I am Woman, Hear Me Roar: The Good, the Bad and the Forgotten Women in History

[Trollheart]

Yes, in a perfect world there would be little or no distinction between the sexes, certainly no bias on one side or the other, but sadly we don't live in a perfect world, nor are we ever likely to, and our world has been, like it or not, male dominated ever since, well, forever really. If you're a Christian, this sense of entitlement is drilled into you from a young age through the Bible, and the story of the Garden of Eden, where we're told that the weak woman Eve was responsible for getting her and her hubby thrown out of Paradise by an irked God who snapped "Didn't I tell you to leave that fucking tree alone? Didn't I? You think I planted the Tree of Knowledge just so you two losers could benefit from it, and make yourselves as me? Fuck off out of my garden! Go on, do one!" (Actual quote).

This fantasy has given us men the mistaken belief that we are better than women, and has instilled in our gender as literally God-given fact that we are the masters of the Earth. If it wasn't for damn women listening to suspicious serpents, we could still be running around in the nip, eating fruit and completely unaware of words like mortgage, heart attack and cancer. And so Man's superiority is established from the moment we can understand what we're told, and we see the result of this all around us, even today, where, despite having made major advances in the last century, women are still struggling to be treated as equals.

And history is no better. Well, given that it's almost all been written by men, what would you expect? Reading through a history book, apart from the obvious ones we can't ignore or airbrush out, like Queen Elizabeth I, Marie Curie, Joan of Arc, Margaret Thatcher and others, we have, as men, done our level best to ignore, push to one side or bury entirely the contribution our opposite sex has made to our civilisation. There are certain things we have to acknowledge, but where we can, we have always shoved the troublesome woman into a dark room and locked the door, walked away with the key whistling innocently.

But though women remained silent for centuries, hardly even given a voice to use in their lives, seen as property or at best an inconvenience by their husbands or other male counterparts, the silence has been broken recently and a whole slew of books now trumpet the stories of the women time forgot, who have been all but erased from history. This journal will not be concentrating solely on them, because as the title says, it's a story of the good, bad and forgotten women who have helped make our world what it is today. Many of these brave and pioneering women you will all be familiar with: those mentioned above, as well as writers like Jane Austen and the Brontes, leaders like Cleopatra, Mary Queen of Scots and Hilary Clinton (um) as well as less salubrious characters such as Ruth Ellis, Ma Barker and Aileen Wournos, though in general I am going to try to avoid any unnecessary crossover with my Serial Killers or Most Evil journals. I'm sure there'll be plenty to go around.

But did you know that the person to pioneer the practice of defence counsel in the USA was a woman? Or that a woman held together the fragmenting French court during the worst years of the religious wars that raged across Europe in the sixteenth century? Were you aware Hollywood screen queen Hedy Lamarr was responsible for creating radar - well, part of it - and that her work led to what we know today as GPS and Bluetooth? These are the kind of stories that, while it would be unfair and inaccurate to say have all been buried by historians, don't tend to really be known unless you go looking for them. And you can't go looking for something unless you know to, well, go looking for it.

So here is where I will try, in my poor, inadequate way, to redress the balance as much as I can, by telling you not only about the famous and infamous women in history, about whom most if not all of us know, but the unsung heroes, the buried secrets, the figures pushed into the background, the forgotten women of humanity's history. I'm sure some of you ladies out there are saying it's not my place to write such a journal, and you know, it's probably not. But I reckon I'm the only one who would undertake such a project, so I guess you're stuck with me. Hopefully I can do you proud, or at least not completely fuck it up. I guess we'll see.

This journal will not run on any sort of a timeline, nor will it really be organised in any significant way. My intention is to hop, skip and jump through history, going maybe back to the fifth century BC and then jumping to World War II, coming up to date before heading back to the Napoleonic Wars. So all over the place, really. It doesn't matter, because no matter what century or era you lived in, women were there, doing what they do. It's just that for the better part of our history, we as men have ignored and kept them down, laughed at or ignored their achievements (or in some cases, stolen them as our own) and shook our heads at how such silly, pretty things could ever consider that they would find their own place in history without us.

Well, that ends now.

[Trollheart]

Hands up who can name England's first queen? You there: no, sorry, Elizabeth was preceded by Mary, known as Bloody Mary. But even she wasn't the first, even if this woman is not really recognised by history as such, or at least, her claim to the throne is disputed.

Timeline and location: Twelfth Century England, France and Germany

Name: Matilda
Occupation: Holy Roman Empress; Queen of England (disputed)
Nationality: English
Born: 1102
Died: 1167
Famous (or infamous) for: Holding the English throne, though unrecognised, and therefore being the first unofficial Queen of England.

Daughter to Henry I (who was not anything to do with the Henry Tudors, but was in fact the son of William the Conqueror, and so a Norman though born in England) Matilda was born into a time of turmoil and a family at war. Her father's two brothers (therefore her uncles) Robert Curthose and William Rufus fought over William the Conqueror's inheritance, and warred upon each other, both wanting the throne of England. Henry nominally supported his elder brother Robert, and in return for his support was made Count of Cotentin, in western Normandy. But only till it suited him. In 1088 Robert rescinded the Countship and imprisoned Henry, who had been to England to see William about those estates their father had left him in his will. Nothing doing, the younger and far more alive William had snapped, and Henry high-tailed it back across the Channel, and into the waiting arm(ie)s of his other brother. What a family, huh?


(Now, doesn't it look like old King Henry is holding a birthday cake in one hand and a beer in the other? He's not: that's a book - probably either The Bible or How To Deal with All Your Bastards - in his right (as we look at it). The other thing? Dunno. Looks like a city. Must have been a damn big guy!)

In 1091 Henry decided fuck them both, and went to war against Robert and William, a war he quickly lost, but rather than pursue Henry the two brothers instead began to duke it out again, allowing their younger sibling to gain power in Normandy and mass an army. Seeing how Henry's power was growing, and losing ground against Robert, William decided to support his kid brother and they took on Robert. In 1095 their war was broken up as God called - well, the Pope, which to people back then was the same thing - on all Christian men to defend (um) the Holy Land as the First Crusade got under way. Robert responded and Henry got pally with his other brother, fighting alongside instead of against him, but as the new century turned William fell victim to the old "hunting accident" so prevalent back then, and while it may very well have been some sort of conspiracy, at which most eminent historians (and possibly some less eminent) wag their fingers and shake their heads, the upshot (sorry) was that Henry was able to seize the throne of England while Robert was still off killing for Christ in a godless country. Score!

All of which tells us what a time Matilda was born into. She now had one uncle who had been killed, possibly by (yes, yes, eminent historians! I said possibly!) or at the behest of her father, another off fighting in Jerusalem who might very well want the crown back when he again sighted the shores of Old Blighty, and a mother who was from the royal family of England's age-old enemy, bonny Scotland. Not only that, but daddy could most definitely not keep it in his pants, and while she only had one legitimate sibling, a brother, she had no less than twenty-two bastard brothers and sisters. Talk about an extended family! As if this wasn't enough to deal with, she was barely seven or eight years old when the lecherous old king of Germany, another Henry, decided he'd have her as his wife. Let's see what age he was at this time. We're talking 1109 here, so then: born in either 1081 or 1086, this makes him at best (assuming the latter date to be the correct one) twenty-three years old. Well okay, not too old, but he sure did like them young then, didn't he? Matilda began her voyage to Germany in 1110, her dad chuffed at the marriage proposal, as it would strengthen his weak claim on the English throne and make Germany his ally. Matilda? What had she to do with it?

So Matilda became Queen of Germany, but in fairness she was too young to be married, even for the decadent Middle Ages, so Henry had to take cold showers (and probably mistresses and servant girls) for another four years, before his new bride was ready to be porked. Henry and Matilda were married in 1114, which still only makes her about eleven, but that's the twelfth century for you! I'm actually surprised His Majesty waited. Two years after their marriage Henry, with Matilda at his side, marched into Italy to sort out the pope, with whom he had a bone to pick, the guy having excommunicated him and all. Looks like popes just didn't like kings named Henry! Nevertheless, excommunicating a king is one thing, taking on his army is another, and like the big girl's blouse he was, the hilariously-named Paschal II legged it over the mountains at the approach of the Germany army, leaving his successor, Gregory VIII, to crown Henry as Holy Roman Emperor and Matilda as Holy Roman Empress.

"That'll do for me," grinned Henry, but unfortunately it would not. Do, that is. See, the thing is, our man Gregory VIII, then a mere papal envoy known as Maurice Bourdin, had also been excommunicated by his boss, and further, would be deposed and imprisoned by his successor, making the whole coronation thing a little shaky to say the least. Never one to let ambiguity get in the way though, both Henry and Matilda continued to use these titles, even if they may no longer have been seen as official. What happens in Rome stays in Rome, ja? Henry had to return to Germany in 1118, as the natives were getting restless, and Matilda ruled over Rome in his absence. He wasn't to be long for his world though, suffering from cancer and succumbing to it in 1125. I guess Matilda didn't have too many friends in the fatherland, as the local bishop convinced her to give up her claim to the throne, being childless and therefore unable to act as regent (for some reason I don't understand) and promptly handed the crown to Henry's enemy, Lothar of Supplinburg, who said "ta very much yer bishopness", and kicked Matilda out of Germany. She stuffed all her jewels in a bag, also cramming in two of her late husband's favourite crowns and the Hand of St. James the Apostle (never know when you're going to need a hand. Sorry.) and bailed for England.

Why for England? To answer that, we have to look into the event which was a catastrophic blow to the succession there. History calls it the White Ship Disaster.

Sinking the Succession: The White Ship Goes Down

No less a figure than the son of the man who had brought William the Conqueror himself to England in 1066, the White Ship was captained by Thomas Fitzstephen, and was originally offered to Henry I (remember him? Matilda's dad?) but he had said "nah you're all right mate, I'm sorted already, but my sprogs would sure welcome a berth." And so his son, yet another William, as well as two of his many bastards, and a bunch of others boarded the White Ship. As did the man who would later be King Stephen, but he, seeing all the boozing going on, thought better of it and disembarked, recorded as saying "Go ahead; I'll catch the next one. Got a few loose ends to tie up here in Normandy anyway. I'll see you over there."

But he wouldn't. What was that? Oh yeah. Booze. Well, seems that drink was called for, and supplied "in abundance", showing little real difference from today's booze cruises. I have no idea how many it was supposed to take but it was certainly carrying more than its complement, reckoned at around 300 people. Suitably tanked-up and belligerent, the nobles and the king's sons roared "Follow that ship! Overtake the old man! We'll show him!" or words to that effect. "Right you are, your various Highnesses!" grinned the captain at the nine hundred people yelling at him, and gripping one of the three helms on the ship, steered it away from port and directly into nearby rocks. They never even got out of the harbour, the vessel going down like one of the rocks it had hit, most of its passengers probably too drunk to realise what was happening, never mind swim for it.

The only one with any sort of a clear head, oddly enough, was William, Henry's only legitimate heir, and he got into a boat and tried to make it but ended up turning back for his half-sister and being literally drowned by the rest of the bastards. When the captain, who had not drowned, surfaced and realised the heir to the throne had died on his watch, he decided it wasn't worth it and just let himself drown. Better that than face the furious and grief-stricken king.

And so this left a gap in the market, as it were. The removal of William left Henry with only one legitimate heir, even if she was a woman. This threw England into the period known, rather colourfully, as The Anarchy.

Anarchy in the UK: A Woman's Place is Not on the Throne!

The twelfth century was not a good time to be a woman. It would take another four hundred years before England would accept one as their ruler, and they sure weren't in the mood to do so here. Despite being Henry's only remaining progeny from his marriage, Matilda had no real claim to the throne of England in the eyes of the - male-dominated - nobility of the country, and through Henry had bastards for all occasions running around the country, more bastards than you could count almost, nearly all of them were rebelling or fighting against him in one way or another. He wasn't about to crown one his successor, so his next plan was to do what any self-respecting heirless king would, and marry again, hoping to gain a son. Not only did his new wife fail to come up with an heir, she hadn't even the decency to give him a daughter, useless as that would have been. Back to the drawing board for our king in a quandary.

The best thing he could come up with was to get the widowed daughter back on the horse, so to speak, and see if she couldn't come up with a handy heir to his kingdom. To this end he had her marry Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. In theory, he could have married her off to any of a number of princes - Matilda was said to be quite beautiful, and still young and well able to bear children at this point - but like most kings, while he needed an heir he also planned strategically, trying to secure alliances that would consolidate his power in Normandy, and Geoffrey was his man for this. There were however several problems here, not least of which being the Count's tender age, a mere lad of thirteen when he was wed to the twenty-five-year-old Matilda, whom he must have looked upon as very old indeed. A right role reversal, eh? Matilda wasn't happy either; a count is a hell of a step down from a king, and miles from an empress, and remember, she was at this time the Holy Roman Empress, so she was being asked - ordered, commanded - to marry way below her status.


(Geoffrey of Anjou. Looks like someone's rolled him up in a carpet, doesn't it?)

Add into this the fact that she didn't particularly care for Geoffrey either, and it's not that surprising that soon after the marriage she didn't want, she told her new husband "See ya! Wouldn't want to be ya! I'm for home!" And promptly returned to Normandy, leaving Geoffrey to sort through the CDs and DVDs possibly to work out who owned what. In 1131 they got back together, probably with a lot of urging/commanding/pleading/bribery from dear old dad, and to his immense joy his troublesome daughter finally popped a son out, a baby who would go on to become  Henry II, first of the Plantagenet Kings of England. About fucking time, probably thought Henry, and sat back to enjoy his last few years as king, the succession now assured. A year later she was pregnant again, though this time the birth was much tougher and in fact she came so close to death that she and her father argued about where she would be buried. Come on now: what father hasn't had that conversation with his dying daughter? We've all been there.

Anyway, Geoffrey was born and luckily Matilda survived. Henry now had two heirs, or if you prefer, and yes I'm going to do it, just see if I don't, an heir and a spare. Whether the birth of their children had brought them closer together, or whether Geoffrey just fancied his own arse on the throne of England, the two fell out with Henry and Geoffrey demanded that the king recognise Matilda as his successor, to which Henry said, "Ask me arse. I know what your game is mate: you want to take my throne while I'm still alive. Well, over my dead body you do." It's possible his son-in-law shrugged "Yeah, that's the idea," but Henry would not be swayed, and as a consequence, when rebels rose against him in Normandy, Geoffrey and Matilda put their own armies at their disposal, possibly trying to kill or dethrone daddy. When Henry unexpectedly died in 1135, the husband and wife saw their chance, and pressed their advantage.

Enter Stephen.

Uh, what? Are you actually shitting us here, Trollheart? This is supposed to be women in history, remember? So far we've had two Williams, two Henrys, a Robert, a Geoffrey and now a fucking Stephen? Yeah, well, I hear you, believe me, but you know, nobody in history, or even just normal life, exists in a vacuum. Everyone is influenced by those around them, and given the pretty much almost non-existent status of women into almost the twentieth century, or certainly the nineteenth anyway, it's going to be a fact that powerful men will swarm around the women we're talking about. Or, often, not powerful men, but just men. You can't talk about Elizabeth I without mentioning her da, Henry VIII, or indeed the Earl of Dudley, you can't write about Winnie Mandela without writing about her famous hubby, and you will do well to keep Hitler out of any discussion on Eva Braun. It's just how it is: you have to set the scene, and history revolves, like it or not, almost completely around male figures, so we have to position Matilda with respect to the men around her, who influenced her, helped her or opposed her. Believe me, we're getting there.

But first, to Stephen, later to be a King of England.

Known as Stephen of Blois, he was a Frenchman, born to the daughter of our man William the Conqueror, and so with possibly a stronger claim to the throne of England than Matilda possessed. You may recall he was one of the few with the foresight to say "No thanks, this cruise is looking too boozy for me!" and step off the ill-fated White Ship, thereby saving his life and remaining as one of those with the best legitimate claim to the English crown. Ah. According to another account his decision not to be aboard the White Ship was a little more prosaic and less noble; he was suffering from a case of the runs. Well, if so, his decision turned out not to be a shit one. Sorry. Anyway, not about to waste his heritage, when he heard Henry had popped his clogs, Stephen thought "Oh to see the green shores of England again", or something, possibly ignoring the fact that he had never seen the shores of England, green or otherwise, in his life. But sure that wasn't going to stop him. There was a throne going begging and as far as he and his mother were concerned, it had his name on it.

See, the thing about Henry was that he was generally not considered a good or well-liked king, and there may have in fact been few who mourned his passing. Witness the explosion of unrest and in-fighting amongst his many progeny, most of which were, quite literally, bastards. Whether he had instilled this lack of common familial feeling in his sons and daughters, or whether he had angered them by not being there for things like First Holy Communions and birthdays, or indeed whether it was just that none of them liked him, Henry was not a popular dad, and this lack of regard extended well outside his rather large and mostly illegitimate family. The flags may have been at half-mast when he breathed his last, but it was probably only for show. Inside, and in private - or even public perhaps - many may have been glad to have seen the back of the old bastard.

Stephen could not have been more different. A pious, noble man, he was one of the guys, sitting with his own men and laughing and drinking with them, and even his people liked him. He was very popular, and a very competent ruler too. He wasn't a king in Normandy, but a noble, and also well in with the Church, which always helps. Making his way to London, Stephen was proclaimed king in 1135. Just to make things even more confusing, Stephen's wife was also named Matilda, so technically there would be two Queen Matildas, as we will see. Whatever else  can be said about her though, the Matilda we're talking about, Henry's daughter, must have been one tough woman. While campaigning around Normandy with Geoffrey they clearly found time to get it on - again - and she was pregnant with her third child, another boy, whom she gave birth to (thankfully sans the complications and near-death experience of her second-born) in 1136.

Stephen left his coat on the English throne in 1137 so that nobody would sit on it while he was gone, and returned to Normandy to take on Matilda and her husband. However as ever, slightly hilarious history intervened to thwart him. His Norman nobles, who thought little of the Flemish mercenaries the king had signed up to help him, decided they didn't much fancy travelling and fighting alongside them: they'd much rather fight with them, and so they did, the two sides of his army duking it out in a crazy mini-civil war, while Stephen may or may not have pleaded "Come on, guys! Can't we all just get along?" They couldn't though, and King Stephen remarked "Fuck this! I'm off back to England!" And off he fucked.

Things, however, did not get any better for him once he landed on Old Blighty, as Matilda's uncle, King David I of Scotland, seized the chance to attack the northern territories of Carlisle and Newcaste, necessitating the English king's crossing the border with an army and asking David if he wouldn't mind awfully going back to where he came from, to which David shrugged "Aye, sure. I was only fashin'* anyroad!**" And off he fucked back to Scotland, leaving Stephen to breathe a sigh of relief and head southwards again. But not for long. The Welsh, seeing the Scots rise, thought we can do that too, and so they did, and Stephen was off fighting again, putting down revolts and rebellions like there was no tomorrow.

Time for a bastard to enter the fray.

*Fashing: joking, kidding around
** Anyroad: a rather colourful local way of saying anyway

[Trollheart]

Robert of Gloucester, one of the many illegitimate progeny of the oversexed late King Henry, rebelled against Stephen, being, as he was, technically Matilda's half-brother. His rebellion caused everything to kick off: a civil war in Kent, the re-invasion of Normandy by Geoffrey, and sure David thought why not get in on the action too, and re-invaded the north of England. Stephen must have thought "Suffering Jesus! Am I to be allowed no fucking peace?" This was a period of three years during which everyone seemed to want to fight, rebel against him or take his crown, and in 1139 Matilda, having failed to convince the Pope to legitimise her claim, decided to take the direct route and just take the throne by force. She landed in the suspiciously-French-sounding Arundel, in West Sussex, in the summer, though in the company not of Geoffrey but of Robert of Gloucester. Seems her hubby had decided "You're all right, thanks, I'm happy here. But, you know, bon chance and all that bollocks." Yeah, he stayed in France.

Seems a bit odd to me that Matilda and Robert only brought 140 men with them (well, it says 140 knights; maybe there were other soldiers?) - when Henry II landed in Ireland his army numbered in the thousands, and 140 men can hardly have been enough to oppose Stephen on his home ground. I expect they were looking for support from the Norman lords in England. Matilda's mother was there, and she helped them, though Stephen seems to have quickly besieged her castle and taken her prisoner, later letting her go with a firm admonishment not to do it again, possibly missing the raspberry she blew at him behind his back. While he set about pursuing Robert, whom he no doubt considered the more dangerous enemy (what threat, after all, could a mere woman pose to a king and his army?) she settled in Gloucester and began making alliances, and plans. Irked to discover she was not just buggering off to a nunnery or sitting at home doing needlework, Stephen attacked her again, meaning to teach her a proper lesson this time.

However, he was the one who was taught the lesson.

New ally of Matilda, or at least enemy of Stephen, which amounted to the same thing, Ranulf of Chester joined Robert and together they took on Stephen's forces at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, defeated the king's forces and took Stephen prisoner, reversing the roles as he was now brought to Matilda's castle and incarcerated at Bristol. Matilda now began to make plans to have herself declared queen. Naturally, this as always involved bribes, promises, threats and the odd round of excommunications before everyone was happy, and even Stephen shrugged and said "Fuck it, let the bitch have the crown. It's been nothing but trouble to me since I put it on. Should have stayed in Normandy. They know how to treat a ruler there!"

On April 7 1141 Matilda was crowned Queen of England, though she assumed the title "Lady of England and Normandy" before she was actually crowned. This never happened though, as she was chased from London (where her coronation was to take place) by supporters loyal to Stephen, while back in la belle France Geoffrey folded his newspaper (yes I know), glanced at the clock (I KNOW!) and stretched and yawned. "Time for another invasion of Normandy, methinks!" he grinned, and set about fitting action to word. His successes then reverberated back through England, as supporters of Stephen began to see which way the wind from across the Channel was blowing, and thought of their own skin. Matilda's power grew as Stephen's waned. But if there's one thing you can say about military alliances, it's that they are fragile, and fluid. Two things. If there are two things you can say about military alliances, it's that they are fragile, fluid and likely to change. Three things. If there are three things you can say about military alliances, it's that they are fragile, fluid and likely to change. And affect the whole balance of power. Four things. Among the things you can say... you get the idea.

Having made an alliance with Henry of Blois, Stephen's brother, Matilda fell out with him and she and Robert besieged his castle at Winchester. Stephen's wife, the other Matilda (also known at this time still as Queen Matilda, to add to the confusion) took her chance and charged in for hubby's glory, and battle was joined. In what became known as the Rout of Winchester, Matilda was roundly defeated but escaped, leaving Robert to be captured and eventually exchanged for Stephen. Release, Stephen made sure he was re-crowned and so essentially, although never entirely legitimate, Matilda's reign as Queen of England lasted a mere eight months, making hers one of the shortest reigns in English history, though not the shortest. It's said that it was believed (whether true or just anti-Matilda propaganda) that during his imprisonment Stephen had been held in very poor conditions, and that as a result he had become so sick that it was feared he might die. As he hovered on the brink of death, sympathies began to turn back towards him and his following saw a resurgence.

Matilda had made her court in Oxford, and perhaps naively had sent Robert to fetch Geoffrey, hoping her husband would reinforce her relatively small and inexperienced army. Stephen, meanwhile, managed to convince Ranulf of Chester to throw his lot in with him again, and Ranulf deserted Matilda's cause. This left the Empress with a very small force against Stephen's more than 1,000, and he easily took the town and besieged Matilda's castle. Did a lot of besieging in those days, they did: besiege this, besiege that - couldn't move with a siege going on somewhere. Two months into the siege Robert returned, with about 700 men but no Geoffrey, who had again decided France was where it was at, and bugger his wife, who had never understood him anyway.

As the army besieging the castle got tired and bored, and careless - or possibly helped her, betraying their king, who knows? - Matilda managed to escape from Oxford with four nights, shocking and enraging a chronicler of the time, almost an apologist for Stephen, who fumed "I have never read of another woman so luckily rescued from so many mortal foes and from the threat of dangers so great: the truth being that she went from the castle of Arundel uninjured through the midst of her enemies; she escaped unscathed from the midst of the Londoners when they were assailing her, and her only, in mighty wrath; then stole away alone, in wondrous fashion, from the rout of Winchester, when almost all her men were cut off; and then, when she left besieged Oxford, she came away safe and sound?"

Like a dark ages Houdini, Matilda was gone again, slipped through the king's fingers like sand, literally, according to some chroniclers (not the one above) walking on water, though this has been taken to mean the Thames was frozen so she could use it as a path to escape, and wearing a white cloak as camouflage against the whiteness of the recently-fallen snow.

Having slipped through her enemy's fingers, Matilda made Wiltshire her new capital, at the castle at Devizes which had been confiscated by Stephen previously. Pulling in those old reliables, the fractious Fleming mercenaries, she set about securing the county under her rule. With Robert at her side again and the support of various nobles whose land Stephen had snaffled, she built up a sizeable court and settled down to wait the King out. Stalemate, or as we might say today, Mexican standoff. In England, obviously. Not Mexico. Which wasn't even discovered at this point. But you get the idea. She then decided to play Stephen at his own game, and besieged him in Wilton Castle in Herefordshire. This led to a battle as Stephen, knowing how serious a siege can be - he had done his share of besieging, after all - decided fuck this waiting around, I'm going for it, and out he broke. In the ensuing Battle of Wilton he was defeated, his castle burned, but he managed to become a dot on the horizon. One for Matilda and her forces. Girl power!

Things began to go slightly to shit for the king, as East Anglia rose up, followed by the yo-yo earl of Chester, Ranulf, who, like most nobles, didn't really care too much about promises or treaties or agreements, and went where the wind was blowing. At the moment, it was blowing slightly in Matilda's direction, so he headed that way. Stephen now had close to a full-blown rebellion on his hands, while in France  Geoffrey hadn't been idle, recognised by the end of the year as Duke of Normandy by the king, Louis VII. Despite this, things weren't all sweetness and light for the Empress either.

One of her best military commanders, Miles of Gloucester (no, not Miles TO Gloucester, though if he had been Miles II that would have been funny... okay, okay, I'll get on with it) fell victim to one of the most popular deaths for young virile men in 12th century England, the hunt. Whether he was done in or it was really an accident I don't know, but there's probably a reason men about to be married did not go on a stag. Anyway, his loss weakened Matilda's position, and then Stephen defeated Geoffrey (no, another one) of Mandeville, who had kicked off the East Anglian trouble, and sued for terms. Neither were prepared to compromise, and so the stalemate continued. But it wouldn't remain so for long.

Over a period from 1145 to 1151, Matilda lost many of her commanders to the Second Crusade, as they answered God's call to knock some good old European blood-and-guts sense into those damned heretics, Robert died - peacefully, it says, which surprises me, and probably surprised him - and Brian Fitz Count, another of her big supporters, decided he also wanted to die a non-violent death, and entered a monastery. They threw him out, probably silently, but he re-entered, and when he was eventually able to explain to him that he didn't in fact want to burn their abbey down, but join up, be a brother, be a monk, they said (silently; probably signed) sure dude, why not? God needs all the monks he can get. Unfortunately God called this new monk home sooner than he had expected, and the life of Brian (sorry) came to an end in 1151.

During this time, Matilda's son decided it might be a good idea to pop over the Channel, picking up some duty-free on the way no doubt, and visit mummy. The army he brought with him though seemed put out when he explained he couldn't pay them, and when mum refused to come up with the readies ("I only gave you sixteen thousand florins last week, son! That was supposed to last you all winter! You think I'm fucking made of money, do you?") they ended up getting paid by, of all people, Stephen, who probably thought well if I pay these guys they can hardly fight against me, now can they? He was of course right, and off they all buggered back to France, to his relief. Matilda followed them the next year, 1148, possibly at least in part due to her need to talk to the Pope about demanding his castle at Devizes back. "Oi! That belongs to the Bishop of Salisbury!" Pope Eugene II had thundered when he found out she was squatting in it. "Clear off, or I'll excommunicate you into the next century!" Hmm. Careful with that axe, Eugene!

"Fuck England into a hole!" thought Matilda, setting up her new court at Rouen, and when Geoffrey died in 1151, Henry, their son, legged it back across to England to claim his throne, an army at his back to explain in detail the thinking behind his legitimacy. He failed,  but in the end Stephen adopted him as his son, and also his successor, so when Stephen died only a year later, Henry achieved what his mother could not, and became King of England. How proud his mum must have been.

As for her, she stayed in Normandy but did poke her nose into the new King Henry II's affairs, helping him to sort out his kingdom. And that relic, the Hand of St. James? Well, you might possibly have thought she had taken it as a handy backscratcher, and maybe she did, who knows? But it ended up in the Abbey of Reading, despite attempts by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, to get it returned to Germany. He was bought off instead with, um, a big tent. Yeah. If you have a choice between a supposedly priceless and powerful relic of a saint, and a marquee, go for the tent every time.

Matilda became a very valued advisor to her son and his court, and brokered many tricky deals and arrangements, and though she counselled against Henry's invading Ireland, he went ahead and did it anyway after her death, setting in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to centuries of bloodshed, strife, death and really bad feeling between the English and us. See my History of Ireland journal, obviously, for more. Matilda died in 1167, and was buried at Rouen, though through the depredations , three hundred years later, of the people she had tried to rule, her bones got scattered and though re-located in 1684, Napoleon made sure they were messed up again in the eighteenth century until finally they were again re-interred at Rouen in 1846, seven hundred years after her death.

Although never officially crowned nor recognised, even today, as a queen of England, Matilda still took on the most powerful man of the time, the King, Stephen, and several times thwarted him, either evading capture herself, or indeed having him captured, and fought him to a standstill. Though she technically never really gave in - the war between her and Stephen sort of ground naturally to a halt, for the reasons stated above - she never sat on the English throne and is today only considered a footnote in the history of English monarchs. Nevertheless, considering the time, and the huge disadvantages of being a woman, and the enemies she faced both within and without her own power structure, immense credit must be given to her as surely one of the most powerful, and successful, women in twelfth-century England.

[Trollheart]

Timeline and location: Twentieth Century America

Name: Kate "Ma" Barker
Occupation: (Ostensibly) Crime boss
Nationality: American
Born: 1873
Died: 1935
Famous (or infamous) for: Leading the infamous Barker-Willis gang who terrorised the American midwest during the 1930s.

History is, as they say, written by the winners, and when any who would refute the facts written down are conveniently dead, it makes it difficult to know how much of the truth made it onto that paper, and how much is propaganda, or even outright lies. Anyone who has heard the name "Ma" Barker will be aware of her reputation as the feared leader of the vicious Barker-Karpis gang, a matriarch of crime and violence who presided over a brood of killers and thieves, and who has gone down in history as one of the most vicious women of the twentieth century, corrupting and twisting the whole idea of motherhood and the gentler sex. This may all very well be true, but there are doubts about the veracity of many of the statements about her, and allegations of cover-ups by the FBI that go right to the top. As this is not Trollheart's Most Evil, therefore, I am not going to just accept the popular story as gospel, but will investigate, as far as I can, the details behind the woman and see if I can get at the truth, if indeed there is any hidden truth to be got at.

Unfortunately for me, the only book on her I could get - well, that I was prepared to pay for - already has me worried. No less than three times in the god-damn introduction to the book has the author misspelt her name, calling her Baker rather than Barker. This could of course just be evidence of poor proof-reading, but even so it's lax to let such an important error through not once, not twice, but three times. And if it's more than just a mistake, then it casts a real shadow of doubt over the competence of the writer; after all, if you can't remember or make sure of the name of your subject, well, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence, does it?

Whatever, I'm stuck with this, and various websites, so let's make the best of it and see where it takes us. For those interested, the book in question is called, with a rather stunning lack of impartiality, Ma Barker - America's Most Wanted Mother: the True Story. I would love to think it is the true story, but as I say, Bina Brown has not engendered any real hope in me that this will be anything other than a regurgitation of the "facts" already in the public domain, and will support the FBI's theory that she was, as Edgar J. Hoover once opined, "the most vicious, dangerous and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade."

One thing we can say for sure: whether it's Waco or Ruby Ridge, or Lee Harvey Oswald in question, the Federal Bureau of Investigation always makes sure to cover itself, as we've seen already in other articles I've written in other journals, and for me the acronym could be anagramised to read FIB; it seems the Bureau is not above twisting, moulding, shaping the truth to suit its purposes, as far as outright lying to protect itself, its reputation and its operatives. It's a brave man or woman who will take on the FBI, an action that can land you in jail, out of work or even dead.

But perhaps we're doing the Bureau an injustice here, and I have really nothing to base this on other than comments made on the Wikipedia page which seem to allude to a cover-up. This may not at all be the case, and maybe I'll find, as I research this woman and her family, that she deserves her dread and hated reputation, and that there is no truth to the conspiracy theories. Or maybe there is. I go into this with an open mind, but like probably everyone else who has ever heard her name, I always assumed "Ma" Barker was just plain vicious and evil. I was not aware there was, or could be, another side to her story. It will be interesting to see if this is the case.

Oh for the love of God! I've just seen how many pages this "book" has! Thirteen! Forget that. Worse than a Readers Digest version of the story. You're not going to get any deep insights or personal accounts in that, are you? What a waste of time. I think Wiki has more on her than that! Right, we'll concentrate on whatever other sources we can find. Let's see, true crime websites, true crime websites...

I find it odd that she didn't like her name. If I was a girl and someone had christened me Arizona I think I would consider it a very unique name, and let's be honest here, Arizona Barker sounds just made for the movies, the newspapers and so forth, doesn't it? But she didn't care for it and so Arizona Donnie Clark became Kate Barker, after having married George Barker, a tenant farmer in 1892. I suppose such things are hard to corroborate - or disprove - but one account says the young Arizona (at the time often called "Arrie") had a mean and nasty temper, and yet on the other side of the coin she attended church regularly, though I suspect kids had little choice in those days. Another claim made is that she once saw Jesse James ride through her town, and I suppose she could have done, but she would have been at best nine - and likely much, much younger - as James died in 1882. His days of riding with the Youngers and his own gang were well past by then, so let's assume she was maybe seven? Is that an age at which such a vision would inspire a young girl to a life of crime, as is claimed on the Biography.com website? I leave it to you to decide.

At any rate, Arizona, now Kate Barker, gave birth to four sons: Arthur, Fred, Herman and Lloyd. It's just for my own amusement, but you can arrange those boys so that the first letter of the names of each spell the word half. Just mentioning it, nothing to do with anything. Barker's kids were apparently - and this is according to the FBI, so make of it what you will - all illiterate, or barely able to read and write, as their parents paid no attention to their education. There's no information extant, or none I can find anyway, which speaks of Kate's childhood, and whether or not she went to school and if so, if she did well or not, so it's hard to say whether this lack of interest in educating her kids is credible.

What doesn't seem to be in dispute is that her boys were trouble from the get-go, as they say in 'Murica, being arrested for thievery and other low-grade crimes, with most of them spending time in prison by their teens. While much of this antisocial behaviour surely can be laid at the feet of the parents, particularly Kate, who refused to allow her husband to discipline them and flew into a rage whenever he tried to even scold them, much too can be attributed to their induction into another well-known Prohibition-era crime gang.


Central Park, New York. Not terrorised, at least by this gang.
The Central Park Gang

Seems odd to me that these guys were so called, as they neither operated in Central Park nor even in New York, plying their criminal trade around Tulsa, Oklahoma. When I research I also run into the Central Park 5, which is something entirely different, so it's hard to find out too much about them, but here's what I have. It seems to have served as a sort of training/proving ground for criminals, with the likes of Alvin Karpis, Russel Gibson and William Underhill serving time there. Also part of the gang were Matthew Kimes and Ray Terrill, who would later leave to form their own gang, rather imaginatively called the Kimes-Terrill Gang. Although some of the Barker Boys would spend time in the Central Park Gang - notably Arthur, who would end up bringing both Karpis and Gibson into his own gang.

The relationship between Karpis and the Barkers went back further than the Central Park Gang though. When Fred, the youngest, was paroled he hooked up with him and the two embarked on a life of staying on the straight and narrow and being model citizens. Right. Once a thug, always a thug, and Fred and Karpis carried out robberies that quickly escalated to the first murder attributed to the gang now known as the Barker-Karpis Gang, when they shot and killed a sheriff who was trying to stop them. Once that line had been crossed, there was no going back. The dark genie was out of the bottle and nothing would force him back in. I suppose they considered they could only be executed once, so why not for murders rather than a single one? What had they, in their eyes, to lose?

So without going too deeply into the crimes committed by her sons, Barker's spawn were certainly violent scum, robbing, killing and kidnapping their way across the American Midwest, and came to a deserved violent end. As did she. But the point I want to explore, if I can, is her own role in their crimes. I'm not about to give her a pass, but bringing up a bad bunch is hardly a crime - sometimes kids get out of hand, especially as they grow up - and even approving of, or at best, not disapproving of their life choices is not, I would think, justification for killing her. So, did she take an active part in their crime spree? I must admit, up to now I always assumed she was a gun-totin' woman, backing up her kids and helping split the proceeds of their crimes. At this point, I don't have evidence to say that's true. Or that it's not. Let's dig further and see what we can unearth.

Okay, thanks to a footnote on Wiki I've come across a book chronicling the life of Tom Brown, ex Police Chief of St. Paul, Minnesota, who apparently secretly aided and abetted and protected the Barker-Karpis gang, so maybe I can get some actual unbiased detail from that source. Let's see. According to the account in the book, Secret Partners: Big Tom and the Barker Gang by Tim Mahoney, there seems to have been a lot more to the story than was officially released to the public, including the fact that the Chief of Police was not only protecting the Barker-Karpis Gang, but actually alerted them when they were about to be busted, allowing them to make their escape. I wouldn't be surprised, to find, as I go on reading, that Kate Barker was killed to keep this dirty little secret of police corruption at the highest levels from leaking out.

Well I have to check into her earlier life, as in, during her kids' life of crime, not her own youth, but by 1932 Mahoney notes she was frail, suffering from heart palpitations and panic attacks, as well as fits of loneliness and depression. Doesn't sound like the cold-blooded killer painted by the FBI. Doesn't, in fact, sound to me like anything more than a harmless old lady, despite her sons being the terror of the midwest and stone cold killers.

Having read through most of that book, I have a somewhat better idea of what went down, and as an aside, if you want an insight into the level and scale of corruption that went on in at least the St. Paul Police Department (and likely in other states too) it's well worth a read. As for Kate "Ma" Barker, well from what I read her sons kept her out of the loop, hiding her in a variety of hotels and apartments, though whether this was to insulate her from being implicated in their crimes - a vain effort, in the end - or because she was hotly against all of their girlfriends and did her best to split each of her sons' relationships up, I can't say. It does speak to someone who was not directly involved in the robberies, kidnappings and murders, though it's hard to believe she did not know about them. However, having knowledge of a crime and keeping it to yourself, while a federal crime itself, does not earn you the death penalty.

She seems to have either had no input into or perhaps knowledge of the plot to take care of her common-law husband though. Her actual husband, George, whose name she had taken and whose name the boys all now bore, had finally had enough of his maniacal criminal offspring and left her in 1928, giving up on the family when it was clear she would not countenance any sort of punishment for her children, and was in effect enabling and basically abetting their criminal lives. It's always hard to be sure, as most sources quote the FBI, and they, as you might expect, tried to paint her in the worst light possible, but it seems that some time after George left she ended up with a guy called Arthur Dunlop, living in pretty bad poverty from what I read. I don't think they married - he seems to have been used more as a cover so that the family could retain a slight aura of respect - but she introduced him as her husband.

He may just have had really bad luck, or he may have been a snitch, but either way the boys were not having it and, believing he had given them away when they were almost captured (but warned by Brown) they killed him. It's not recorded what Ma Barker's reaction to this was, but given how fiercely loyal to and protective of her sons she was, she may have believed the story and thought Dunlop got what he deserved. His murder took place in 1932, but it wouldn't be long before his so-called common-law wife would be following him to the grave.

As tends to usually be the case, it was one of their accomplices who sold the Barkers out in the hopes of making a deal, giving the FBI a rough idea of where their hideout was - he wasn't sure exactly where, but knew it was near a lake in northern Florida. On January 16 1935 Federal agents surrounded the house where the Barker-Karpis Gang had been discovered to be hiding out. As it happened, there were only two occupants left - Fred Barker and his mother, the rest having lit out - and one of the agents called out for Fred. Ma came to the door, asking who wanted him. Getting no answer, she slammed the door and went back inside. Tear gas canisters hit the windows but did not break them. Machine-gun fire answered this assault, and a deadly gun battle began. Amazingly, people began arriving and having picnics as they watched the hours-long exchange of gunfire. I mean, can you imagine that today? Well yeah, but they'd be filming it on their phones and uploading it to social media. 

At any rate, Kate was not seen alive again. The FBI, not surprisingly, claim she took part in the gun battle, but this was never proven. It wasn't even known if she had ever fired a gun, or could hold one, and at her age this seems at best unlikely. A more believable story would be that Fred made a last stand while his mother perhaps took cover, or shouted encouragement, or even shrieked hysterically, who knows? J. Edgar Hoover, however, was not about to accept or admit that his agents had killed an unarmed old woman, and so the fiction about her being a criminal mastermind was built up, and has endured to this day, though most crime historians dismiss such an idea, and even hardened gangsters who knew her, including Alvin Karpis, scoffed at the notion. "She wasn't a leader of criminals," he said, "nor a criminal herself." Notorious bank robber Harvey Bailey agreed, in somewhat less kind terms: "Ma couldn't plan breakfast," he sneered, "let alone a criminal enterprise."

[Trollheart]

But facts rarely get in the way of an FBI story, and the Bureau will always go to the greatest lengths to show itself as "the good guys" no matter what. And there had been a wanted poster for Ma Barker, so they capitalised on that and labelled her as the leader of a killer brood, when in fact, while she was certainly not innocent, she is highly unlikely to have taken any real active part in any of the crimes. For one thing, she was normally kept away from them by her sons, they sending their girlfriends to stay with her while they robbed, murdered or kidnapped. With nobody left alive to refute their story about the shoot-out, the legend gained traction and led to several hyperbolic movies which spread Ma's fame/infamy far and wide, and whose writers didn't too much bother with researching the truth.

It would be unfair and also inaccurate, I believe, to paint Kate "Ma" Barker as an innocent whose reputation was tarnished, even created by the FBI, but it would also be unfair to accept the image they painted of her. She was certainly guilty of losing control - or not even trying or wanting to have control, or even encouraging the bad habits - of her sons, and of never making them feel they should pay for their crimes. She was guilty of aiding those crimes in the sense that she provided shelter and cover for the gang, and she was without question indirectly responsible for many deaths, especially of cops, due to the actions of her sons. But the idea that she was some cigar-smoking, Tommy-gun-toting hard-as-nails black widow who snarled defiance at the Feds as she died in a hail of bullets is at the very best questionable. It's quite possible she was terrified as the slugs shattered windows and impacted walls and furniture, and though it's impossible to say whether Fred died before her or not, if he did then she must have gone through her own personal hell, seeing her son cut down in front of her, although she wouldn't have to wait long before being violently reunited with him.

The legend persists, and I wouldn't want to whitewash or say she was unfairly treated. Did she deserve to die? Maybe, maybe not. Contemporary accounts speak of the FBI giving the two of them multiple chances to surrender, though it's unlikely a stone-cold killer like Fred Barker would have taken that deal. But it's quite clear that once the smoke cleared and they realised they had killed an old woman, possibly an unarmed old woman, agents shrugged their shoulders and turned to congratulating each other on a job well done.

I am a little surprised though at the need to invent the legend of Ma Barker. I mean, yes, the FBI knew she was in the house but Fred started shooting first (according to them, and I'd accept that's likely as he was hardly going to be taken without a fight) so why didn't they just further blacken his name by saying "he even got his poor old innocent mother killed" and leave it at that? Why create this - frankly, hard to believe - image of a desperate woman toting a Tommy-Gun in, what, her sixties? With no previous experience documented of her even firing a gun? They could have held her up as the tragic result of what happens when gangsters care more for their own freedom than the lives of their parents, which would not only have been more believable, but also more than likely closer to the truth.

I wonder if it had anything to do with the FBI being a pretty new organisation - they had only obtained permission to carry guns the previous year - and Hoover wanting to have a "big story" to tell? Killing Fred Barker wouldn't be it: he was just one of the gang, and the others were still at large. But killing the "evil mastermind" of the gang, and thus cutting off the serpent's aged head? That plays well in the papers. Not only that, if the true story had come out, the depth of corruption in the St. Paul police department would have been a major embarrassment to US law enforcement, and hard questions would have been asked. Better to scapegoat an old woman and deflect any possible inquiry into the performance of the guardians of the law. Plus then, it's likely any nascent sympathy the general public may have had for the old woman would have evaporated in a possible cloud of lies and half-truths woven by the Bureau. No case to answer: she was evil and deserved to die. File closed.

I suppose in the end you can say that while the raid on the Barker-Karpis hideout yielded only two bodies, it resulted in another casualty: the truth. From that moment on, the legend around Ma Barker took on a life of its own and grew, and persists to this day.