Development Of Women’s Concern For Humanity

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31597, 7 February 1968, Page 2

Development Of Women’s Concern For Humanity

Humanism had developed hand in hand with the improvement in the position of women, Mrs Doreen Grant told members of the Dickens Fellowship last evening. The fight for their own rights developed to a high degree women’s special qualities of compassion, understanding and endurance.

“The name of almost every woman history remembers is associated with the improvement in the position of women and a concern for humanity,” she said.

Mrs Grant was speaking at the fellowship’s dinner, held to celebrate the 156th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. Her topic was the move towards equality for women in the novelist’s lifetime.

“Deeply concerned as Dickens was over the dreadful conditions affecting such a large number of the population, he gave little indication in his writing that he was aware of the forces which were already working for the emancipation of women,” she said.

In England In his time, the average citizen regarded the question, of injustice to women with the same philosophical attitude with which he viewed the weather. There seemed -little anyone could do

to change it. Women of all classes in society had no legal rights. They were entirely subservient to their husbands, who were able to dispose of the property and earnings of their wives, beat them or desert them, without infringing any law of the land, she said.

Husbands could, in extreme cases, deprive women of their own children by giving, indenturing or willing them away.

Ln Dickens’s time there were some schools for girls, and better-class families employed governesses for their daughters. But the great majority of women received no

education. In 1870, the year of his death, an Education Act made it possible for ail children in England between the age of five and 12 to attend school. During the industrial boom, hundreds of thousands of women worked in the “sweat shops,” mills and factories of England, Europe, and America, for the lowest possible payments, to supplement the starvation wages of their menfolk.

They were over-worked, un-der-paid and appallingly housed, living in conditions of abject squalor, unable to read or write LEADERS EMERGE “Meanwhile, from among the better-educated middle classes, women pioneers in a variety of fields were beginning to emerge," she said. The prevailing complacent attitude to the inequalities women suffered was shaken by the Norton case in 1836. Carolyn Norton, a successful novelist, was forced to leave her worthless, violent husband, but found she had no legal rights in dealing with him. He “kidnapped” her children and refused to tell her where they were, divorced her on trumped-up charges, and claimed the considerable royalties on her books—which he was entitled to do. “Because Carolyn Norton was' a well-known figure in society and had plenty of fighting Irish blood in her veins, she waged a fierce battle to arouse public opinion. This campaign led to the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act (1870),

a milestone in the fights for women’s rights,” said Mrs Grant. The work of Florence Nightingale and her nurses in the Crimean War focussed the attention of the world on women. Her achievents shed an uncomfortable light on the status of single women, and made an enormous contribution to the raising of the standard of medical care. SINGLE WOMEN

Unless they were rich, single women of upper-class or middle-class.families could live as perpetual (and usually unwanted) guests in the homes of relatives; or they could be paid companions to other women or governesses to other women’s children. To help them in their plight, a group of women opened the first employment agency in London to find “white collar” jobs for women. One of the greatest humanitarians of the nineteenth century was Elizabeth Fry, a woman who devoted her life to improving the appalling conditions of prisons and convict ships. “AMONG THE NOBLEST” “The present humane treatment of offenders has gradually evolved during the last 150 years, but its beginning and its inspiration were the work of this one woman who had an abounding love, great strength of purpose and deep compassion. This must place her among the noblest and most practical social reformers of all time,” said Mrs Grant. Elizabeth Blackwell (America’s first woman doc-

tor), with unshakable courage, intelligence and diplomacy, forced open the locked doors of medicine for many thousands of scientifically gifted woman. She was also partly responsible for the opportunity for the first woman to take up medicine in England—Elizabeth Garret. Josephine Butler, who worked unceasingly to “ameliorate the lot of the prostitute” and to wipe out white-slave traffic, was regarded by some as in the same category as Florence Nightingale, Mrs Grant said.

“Dame Millicent Fawcett, a leader of the constitutional movement for women’s suffrage, said of Josephine Butler: ‘No other woman in bisti ry has had such far-reaching influences or effected so widespread a change in public opinion.' ” A lesser known woman, whose life was a protest against social evils, was Mother Emily Ayckbaum. She founded orphanages for foundling children, which were in striking contrast to the workhouses described by Dickens. She also founded the Community of the Sisters of the Church, who were responsible for establishing girls’ schools, including St Margaret’s College in Christchurch, New Zealand. HOUSING REFORMER

“Less renowned than she deserves to be was the housing reformer, Octavia Hill, a woman who was 100 years ahead of her time,” Mrs Grant said. “She contributed something original and lasting to social reform in housing, the provision of open spaces, cadet training, and Poor Law reform.”

Her achievement was the result of effort and ability in the face of personal poverty. These women of the nineteenth century shared Dickens’s concern for the underprivileged. Mrs Grant said she felt that if Dickens were alive today his writings would describe the surprising amount of unkindly criticism and lack of compassion rtlll displayed by many towards those suffering from some handicap, such as the mentally ill and rehabilitated prisoners. “And I am quite certain that Dickens would support wholeheartedly Human Rights Year (1968), in the hope that people the world over would soon enjoy equal justice, equal opportunity and equal dignity without discrimination,” said Mrs Grant.