Chrystal Macmillan

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Jessie Chrystal Macmillan

Chrystal Macmillan , also Jessie Chrystal Macmillan , MA BSc (born June 13, 1872 in Edinburgh ; died September 21, 1937 there ) was a liberal politician, lawyer, feminist and pacifist. And she was the first female natural sciences graduate at the University of Edinburgh and the first honors graduate in mathematics at that institution. She was an activist for women's suffrage and other women's issues. She was the first woman to plead personally in a legal case before the House of Lords , and she was one of the founders of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (German: The International League of Women for Peace and Freedom ).

During the first year of World War I , Macmillan spoke on behalf of United Kingdom women for peace at the International Congress of Women , a peace convention in The Hague . Then she met with world leaders such as President Woodrow Wilson , whose countries were still neutral, in order to present them with the proposals formulated in The Hague. Wilson subsequently used some of these suggestions in his Fourteen Points , his justification for starting a war in order to usher in a lasting peace. At the end of the war Macmillan took part as a delegate at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and helped found the League of Nations . Macmillan made an unsuccessful attempt to get the League of Nations to fix a problem in their favor, namely that a woman who is of a different nationality from the husband may keep it in the marriage.

Early career

Macmillan was born Jessie Chrystal Macmillan on June 13, 1872 to John Macmillan, a tea merchant who worked for Melrose & Co in Leith , and his wife, Jessie Chrystal Finlayson. The family lived at 8 Duke Street, Edinburgh. Duke Street was called Dublin Street from 1922 and is located in the New Town. Chrystal was the couple's only daughter along with their eight sons. After an early education in Edinburgh, she attended St Leonards School and St Katharines School for Girls in St Andrews on Scotland's east coast. She came back and enrolled in the University of Edinburgh in October 1892 . She was one of the first female students, including Lilias Maitland, but was not the first to graduate because others had already entered as advanced students and could do their Masters earlier. Macmillan studied "scientific" mathematics with George Chrystal , astronomy with Ralph Copeland and natural philosophy with Peter Guthrie Tait and Cargill Gilston Knott . She did her "Bachelor of Science" in April 1896, as the first woman in Edinburgh.

College of Art, main entrance

In the summer of 1896 she went to Berlin to continue her studies, then came back to Edinburgh and passed an examination in Greek in order to be able to enter the "Faculty of the Seven Liberal Arts" in October 1896. She studied a number of social subjects including politics and graduated in April 1900. Macmillan was the first woman to receive first-class honors from Edinburgh in mathematics and natural philosophy, plus second-class honors -Degree in moral philosophy and logic. During this time she was a member of the Edinburgh Ladies' Debating Society, a forum that helped her gain the confidence to argue in the face of opposition. She also joined the Edinburgh Mathematical Society in May 1897, as the second female member after Flora Philip in 1896.

Women's rights

Macmillan was active in the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage (ENSWS). In 1897, two women's associations in Great Britain merged to form the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), for which Macmillan and Louisa Stevenson served as members of the "Executive Committee" for Edinburgh. She always called herself Chrystal Macmillan, she didn't use the first name Jessie.

Election of a member of the lower house for the university

As graduates, Macmillan and four other women at the University of Edinburgh were full members of the General Council, but were denied the possibility of voting in February 1906 for the member of the House of Commons to take the seat of Parliament that the university was entitled to. Macmillan argued that the General Council electoral statutes used the term "person" throughout and that she and the four other graduates were indeed persons. In March, Macmillan wrote to Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy asking for help. This was namely the author of the pamphlet The Enfranchisement of Women . Macmillan informed Elmy, "I formed my beliefs on your pamphlet." (German: I formed my ideas based on your pamphlet. ) Elmy recommended that she contact Charlotte Carmichael Stopes for additional useful arguments. Macmillan went to the university court with this case in 1907, but lost the trial and a subsequent appeal. Scottish women suffrage activists banded together to raise the £ 1,000 for this case to be brought before the House of Lords . They hoped that awareness would rise in Britain of the absurdity and injustice of denying the right to vote to educated women like them.

Trial before the House of Lords

Boardroom of the Peers, House of Lords, Westminster, (circa 1880)

In November 1908, Macmillan appeared in London as a university graduate to argue for her right to vote for a seat at the Scottish university. Macmillan was the first woman who could bring a case to the Court of the House of Lords. She was assisted by her contemporary, Frances Simson, who was one of Edinburgh's first eight female graduates. When she was heard late in the day, she spoke for three quarters of an hour. Press reports about her appearance described her as a "modern portia". In Scotland, the Glasgow newspaper The Herald reported that it started out nervously, but then warmed up to its subject and delivered an admirable lecture on its plea. Two days later, she continued to speak on her case, this time with full concentration and clad in a red dress with a fur-trimmed hat. Like other women's suffrage activists in Great Britain and the United States, she based her complaint on the terms person and persons in electoral regulations arguing that such vague words were not a basis for excluding all women from voting. The court upheld the rulings of the two lower courts that the word person did not include women when it came to state privileges. She lost the trial, but The New York Times reported that she responded to the decision against her by saying, "We'll live to fight another day." In Wellington , New Zealand , the Evening Post newspaper wrote a less harsh report, stating that Macmillan was in good spirits in defeat. After the trial, she said to a reporter from the London Daily Chronicle : "I don't suppose that there is anything more to be done just now, but we shall live to fight another day." (German: I don't think that more can be achieved at the moment, but we will have more battles in our lifetime. ) No matter what your exact words, your appearance in the House of Lords attracted worldwide attention, which is very valuable to the Was the business of women.

Women's rights at the international level

In 1911 Macmillan took part in the sixth congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in Stockholm . There she began, in collaboration with Marie Stritt , President of the German Association for Women 's Suffrage , and Maria Vérone , President of the “French League for Women's Rights”, with a long-term project documenting the electoral situation for women around the world. After two years of correspondence with women's rights activists scattered around the world to collect global information, the women completed Woman Suffrage in Practice, 1913 , in May 1913 , to which Carrie Chapman Catt wrote a foreword. Published in conjunction with the National American Woman Suffrage Association , the book described the electoral situation in 35 countries and empires at the time. The authors had divided the work according to country; Macmillan was responsible for representing the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, India, China, South Africa and five smaller countries. Macmillan noted that in a few countries and empires women were specifically banned from voting by law; they were prevented from voting by common law alone. She wrote both from personal experience and from observation by activists: “As soon as they become alive to this fact, they have tested the legality of their exclusion in the law courts.” (German: As soon as they became aware of this fact they have tested the legality of their exclusion before the courts. )

In 1913, Macmillan attended the seventh IWSA Congress in Budapest and became Vice President of the IWSA, a position she would hold for ten years. In 1914 she was the author of a 30-page booklet entitled Facts versus fancies on woman suffrage (German: facts in contrast to women's suffrage ) and published by the NUWSS.

Peace activism

Pacifism versus patriotism

The Open Christmas Letter from 1914

When World War I began, Macmillan looked for peace activism from the NUWSS. Instead, there was a majority among British women who wanted to help men win the war. Her own pacifism was not passive at all - soon after the outbreak of hostilities, she traveled to Flushing, the Netherlands, on a mercy tour . At the end of October 1914 she brought food to the refugees after the fall of Antwerp . In late 1914, Macmillan signed the Open Christmas Letter, a sign of communication between women from warring nations who were looking for peace.

Elsewhere in the world, pacifist women have been forced to adjust to the realities of war. After the "cannons of August", Rosika Schwimmer , a citizen of Austria-Hungary, whose work in England had prevented her from returning home, developed her idea for an international conference of neutrals who should mediate between the warring nations. In September 1914, Stritt wrote to Catt in America, emphasizing her deep personal regret over the terrible war. Because of the war, the pacifist women from Germany were forced to withdraw their invitation to host the annual IWSA congress that was to be held in Berlin nine months later. In December 1914, Julia Grace Wales, a professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison , published her views on efforts to achieve peace through mediation in a pamphlet called Continuous Mediation Without Armistice, popularly known as the Wisconsin Plan “Was designated. Catt, who found these messages to be an inspiration, suggested holding an international four-day women's peace congress, which was to take place in The Hague from April 28, 1915, than a women's suffrage congress in Berlin.

When that announcement reached the UK, the NUWSS was split in two, with patriots like Millicent Fawcett , who signed up for War Aid, and the signatories of the Christmas Letter wishing to send peace delegates. The majority in the NUWSS, however, was more nationalistic than the peace-minded minority. They rejected a resolution supported by internationalists Helen Bright Clark and Margaret Bondfield , who would have liked to send a delegation to The Hague. Because of this, women like Margaret Ashton , Helena Swanwick and Maude Royden left the NUWSS and made plans to travel to The Hague; in total there were about 180 women. Macmillan was the only international board member of the NUWSS who did not resign; she was on her way to do relief work. She did volunteer work near The Hague and wanted to join the ex-NUWSS members when the group crossed the English Channel .

International Women's Peace Congress

Macmillan, photographed in The Hague in 1915 for an article published in The Survey .
International Women's Peace Congress of 1915. From left to right: 1. Lucy Thoumaian - Armenia, 2. Leopoldine Kulka - Austria, 3. Laura Hughes - Canada, 4. Rosika Schwimmer - Hungary, 5. Anita Augspurg - Germany, 6. Jane Addams - USA , 7. Eugenie Hamer - USA, 8. Aletta Jacobs - Netherlands, 9. Chrystal Macmillan - UK, 10. Rosa Genoni - Italy, 11. Anna Kleman - Sweden, 12. Thora Daugaard - Denmark, 13. Louise Keilhau - Norway

From April 28 to May 1, 1915, a large congress of women from North America and Europe met in The Hague to discuss peace proposals. The event was the "International Congress of Women" ( International Women's Peace Conference ), or also called "Women's Peace Congress". The 180 contingent of British women was reduced in large part by Winston Churchill's deliberate suspension of the British Channel ferry service, which prevented most British women activists from participating. Since she was already in Antwerp, Macmillan was able to comfortably attend the women's conference and speak for the UK - she was one of the three British women present. She was selected as a member of the international committee that had to travel to the neutral nations and promote the proposals of the congress there. The Wisconsin Plan was unanimously accepted as the optimal way to bring peace back to the world. Macmillan, Schwimmer, and the committee traveled to the neutral United States to present him to President Woodrow Wilson . Many of the peace proposals were used by Wilson in his Fourteen Points , and the efforts of women helped encourage the later formation of the League of Nations .

After the war, Macmillan went to Zurich in May 1919 as a delegate to the International Congress of Women. Congress very much condemned the harsh terms of surrender envisaged for Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, which was due to be signed the month after. Macmillan brought this condemnation through Congress to the beginning Paris Peace Conference, but no changes were made to the treaty.

Lawyer

Middle Temple Hall (2017)

At the beginning of 1918, British women who had reached the age of 30 were granted the right to vote and run for public office. Following the adoption of the Law "Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919" (German: law repealing disqualification of women in 1919 ) that it made the women able to become members of the legal profession, Macmillan competed at Middle Temple as a trainee Lawyer. She was allowed to appear in court on January 28, 1924, and in 1926 she became a member of the Western Circuit; she was the second woman to be admitted to court sessions. By 1929, she served as defense attorney on the six cases she appeared during the court tour. And from 1927 to 1936 she took on 65 cases in the negotiations of the “North London Session Courts”. From 1929 she appeared in five cases as a representative of the prosecution at the Central Criminal Court and in one case for the defense. There is no evidence of their civil proceedings. When she was studying for her admission, she was involved in founding the Open Door Council, which aimed to combat legal restrictions on women. Macmillan helped to lift restrictions in order to give women equal opportunities at all stages of their professional careers. The NUWSS was reorganized in 1918 and was then called the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, but Macmillan disagreed with the union's position on protection legislation for women workers. In 1929 she was involved in the founding of a global association, the "Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman Worker" - she served as president of this association until her death.

politician

In the general election of 1935 Macmillan ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Liberals in Edinburgh North. She was only third with less than 6% of the votes cast.

During the same period, she worked to curb trafficking in women as sex slaves. To this end, she worked with Alison Roberta Noble Neilan's Association for Moral and Social Hygiene. Feminist author Cicely Hamilton wrote of Macmillan that

"She was the right kind of lawyer, one who held that Law should be synonymous with Justice ... Her chief aim in life - one might call it her passion - was to give every woman of every class and nation the essential protection of justice . She was, herself, a great and very just human being ... She could not budge an inch on matters of principle but she never lost her temper and never bore a grudge in defeat. "

(German: she was the right kind of lawyer, one who had the attitude that laws should be synonymous with justice ... Her main goal in life - you could call it a passion - was to make every woman from every class and nation She was a great and very righteous human being herself ... She couldn't give an inch when it came to matters of principle, but she never lost her equanimity and was never resentful to defeat. )

Nationality of the wives

Memorial window for Jessie Chrystal Macmillan, Corstorphine Parish Church

In 1917 Macmillan opposed the practice of assigning a woman whatever nationality depended on her marriage. From 1905 onwards, this had been the hiring of Ishbel Hamilton-Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, known as Lady Aberdeen. But Macmillan saw this problem in a new light during the war. At the beginning of the war, women who were married to foreigners were suddenly confronted with the fact that they were viewed as persons of hostile nationality in their country of birth. By virtue of the same legal basis, a number of British women enjoyed full citizenship in hostile territories. Macmillan thought it best that women should maintain their existing state affiliation upon marriage. To this end, she wrote an article entitled "The Nationality of Married Women" which was published twice in Jus Suffragii , once in July 1917 and again with updated statistics in June 1918. However, no new laws were passed because of it; the nationality remained tied to that of the husband.

This problem came back on the agenda in 1930 when the “Conference on Codification of International Law” was held in The Hague. A large contingent of American women joined international women's groups to change existing national laws. But the women couldn't agree on the wording. The intensive lobbying work of the women and an impressive demonstration were unable to influence the conference participants; international law stuck to the principle that a woman's nationality should be based on that of her husband. In response, Macmillan organized an "International Committee for Action on the Nationality of Married Women" early the following year. Six of the most influential international women's organizations tried to get a broad base of support for working women. Macmillan's stated aim was to delay ratification of the Hague Convention and to make it certain that a woman's nationality could not be changed without her consent and that the nationality of a couple's children would no longer be based solely on the nationality of the father should. While the new committee was successful in influencing the League of Nations to address the problem, when the League of Nations set up a study group, that group was split into two headstrong groups that could not agree. Because of this, they were brushed aside as ineffective by the League of Nations, which preferred to ratify the Hague Convention. The women's groups disbanded and the Hague Convention was ratified in 1937.

death

The grave of Chrystal MacMillan, Corstorphine churchyard, Edinburgh

In 1937 Macmillan's health deteriorated, in June her leg was amputated and her heart was weak. On September 21st, she died of a weak heart in her bed at home at 8 Chalmers Crescent, Edinburgh. Her body was cremated on September 23rd. Her ashes were buried in her parents' grave in the "Corstorphine Churchyard" in the west of the city. The tomb is clearly visible as it has a massive granite cross just north of the church.

In her will she made donations to the “Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman Worker” and to the “Association for Moral and Social Hygiene”.

Heritage and keepsake

A memorial window was added in Old Corstorphine Church soon after her death. It is located on the south side of the church towards the southeast corner.

The Chrystal Macmillan Prize is a £ 100 prize given at the discretion of the Scholarships and Prizes Committee of the Middle Temple in London, a law firm. The award was made as an annual grant intended to benefit female law students who did best in their final exams and to aid the societies with which Macmillan was affiliated.

A “Millennial Plaque” in honor of Macmillan is attached to the “King's Buildings”, a science campus at the University of Edinburgh. The sign states that she was the following: "suffragist, founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom" (German: Women's suffrage activist, founder of the "International League of Women for Peace and Freedom" ). She was also the "first woman science graduate of the University" (German: the first graduate of the natural sciences of the university ). She acquired this rank in 1896.

A building in the University of Edinburgh is named after her, the "Chrystal Macmillan Building" on the northwest corner of George Square. Since 2008 it has housed most of the "School of Social and Political Science".

In 1957, the United Nations created Independent Nationality for Any Married Person, a decision Macmillan had worked to achieve in her life to no avail.

Her name and picture (and those of 58 other supporters of women's suffrage) are on the base of the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square , London, which was unveiled in late 2018.

literature

  • Elizabeth Crawford: The women's suffrage movement: a reference guide, 1866-1928 . Routledge, 2001, ISBN 0-415-23926-5 .
  • Sybil Oldfield: Proposal for a Short Collaborative Research Project in British Women's History. In: History Workshop Journal. 27 (1), Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 176-178.
  • Sybil Oldfield: Women humanitarians: a biographical dictionary of British women active between 1900 and 1950: 'doers of the word'. Continuum, 2001, ISBN 0-415-25738-7 .
  • Sybil Oldfield: International Woman Suffrage: November 1914 - September 1916. (= International Woman Suffrage: Jus Suffragii, 1913–1920. Volume 2). Taylor & Francis, 2003, ISBN 0-415-25738-7 .
  • Sybil Oldfield: Macmillan, (Jessie) Chrystal (1872-1937). [subscription required]. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X .
  • Helen Rappaport: Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers. Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2001, ISBN 1-57607-101-4 .

Web links

Commons : Chrystal Macmillan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1872-73
  2. ↑ MacTutor History of Mathematics, Jessie Chrystal MacMillan, by JJ O'Connor and EF Robertson, University of St Andrews Scotland, School of Mathematics and Statistics, January 2008. Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  3. ↑ Crawford, 2001, pp. 363-365.
  4. ↑ Crawford, 2001, pp. 363-365.
  5. ↑ Crawford, 2001, pp. 363-365.
  6. ^ Siân Reynolds: Paris-Edinburgh: cultural connections in the Belle Epoque. Ashgate Publishing 2007, ISBN 978-0-7546-3464-5 , p. 188.
  7. ↑ Rappaport, 2001, pp. 413-414.
  8. ↑ Rappaport, p. 413.
  9. ^ Antis Fear Success of Suffragettes. In: The New York Times. December 12, 1908, p. C1 , accessed March 6, 2010 .
  10. ↑ No Right To Vote . In: Evening Post . Wellington, New Zealand January 22, 1909 ( govt.nz [accessed April 15, 2019]).
  11. ↑ Rappaport, p. 413.
  12. ^ Chrystal Macmillan, Marie Stritt, Maria Verone, Carrie Chapman Catt: Woman Suffrage in Practice, 1913. 2nd edition. International Woman Suffrage Alliance 1913, London / New York. Introduction
  13. ↑ Rappaport, p. 413.
  14. ^ Jill Liddington: The road to Greenham Common: feminism and anti-militarism in Britain since 1820. Syracuse University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8156-2539-1 , p. 96.
  15. ↑ Oldfield, 2003, p. 18.
  16. ^ A b Emily Hobhouse: Report — Rapport — Report . Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (First Congress: 1915: The Hague), Amsterdam 1915, Foreword, p. ix-xii .
  17. ↑ Oldfield, 2003, p. 18.
  18. ↑ Oldfield, p. 18.
  19. ^ Text of the Wisconsin Plan.Retrieved April 18, 2019.
  20. ↑ Rappaport, 2001, p. 98.
  21. ↑ Crawford, 2001, p. 114.
  22. ↑ Crawford, 2001, p. 19.
  23. ↑ Crawford, 2001, p. 668.
  24. ↑ Christine Bolt: Sisterhood questioned ?: race, class and internationalism in the American and British women's movements, c.1880s – 1970s. Routledge, 2004, ISBN 0-415-15853-2 , p. 33.
  25. ↑ How Did Women Activists Promote Peace in Their 1915 Tour of Warring European Capitals? In: Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000. Retrieved April 18, 2019 .
  26. ^ Crawford, p. 668.
  27. ↑ Rappaport, p. 413.
  28. ↑ Rappaport, p. 413.
  29. ↑ Rappaport, p. 413.
  30. ^ Leila J. Rupp: Worlds of women: the making of an international women's movement. Princeton University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-691-01675-5 , pp. 146-148.
  31. ↑ Rupp, p. 146.
  32. ↑ Rupp, p. 146.
  33. ↑ Other Prizes. (No longer available online.) Middle Temple, archived from the original on March 1, 2010 ; Retrieved March 6, 2010 .
  34. ^ Chrystal Macmillan Building. In: News. School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, June 19, 2008, accessed March 6, 2010 .
  35. ↑ Rupp, p. 146.
  36. ↑ Historic statue of suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett unveiled in Parliament Square. Gov.uk, April 24, 2018, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  37. ↑ Alexandra Topping: First statue of a woman in Parliament Square unveiled. In: The Guardian. April 24, 2018. Retrieved April 24, 2018 .
  38. ↑ Millicent Fawcett statue unveiling: the women and men whose names will be on the plinth. iNews, accessed April 25, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Macmillan, Chrystal
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Macmillan, Jessie Chrystal (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British liberal politician, lawyer, feminist and pacifist
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Edinburgh
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 1937
Place of death Edinburgh