mouseofhell

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I've read the Reviers and numerous books on history, 500 years of fighting and turmoil, once we're Independent I expect nothing less in the Borders

When Woman of the Day Josephine Butler, born OTD in 1828 in Milfield, Northumberland, died in 1906 at the age of 78, Millicent Fawcett hailed her as "the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century". For good reason. Josephine, who helped to prove that it was possible to openly buy a 13 year old girl for five quid, actively campaigned for the protection of women and children for forty years. Her determination was prompted by the tragic death of her five-year-old daughter Eva in 1864. "I became possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth and find some pain keener than my own…and to say (as I now knew I could) to afflicted people, 'I understand. I, too, have suffered.'" She channelled her grief into working with "fallen women," and those confined to workhouses in Liverpool. That included opening her own home so that they could recover from the brutal “treatments” meted out to them, but she soon found herself campaigning tirelessly against prostitution and trafficking of women and girls. To do so, she also had to expose the double standards so prevalent in Victorian times. "It is a fact, that numbers even of moral and religious people have permitted themselves to accept and condone in man what is fiercely condemned in woman." In return, she was vilified, slandered, jeered, threatened, and physically attacked for challenging powerful interests: politicians, clergy, police, doctors, pimps, and brothel-keepers. The hostility was both widespread and intense. An MP publicly declared her “worse than the prostitutes.” The London Daily News accused her of being “discontented in [her] own home” and pursuing “a hobby too nasty to mention.” A journalist called her “an indecent maenad, a shrieking sister, frenzied, unsexed, and utterly without shame.” The national press either ignored her work or sneered at it, adding to the social stigma. These days, she’d be accused of being “untoward about paedophiles.” First, Josephine led the major national (and later, international) campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts, the state-sanctioned abuse of any woman or girl found anywhere in the vicinity of British Army and Royal Navy bases, and suspected of being prostitutes. No evidence needed. Just a policeman’s word. The legislation tried to control the spread of STIs in the Army and Royal Navy, not by curbing the behaviour of men but by controlling women. If the male magistrate agreed with the policeman’s suspicion, the woman was subjected to painful and intrusive internal examination with a steel instrument: a procedure Josephine called “steel rape”. If the woman refused, she was imprisoned and sentenced to hard labour. If she complied and was found to have an STI, she was confined to a “lock hospital” against her will until cured. If she complied but was clear of any infection, her name and reputation were shredded anyway and "the Acts had the effect of turning them to prostitution by barring respectable ways of life to them". In case you think women needed to behave in a salacious manner to attract attention, I should point out that Elizabeth Burley of Dover, a respectable woman, attempted suicide in 1881 after she was hounded and harassed by the police under the Acts, fuelling public outrage and petitions. But I digress. It took Josephine nearly seventeen years (with support from Florence Nightingale), plus arduous journeys of over 3700 miles across the country, and almost a hundred meetings, to deliver a vivid but factual description of steel rape to working-class men, but she succeeded in having the Acts suspended by 1884 and fully repealed in 1886. "It is well that we should understand clearly the illegal character of the Acts we oppose... when it comes to a matter of such awful seriousness as that of a woman’s honour... it is an awful thing to put the accusation in the power of the executive — that executive being the secret police..." Along the way, she also endured men throwing cow dung at her, smashing the windows of her hotel rooms, threatening to burn down a building while she was inside speaking, besieging her hotel with the result that she had to escape through a back window. She had to hide in a grocer’s cellar, book hotels in false names, dodge rocks hurled by hecklers, and endure male medical students in Glasgow barking, mewing, crowing and whistling to drown out her voice. Nothing arouses the fury of some men more than a woman who stands between them and their prey. But you really want to know how Josephine exposed the trade in girls under the age of 13, don’t you? Part 2 of this “distinguished Englishwoman’s” story will follow tomorrow, but for now, I leave you with this thought from her. "Attempted modifications of an essential evil always fail."

While Brian Boru was High King of Ireland 🇮🇪 from 1002 AD, the Irish language was also dominant in the Gaelic kingdom of Scotland The Gael, Coinneach mac Dhuibh, was the King of Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 at this time.

I despair at bampots like this , idiotic nonsense 🤡

Warkworth, Northumberland, on a late spring evening.

Just 1000 views away from having my 7th 100k+ view video… I’ve taken to seeing this as a measure of success - so it’d be wonderful to add it to the pile! 🌟

This whole project has been a car crash in slow motion. Looks like it finally crashed. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Enough games, Scotland needs a united socialist party to stand up to war, poverty, and decline. Time to put the grown-ups in charge.