SANDRA,
Thank you for extending the PERKINS and the MOWER families. You seem to be very familiar with all of the Canadian Public Records.
I am in the middle of reading the impressive 20 page essay from Hilda KEAN which covers some of the dillemas of any historian or genealogist and the possible predjudices and judgements that we bring to interperate the documents that we might find.
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"Some Problems of Constructing and Reconstructing a Suffragette’s Life: Mary Richardson, suffragette, socialist and fascist."
HILDA KEAN
Ruskin College, Oxford, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
Drawing on recent work on feminist autobiography, this article discusses the ways in which a range of autobiographical writing was used by Mary Richardson, a former suffragette, at different stages of her life. It considers the ways in which autobiography was rewritten to fit various political circumstances and to suggest political continuity and cohesion. The article explores the role of the historian in analysing her writing and raises questions about the use of autobiography in history. Mary Richardson – suffragette, socialist, fascist – used autobiographical writing at different periods in her life to give meaning and a sense of unity to her range of political, public activities. A study of the way in which she constructed her self in written forms at different times of her life may be illuminating both for a study of autobiography as well as for the development of suffrage in popular memory. My own interest in Mary Richardson’s creation of her life follows my earlier research on the ways women had constructed their own identities through public activities and autobiographical writing particularly in a period of political downturn for feminism. In Deeds not Words [1] I looked at lives of teachers who were suffrage feminists and the way in which the suffrage movement was depicted by them as determining their existence after the vote was won and throughout their teaching careers. Subsequently I looked at various suffrage autobiographies of the 1920s and 1930s and explored why autobiography was used as a medium of writing. Drawing on the work in particular of LuisaPasserini and Alessandro Portelli, I explored some of the myths which were created and argued that the suffrage autobiographical opus had become almost a collective invention of the past.[2] I stressed the important role played by such autobiographical writing in helping historians understand.
Women’s History Review, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1998
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/09612029800200184?needAccess=true======
I have also found an online archive, a readable copy of Mary's autobiography 'Laugh A Defiance'
https://archive.org/details/bwb_W7-DDF-869/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater
