Infinite Women

Historian and audio producer Catherine Freyne is co-curator of an exhibition at the State Library of NSW called Pride (R)evolution (https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/pride-revolution; see the exhibition's "Sporty Lesbians and Fit Feminists" digital map at https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/2b49515c1ccc97c68b83ce4c05f11c5a/the-sporting-lesbian/index.html). She joins us to talk about Australian mountaineer Freda du Faur, the first woman to climb New Zealand's highest peak, Aoraki / Mount Cook, in 1910. Freda was also a lesbian, whose life was tragically impacted by the attitudes and practices of the times in which she lived.

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Read about Freda on Infinite Women

Born into a prominent Muslim family in Granada in 1485, Sayyida fled the Spanish Reconquista in 1492. Her family resettled in northwest Morocco; she was highly educated and at 16 was married to her father’s friend, a man 30 years her senior. The Moroccan sultan had granted her husband the opportunity to rebuild the ruins of Tetouan, which had been destroyed by the Spanish. Sayyida served as a de factor vice governor, ruling in his stead when he traveled. When her husband died in 1515, the residents were used to seeing her in charge and accepted her as the new governor.

But while she was a noblewoman and politician, she was also a pirate, or corsair. She never forgave the Spanish for forcing her family to flee Granada and to avenge herself on her “Christian enemy,” she reached out to the legendary Ottoman admiral Hayrettin Barbarossa of Algiers. While Barbarossa trawled the eastern Mediterranean, Sayyida proved herself a scourge in the western Mediterranean, Iberia and Morocco’s Atlantic coast. She led her fleet, preying on Spanish and Portuguese shipping lanes. She amassed a large fortune from both the loot and ransoming captives and was seen as the Europeans’ main contact to negotiate the release of Christian captives.

After 25 years of widowhood, Sayyida accepted a marriage proposal from the Moroccan sultan. Their marriage is the only recorded instance of a Moroccan sultan marrying outside of the capital - Sayyida insisted he come to her in Tetouan because she had no intention of giving up ruling her city and she wanted everyone to know it.

Unfortunately, the following year, she was overthrown by her son-in-law and stripped of her property and power after four decades in Tetouan.

Accepting her fate, al Hurra retired to her childhood home in northwest Morocco, where she lived almost two decades more.

Read more about al Hurra on the Infinite Women site: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/sayyida-al-hurra/

Thanks to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, every American child grows up hearing about the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Imagine if, instead, he’d chosen to immortalise the story of American Revolutionary heroine Sybil Ludington.  Her nighttime ride was the more impressive feat, to be sure - she was 16, to Revere's 41, when she rode 40 miles, compared to Revere's 12.5 miles. Her mission was to to warn the roughly 400 militiamen under her father's command that British troops were planning to raid Danbury, Connecticut, where the Continental Army had a supply depot. On the way, she woke people in their homes, yelling "The British are burning Danbury!" Previously, the teen had saved her father from capture by 50 Loyalists. When the mob approached their house, Sybil lit candles around the house and had her siblings march in front of the windows in military fashion, creating the illusion that troops were guarding the house and causing the Loyalists to flee. Yet even the national Daughters of the American Revolution, in 1996, said that the evidence was not strong enough to support their criteria for a war heroine because her story was recorded primarily in her family’s oral tradition, and they removed a book about her from their headquarters' bookstore. The DAR chapter near her historic home says that her exploit was documented, and it continues to honor her. As for Longfellow - maybe it’s just too hard to find rhymes for “Ludington.”

Read more about Sybil on the Infinite Women site: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/sybil-ludington/

When it comes to travelling long distances to pass military intelligence, we can’t forget about Canadian Laura Secord. During the War of 1812, Secord didn’t even have a horse when she traversed 20 miles on foot out of American-occupied territory in 1813 to warn British and Mohawk forces of a surprise attack by the Americans. According to legend, she’d overheard billeted soldiers talking about it and set out the next morning. Thanks to her warning, the Mohawk and British troops were able to prepare, and won the subsequent battle.

Read more about Laura on the Infinite Women site: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/laura-secord/

Standing by your man isn’t always easy, but Gaby Bloch and Mary Ann Bugg went above and beyond to break their partners out of prison. While both demonstrated loyalty and ingenuity, that may be where the similarities end. Mary Ann was a bushranger, a type of 1800s Australian bandit, while Gaby was a member of the French Resistance during World War II.

Let’s start with Mary Ann. Born in 1834, she grew up experiencing all the discrimination you’d expect for someone who was both female and Aboriginal, being Worimi (Warrimay) on her mother’s side, and the daughter of an English convict on her father’s. First married off at age 14, she had several children and exes by the time she took up with Frederick Ward in 1860. He went by the name, and no I’m not joking, Captain Thunderbolt. Ward was basically on probation for horse theft, and when he violated that probation, he was sent back to Cockatoo Island, which is not as adorable as it sounds. The island prison in Sydney Harbour, about 400 meters of shark-infested waters to swim - which Mary Ann reputedly did, carrying a file to take care of those pesky leg irons. They carried on robbing folks and making babies for several more years before separating at the end of 1867. It’s also worth noting that jailbreak aside, Mary Ann was probably doing the heavy lifting in their partnership while Thunderbritches claimed all the credit. She hunted their food, was the only one who could read a map, scouted ahead and spread false information to evade authorities and even taught him to read. He was also shot and killed within a year and a half of their split, while Mary Ann lived to age 70. She also had 13 kids and evaded arrest by pretending to go into labour.

Several decades later and halfway around the world, Gaby Bloch had been arrested with her husband and other members of the French Resistance in October 1941. Although Gaby had been released after three months, the men were still being held by the government on charges of treason, and at risk of being turned over to the occupying Nazi forces. Gaby turned to Virginia Hall, one of the most effective agents sent to France by the UK’s Special Operations Executive. Known as the “Limping Lady” due to her prosthetic leg, Virginia’s brilliance was often overlooked. The women arranged to have a radio smuggled into the internment camp at Mauzac, and Gaby would travel the 35 miles there several times a week, sneaking in messages, tools and supplies a bit at a time. Gaby also recruited support from the staff - if she’d said the wrong thing to the wrong person, or been discovered smuggling items into the prison, either could have resulted in her death. The plan was almost ruined when one of their inside men accidentally slipped a message into the wrong guard’s jacket - fortunately, that guard was happy to be be bribed to keep silent, but it must have been terrifying when he confronted Gaby with the note. The escape went off without a hitch in July 1942, and although Gaby was arrested, Virginia had made sure Gaby had a rock-solid alibi for the time with plenty of witnesses and the police were forced to release her. The Special Operation Executive’s official historian called the prison break ‘one of the war’s most useful operations of the kind’. Gaby and her children reunited with her husband in London, where the couple went on to serve the French security services. Both received the Legion d’honneur, and Gaby was recommended for the King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom.

Read about "La Pola" on our website: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/policarpa-salavarrieta/

Although the independence forces would eventually succeed, forming the Republic of Gran Colombia in 1819, La Pola did not live to see it. She was arrested by the Spanish after her lover was captured with information she provided, and she was executed in 1817. She did not accept her fate meekly, cursing the Spaniards relentlessly the night before. When she and several other prisoners were taken to be killed by firing squad, she refused to kneel, yelling "I have more than enough courage to suffer this death and a thousand more. Do not forget my example." Although soldiers forced the prisoners to face away from their killers, when the squad began shooting, Policarpa turned around to face them.

Remembered as a heroine of the fight for independence, she has been commemorated in stamps and on money, and in 1967, the Colombian congress passes a law declaring that 14 November would be the “Day of the Colombian Woman” in honour of the anniversary of the death of “Our heroine, Policarpa Salavarrieta”. She even has a tarantula named after her.

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This week we're joined by the fabulous Jess Harper, an Australian operatic soprano who dropped by for a chat about the even more fabulous Australian operatic soprano, the great Dame Nellie Melba. In addition to being an alumna of the Melba Opera Trust's scholarship program, Jess performed as Nellie in the biographical stage production Melba: A New Musical, with Hayes Theatre Company in Sydney in 2017.

Read Nellie's bio on our website: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/nellie-melba/

For more on Jess, head to her website: https://jessicaharpersoprano.com/

Learn more about the Melba Opera Trust and their work: https://www.melbaoperatrust.com.au/

Possibly the most successful pirate of all time was Ching Shih (https://www.infinite-women.com/women/ching-shih/)

In 1801, the woman who would be known as Ching Shih was a young prostitute who married a pirate lord, Ching I. It’s said that she demanded an equal share and command before she would marry him, which he agreed to. Six years later when her husband died, Ching Shih took command of the Guangdong Pirate Confederation, putting her in charge of about 400 junk ships and 40,000 to 600,000 pirates in her early 30s. Years earlier, she had helped her husband form the confederation, in which different pirate leaders each sacrificed some autonomy for collective benefit. Her political savvy and knowledge of players, relationships and dynamics helped her not only gain power but keep the confederation together after Ching I’s death. 

She then wrecked havoc on the South China Sea for years - under her command, the confederation was far more active. Ching Shih took on everybody who was anybody, including the East India Company, the Portuguese Empire, and the Qing Chinese navy. One captive estimated that Ching Shih had 80,000 pirates, 1,000 large junks and 800 smaller junks and rowboats under her command in 1809.

She also ruled with an iron fist - any pirate caught giving his own orders or disobeying those of a superior was to be beheaded on the spot. It was also a capital offence to steal from the common treasury or from villagers who supplied the pirates. Additionally, if a pirate raped a female captive, he would be put to death, but if the sex was consensual, both would be put to death, though a captive was allowed to marry a pirate if they wanted to.

Perhaps the most impressive part of her piratical career was its ending. Ching Shih was such a powerful enemy that she was able to arrange a peaceful surrender in 1810. At the time she was in command of 17,318 pirates, 226 ships, 1,315 cannons, and 2,798 assorted weapons; her personal command encompassed 24 ships and 1,433 pirates. The terms of surrender included pardons, pork, wine and money for her crews and her lover Zhang Bao was awarded the rank of lieutenant and allowed to keep a private fleet of 20 to 30 ships. She married him, retired to run a gambling house in Macau, had more children and lived to be almost 70.