In the nineteenth century Belfast expanded rapidly, its industries succeeded on a global scale and the town gained city status. Behind this well-known story of Belfast is one that is not as well-known – the women fighting for change, for progress, for society. I cannot wait to introduce people to these amazing women and their stories at my talks and tours for the Imagine! Festival this year.
The Enlightenment spirit of progress and equality was one that the women of Belfast had in buckets. Mary Ann McCracken, probably the best known of these trailblazing women, believed in the ideals of democracy, liberation and freedom from religious discrimination but for a long time history only cast her as a devoted sister. In reality, Mary Ann rebelled against her middle-class background. She ran her own business, she took in her illegitimate niece, she persisted in trying to make the condition of the poor just a little bit better and she fought against slavery right up into her 90s. Mary Ann laid the path and showed how much difference a woman could make.
She wasn’t alone. Middle-class women banded together to form a maternity hospital for working-class women in childbirth. Their work was revolutionary. They sprang into action during the Great Famine organising relief for women and children in Belfast and throughout Ireland. Some started schools exclusively for girls to give them a better education. They took their fight to Westminster to ensure access to education was gender-inclusive. They campaigned for women to be accepted into Queen’s College, the first female students proving their academic prowess.
The middle-class women did not just fight for their own rights but also for the rights of working-class women. When they campaigned for changes in the law so that women had a right to keep their own wage, it was purely so that working-class women could have some financial independence. One Belfast woman railed against the laws which meant that poor women could be forcibly examined for signs of venereal disease and detained against their will. Such issues would not apply to the comfortable middle classes but the desire to raise all women was always at the forefront.
Largely thanks to these efforts in changing laws and pushing boundaries, by the end of the nineteenth century working-class women had opportunities that would have been unthinkable for their mothers and grandmothers. Belfast had the highest proportion of women in its population throughout Britain and Ireland. However, it was still a man’s world. The women working in the mills and factories of Belfast did so in appalling conditions for very low wages. As the new century dawned, they picked up the baton and began to campaign themselves. They set up and joined trade unions, they agitated for better conditions and they started getting more involved in politics. Their middle-class counterparts were advocating for the vote. The working-class women wanted fair pay for their labour.
Their stories show that the female population of Belfast was always pioneering, always pushing for change and for progress.
Robyn’s talk and tour takes place at Room 02/025 in the Peter Frogatt Centre at Queen’s University on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th March at 11.00am. You can book tickets here.
