Tell me about an amazing woman in history that I may not have heard about?

[AwfulMaureen]

There are LOADS of women in history who've done incredible things or had amazing careers but have been forgotten...like an amazing singer from the twenties/thirties who also worked as a prostitute and who wrote and sang some of the most shockingly filthy songs in addition to having a stunning voice.

She began singing professionally as a child having been singing on the street for money...she was offered work in bars. ...I love Lucille Bogan...WARNING...don't play the song in the link if the kids are around!

Tell me your favourite unknown women?

Hilary Heilbron, first woman judge.

Noramum, have just spent last hour reading about Lise Meitner - wow! Not only did she co-discover nuclear fission but she refused to use it to develop a bomb. So interesting, will have to discover more.....

Sophie Scholl, member of the German Resistance, executed with her brother in 1943 by the Nazis.
There is a biography of her, but it's not terribly well written IMO. She deserves better.

YY to some of my favourites already mentioned: Katherine Swynford, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Harriet Ann Jacobs and Mary Seacole.
Can't help feeling I'm forgetting someone!

I was going to go fro Grace Hopper, but she's already been mentioned, so I'll go for Stephanie "Steve" Shirley instead, whose autobiography I'm in the middle of just now. Arrived on Kindertransport, set up a women-only computer programming company till it was made illegal by the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act, and has also done a lot of work to support autism.

The Sophie Scholl film is excellent.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0084897/

Die Weisse Rose

Diana Barnato Walker

She flew with the ATA during the war and afterwards gained her commercial pilots licence. She was the first British woman to break the sound barrier.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Barnato_Walker

Ernestine Potowski Rose - C19 atheist, abolitionist and women's rights activist deserves to be better known. It's her 204th birthday tomorrow en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernestine_Rose

Mary Wollstonecraft, most definitely an early feminist. Ditto the wonderful Aphra Benn, even earlier.

There is however one thing that many/most of these women have in common, and that is that they were largely free from domestic chores, either through wealth or because they elected not to marry and had to the means to survive unmarried (whether through work or thanks to a private income).

Very many of them did not have children.

In that case, duchesse, I offer Hannah Mitchell, who was a genuine working class role model, and whose husband paid for her to be released from jail following imprisonment for her suffragette activities, basically because he wanted her back to cook his tea.

Vivan Maier

She worked as a nanny in 1950s and 60s New York and Chicago. When she died alone and in poverty it was found she'd left behind in a lock up 100,000 negatives of the most incredible street photography, that no one had ever seen.

Thankfully she is now being recognised and there is a touring exhibition and a couple of books published.

She might be the exception that proves the rule. Most working class women would have been so busy working / attending to their families that they had no time or energy to do anything else.

Rita Levi Montalcini, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for her discovery of nerve growth factor, was an Italian Senator, and died recently at the age of 103.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Levi-Montalcini

I've just discovered Vivian Maier too!

Loving this thread - some amazing women to research here.

Thanks all.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I take your point, bunnymother, but there was a surprising number of working-class women in the North West (and probably elsewhere, but this is the area I know best) in factories, mines etc who were very active in general working class activism and trade unionism as well as specific womens rights. The suffragist organisations also ran services to provide meals for these women and their families to allow the women to attend public meetings after work without having to go straight home and cook the tea. Will try to dig out some references, but there are very few web links, unfortunately.

Great thread. Thanks for the contributions. Days and days of reading to do...

if she hasn't already been mentioned Maria Santos Gorrostieta story here

I believe that the WSPU was one of the organisations that provided the food support as mentioned above, (though I can't find the book at the moment), which isn't to negate the problematic class elements of that organisation.

Other interesting figures in working class women's activism are Sylvia Pankhurst. though from a middle-class background herself, Esther Roper, from a working class background though a lesbian, so husband/children not relevant and Eva Gore-Booth, all of whom were a massive force in female participation in trade unionism.

Eva's sister was Constance Markiewicz, who was a huge figure in Irish Independence, as well as being the first women elected to the British Parliament, though she never took her seat.

Dr Virginia Apgar - had saved the lives of thousands of babies by noticing the early signs of life in newborn babies were vital in telling the outcomes for those babies in aneasthetised mothers. Until she developed the Apgar score (although it wasn't called that until about 10 years later) Drs were mostly concerned about the outcomes for the mothers so no one noticed the patterns among babies. Anyone born since the 50s in the Western world will have been given an Apgar score at 1 & 5 minutes after birth.

Also Betty Williams & Mairead Corrigan. Nobel peace prize winners after founding Women for Peace in Northern Ireland in the 70s after both were affected by the Troubles.

Great thread by the way. Hope it becomes a classic

I came on to post Mary Kingsley, saw NigellasDealer had done so first, but am going to add a bit about her. Neice of Charles Kingsley (author of The Water Babies), didn't get to be educated formally like her brother but taught herself at home. Became the carer for both her parents and when they died, used her inheritance to explore Africa alone and wrote two best-selling books about her travels.

To add someone new, don't think Elizabeth Gaskell has been mentioned yet - not as famous as her friend Charlotte Bronte, whose biography she wrote, but a fantastic novelist in her own right, writing about the social problems of the Victorian era - and though she isn't exactly working-class herself, she writes about the poor and working-class knowledgeably - she lived in Manchester for some time with her minister husband and this informed her writing.

Lucie Aubrac - she was in the French resistance and showed untold bravery to help her husband escape, also very much a feminist. Her book is short and well worth a read.

Most of the women mentioned who were black women involved in civil rights were working-class and had plenty of domestic duties, as were the women of the trade union and labour movements.