Wollstonecraft?

Mary Wollstonecraft was born 27 April 1759. Her tombstone stands near St Pancras Old Church on the banks of the River Fleet, where St Pancras International railway station now stands. Wollstonecraft, who wrote A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, gave birth to Mary Shelley in nearby Somers Town on 30 August 1797, and died only days later, on 10 September 1797.

As Helen Irving recently noted, the assassination of Sitara Achakzai, a leading Afghan women's rights activist, was another tragic reminder that equality between the sexes is far from accepted in the world today.

"It was Wollstonecraft who gave the world the first sustained account of women's subordination and the means of combating it. Her 1792 work, A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, is a vigorous defence of education for girls, equality in marriage, and women's right to work. Women, she argued, were enslaved not only by the laws and practices that defined them as the property of their fathers and husbands, but especially by the limited education they received.

Today, as an Englishwoman, Wollstonecraft would not have died (at 38, from childbirth) as she did. But such progress has not been felt everywhere. Maternal death rates in some parts of the world are shockingly high. In Australia the rate is among the world's lowest (about eight in 100,000 on recent data), but in sub-Saharan African one in 22 women will die in pregnancy or childbirth. In Afghanistan, it is one in 16. Neo-natal infant mortality is similarly elevated.

When we find ourselves tempted to romanticise tradition or apologise for customary practices that harm women, we should remember this, and give thanks to pioneers like Wollstonecraft. Long may she, and the women like Sitara Achakzai who have followed her, be remembered."

full article, SMH

Wollstonecraft Walk (with pictures)

Mary Wollstonecraft by the Fleet River, 26 April

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An easy and accessible two hour walk from Tavistock Square, starting at 4.00pm to Old St Pancras Churchyard by about 6.00pm on Sunday afternoon.

Please indicate if you would like to join in: livingstreetskx@googlemail.com
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(Read or download Wollstonecraft's 1796 Book)

• Kings Cross Voices eg. Barbara Hughes on vice in the 80s
  
• Half way point: Argyle Square Sound Trail (London Architecture Biennale 2006)

More Wollstonecraft from the Islington and Newington Green Unitarians

Inspired by walking, accessibility and with a new interest in eco-hydrology, I was digging for information about the path of the River Fleet which runs somewhere beneath the street next to my flat.

An excerpt from Homann's map of circa 1705 shows the Fleet running past where I sit, at that time in a field, and St Chad's Well must have been a little way down, where now there is a café, where in 1772 there were reported to be a thousand people in a week drinking of the well waters.

I intend to conjure up some related ideas for a walk in April, and to think about the Fleet (and even to remember the Tuul) in the wider restoration scheme of River//Cities.

flickr slideshow