by Sue Corbett
Maria Montessori, educator, was born on August 31, 1870. She died on May 6, 1952, aged 81
EVA PERÓN
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CHARISMATIC FIRST LADY OF ARGENTINA WHOSE EFFORTS FOR THE POOR AND DISENFRANCHISED CULMINATED IN HER SOCIAL AID FUND
JULY 28, 1952
Señora Eva Perón, wife of the President of Argentina, whose death is reported on another page, was second only to her husband in power and influence in their country.
The republics of South America have in their brief histories abounded in men rising from obscurity like comets, to pass across the political horizon and to set again with equal speed. Señora Perón is the first woman to have had so spectacular a career in a part of the world where the tradition of feminine domesticity is still strong. True, she had a colourful personality, good looks, charm, and determination, but these gifts do not in themselves explain the hold she gained over her countrymen as well as her countrywomen, and though her marriage to the popular and forceful President of Argentina certainly contributed to her power, she was already a personality in her own right before her marriage. She thus remains something of an enigma, an enigma which her account of her political and social ideals published last year under the title La Razón de mi Vida, does little to resolve. Perhaps the secret of the influence of this young and attractive girl of humble origin, who could, while wrapped in furs and sparkling with diamonds, address the workers of Buenos Aires as one of themselves, was that they saw in her all their cherished ambitions and aspirations fulfilled. To them she was Cinderella in real life and if she could make the grade so could they.
Eva Maria Duarte was, according to Argentine works of reference, born at Junin in the province of Buenos Aires on May 7, 1922, of relatively humble stock. The facts of her early life are obscure, but she seems to have gone to the capital before she was 20 and, aided by striking good looks and a vivacious manner, to have made something of a career for herself on the stage and in the cinema. Greater success attended her as a radio artist, in which in a number of historical serials she was cast for the heroine, generally encouraging and comforting South American liberators whose fortunes were temporarily in eclipse. Thus for millions of Argentines she became “Señorita Radio” and so was one of the people of nation-wide popularity on whom Colonel Perón, then Minister of Labour and Welfare, called when he wanted to make a great appeal for a national fund to help the victims of the San Juan earthquake. The attraction was mutual and together they set out to win support.
When her husband fell from power in October, 1945, and was arrested, she it was above all others who roused the workers to paralyse the country until he was released and placed on the way to supreme power. When that was attained, she organized the women workers, made female suffrage a live issue, and was behind every step taken to lend aid to the aged, succour the children, and alleviate distress — especially if these things could be done in such a way as to flout the former ruling classes — the “oligarchy,” as Señora Perón called them. She had, indeed, little or no sympathy with those who sought salvation outside the ranks of “Peronismo.” The tangible results of her vast work as an organizer exist in the great social aid fund — an institution whose enormous financial resources have never been estimated and whose income and expenditure could not be audited. The fund became under her guidance the most important single influence in Argentine life. Every form of out-relief, children’s playgrounds, aid for earthquake victims, toys for destitute children, clothes for the needy — all were available under “Evita’s” banner, and this fact explains much of her power and popularity in her own country.
Her popularity, however, received a check last year, when her candidature for the Vice-Presidency caused such opposition in the Army that she felt obliged to announce over the radio, in a voice shaken with emotion, that she had taken the irrevocable decision to renounce the high honour by her own free will. For this her husband awarded her the Grand Extraordinary Peronista Medal, “in recognition of her noble gesture.” Her health was, in fact, already failing and last November she underwent a serious operation which led to a temporary recovery. She reappeared in public several times, but she was never able fully to resume her former activity. Masses for her recovery were said throughout Argentina, but it seemed unlikely that a fatal issue to her long illness could be far off. With her characteristic courage she accompanied her husband in the ceremonies of the inauguration of his second presidential term on June 4 and stood beside him in an open motor-car. This was her last public appearance.
Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina, was born on May 7, 1919. She died on July 26, 1952, aged 33
MARGARET BONDFIELD
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LABOUR MP WHO WAS BRITAIN’S FIRST WOMAN CABINET MINISTER
JUNE 18, 1953
By the death of the Right Hon Margaret Bondfield, C.H., which occurred on Tuesday in a nursing home at Sanderstead, Surrey, the British Labour movement loses one of its most notable women, a trade union organizer of idealistic and practical temper during almost half a century.
The loss is not the Labour movement’s only, for “Maggie” Bondfield was a woman of lovable temperament and unusually wide human sympathies. Though she was the first of her sex to attain Ministerial rank, her parliamentary career covered only six years in all. She was, first and foremost, a trade unionist rather than a politician, and the essential part of her work for what a generation ago was called social betterment was carried out elsewhere than at Westminster. The tribute to her energy and devotion was fully deserved when in 1923 she became the first woman chairman of the General Council of the TUC.
Margaret Grace Bondfield was born in humble circumstances at Chard, Somerset, on March 17, 1873, one of 11 children of a lace-maker. At the age of 13 she became a supply teacher to infants in a local board school. Two years later she left teaching and went to Brighton to serve in a colonial outfitter’s shop, and for the next 11 years she worked in various London and provincial shops. Conditions under which the majority of shop assistants worked in those days were hard. Hours — a 70-hour week was not uncommon — and pay apart, the living-in system was the cause of many evils and abuses. “Maggie” Bondfield (the diminutive clung to her all through her career) soon reached the conclusion that the only hope of putting matters right lay in trade unionism. In 1894, four years before the formation of the National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers, she joined the Shop Assistants’ Union; two years later, on its amalgamation with another union, she became its assistant secretary, remaining in that post until 1908, when she resigned to take up wider activities.
Minister of Labour Margaret Bondfield with Stanley Baldwin, then Leader of the Opposition, in 1930
Sir Charles Dilke’s Shop Bill had been introduced in 1896. Miss Bondfield made contact with him and Lady Dilke, and this association, together with her friendship with Mary Macarthur, led to vigorous propaganda on behalf of women in industry. In those days of trade union organization women who entered industry were regarded by many of the men with whom they worked as interlopers. Much of Miss Bondfield’s prentice work as a union organizer was concerned with breaking down this prejudice. One instrument to her hand was the Women’s Trade Union League. Another was the National Federation of Women Workers, founded in 1906.
On launching out into political activities Miss Bondfield threw in her lot with the Independent Labour Party, serving after a time on its executive. After the death of Mrs Ramsay MacDonald she became organizing secretary of the Women’s Labour League, and in 1914 she occupied a similar post with the National Federation of Women Workers. During the war of 1914-18 she was a member of the Central Committee on Women’s Employment, of the Trades Union Advisory Committee to the Ministry of Munitions, and of the War Emergency Workers National Committee. Like other prominent members of the ILP, she maintained an essentially pacifist attitude during the course of the war.
After the women’s vote had been won Miss Bondfield pressed forward tirelessly with her work of
labour organization. In 1920, as TUC delegate. she attended the convention of the American Federation of Labour and also visited Russia. The International Labour Office of the League of Nations had from the first awakened the liveliest hopes in her — with Mary Macarthur she went to its first conference, at Washington, in 1919 — and she attended further conferences at various times during 1921-27. In 1924 she was the official representative of Great Britain on the governing body. Mary Macarthur had died in 1921 and Miss Bondfield took over from her, among other responsibilities, the chairmanship of the Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women’s Organizations. She also became vice-president of the International Federation of Working Women. With the merging in 1920 of the National Federation of Women Workers in the General Workers’ Union she also became the latter’s chief woman officer and remained in the post until March, 1938.
She had received in 1923 the highest honour the British trade union movement could confer — the chairmanship of the General Council of the TUC. She was the first woman to occupy this office, just as 24 years earlier she had been the first woman to attend the annual union conference as delegate. In 1923 also she entered Parliament as the Labour member for Northampton. Her quality was recognized by her appointment, early in 1924, as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour in the first Socialist administration. That same year she headed a delegation sent to Canada by the Overseas Settlement Committee, and continued to serve on that body till 1929.
Miss Bondfield lost her seat at the General Election of 1924 and remained outside Parliament until 1926, when she was returned for Wallsend at a by-election with a majority of over 9,000. In the formation of the second Socialist administration she was an obvious choice as Minister of Labour. She held that office until 1931, having meanwhile been sworn of the Privy Council; she was one of the many conspicuous Labour casualties in the General Election of 1931. After a further defeat by the same candidate, Miss Irene Ward, she decided in 1936 not to stand again for Wallsend, but her interest in politics and industrial organization remained unabated. In 1938, at the age of 65, she undertook the journey to the United States and Mexico in order to study labour conditions there. More recently, however, she had withdrawn noticeably from public affairs, but some three years ago came again before the public as the authoress of her admirably written reminiscences, A Life’s Work.
Her pioneering spirit and selfless devotion to the practical causes she made her own were widely recognized. Hers was not a sentimental humanitarianism. She appealed always to reason and presented a documented case innocent of rhetoric. As a speaker she was perhaps more successful on the public platform than in the House, though she had a good voice and a command of English which bore testimony to wide reading. Her generous nature and real sense of humour looked out from a pleasant, alert, bright-eyed countenance surmounted by a broad and thoughtful brow. She received the freedom of her native Chard in 1930 and was made an honorary LL.D. of Bristol in the same year. She was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1948.
Margaret Bondfield, CH, Britain’s first female Cabinet minister, was born on March 17, 1873. She died on June 16, 1953, aged 80
DAME CAROLINE HASLETT
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ROLE MODEL AND HIGH ACHIEVER IN THE FIELDS OF ENGINEERING AND PROFESSIONAL ADMINISTRATION
JANUARY 5, 1957
Dame Caroline Haslett, DBE, who died yesterday at Bungay, Suffolk, at the age of 61, was a distinguished engineer and administrator, and a feminist who advanced her cause less by propaganda than by the attainment of high qualifications and responsible positions.
Dropping into an engineering career almost by accident, at a time when a woman engineer was a rarity, she excelled in her profession, and aspired to make posts in lighter engineering available to women generally. She founded the Electrical Association for Women, was secretary of the Women’s Engineering Society, and founder and editor of its journal, The Woman Engineer, as well as of the Electrical Age. She carried out an educational programme for the Central Electricity Board, and after nationalization of the industry became a member of the British Electricity Authority. She was not a brusque or aggressive character and did not appear or behave like the typical woman executive of fiction. She was a person of methodical mind, who yet contrived to avoid being enslaved by system. Her work was her life. She shone as an organizer, and knew the virtues of judicious delegation, so that her time was not cluttered up with detail. Her valuable service and example were publicly recognized in 1931 by the conferment of the CBE and by her promotion to DBE in 1947.
Caroline Harriet Haslett was born at Worth, Sussex, on August 17, 1895, the eldest daughter of Robert Haslett, a railway signal fitter and a pioneer of the co-operative movement. After education at Haywards Heath High School she was offered a start in the engineering industry as a secretary with the Cochran Boiler Company. Before long she asked to be transferred to the works, and from 1914 to 1918 worked in London and Annan, qualifying first in general and then in electrical engineenng.
In 1919 there was founded the Women’s Engineering Society, and Miss Haslett became its secretary, and for many years edited its journal, The Woman Engineer. Some of her most valuable work for this society was in breaking down the prejudices of employers against taking on female labour, and above all in persuading the various engineering institutions to allow women to qualify. She herself worked chiefly in the electrical sphere, perceiving that this form of energy was best adapted to household tasks. She edited the Electrical Handbook for Women and Household Electricity, and showed another kind of solicitude for the well-run house by becoming chairman of the home safety committee of the Safety-First Association and vice-president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
In November, 1924, she founded the Electrical Association for Women. Starting in a small way, in a one-room office, it was to grow in a quarter of a century into an organization having over 90 branches and 10,000 members, including housewives, educationists, and domestic science teachers. It founded the Caroline Haslett Trust, providing scholarships and travelling fellowships for these teachers. In 1925, meeting Sir Andrew Duncan, chairman of the newly formed Central Electricity Board, she persuaded him that a big educational programme was necessary if best advantage was to be had from the new facilities provided by the grid. The board duly provided the necessary finance to enable the Electrical Association for Women to go ahead.
In 1930 Miss Haslett was the only woman delegate at a power conference in Berlin. During the next 20 years her public activities became legion. She became member of council of the British Institute of Management, of the Industrial Welfare Society, of the National Industrial Alliance, of the Administrative Staff College, and of King’s College of Household and Social Science; a governor of the London School of Economics and Political Science, of Queen Elizabeth College, and of Bedford College for Women; a member of the Central Committee on Women’s Training and Employment; a member of council and vice-president of the Royal Society of Arts; and president of the British Federation of Business and Professional Women. She was a member of the Women’s Consultative Committee and the Advisory Council of the Appointments Department, Ministry of Labour; a member of the Correspondence Committee on Women’s Work of the International Labour Office; a vice-president of the British Electrical Development Association, and the first woman to be made a Companion of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
In September, 1947, came an appointment which crowned a many-sided career, the main part of which had been devoted to the electrical industry. Dame Caroline Haslett was named by the Minister of Fuel and Power a part-time member of the British Electricity Authority, formed to conduct the industry under national ownership. Another opportunity of public service in the post-war planning of Britain was her appointment to the Crawley New Town Development Corporation. In the last year or two ill health had obliged her to resign her more onerous posts.
Dame Caroline Haslett, DBE, engineer, was born on August 17, 1895. She died on Janu
ary 4, 1957, aged 61
DOROTHY L. SAYERS
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AUTHOR OF THE DETECTIVE NOVELS FEATURING LORD PETER WIMSEY, AS WELL AS WORKS OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGY
DECEMBER 19, 1957
Miss Dorothy L. Sayers died at her home at Witham, Essex, on Tuesday night at the age of 64.
Sudden death would have had no terrors for her. She combined an adventurous curiosity about life with a religious faith based on natural piety, common sense, and hard reading. She made a name in several diverse fields of creative work. But the diversity of her success was founded on an inner unity of character. When she came down from Somerville with a First in Modern Languages she tried her hand at advertising. The directness and the grasp of facts that are needed by a copywriter stood her in good stead as a newcomer to the crowded ranks of authors of detective fiction. During the 1920s and 1930s, she established herself as one of the few who could give a new look to that hard-ridden kind of novel.
Her recipe was deftly to mix a plot that kept readers guessing with inside information, told without tears, about some fascinating subject — campanology, the backrooms of an advertising agency, life behind the discreet windows of a West End club. Lord Peter Wimsey came alive as a good companion to the few detectives into whom an engaging individuality has been breathed.
