In the days when Britain ruled the waves and bestrode the world as its policeman and plunderer in chief it also subjugated half of its own people to second class status. Women were chattel and property. There were some exceptions based on wealth and birthright but, for the overwhelming majority, your lot was to fall in with the rules and do as you were told. Many did. Those that did take part in social activism were tolerated only so far as the issue was necessary for all of society and then only up to a point.

Thankfully new ideas, the disruption of a world war and new perceptions, encouraged many women to seek equality, and the first grand step in this was The Vote. The suffragette really did put herself in peril and harm’s way to be part of the process of choosing who and how we would be governed.

In this volume we take the short stories of many of these women to explore, through their own words, how they perceived the world around them. And some recorded it in ways that are as surprising today as they were back in their own days of struggle.