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Carve Her Name

@carvehername.bsky.social

3.9K followers 430 following 1.9K posts

Every day women have, and are, making history. Follow us to get daily posts on what women have done #OnThisDay. 🗃️ We check replies on weekdays, but not always at weekends. https://carvehername.org.uk/ and https://linktr.ee/CarveHerName

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · Oct 12

Hello!

Every day women have, and are, making history. We tell their stories a day at a time. Follow us for posts about the history women made and are making.

Here's a few notes on what we do.

a woman in a dark room with the word women written on the bottom

Alt: Saoirse Ronan as Jo in Little Women. She's exclaiming "women!!!"

media.tenor.com

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 3h

#OnThisDay, 13 Oct 1975, Te Rarawa leader Whina Cooper brings around 5,000 marchers to the New Zealand Parliament to present a petition signed by 60,000 people protesting ongoing Māori land alienation.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #NZHistory 🗃️

Whina Cooper addressing the crowd at the protest. She is an older Maori woman wearing a traditional cloak over her clothes.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 10h

Last chance to celebrate #BookshopDay!

Buy a book by the end of 12 Oct and you could win a £250 Bookshop.org digital gift card. Every sale supports independent bookshops: uk.bookshop.org/shop...

(UK only, affiliate link, e-books DO count!)

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Reposted by Carve Her Name

Women's History Scotland @womenshistscot.bsky.social · 14h

📣 NOW ACCEPTING ESSAYS! The Leah Leneman Prize for research on women’s or gender history is open to students & independent scholars. Submit your 8-10k word essay by 22 Dec 2025 📅

Full details: womenshistoryscotland.org/projects-and...

Front cover of Leah Leneman's 'The Scottish Suffragettes' featuring an image of an Ewardian woman in front of a 'Womens Freedom League' banner, and a second image of a busy suffrage march with banners that read 'Votes for Women'.

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Reposted by Carve Her Name

Dr Simona Guerra @drspguerra.bsky.social · 20h

She worked on the draft of the Messina Declaration and she sat in the first meeting of the European Assembly in Strasbourg on September 10, 1952. The only woman among the first 78 members of the European Assembly. More in my publications, one ☝🏼 #EUsky

Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 20h

#OnThisDay, 12 Oct 1956, Marga Klompé is appointed Minister of Social Work. She is the first woman to be a cabinet Minister in the Netherlands government

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #NLHistory 🗃️
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Marga Klompé sitting with the rest of the Dutch cabinet - all white and male - as they pose for photos.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 20h

She is recognised as a key architect of the Dutch welfare state.

[photos (c) Spaarnestad Photo ]
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Marga Klompé without the cabinet. She is a white woman with light hair.

Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 20h

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 1d

Celebrate #BookshopDay with us!

You could win a £250 Bookshop.org digital gift card when you snap up a book with us between 10 and 12 October.

Every sale supports independent bookshops: uk.bookshop.org/shop...*

(*affiliate link, UK only, includes eBooks!)

A 1910s advertising illustration of a white woman reading a book, surrounded by a lot more books. A small text reads 'do it now'.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 1d

J Edgar Hoover requests her resignation, along with her colleagues Jessie Duckstein and Lenore Houston, in 1924. The FBI does not appoint another woman as a Special Agent until 1972.
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Special Agent Dana Scully rolling her eyes at something stupid Special Agent Fox Mulder just said.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 1d

#OnThisDay, 11 Oct 1922, Alaska P Davidson becomes the first woman to be an FBI Special Agent. She was employed to focus on the trafficking of women across state lines.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
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photo of Alaska P Davidson. She is a white woman with dark hair in a bun.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 2d

PS: We've been updating the bookshop this morning with some books by women and non-binary authors that are popular this autumn. (We've not read them, but we know they're popular or, er, shortlisted.)

uk.bookshop.org/lists/autumn...

(affiliate link)

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 2d

If you like what we do, you can support us in a few ways:

🔁 repost, so more people discover us.
💬 add more info, if it's your area of expertise.
🪙 toss a coin our way, if you can afford to: ko-fi.com/carvehername.
📚 buy a book through our bookshop: uk.bookshop.org/shop....

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Buy CarveHerName a Coffee

We're mostly powered by coffee, a righteous sense of determination, library cards and more coffee. Which is why you can buy us a virtual coffee if you like our work. We'll actually spend it on books, the server for our site and our time.

ko-fi.com

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 2d

We try to post a little BTS snippet on our kofi each week, when we have time. This week, we've looked at how we learnt of Abbie Sweetwine, and why even if a story has been told, telling it from another angle is useful.

ko-fi.com/Post/New-b...
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📢 New blogpost! Abbie Sweetwine

CarveHerName published a post on Ko-fi

ko-fi.com

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 2d

#OnThisDay, 10 Oct 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst and others form the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Manchester, UK. Eventually known as the suffragettes, they fought for women to have the vote.

[photo c 1906]

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #VotesForWomen #BritishHistory 🗃️

staged photo of the WSPU holding a meeting at a dining table. They are all white women.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 3d

"Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right."

#OnThisDay, 9 Oct 2012, Malala Yousafzai survives an assassination attempt by the Taliban. She continues to campaign for education for girls and women.

A teenage Malala speaking before the attempt on her life.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 4d

Today we published a new blog article, looking at Abbie Sweetwine. Florida-born Sweetwine was one of the USAF team who responded to the Harrow and Wealdstone crash in London. She saved lives that day, and helped change emergency response practise in the UK.

carvehername.org.uk/abbie-sweetw...

Abbie Sweetwine was born on 28 May 1921 in Brevard County, Florida, to William and Lena Sweetwine. Abbie was the youngest of three sisters. Her eldest sister, Ruth, was an educator.
The middle sister, Dorothy, was a community activist and the editor of the first black-owned newspaper in Brevard County.

But Abbie wanted to be a nurse, and she wanted to serve in the air force. She must have joined the Women's Army Corp (WAC) before 1945, as her service record identifies her as a WW2 veteran. According to one historian, few black nurses worked at US bases in the 1940s and 1950s, and even fewer were sent overseas.

In 1949, Sweetwine transterred from the WAC to the Women's Air Force, part of the US Air Force (USAF). By 1952, she was one of the USAF nurses stationed at RAF Northolt, close to the newly built and equipped USAF Hospital Station at South Ruislip in north London.

The Angel of Platform Six

Abbie Sweetwine was not the only woman to help that day. Newspaper reports of the time recount how local housewives arrived with armfuls of bedsheets to rip into bandages. They brought their teapots and cigarettes as well, to help the shocked survivors. It was only a decade after the Blitz, when Harrow had been hit by hundreds of high explosive bombs. Many of these housewives would have served in the military, or in civilian emergency services, so would have known what to do in a crisis. (The widespread belief in the UK that a cup of strong sweet tea will help in any situation clearly played a part.)

What Sweetwine did was something more.

Colonel Weideman had his team set up a military triage station on the platform. They started treating the wounded before they were taken to hospital. The doctors - a mix of the USAF team, local doctors and some from the RAF - needed to focus on the most severely injured who could survive if treated there and then. Sweetwine, the only nurse with experience of the system, took over managing the triage. She identified who the doctors should treat, set up plasma transfusions and dosed people with morphine.

The people she was treating, and the people working alongside her, dubbed her 'The Angel of Platform Six'. She picked up a Woman of the Year award, did interviews and was invited to attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in
1953. And she was promoted to Captain shortly after the disaster. She continued her career as a military nurse, eventually serving in both Korea and Vietnam.

Photo of Lt Sweetwine, a black woman, in the months after the accident, with General Vandenberg, a white man and the Second Chief of Staff of the USAF.

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Reposted by Carve Her Name

Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 4d

🚨 NEW BLOG KLAXON!

This month we take a look at Abbie Sweetwine, the woman the British press dubbed “the angel of platform 6”.

carvehername.org.uk/abbie-sweetw...

Abbie Sweetwine and the Harrow and Wealdstone crash - Carve Her Name

When Abbie Sweetwine ran triage at the Harrow and Wealdstone train crash in 1952, she paved the way for the creation of paramedics.

carvehername.org.uk

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 4d

Yep. Our approach was to write about the crash as part of her career. She herself talked about it as just doing her job. Yet it had such an impact on the day and in the years after.

Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 4d

Likewise! We saw the @garius.bsky.social thread a few years ago and added her to our date files. Finally got around to writing it as a blog this year. All the hat tips to John for first telling the story though.

Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 4d

Read more about Abbie Sweetwine and the Harrow and Wealdstone crash on our blog: carvehername.org.uk/...
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Abbie Sweetwine, a black woman in USAF uniform, holding a plasma bag as white male military doctors treats a patient lying on the platform. Text reads British Train Wreck Heroine. Nurse Lt Abbie Sweetwine of Florida was acclaimed a heroine in the British press for her help to injured in Harrow train wreck in which 110 died. Here she administers blood plasma. One British doctor noted of Lt Sweetwine: "she was an angel."

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 4d

#OnThisDay, 8 Oct 1952, USAF 2nd Lt Nurse Abbie Sweetwine uses military triage at the Harrow and Wealdstone train crash in London. She saves lives and paves the way for the UK’s use of paramedics.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BlackHistory #BritishHistory #LondonHistory 🗃️
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Abbie Sweetwine preparing a plasma infusion at the site of the crash. She is a black woman, surrounded by white men.

A photo of the Harrow and Wealdstone crash, showing three passenger trains that had run into each other. There is debris two storeys high, and people searching the wreckage.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 4d

#OnThisDay, 8 Oct 1643, Jeanne Mance opens the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal - the first hospital in Canada.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #CanadianHistory 🗃️

drawing of Jeanne Mance. She is a white woman with brown or dark blond hair.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 4d

🚨 NEW BLOG KLAXON!

This month we take a look at Abbie Sweetwine, the woman the British press dubbed “the angel of platform 6”.

carvehername.org.uk/abbie-sweetw...

Abbie Sweetwine and the Harrow and Wealdstone crash - Carve Her Name

When Abbie Sweetwine ran triage at the Harrow and Wealdstone train crash in 1952, she paved the way for the creation of paramedics.

carvehername.org.uk

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 5d

If you're in the UK, this weekend might be a great time to try buying a book from our bookshop on the UK bookshop dot org.

Buying through bookshop dot org supports indie bookshops and our affiliate links also may pay us a little sometimes. Win/win.

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Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 5d

#OnThisDay, 7 Oct 2006, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskava is assassinated in her Moscow apartment block.

She had been doggedly reporting on human rights abuses by Russian forces in Chechnya.

photo of Anna Politkovskava at an event. She is a white woman with grey hair.

photo of the floral tributes and signs outside Anna's apartment after her murder.

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Reposted by Carve Her Name

Kas van Kasbergen. @kustbewoner.bsky.social · 6d

Eerste Nederlandse vrouwelijke piloot Beatrix de Rijk.
Met een foto replica Deperdussin 1910, de vliegmachine van de Rijk.

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