WHEN WOMEN WERE SLAVES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20322, 2 February 1928, Page 11

WHEN WOMEN WERE SLAVES.

LIFE A HUNDRED TEARS AGO. Few moderns realise the extraordinary conditions under which all women lived a hundred and less than a hundred years ago. Mrs Oliver Straehey, better known perhaps as Ray Straehey the novelist, in a recent lecture on the rise of the women’s movement, gave a picture of life in the last century, when socially, politically, educationally, financially, and domestically, women of all classes were indeed no more than slaves (says the Westminster Gazette). UNLADYLIKE OCCUPATIONS. There was no public life for women, no occupations outside the homo save dressmaking and teaching as governess. But home life,' too, was incredibly restricted. In the country worn n could not go out anywhere alone, even down to the village. Footmen or maids were always in- attendance. Young . ladies were escorted by younger brothers. Playing the violin, swimming, skating were all unladylike occupations. Women were not allowed even to wear spectacles, and they had very little to read, whLt everything tvas censored by some male member of the family. They could not belong to libraries, they could not buy. books, because they had no iponey. THEIR PIN MONEY. This financial dependence of worßeii on husbands, fathers, or brothers was one of the most humiliating things women underwent. Young ladies had just enough pocketmoney to buy their friends little gifts at Christmas. Married women were allowed to run up bills to certain amounts for specific things known to their husbands. The idea of having money in their pockets to spend as they pleased, in short, to be as their husbands, was, in the words of Lord Fraser, al ‘ .5 on the subject in the House of Lords about 1840, “absolutely unnecessary.” Up to 1848 there was absolutely no education for women of any class save by the tutors who came to teach their brothers. Occasionally the eldest girl of a large family was given special ies-« sons, after which she set to work to educate her younger brothers and sisters, whether she had any aptitude for teaching or not. Aptitude was not even necessary for governesses, who were badly paid, treated as outcasts and servants, and who in many cases went mad at an early age. The first idea of helping these women was by starting lectures to improve their knowledge. These classes developed into Queen's College for Women. But the education given was that which woull now bo given to children of 12, elementary arithmetic, history, and grammar, so little dir, these governesses know. The fourteen earnest young women who started Girton College much later ; in the century nearly wrecked the higher education movement for women by one of them putting on tights in which to act Hamlet in a private performance at the college! The shock given to the authorities was immense. In 1874 a well-known -octor pronounced that higher education for women would make them incapable of childbearing, and Dr Garrett Anderson, the first woman doctor in England, did not - dare to refute the accusation, because half her supporters would have thought it most indelicate. Instead she turned off the matter by starting an agitation about . gymnasia for girls and open-air schools, games and sports, which diverted public interest. STORY OF MARY SOMERVILLE. The story of Mary Somerville, who became a famous astronomer and historian, is a most graphic illustration of the appalling difficulties intelligent women had to face. Mary Somerville discovered in a corner of a fashion paper an algebra problem. Her brother’s tutor refused to teach her the subject or to buy her a book on it (she could not buy one herself). Later she managed to get hold of one unknown to anyone, and learned it by candle-light in bed. The maid reported a waste of candles; this was stopped, but the child had learned it by heart and repeated it to herself for several years 'ntil she married and could continue her studies. SITTING BEHIND A SCREEN. The story of the two American women delegates to the Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London is amusing, but awful. The first day of the Congress was spent in discussing what should be done witK these first women delegates. They sat , with a screen round them. Then they were sent up to the gallery. But their chief, a man, squashed the Conventirn by going and sitting with them. So angry were the women when they got back to America that they founded the American Women’s Party.