Story Category: Legacy

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

As we all stay at home during the current lock down, we can’t look to the Pavilion Garden to enjoy the season’s finest plants and flowers in bloom.

So instead, our Garden Manager Robert will be sharing some garden tips for those making the most of the time at home.

Robert at work in the Royal Pavilion Garden

Here are a few gardening suggestions for April as people self isolate. Something for the garden and also personal spiritual and mental wellbeing too.

• Look at your garden, window box, courtyard every day. Spend time doing it, and use all the senses. Really study the flowers close up, smell the fresh air and flowers and listen to the sounds of birds singing.

• Look ahead to when this crisis period is over. Make plans for the garden. What you are going to plant and sow.

• Buy plants and seeds online. You may have seeds at home that you can start sowing in the greenhouse or window sill. Most seeds remain viable for many years.

• Dead head old flowers, Daffodils, Primroses etc.

• Split large clumps of herbaceous perennials into smaller clumps and replant elsewhere in the garden. eg. Asters, cranesbill geraniums, astrantia.
• Enjoy it! Share your garden and flower images, let us know how you’re getting on.

Robert Hill-Snook, Garden Manager

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Constance Garnett with her son, David, in the mid 1890s

Books are more important than ever during these strange times. They have the power to take us to another place at a time when we are all staying within our homes; they can open our eyes to different cultures and lives and they can offer comfort and distraction. Lovers of reading owe a debt to Brighton’s Constance Garnett (1861 – 1946), the first person to translate the work of iconic Russian novelists into English.

Born in 1861 in Ship Street, Constance was the younger sister of Clementina who was to become a Trade Union pioneer.  A lover of reading and pupil of Brighton and Hove High School pupil, Constance, earned a scholarship to study Latin and Greek at Cambridge and followed this with a career as a librarian in London’s East End.  In 1892 destiny intervened in the shape of a Russian exile called Volkhovsky whom she visited with her future husband, Edward Garnett, a reader for a publishing company.  Constance was captivated by the stories that the young revolutionary told her about life in Russia and some of the intriguing sounding work that was being done by its writers.  As most of these writers were inaccessible to English readers because they hadn’t been translated into English, Constance decided that she was simply going to have to learn Russian and translate them herself.  Armed with a dictionary and a grammar book, and all the while enduring a difficult pregnancy, Constance pulled off this feat, mastering the language to such an extent that she was soon making the works of writers such as Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Turgenev and Tolstoy available for English speakers for the first time.

Illustration from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, by artist Leonid Pasternak

She wasn’t the first to tackle the almost one and a half thousand page long War and Peace, however.  That honour goes to Clara Bell in 1886.  But Constance was the first to translate it directly from Russian, Bell having worked from the French translation.  By 1894 Constance was leaving her young son and husband at home to make trips to Russia, sometimes of three months in length – no mean feat for a single woman traveller at the time – to meet the writers whose work she was translating.  On one occasion she battled the snow to have lunch with Tolstoy at his snowbound estate, Yasnaya Polyana, where he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina.  She reported that his ‘piercing eyes seemed to look right through one and to make anything but perfect candour out of the question’.

Constance’s mission to bring works of Russian literature to a wider, English speaking audience for the sheer enjoyment of reading them was always forefront in her mind.  She ensured that her translations came out in inexpensive editions to ensure that as many as possible could afford them. By the time of her death in 1946 Constance had translated over 70 volumes of Russian literature and is considered a key figure in the introduction of Russian literature to the English speaking world.  The fact that Constance learned Russian so quickly and was able to translate so many different writers for the benefit, enjoyment and inspiration of millions of readers worldwide, is an achievement indeed.

Today, although there are some criticisms of her work now sounding a little demure for modern readers, most of Constance Garnett’s translations are still in print.

When you consider how much writers in the English speaking world were influenced by Russian writers – notably Chekhov who caused short story writers in particular to make an about turn when they discovered his short, to the point fiction – it can be said that Constance Garnett had a huge influence on literature in the twentieth century and on.  New Zealand writer, Katherine Mansfield, herself a giant of the short story in the twentieth century, made her appreciation known in a letter to Constance in 1921: ‘These books have changed our lives, no less.  What would it be like without them?’

Written by social historian, Louise Peskett.

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Anita Roddick, courtesy of the Chichester Observer.

In March 1976, 44 years ago today, Dame Anita Roddick (1942 – 2007) opened the first Body Shop in Brighton. Dame Anita Roddick needs no introduction. As well as founder of high street staple, the Body Shop, she was also an energetic human rights, social justice and environmental campaigner; she became a well-known and admired woman all around the world.

Born in Littlehampton, the daughter of Italian parents who ran a café, Dame Anita fitted a lot of things into her life before alighting on the Body Shop. She worked as an English teacher, worked and travelled in Europe, Africa and the Far East, and, at one point, even ran a B&B in her home town.

In March 1976 she opened the first Body Shop in Kensington Gardens, Brighton – today a blue plaque marks the very modest spot.  It was a gamble and she needed a bank loan to see the project through.  Dame Anita later joked that she chose to paint the shop dark green – later to become the Body Shop’s trademark – because this was the only shade that would cover the mould on the shop walls.  The company quickly struck a chord with the shopping public.  A champion of fair trade and ethical business practices, its line of simply packaged cruelty free products – many unisex-  were inexpensive and cool.  Products that hadn’t been tested on animals and didn’t contain animal products had previously been expensive, difficult to track down or not of the best quality.  The Body Shop’s standards were high and as anyone who has ever used coconut hairgel or Dewberry perfume can tell you, they also smelled great.

Fifteen years later, the little shop on a Brighton back street had mushroomed into 700 branches.  It showed how ethical consumerism didn’t have to stay small but could be a sharp and slickly run business, and challenged how other businesses should behave  The Body Shop’s success and subsequent presence on every town’s high street led other companies to look at their own shortcomings.  Trying to catch up, every shop from Boots to Tesco to Superdrug would soon be bringing out a cruelty free option for shampoos, soaps and other grooming products, although none of them quite caught up with the Body Shop’s cool factor. The Body Shop wore its campaigns on its sleeve.  Not only were its products cruelty free but they sourced from ground-level growers rather than commodity brokers and, in a move that was ahead of its time, did away with unnecessary packaging.  Messages were eye-catching and written loud and clear on eye catching posters in shop windows and on walls.  The Body Shop pushed these and other issues of ethical consumerism into the public – and shopping – arena.  Shoppers had never been so savvy and able to make such informed and responsible choices.  It set a pattern.

At Dame Anita’s helm, the company backed Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, and the Big Issue. There was also Ruby, the size 16 doll, created to tackle stereotypes of female attractiveness, pushing this issue into debate.

By the end of the 20th century the company had 2000 outlets in 55 countries and was proving that profitable business and social conscience could go together.  Although many customers were disappointed by its sale to L’Oreal in 2006, Dame Anita made sure that the company’s ethics would be ring-fenced within the group and planned to channel the profits through the charitable Roddick Foundation.  In 2017, it was sold to the Brazilian cosmetics company, Natura.

Blue plaque for Anita Roddick on the site of the first Bodyshop in Kensingtom Gardens

Sadly Dame Anita died in 2007.  If the Body Shop, although still on many high streets around the world, has lost some of its initial radical edge, the ethics of responsible consumerism it pioneered are still going from strength to strength and it has inspired companies and consumers worldwide.

Written by social historian Louise Peskett. Image of Anita with thanks to Steve Robards

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

The current lock down has dramatically decreased our freedom and confined many of us to home for most of the day. One thing it is currently impossible to do is visit museums, so many are now creating virtual content to keep our visitors engaged with their subject areas.

For a Natural History Museum, such as the Booth, it is an opportunity to encourage us all to observe the natural world in life rather than in death. While a lot of species are difficult to observe without specialist equipment, there are many animals that live right under our noses. Some are so common we simply ignore them, and others are too small to notice without pausing to look.

To encourage you to look at what’s in your garden, in the park (if you’re exercising at an appropriate distance from others), or even the view from the window of your flat, we’ll publish a series of blogs in the Nature at Home category about how you might look at these species in slightly more detail than you may have done when there were more distractions.

Equipment

This first blog discusses the equipment that you might find useful. It ranges from very cheap to more expensive. Some equipment may already be in your home, whereas the more expensive equipment is suitable if you’d like to learn new skills or take your observations to the next level.

For plants and many animals in the garden, especially larger insects and common birds, no equipment is required. However, if you have a pair of binoculars in the back of the cupboard it might be worth digging them out.

As many of the lifeforms and their features will be small, a method of magnification is worthwhile. Many of us have magnifying glasses at home, but if you have a smartphone this can also be a good way to see some of the smaller details. Perfect for sharing your more unusual finds on social media too! Photographs are also the best way to identify many things as it allows you to study the features of the animal or plant.

Identification guides are widely available online (some links at the end) and you may already have printed guides on your bookshelf. If you aren’t able to identify it, there are several useful sites to ask the wider community for help (again some links at the end).

For larger animals, especially birds (or mammals if you’re lucky enough to have them visiting your garden) binoculars are best. If you are keen on photography, a zoom lens will allow you to get good shots. This can be especially useful when the bird is just a bit too far away for you to see details with just the naked eye. If you have a bird feeder or even a flat surface to put out bird seed or nuts, you can focus your camera on that position in readiness for any visitors.

Some of the equipment used to take the photos illustrating the blog are pictured below. If you are keen to capture more images of the creatures in your garden, as practice before you head into the wider countryside after the lockdown ends, the equipment can all be purchased online, from a number of popular retailers.

Whilst it is often nice to just observe the visitors or resident life in your garden or urban environment, sometimes you may wish to record these observations more formally. Notepads are the easiest and most low-tech way to do this, or you can use apps on your phone, such as iNaturalist (which even tries to identify what you’ve seen for you!)

Bird Spotters Notebook

The upcoming blogs will focus on different organisms to discover in your home, garden or park. You may have only glanced at them before, but we’ll be looking closely at the overlooked or unusual animals living there. Magnification can bring a whole new world to your attention too, making tiny creatures much more fascinating.

Equipment reference sheet:

• Photography:

Beginner: smartphone – a clip-on magnifier can help with close-up shots. Or a compact camera if you don’t have a good phone camera.

Intermediate: Olympus Tough camera – This specific point and shoot camera is highly recommended as it has a built-in macro lens for extra close-up capability. It is also waterproof!

DSLR Camera – best for enthusiasts/those looking to move into more serious photography. A 300mm zoom lens is a good (and relatively affordable) lens for getting closer pictures of garden birds.

• Observation:

Your eyes – this is the best way to a start, just paying attention to movement may treat you to behaviour you may not have observed before in common birds.

Binoculars: Cheap ones will do, but if you can afford it, higher quality binoculars will make observation of birds easier and more comfortable.

Magnifiers: A simple magnifying glass will work. Hand lenses can give better magnification but can be tricky to use. You can also get attachments for smartphones which give you the advantage of being able to capture the image.

• Identification and recording:

Notebooks, diaries or observation sheets/books. Alternatively, you can use digital versions such as google docs/notepad etc.

Identification guides. You might already own printed books or sheets. Alternatively, there are good online resources for these too.

Some suggestions are:

Birds: Eco Kids Planet Handy Guide to the UK’s Top 10 Garden Birds and RSPB Identify a Bird

Insects: Wild About Gardens Wild Bee Action Pack

Butterflies and Moths: Cross-Pollination Butterfly and Moth ID Guide

Some other Insects: Cross-Pollination Flies and Other Insects ID Guide

Plants: Trees: Woodlands Guide to British Trees

Wildflowers: Waitrose Garden Spring Flowers / Spring Wild Flower Guide

Fungi: Wild Food UK Mushroom Guide – Eating wild mushrooms are AT YOUR OWN RISK and we would not recommend it! Woodland Trust Types of mushroom in the UK: common identification guide.

Look out for the next post in the Nature at Home series when we’ll look at observing bird and mammal visitors to your garden.

All photos (unless stated) (c) Lee Ismail

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences and Kerrie Curzon, Collections Assistant

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Thanks to all those that came to the February half term creative workshops. We had such a lovely time that I thought I’d share the children’s work.

If you came – see if you can spot your artwork below. If you didn’t – here’s a taste of what happened. Our theme was inspired by the Cultural Icons exhibition.

The children used a wide range of art and craft materials to create their own characters in these popular workshops that were run by Nadya Derungs.

Wooden Spoons transformed (Photo by Alice Gough)

Working together to create designs (Photo by Alice Gough)

A Happy Face! (Photo by Alice Gough)

Two characters that cleverly stand up on their own – are they twins? (Photo by Alice Gough)

Hair and dress colour beautifully coordinated
(Photo by Alice Gough)

At these events we collected children’s views to find out what they have enjoyed and what they would like to do in the future at the museum. Thank you to the fifty-five children (aged 3-12) and their parents – your views will help us plan future events.

Smiley faces everywhere for these events!

Towards the end of half term, local potter Adam Campbell ran a clay mask-making workshop at the museum. Children and their parents had a relaxing morning of creativity – here’s what was made…

Arrrh! – it’s a pirate! (Photo by Louise Dennis)

The artist fashions roses from clay to put on her piece ‘Noahs Ark’
She has made a dove too – can you see it? (Photo by Louise Dennis)

A beautiful cat in clay (Photo by Louise Dennis)

Do you recognise ‘Toothless’ – from the film ‘How to Train your Dragon’? (Photo by Louise Dennis)

Can you see who this Marvel hero is? (Photo by Louise Dennis)

Children’s craft events are held throughout the year and we hope to see you soon for another great day.

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Today we celebrate much loved Henfield resident actress and women’s equality activist, Elizabeth Robins (1862 – 1952).

Elizabeth Robins by W&D Downey, c.1890s

Born far from Sussex, in Kentucky, USA, she was an actress who, after the shock of her husband’s suicide, decided to give England a try.  Arriving in London in 1888, she quickly became a fan of Ibsen and found fame playing Hedda Garbler.  With theatrical friends including George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, Robins went into theatre management with Marion Lea and together they brought plays to the stage which showcased strong female characters and plots that were relevant to contemporary women.  In 1894 she began a long and successful writing career, sometimes under the pseudonym C. E. Raimond.  Her first novel under her own name, ‘Magnetic North’ (1904) was inspired by her own intrepid trip to Alaska to search for her brother who had gone missing.  In 1907 her play ‘Votes for Women’  was the first successful attempt to dramatise the street politics of women’s fight for the vote.  It was so successful it was performed all over the country and led to a flurry of similar pro suffrage plays appearing on stage, introducing the idea of votes for women to people who were not necessarily aware or supportive of the cause.

Becoming more galvanised by the suffrage movement, Robins joined both the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and the Women’s Social and Political Union, although she subsequently broke with the latter when their activities started to become more militant.  Her best tools to rally support were her skills as a writer and public speaker and she never hesitated to speak to meetings up and down the country or write articles and pamphlets. In 1908 she joined the Women Writers Suffrage League and the Actresses’ Franchize League.

Play by Elizabeth Robins

By 1908 she had fallen in love with Sussex and started living in a rambling 15^th century property on the outskirts of Henfield called ‘Backsettown’.  She was to spend over 30 years in Henfield, even, in 1917, becoming a founding member of the village’s Women’s Institute.  Like many feminists she saw the 1911 census as an opportunity to make a point, and spoiled her from, writing ‘the occupier of this house will be ready to give the desired information, the moment the government recognizes women as responsible citizens’ on it.  Around the same time as her move to Henfield Robins was introduced to the young Petworth-born, Octavia Wilberforce.  A young woman from a wealthy background who had alienated her family and become disinherited by breaking off her engagement to an earl’s son to study medicine, Robins took her under her wing and helped to support her studies.  Following the government’s cruel ‘Cat and Mouse Act’ of 1913, which sought to undermine the political impact of hunger-striking suffragettes by releasing them from prison for enough time to recover their health before returning to serve their sentence, Robins and Wilberforce set up Backsettown as a recuperation home.  It’s said today that quite a few Suffragettes found a hiding place there too.  From 1927, the house was to be run, under the helm of Wilberforce, as a convalescent home for professional women.  Today Backsettown is a private house.

The tireless Robins was also to play an important part in the setting up and running of women’s hospitals in nearby Brighton.  Working in particular with Dr Louisa Martindale, Brighton’s first GP and founder of the New Sussex Hospital for Women, Robins played a key role in the management commitees of the hospitals and, using her great writing skills and show business contacts, was an effective fundraiser of both the Lady Chichester Hospital and the New Sussex, allowing them to bring accessible healthcare to all women in the area.

Elizabeth Robins by W&D Downey, c.1890s

Elizabeth Robins was an extraordinarily versatile woman who freely used her talents to help fight for a more equal world for women. Not only in Henfield is she rightly remembered by local people but also in Brighton where the Brighton & Hove Women’s History Group have been fundraising for a blue plaque to be erected in honour of both her and Dr Octavia Wilberforce at 24 Montpelier Crescent, where Dr Wilberforce practised and the two women lived.

Written by social historian Louise Peskett

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Margaret Grace Bondfield, 1873-1953, c. 1917

One of the most recent blue plaques to appear in Brighton & Hove honours Margaret Bondfield, who in 1929 became Britain’s first female cabinet member.  Although her birthplace was in Somerset, it was in Hove where Margaret became politicised and formed the views that would shape her political career.

Bondfield was fourteen when she arrived in Hove to serve an apprenticeship in a Mrs White’s drapers shop in Church Road.  Although she, herself, was relatively well looked after while serving her apprenticeship, she couldn’t help noticing that female apprentices elsewhere endured poor wages, miserable living conditions and no opportunities to change things.  Most ‘shop girls’ at the time worked in the ‘living-in’ system which forced them to live on the shop premises at the beck and call of the owners, with poor food, low wages, no freedom, and vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.  The teenage Bondfield became friends with Louisa Martindale (mother of Brighton’s first female GP, Dr Louisa Martindale), a woman who believed in equality for women and the relationship helped Bondfield’s sense of injustice at the shop girl’s lot solidify into a strong conviction that things could – and should – change, and a commitment to be part of the process.

Moving to London in 1894 it didn’t take Bondfield long to put her ideas into practice. In a few years, due to her hard work and fearlessness to swim against the tide, she was considered the leading authority on shop workers, the assistant secretary to Shop Assistants Union District Council, investigating pay and conditions and regularly reporting her findings to Parliamentary Committees.  In the early years of the 20th century, she was at the forefront of attempts to improve working women’s lives, co-founding the first trade union for women, advising the Liberal Government on improving maternity benefits, and militating for improvements to child welfare, reduction in infant mortality rates and minimum wage laws. She was also chair of the Adult Suffrage Society, believing that suffrage should be extended to all adults regardless of gender or property. In 1923, the same year she became secretary to the TUC General Council – and on her third attempt – Bondfield was elected Labour MP for Northampton.  Although she lost her seat the following year, she won again for Wallsend and in 1926 served in Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s government.  From 1929 to 1931 she made history when she was made Minister for Labour, Britain’s first Cabinet Minister.

She fell from popularity when, against the backdrop of the Depression, she supported government policy to cut unemployment benefit for some married women.  An unpopular policy with voters, Bondfield lost her seat in 1931. Bondfield remained active in the National Union of General and Municipal Workers until 1938.

Margaret Bondfield achieved an incredible amount during a short period of time, fighting for – and usually gaining – improvements in working conditions, living standards, and overall equality. Any woman today who has ever had a job owes her a debt of gratitude.

The blue plaque in Church Road, Hove, celebrating Margaret Bondfield

The blue plaque for Margaret Bondfield now stands on the premises of the former drapers shop where she worked as an apprentice – today a Nisa convenience store in New Church Road.  It was unveiled by Labour MP for Hove, Peter Kyle who researched Margaret’s life in Hove, and campaigned for the plaque alongside the Brighton Women’s History Group and the Commemorative Plaque Panel.  He was accompanied at the plaque unveiling by Rachel Reeves MP who included Margaret in her book The Women of Westminster.

Written by social historian Louise Peskett.

The Rt. Hon. Nicola Sturgeon MSP from the series 100 First Women Portaits by Anita Corbin

Women are still breaking new ground in the political arena today. The current exhibition, 100 First Women Portraits, by Anita Corbin, features Rt. Hon. Nicola Sturgeon MSP, who was the first woman to be First Minister for Scotland. She has held that role since 2014. She was also the first female leader of the Scottish National Party.

It also features Rt Hon.the Baroness Helene Hayman GBE PC who changed history when she became the first elected Lord Speaker in the House of Lords in 2006. She had previously been the youngest member of the House of Commons and the first woman to bring her new baby into Parliament when refused maternity leave.

The Rt. Hon. the Baroness Helene Hayman from the series 100 First Women Portaits by Anita Corbin

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Mary Hare

Mary Hare was a trailblazer in many different ways. Not only was she one of Britain’s first ‘police women’, she was also a pioneering teacher of deaf children, and a passionate suffragette determined to change women’s lives for the better.

When the Brighton Gazette quoted Mary Hare announcing that the Suffragettes were poised to ‘rouse Brighton’ at a meeting in 1908, it must have sent a chill through many of their readers’ veins. Although an early member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), she had joined the breakaway group of women disenchanted with the Pankhurst leadership, the Women’s Freedom League in 1907 and become secretary. Speeches and quotations from meetings she chaired regularly making the newspapers of the day.

It wasn’t only in women’s suffrage that Mary Hare was determined to break new ground.  Arriving in Hove from London in 1895 at the age of 29 and settling in St Michael’s Place, Hare was also a pioneering teacher of deaf children, and had already run a small school for deaf and dumb children from her mother’s house in London.  At the time, many children born with hearing or speech impediments would be considered mentally disabled and ruled out of the chance of an education, frequently ending up in the local asylum.  Teaching ‘oralism’ – lip reading, mimicking lip movements and speech, Mary Hare found that deaf and dumb children were as apt as any other to learning, and worked towards stopping their exclusion from education and society in general.

In Brighton and Hove Mary Hare became a pivotal figure in societies which promoted women’s equality.  President of Brighton Women’s Co-operative Guild, in the 1911 census, she became notorious for being one of the women who spoiled her form by scribbling ‘women do not count therefore we will not be counted’ on it. In early 1915, with the war a few months in, Mary Hare decided that Brighton needed an all-female police force to support the work of the men.  Very much without the blessing of the local constabulary, she set up a group of women to do just this, the Women Police Volunteers.   In April 1915, the wonderfully named Chief Constable Gentle of the Brighton Police informed the Brighton and Hove and South Sussex Graphic that he ‘disapproves entirely’ of Hare’s efforts to police the town.   There was already a body of women set up to do this, he explained to the Graphic, the officially sanctioned ‘Women Police Patrols’, a group of ‘ladies of position in the town’ and they were quite happily operating within the guidelines set down for them by the male police.  Understandably the local press were in a froth of excitement with the prospect of not one but two groups of Brighton’s young ladies dabbling with law enforcement and many newspapers had fun explaining the duties and conflict between the official body and Mary Hare’s rogue force.

Mary Hare and her team of police volunteers on front page of the Brighton and Hove and South Sussex Graphic, , 3 April 1915

The duties of the official Women Police Patrols, according to the article in The Graphic, was solely ‘to give proper advice to young girls in the town, and to establish clubs if possible, for their social benefit.’  People would not have had to read too far between the lines to know that this was a ploy to combat the phenomenon of ‘khaki fever’, the name given to the result, many feared, of the mixture of unattached women, soldiers in khaki uniforms and the heady atmosphere of war.   The Women Police Patrols, organised by the National Union of Women Workers, would help keep at bay this potential cocktail of depravity and loose morals, with the ‘clubs’ they meant to set up giving girls with time on their hands opportunities to enjoy activities of a more wholesome nature than hanging around the streets waiting to be seduced by a handsome soldier.  While agreeing that the women and children of the town were vulnerable at this time in history, Mary Hare had more far-reaching plans for her Women Police Volunteers.  They would help people in general, she explained to The Graphic, and ‘bring about general improvements.’  Although they didn’t have official certificates, a room in the Town Hall and perhaps weren’t even ‘ladies of position’ in the town like the official Women Police Patrols, Mary Hare’s Police Volunteers were organised to a military degree.  They all followed training in drill, signalling, first aid, self-defence, procedure and rules of evidence in police courts.  They spent their time supporting women and children, whether witnesses or prisoners in the intimidating environs of police courts, and patrolling lonely areas.

Rather than merely wearing a genteel armband like the Women Police Patrol, Mary Hare’s force wore a full-on uniform, not dissimilar to the male police, of dark blue suit and bowler hat. Mary Hare herself was described by an amused local as looking ‘particularly smart in her uniform and bowler hat’.  The authorities persisted in failing to be charmed, however, and despite Chief Constable Gentle’s orders to cease, the Women Police Volunteers continued.  ‘We are out to do good work in Brighton, and we have had unsolicited testimonials to the effect that we have done good,’ Mary Hare reasoned simply.

Mary Hare went on to live in Goldsmith Road and then San Remo on Hove’s seafront.  In 1916, at the same time as running her Women Police Volunteers, she founded the Dene Hollow Oral School for the Deaf in Burgess Hill.  Following Mary Hare’s death in 1945, the school renamed itself in her honour and in 1949 moved to Newbury, Berkshire. The Mary Hare School in Newbury, Berkshire is now the largest school for the deaf in the UK. It teaches children from Year 1 to 13 and continues to fulfil Mary Hare’s vision for auditory/oral education.  In her will Mary Hare wrote ‘my efforts on behalf of the Deaf have been my greatest joy in life.’

Written by social historian, Louise Peskett. Part of our 100 Pioneering Women of Sussex blog series.

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Odaline de la Martinez in front of her photo from 100 First Women Portraits by Anita Corbin

It’s a special combination when a pioneering woman in her own right does a talk about another trailblazing woman. Yesterday’s Bitesize talk at Brighton Museum saw Shoreham-by-Sea based Odaline de la Martinez, the first woman to conduct a BBC Prom, explore the life and music of composer and Suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth.

Odaline (b.1949) is part of the current exhibition, 100 First Women Portraits, by photographer Anita Corbin. Composer, conductor and a graduate in maths and music, Odaline was the first woman, in 1984, to conduct a Prom in 89 seasons of the BBC Promenade Concerts, since it’s inception in 1895. This world famous music festival is now watched and listened to by an estimated 15 million viewers in the UK. She has since appeared at the Proms regularly and did a special performance in 1994 of Dame Ethel Smyth’s opera, The Wreckers.

Odaline is Cuban-American. She studied at Tulane University, New Orleans and the Royal Academy of Music where she studied composition and piano. In 1976 she founded the Ensemble Lontano. Since then Odaline has received numerous awards, including 2015 Winner Opera America Award for Female Composers, the Villa-Lobos medal given by the Brazilian government in recognition promoting and conducting his music. In April 2015 Martinez received an award from Opera America, toward the production of a video based on her second opera Imoinda. In September 2016 Odaline received a Women Make Music grant from the PRS for Music Foundation toward the writing of her opera Plantation.

She has also dedicated much of her career to enabling other artists to gain opportunities. In 1992 she founded the record label, Lorelt, which concentrates on music neglected by many recording companies, contemporary composers, women composers and those from Latin America.

In 2006 together with Lontano she founded the London Festival of American Music to bring a broader spectrum of the best American and US-based contemporary composers to UK audiences. This festival is now celebrated biennially. Several major works have received their UK premieres there, including works by John Harbison, Marjorie Merryman, Daniel Asia, Peter Child, Chen Yi and Roberto Sierra.

Odaline is also trustee of The Mornington Trust, who has been responsible for community and educational work in Waltham Forest and other London boroughs since 2000.

Dame Ethel Smyth in 1922

Odaline says that one of the highlights of her career so far was conducting Dame Ethel Smyth’s opera, The Wreckers. She describes Dame Ethel as one of the most significant composers of the 20th Century. She composed a series of operas and from 1911 to 1913 was closely involved with the Suffragette movement. One of her compositions, The March of Women was adopted as the anthem to the Women’s Social and Political Union. In 1922 she was appointed D.B.E for Services to Music and in 1926 became the first female recipient of an honorary doctorate in Music from Oxford University.

Anita Corbin took Odaline’s portrait photograph in St Andrew’s Church, Hove in 2014. It is the only portrait that shows movement, with Odaline moving her arms as if conducting. It’s a vivacious and lively photograph which perfectly captures Odaline’s passion and love for music and sharing it with others.

Odaline de la Martinez and photographer Anita Corbin at the 100 First Women Portraits exhibition at Brighton Museum

From the series 100 First Women Portraits by Anita Corbin

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

The Tawny Owl Strix aluco is the focus for the Booth Museum this month.

UK conservation status: Amber 

Tawny owls are woodland birds, their feather patterns offer good camouflage during the day when they roost in trees. You may catch a glimpse of them if they are mobbed and disturbed by small birds that feel threatened by the roosting owl. 

Their short wings allow tawny owls to manoeuvre while hunting in woodlands. They have a varied diet of mice, voles, lizards, bats, worms and slugs!

The tawny owl is absent from the island of Ireland and other islands around the British coasts, as they do not like flying over water.

Kerrie Curzon, Collections Assistant and Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences