Can I tell you about my great nan?

[spiritmum]

She grew up very poor in East London in an Irish immigrant family. During the Suffragette movement she chained herself to the railings at Downing St. My mum isn't sure if she did this on her own out of inspiration or if she was part of the movement; she did have a friend who was from the 'class above' her but we don't know that much about their friendship. We don't know if she was jailed but it could be that great-nan didn't tell anyone, particularly given how cruelly the women were treated.

Later on great-nan used to go collecting for the poor in her community. If someone needed money to pay the doctor, or for rent or food or if they had a new baby, she would go out and collect money to help them - apparently she dressed very well and didn't look like she came from where she did, IYSWIM. Anyway, some boys were caught begging and they lied and siad they were doing it for great-nan, so she was arrested and brought to trial. Everyone from her community turned out to attend the trial in their best clothes, and all the children stayed off school. Not only was she acquitted, she was given a special license to collect for her community.

According to my mum she was polite to men, but didn't really acknowledge them at all and didn't talk to them very much, even though she was married with sons.

I wish I'd known her. My nan -her daughter - was very much like her I think, she was a cleaner in a big factory but got herself a degree with the OU in engineering.

She sounds fab.
A little like my nan in attitude - men were fine, had their uses, but that's as far as it went.
She also took in the child of her unmarried friend. Kind of 'hid' him among her own big family, and returned him once friend was respectably married. This is the Ireland of the 40's, btw. We never knew this til her funeral, her friend who was still alive told us the tale.

How fabulous! You have a lot to be proud of her for!

Thank you everyone! . I'm trying to find out as much as I can about her from my mum so I can write it all down for the dc.

Wukter, great what women do for each other, isn't it?

That's heart warming stuff.

I keep meaning to write down lots about my Godmother while I have the chance (she's 90). Fascinating life - her Dad was a miner who was thrown out of his tied cottage, with wife and kids, for daring to stand for the council for Labour (mine owner was Tory). Her Dad ended up leader of Manchester council and her brother the youngest MP in the House of Commons.

Meanwhile she and her mother went door to door collecting money for the first Marie Stopes birth control clinic in Manchester - people spat in their faces it was such an outrageous idea, even though only for married women (they used to give unmarried women a wedding ring to wear otherwise the docs would turn them away).

In the late 30s, many of her friends inc. boyfriend went off to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil war. Chamberlain was such an appeaser the boys weren't allowed back in this country on their return - they had to be smuggled in with help from my Godmother and other friends. I think everyone realised how wrong appeasement had been when the Germans invaded Poland and we had to go to war...

Oh, and her twin sister had a stillbirth during WW2. She was sent home from hospital, on the bus (no petrol for private cars, blackout in force), with the baby in a cardboard box. (Happily went on to have two other children.)

Oh, and she says this myth about people being healthier under rationing is nonsense spouted by people who weren't there. Mothers of babies who were at home were starving, as they weren't in the factories hence didn't get fed in the British canteens.

What an amazing woman.
So many women are absolutely bloody amazing. (as are some men of course, but there's something extra amazing about the toughness and resilience and self sacrifice of women imo)

Wow - you have feminism in your genes!

Are you researching the family tree? You might be able to find some newspaper articles or some arrest records!

If you donate something to Rosa - the UK fund for women and girls then you could tell her story on their website.

How wonderful.

Can I tell you a little about my great grandmother too?

I have only one memory of her, a snow white-haired woman who sang a lullaby to me and wore a blue dress. I was nearly 2. She was 93. She died a few weeks later.

She was one of fourteen children, her 5 sisters died in infancy and 1 of her brothers. Most from tuberculosis. She grew up in a 2 bed pit house in South Derbyshire and her 7 brothers all worked in the mines from age 10. She was fortunate enough to go to school and when the first world war broke out, she trained to be a community midwife, delivering hundreds of babies throughout her life.

She was roundly chastised by her mother for refusing to marry as soon as she was able and when she eventually did marry she was nearing 40 and refused to give up work. She carried on delivering babies through 3 of her own pregnancies. Her firstborn was my grandfather. Her second born a girl who died suddenly aged 3 (cause of death 'choking on a fishbone') and another son, my great Uncle who was born with Down's Syndrome. She was advised to send him away to a home and told it would be kinder not to try and nurture him as he would never even walk or talk. She took him home and loved him and cared for him for almost 50 years. He walked and talked just fine btw.

When her youngest was only a few years old her husband, my great grandfather was killed in a pit collapse caused by shoddy equipment. With no unions and no representation, she had to fight for any pension or insurance to help her raise two young children, one with Down's. The community rallied round and raised legal fees and after a 3 year battle, they awarded her a pitiful £300 to last her for the rest of her life. My grandfather's pension was never released.

She lived for another 28 years and campaigned tirelessly, was very involved in the start of the miners' unions, marched and petitioned, wrote letter after letter. She held local Labour meetings in her front room, she donated the paltry sum of £300 she had been awarded on her dh's death to charity. She died penniless but never, ever asked for money from a single soul. We found out after her death that not a tradesman or shopkeeper in the area ever charged her a penny. She had delivered half of the community's babies, including the shopkeepers and tradesmen and worked so hard to improve the life of those around her that she was kept into her old age by the people around her. She was a proud and wonderful woman I think.

I have all of her letters and a few treasured photographs of her. In one she is holding her baby daughter. I am the spitting image of her and can only hope to be half the woman she was.

Named, that's a very impressive and moving story. What a fantastic woman - and what a great community.

Named and Edam, such amazing stories. We owe so much to these women, don't we?

My great grandad was in the Navy, first the Merchant and then the Australian Navy because that's where he was when war broke out. All his money got paid directly to him so my great-nan had to wait until he got shore leave and came home to give it to her. She took a job working in a cooper factory fixing the metal bands onto barrels, a job she carried on during WW2.

Thank you, Tabouleh, for that link - I have a spirituality website for mums and I've been looking for a women's organisation to make a donation to for each course I sell - that looks like exactly what I've been looking for. I'm not exactly researching the family tree at the moment, just trying to find out what I can about the women on my mums' side of the family, but looking at records is a good idea, I think I will do that.

These stories are amzing.

< hijack - I would like a link to your site Spritmum, if you don't mind>

These stories are inspiring and it is such a shame that they are as all the work of women is - word of mouth, from woman to woman, and never properly lauded.

Hi, wukter, thank you, it's very much in its infancy and I will be building the content more once the dcs are back at school.

www.spiritmums.com (I do have an ad on classifieds too so am not advertising myself for free!)

Colditz, it did occur to me that between all of us on mnet we could come up with a book about all these amazing women. Get their stories recorded before they are forgotten.

Thanks Spiritmum I will check it out