The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760Reynolds, Myra
History
The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760
Reynolds, Myra
Women -- Education -- Great Britain; Women -- Great Britain; Women authors, English
Mrs. Elizabeth Cellier, a second writer on midwifery, is known
perhaps chiefly because she was supposed to have some connection
with the Meal Tub Plot. After her acquittal from treason charges she
wrote a pamphlet called _Malice Defeated_, in which she courageously
expressed her adherence to an unpopular cause in the words, "I do not
yet so much fear the smell of Newgate as to be frighted for telling
the truth; nor is death so great a terror to me, but that I am still
ready to seal the same with my blood."[149] She must have been a
woman of substance as well as courage, for she was fined a thousand
pounds because of certain passages in this pamphlet. She was also
condemned to stand in the pillory three times, a punishment which,
according to Lady Russell, she bore with intrepidity and nonchalance,
protecting her head from missiles by means of a battledore which she
held up with one hand, while with the other she gathered up and put
into her pocket all the stones that fell within her reach.
In her profession of midwifery Mrs. Cellier was of high repute, but
her interests were not circumscribed by her own practice. One of
her schemes was the establishment of a "Colledg of Midwives" where
the best possible training should be given. Though her pamphlet,
entitled _A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital and raising
a revenue of 5000 l or 6000 l a year by and for the Maintenance of a
Corporation of Skilful Midwives_, did not result in the establishment
of her proposed college, the idea and the formulation of the plan do
credit to her foresight and intelligence, and sound quite in line
with modern forms of woman's civic enterprise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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