Historical Heroines
Page 6
Her efforts would be dramatically stalled by the onset of the Fourth Arab-Israeli War in 6 October 1973, when Egypt (led by President Anwar el-Sadat) and Syria launched a joint surprise attack on the fledgling state on the most holy date in the Jewish calendar: Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, when most members of the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) would be off duty. Iraq and Jordan would also join in the fight against Israel, which swiftly fought back. The United Nations organised a ceasefire on 25 October.
Israel hadn’t been prepared and suffered heavy losses: Golda took the blame and eventually stepped down in April 1974 to be succeeded by Yitzhak Rabin. She died in Jerusalem on 8 December 1978.
Gorgo (AD 508/518?–?)
The second of the Spartan women featured in this book is Gorgo. We don’t know much about her, but like Aspasia the fact we know about her at all speaks volumes.
Daughter of Cleomenes I, King of Sparta, she would have been raised at her father’s court and been accomplished in singing and dancing. Spartan women had a much better deal than their Athenian counterparts. They had greater freedoms, could have an education and own land. They didn’t usually marry until they were between 18 and 20 years old and they could inherit.
Gorgo married her father’s half-brother (making him her half-uncle) King Leonidas I. Together they had a son, Pleistarchus, co-King of Sparta from 480 BC to his death in 458 BC. According to Plutarch, ‘When asked by a woman from Attica, “Why are you Spartan women the only ones who can rule men?”, she said: “Because we are also the only ones who give birth to men.”’
According to Herodotus, Gorgo was born either in 518 or 508 BC; we don’t know when she died but it’s likely she had married Leonidas by 490 BC and was still alive when he died at Thermopylae in 480 BC alongside his famous and, if Hollywood is anything to go by, incredibly fit 300 warriors.
Wise and politically astute, both her father and her husband took her advice on board. That Herodotus mentions her being present at her father’s diplomatic meetings is even more extraordinary considering she was female. She outsmarted the Persians by working out a secret code sent on a writing tablet (not the Apple or MacBook variety) that had been cleverly covered with melted wax.
She must have indeed been a great woman of note, although after her husband’s death, she disappears from history. Just think how many women like Gorgo lived – but died in obscurity and we know nothing of them.
Grace Humiston (17 September 1867–16 July 1948)
When you type Grace Humiston into a search engine, a gratifying number of pages appear about her life as a private investigator. It’s a shame though that the name dominating these searches is ‘Mrs Sherlock Holmes’, a nickname bestowed by the press. Grace’s accomplishments should be enough without being subsumed as an appendage to a fictional male hero.
She graduated from the New York School of Law in 1904, no mean feat for a woman during the Edwardian era. That was the least of her achievements. She was a passionate activist for the poor and marginalised, especially immigrants, and set up a legal agency called the People’s Law Firm, providing pro bono services.
Like a legal superhero she rooted out corruption, espionage, murder and slavery. After being asked to investigate several disappearances of immigrants, she followed a lead that took her to a ring of nasty forced labour camps in the South. The immigrants had been enticed to come and then forced to stay. Incognito, she risked visiting these camps, sometimes in disguise, to uncover the truth. Her work led to her being made the first female Special Assistant US Attorney giving her the power to prosecute the people involved.
Grace also helped many wrongfully convicted people, saving them from Death Row. In 1916 she helped Charles Stielow, who had been sentenced to death after some damning evidence. With just 40 minutes until he was scheduled to die, Grace and her team were able to get a stay of execution giving them the time to find the real killer. We’ve seen this type of story played out ad nauseam on formulaic TV shows, but this was the real deal and achieved by an Edwardian woman no less.
Her most famous case involved the disappearance of Ruth Cruger. This 18-year-old girl went missing on 13 February 1917, after taking her ice skates to be mended at a motorcycle repair shop run by Alfredo Cocchi. Despite a public campaign, the police failed to find her and claimed that she was immoral and had run off. Enraged, Ruth’s father hired Grace to pick up their slack. She was convinced that the young woman had been murdered and her body hidden in the city. They discovered that Cocchi had a rap sheet for assault on women and had conveniently run away to Italy. His wife refused to let Grace dig up their cellar so Grace got permission to dig up the sidewalk just outside the shop on health and safety grounds. Lo and behold some of Ruth’s personal items were found. After that there was no impediment to digging up the cellar revealing Ruth’s body.
Grace then went after the NYPD for negligence and corruption – it was quite the embarrassment for the men in blue. Crucially the case undermined prevalent attitudes that all missing girls were of bad character and had run away to a life of shame. She went on to fight campaigns for missing girls and the slipshod way their cases were treated.
Despite her fame and the press coverage garnered during this time, Grace faded into obscurity. An investigation in 1917 accusing some soldiers of abusing women backfired and became a scandal. During the First World War there was strong nationalist fervour and it was not the ideal time to level accusations at the army. The public took against her and the army savagely kicked her off the pedestal that they had put her on so recently. She carried on supporting causes but her name was no longer respected and her own story became as neglected and forgotten as the missing girls she had tried to save.
Gráinne Ní Mháille, aka Grace O’Malley, Queen of Umail and the Pirate Queen of Ireland (c. 1530–1603)
The sixteenth century saw the rise of two queens, both fearless, ruthless and awe-inspiring – you would not want to mess with either of these formidable women.
They were Queen Elizabeth I and, the relatively unknown, Grace O’Malley, chieftain of the west coast of Ireland. Tensions between the Gaelic Irish and the English would bring those two women face to face.
Grace’s tenacious spirit was evident from a young age. When her father, chieftain of the kingdom of Umhall, banned her from sailing with him on a trading expedition, she refused to take no for an answer. Her mother wrung her hands and warned her wayward daughter that her long hair would get trapped in the ropes. Grace responded by chopping off her hair and boarding the merchant ship – problem solved. This wasn’t just an isolated teenage transgression; this was a sign of the fierce, independent women she would become – from teen to OAP rebellion.
Grace O’Malley was the sort of woman you admire but may not cosy up with. She was of the Enid Blyton and games teacher ilk – the pull yourself up by the boot straps and get on with it type. Swashbuckling tales and legends abound about Grace, such as one about a sea battle where she admonishes her son to stop cowardly hiding behind her petticoats whilst she brandishes swords and fury. She wasn’t a fan of maternity leave either, as just one day after giving birth on her ship she took up arms to defend it before berating useless men who couldn’t let her have one day off without needing her.
She was a fiercely protective mother hen protecting not just her own children but also her vast brood of clansmen. Gaelic Ireland was disintegrating and being swallowed up by Tudor England. The clans that had enjoyed autonomy were fighting the English, fighting each other or giving in and swearing fealty to Henry VIII as their king in return for a title and land.
Grace’s family being of the same tough bootstrap genes was disgusted by those who appeased the English and when the patriarchal Gaelic system tried to stop Grace inheriting her father’s ships, she soon put paid to their misogynistic nonsense by showing her fearsome mettle.
She was in charge of hundreds of men and a fleet of ships as well as commanding a land army to protect her territory from the English. In a high
ly successful highway robbery of the seas, her men would demand ‘tax’ from ships that sailed in their waters. Refusal turned the seawater red, earning her such a fearsome reputation that the English decided it was time to deal with the Gaelic Pirate Queen.
After laying siege to her castle in Rockfleet in 1574, the English soon turned tail and ran after she chased them off. They now saw her as a serious threat to the anglicising of Ireland and their hope for a shiny new green land. Sir Richard Bingham, the English governor of Connaugh, was more tenacious and succeeded in taking her castle, cattle and basically making a rather dangerous nuisance of himself. So what do you do when middle management doesn’t listen? You bypass them for the big boss. Grace took herself off to London to plead her case to Queen Elizabeth I, a bold move as she was a wanted pirate facing a gruesome execution from a queen who was not known for her forgiving nature.
Grace was a canny lass and could play court politics with the best of them, and somehow persuaded the good queen to order her castle and lands be handed back to her and to legitimise her seafaring ‘business’. There may have been some agreement that Grace would help keep the even more ‘annoying’ Spanish at bay, but, as ever, there are few records left to say exactly what went on.
Sources claim that Grace realised quite correctly that her new pal Elizabeth was likely to renege on the deal. However, Grace managed to live to a ripe old age and died in around 1603 in Rockfleet Castle. Her legend continues to this day.
Gracia Mendes Nasi (1510–69)
Dona Gracia, known as ‘La Señora’, was an immensely wealthy Jewish woman who lived during the European Renaissance. Her inspirational story is one of political intrigue, religious freedom and fortune. She is remembered as a ‘Saviour of the Jews’ and was arguably one of the richest women in the world at the time.
Her Jewish noble family were originally from Aragon, Spain, with the surname ‘Nasi’, Hebrew for ‘prince’. Upon being thrown out of the country in 1492 by Catholic Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, they were forcibly baptised in Portugal in around 1497. As a ‘Conversos’, or ‘Marranos’, ‘de Luna’ would be their Christian name and Beatrice was born in 1510.
In 1528, in a big, public and very Catholic wedding, Beatrice married fellow Converso Francisco Mendes Benveniste, a hugely prosperous international gem and spice merchant in Lisbon. They would have a secret Jewish ceremony later. He died in 1535, leaving her with their 5-year-old daughter Reyna and half of his huge fortune.
Shortly afterwards, on May 23 1536, the Pope established a Portuguese Inquisition, based on the terrifying Spanish version. This was an absolute disaster for families like the Mendes and Nasis who whilst outwardly conforming to Catholic traditions, secretly practised Judaism. If found out, their fortunes would be confiscated and their lives put at grave risk.
Beatrice promptly upped sticks, took the young Reyna and her own sister Brianda and fled to Antwerp (then part of Flanders) to join Diogo Mendes, Francisco’s brother and business partner, who had expanded the family fortune into the banking industry. Beatrice would use the money business to help other Jewish Conversos escape from Portugal, ingeniously filtering their money through a secret financial network, enabling them to start new lives elsewhere. It’s likely that her status as a widow gave her independence, a bonus she wasn’t prepared to give up. She never remarried.
Her sister Brianda, however, went on to marry Diogo and when he died, he also left half his fortune to Beatrice, making her a hugely wealthy, independent Jewish woman. Whilst his actions say much for his respect for Beatrice’s business acumen, it really put the cat amongst the pigeons between the sisters.
Back to the Inquisition, made up of a tricky bunch of religious fanatics, which had extended its long tentacles into Spanish-owned Antwerp, home of the Mendes family as well as many other Jewish Conversos. Francisco might very well have been dead and buried, but it wasn’t going to stop them pursuing him for pretending to be a Catholic whilst hiding his true Jewish roots. Of course they also wanted to get their grubby little hands on his fortune but they hadn’t reckoned with the brains of Beatrice. She ‘loaned’ a huge amount of cash to Emperor Charles V to keep him happy. Then of course, there were the fortune hunters out for daughter Reyna’s hand in marriage.
It was time to flee, once again, this time to Venice and then in time to the Duchy of Ferrara, where they could live freely as Jews with other Conversos from Portugal.
As such, Beatrice felt secure enough to change her name to Dona Gracia Nasi, ‘Gracia’ the Hebrew name for Hannah (meaning ‘grace’) and Nasi (meaning ‘prince’). From her new home she would use her considerable wealth and contacts to continue to rescue fellow Jews from the claws of the Inquisition and get them out of Portugal. She was also responsible for the eight-month boycott of the Italian port of Ancona, after Jewish merchants were captured, tortured and burned there, and some sold into slavery. She also paid for Hebrew books, including the Bible, to be printed in Spanish, much easier for the Conversos to use.
She would return to Venice before moving once more to Constantinople where she became a leading patron of the Jewish community, establishing a yeshiva (a Jewish seminary for men), synagogue, schools and hospitals. She also continued the family business, trading goods with her own fleet of ships. La Señora died in 1569.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (14 June 1811–1 July 1896)
It’s impossible to view Harriet’s life without considering the collective influence of her liberal family, who symbolised a shining light in an era of Civil War, slavery and social unrest.
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut on 14 June 1811, she was one of nine children born to preacher Lyman Beecher and Roxanna Foote Beecher. (Another three children were added to the mix when, following the death of Roxanna, Lyman married again.)
The household was big on education; all of Harriet’s seven brothers became ministers; her sister Isabella was an important part of the burgeoning women’s rights movement, organising the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1871. Together with her husband, Isabella was also integral in pushing through a Connecticut piece of legislation in 1877 which gave married women the same rights as their husbands.
Harriet’s other sister Catharine was a teacher at Hartford Female Seminary, a progressive school in Connecticut (Harriet attended from the age of 13), which believed in academic education for girls as opposed to equipping them with more traditional feminine accomplishments. Catharine also established schools in Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin.
Harriet herself published over thirty books, fiction, non-fiction, essays and poems. Her most famous publication is Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, which played an important part in fuelling the antislavery fervour which led to the eventual abolishment of slavery in the US. Based on the accounts of escaped slaves including Josiah Henson, its first instalment was published in the anti-slavery newspaper, the National Era, on 5 June 1851. It was then published as a two-volume book the following year and was a best seller. In its first year, 300,000 copies sold in the US and 1.5 million in Britain.
Harriet established schools for slaves and supported the Underground Railroad – the secret network used to help African American slaves to escape into free states or Canada. At the outbreak of the Civil War she travelled to Washington DC and met Abraham Lincoln at the White House, encouraging him to move swiftly to end slavery. Family legend has it that Mr Lincoln, referring to the war between the North and the South (12 April 1861–9 May 1865), said to her: ‘So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.’
She married Calvin Stowe, a professor of theology who taught at Andover Theological Seminary between 1853 and 1864. An outbreak of cholera killed their youngest son Samuel Charles in 1849; their third son Henry drowned, fourth son Frederick disappeared on his way to California and daughter Georgiana died from a morphine-addiction related illness. Harriet died in Hartford, Connecticut on 1 July 1896 at the age of 85.
Hatsh
epsut (1508–1458 BC)
The second female pharaoh (Sobekneferu was the first; fourteen centuries after Hatshepsut, Cleopatra would be the third and last), Hatshepsut (her name means ‘foremost of noblewomen’) was the longest reigning (twenty-two years) Queen of Egypt.
She became queen when she married her half-brother Thutmose II, the son of her father and one of his wives. Whilst they had a daughter together, Neferure, on her brother’s death, the throne went to Thutmose III, Thutmose II’s son with another of his wives, and Hatshepsut became regent. She appointed herself co-ruler three years later effectively becoming a pharaoh in her own right as a woman.
A brilliant political operator, she would manipulate her image to suit her ends, having herself depicted as a strong-bearded and muscled male in various images and statues and reverting to a female form when that was more beneficial to her requirements. However, following her death, Thutmose III vandalised, defaced (by chiselling off her name) and destroyed many of her statues, probably in an effort to de-legitimise her role as a female ruler or allow himself to take the credit for her successes.
During her reign, the temple at Deir el-Bahri was constructed and she organised a hugely successful trading trip to Punt, probably located between today’s Ethiopia and Sudan. She is buried in the Valley of Kings. Her mummy, discovered in 2007 and now kept in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, revealed that she was overweight, probably had diabetes, had bald patches and wore black and red nail varnish.