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These are trying times so here's a thread of brave foremothers to inspire us. These quines had nerve. 1st Muriel Thompson, a WW1 ambulance driver awarded medals for evacuating Belgian soldiers under fire & moving the injured during a bombing raid. Hellfire Muriel, Impressive. /1 
#Thursdaythoughts pls for Hellen Stirk who refused to call the Virgin Mary for help during childbirth in 1544. She was arrested. They say she breastfed her baby on her way to the river where church officials condemned her soul & held her under till she drowned. Fucking hell. /2
Stella Reekie worked with the Red Cross after WW2 to rehabilitate Jewish kids coming out of Belsen. Later she was a missionary in Pakistan & from 1968 worked with immigrant communities in Glasgow. Her West End home became an open house despite bricks thrown thru the windows. /3
Lady Clementina Elphinstone Malcolm whose journal and letters relating to her experience of breast cancer in the months leading up to her death in 1830 are an astonishing frank early medical account of the illness. It takes all kinds of bravery. Well done, Lady C.
Black Agnes defended Dunbar Castle in 1338. The English army sent 20K men to bombard the castle & Agnes' ladies merely dusted the ramparts in nonchalant defiance. The failed siege cost the attackers 6000lbs of silver. The Earl of Salisbury who led it, wrote her this poem /5
The Highland Clearance women had backbone. Elizabeth Ross (22) was attacked on Skye in 1854.The marks of the man's boots were visible on her breast & shoulders, her clothes soaked in blood. Pieces of her scalp were stripped & found on the ground. She later died. Jesus Christ. /6
Jane Haining became matron of the Jewish Mission Girls Home in Budapest. In 1939 she returned, against advice, saying that if the children needed her in days of sunshine they wd need her in dark times too. She was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 where she died. So fucking proud. /7
I cd go on & on. I haven't touch the Scottish women who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War, the suffragettes or the Jacobite women. We come from a long line of determination and endurance. Our grannies stood up for what they believed in and so will we. Brexit better beware.
And yes, obviously I wrote a book about our amazing foremothers. It's here: amazon.co.uk/Where-are-Wome… We forget too many of our sheroes. Really, we do. And without them we are the weaker. So let's not be. /9
