Curious, quirky, cool #1

Fun stories of women from history

Often in my reading and research, I come across stories that delight me and I want to share, but it may not fit into a longer piece or whatever I’m writing at the moment. Why wait for the perfect moment? Please enjoy these quirky, curious and cool snippets of women’s history that show what we know, deep in our hearts: that women have been smart, feisty and independent for centuries.

In March, 1916 a woman named Jane Street devised a brilliant way to organize domestic workers, which is notoriously difficult to do, due to the isolating nature of the job that keeps them housebound with almost no free time. She placed ads in the paper advertising jobs with unusually high wages, through which she was able to meet women and collect their names to invite them to an organizing meeting. From that meeting, their housekeeper’s union was born. Whenever there was a newspaper advertisement for a maid, these “union maids” would respond and demand the same price—a high price—until the respective employer believed it was the going rate.

—Paraphrased from The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880-1917 by Meredith Tax

When the steamer Alida was sinking from her collision with the Fashion, a Kentucky girl of seventeen was standing on the guard, looking upon the confusion of the passengers, and occasionally turning and looking anxiously toward the shore. A gallant young man stepped up to her and offered to convey her safely to shore. "Thank you," replied the lady, "you need not trouble yourself; I am only waiting for the crowd to get out of the way, then I can take care of myself." Soon the crowd cleared the space, and the lady plunged into the water, and swam to the shore with ease, and without any apparent fear.

— This could totally be a scene from a historical romance novel, but it’s actually from The Complete History of Women’s Suffrage by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage

In 1850s France, a bunch of married and working-class girls formed the Vésuviennes, a “fiery bunch” of women who demanded equality for women. They took their name from Mount Vesuvius—“like lava, so long held back that it must at last pour out.” They wore military-style hats and carried out drills under the leadership of a woman with a weapon. Their agenda was simple—and has still not been attained: Military service for women on the same terms as men, the right of women to wear men’s dress, legal equality for women with men, complete domestic equality between men and women.

—Paraphrased from The Women’s History of the Modern World: How Radicals, Rebels, and Everywomen Revolutionized the Last 200 Years by Rosalind Miles