Extraordinary Ordinary Women of South Wiltshire (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781918403015)

Believing whole-heartedly that ordinary women of the past were far more than just wives and mothers, author Lucy Whitfield has set out to discover and profile a second collection of interesting women - this time from across South Wiltshire. These accessible case studies take in a woman who divorced her husband at the first moment she was able to, a Prussian steam laundry manageress, a Japanese butler's partner, a cloth weaver who married up, a girls' school teacher who taught abroad (and got to vote over there), a suffrage organisation secretary, a soprano singer, a dog breeder, a pub landlady who suffered Victorian mental health care, two young women who concealed pregnancies, prostitutes and a clutch of footballers banned from playing. And more besides.These tales of ordinary, extraordinary lives, by design going much deeper than the usual suffrage-and-STEM criteria for popular women's history, are played out against the canvas of South Wiltshire. They show the depth and breadth of women's history that's out there for the taking, And are intended to inspire people to look harder at the lives of their women-folk, and what could be simmering there just under the surface.