Morning, Clunkers!
On this day in 1707, the Royal Navy lost four warships and between 1,400 and 2,000 sailors in severe weather off the Isles of Scilly. It is one of the worst maritime disasters in British naval history. The ships were under the command of Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovell and it was later determined that the main cause of the disaster was the navigators' inability to accurately calculate their positions. The wrecks remained undiscovered until 1967 when a Royal Naval Auxiliary minesweeper found the them. I’ll leave these here 💐
The Blantyre mining disaster in South Lanarkshire also took place on this day in 1877. The problem was, once again, firedamp, a highly flammable form of methane. Blasting and naked flames had been allowed in the mine. The accident killed 207 miners (including a boy of 11) and left 92 women widowed and 250 fatherless children. I’ll just leave these here too 💐
In 1919, Doris Lessing - author, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize laureate - was born in Iran. Her body of work included the feminist classic The Golden Notebook (although she did not consider it so). She was out shopping for groceries when she was awarded the Nobel Prize - she was 88 at the time - and arrived home to find a gaggle of journalists on her doorstep. “Oh Christ”, she exclaimed, “I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all. It's a royal flush!” Then she went indoors and calmly put all the groceries away. As you do when you've just won the Nobel Prize. She lived to the grand old age of 94.
Hannah Mitchell died on this day in 1956 in Manchester aged 84. She had kicked against sex inequality from a very young age; her violent mother did not believe in education for girls and wanted her daughters married off very early to “farm lads” so they couldn’t bring shame to her door by having children outside wedlock.
In 1905, Hannah joined suffragettes Emmeline Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, Theresa Billington and the MP Keir Hardie outside the gates of Strangeways Prison to greet Christabel Pankhurst on her release from prison for doing a dry spit at a policeman (Christabel maintained it was “more of a pout”). Hannah also joined 150 women who tried to get into the House of Commons. She was one of the twenty who sneaked in successfully and she flourished a 'Votes for Women" banner smuggled in under her clothes. This, and another banner, were torn down by the police and ripped to shreds. One woman, who had stood on a chair to make a speech, was pulled to the ground and all of the women were manhandled out while male MPs watched and cheered.
Hannah campaigned steadfastly for all women to be given the vote - not just those who owned property - and she was instrumental in getting the message out to working class women in and around Lancashire. Her autobiography is entitled ‘The Hard Way Up’ and there is a blue plaque on the house where she lived with her family in Ashton-under-Lyne.
In 2019, same sex marriage was legalised and abortion decriminalised in Northern Ireland.
Here’s to you, Doris and Hannah 🥂