Rose Pastor Stokes and Rani Lakshmibai

Rebellious Daughters of History #20 by Judy Cox From Celebrity Cinderella to Communist: Rose Pastor Stokes (1879-1933) Rose Pastor Stokes was born into poverty, ‘I slipped into the world while my mother was on her knees, scrubbing the floor’, she later recalled. Born Rose Harriet Wieslander in Poland, 1879, and moved to England with her […]

Charlotte Despard and Josephine Baker

Rebellious Daughters of History #19 by Judy Cox Suffragist, Socialist, Republican, Communist: Charlotte Despard (1844-1939) Charlotte French was born in Kent in 1844. When she was ten her father died and her mother was committed to an asylum. In 1870, Charlotte met Maximilian Carden Despard, a wealthy businessman. When he died in 1890, Charlotte dedicated […]

Lucy Parsons, Claire Lacombe and Pauline Leon

Rebellious Daughters of History #18 by Judy Cox Racism, Riot and Unceasing Revolt: Lucy Parsons (1851-1942) Lucy Parsons was born in Virginia in 1851, the daughter of a slave. In 1863, she was moved to Texas where she worked as a seamstress and a cook for white families. In 1870, Lucy was living with a […]

Rose and Nellie Cohen and Anastasia Bitsenko

Rebellious Daughter’s of History #17 by Judy Cox From suffrage to Stalins Purges: Rose and Nellie Cohen The Cohen sisters were the daughters of Maurice and Ada Cohen, refugees from Poland who settled in Whitechapel in 1884. Rose was born in 1894. As teenagers, Rose and Nellie joined Sylvia Pankhurst’s radical women’s suffrage Movement in […]

Angelica Balabanoff and Helen Keller

Rebellious Daughters of history #16 by Judy Cox International revolutionary Angelica Balabanoff (1878-1965) Angelica Balabanoff, was by any standards an extraordinary person. Born to Jewish parents, in Kiev, Ukraine in 1878, she left home aged 19 to study at a radical university in Brussels where she met Russian and Italian Marxists. After graduating, she continued […]