wiki/File:Soroptimist_International_logo.png){kind=logo}
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