Maldon's Museum in the Park recently celebrated International Women's day with a reminder of their exhibition last year on famous Maldon women.

These include Genevieve Rycroft, Ann Carter ('Captain Ann'), Myra Sadd Brown and Edith Prance.

Maldon Nub news has featured two of these redoubtable women in past issues.

In October 2020 we featured 'Captain' Ann Carter, hanged in 1629 for her part in the Maldon grain riots of that year.

An economic depression had hit the Essex cloth trade, leading to widespread hardship and discontent. The decline in cloth exports meant that food which might have been purchased locally was exported at higher prices, and the loss of employment in the cloth trade reduced people's purchasing power at the same time.

Two major riots occurred in or near Maldon in 1629, both involving Ann Carter, the wife of a butcher, born and married in the town.

In the first riot, 100 women and children stormed a Flemish ship at "Burrow Hills" (probably Barrow Hill in Goldhanger) and filled their caps with grain. The authorities did not aggressively pursue the culprits, only targeting a handful already known for their outspoken behaviour.

One of these was Ann. In an age where women were seen as not being capable of independent thought and actions, the law often left them alone, but Ann Carter had already made herself stand out. She had crossed swords with a magistrate in 1622, calling him a "bloud sucker". She had also in 1624 defended her husband with a cudgel against an attempted arrest.

But it's the second riot in 1629 where Ann really came into her own.

Between 200 and 300 men and women boarded a ship loaded with grain at Mill Beach, taking some of the cargo and distributing it to local hungry families. Ann coordinated it, calling herself 'Captain' in letters to neighbouring communities and using one John Gardner, a baker, as her secretary. The crew of the ship was assaulted according to one source, though another says they were sympathetic and actively co-operated.

Co-ordinated action on this scale could not be ignored by the authorities, and a special commission was set up to catch and prosecute the offenders.

Only eight people were tried, as courts preferred to make an example of a few rather than carry out mass punishments. Of these, five were hanged, including Ann Carter.

She was the only woman so punished, and the story goes that she refused to hide behind her sex and made it clear that she was an active participant - the 'Captain' - rather than a misled follower.

In January 2021 we visited the famous Sadd family, major employers in the building and the timber trade. Myra Eleanor Sadd, born 3 October 1872, was to become famous in her own right, not as a businesswoman but as a campaigner for women's suffrage (votes for women).

Until 1832, a few wealthy women had been allowed to vote in Parliamentary elections, but the 1832 Reform Act barred them from doing so. A similar Act in 1835 prevented them from voting in local government elections, though this was gradually relaxed from 1869 onwards. The general thinking behind this was that men were equipped with the knowledge and rational powers to vote on important matters, while women were best placed working behind the scenes to support their husbands.

Clearly, this did not appeal to Myra Sadd, who was already a convinced campaigner for the vote before her marriage to Ernest Brown in 1896.

Myra Sadd Brown, supported by her husband, set off on the long and painful journey which led, after many trials, to the Representation of the People Act in 1918 which gave the vote to women householders, or the wives of householders, aged 30 and over.

She became a member of the key organisations involved: the Women's Social and Political Union, the Women's Freedom League and the Free Church League for Women's Suffrage. As part of Emily Pankhurst's East London Federation of Suffragettes she hosted busloads of women from the East End in her house near Maldon.

Myra Sadd Brown didn't limit her contributions to committee membership: she was arrested in 1912 for throwing a brick through a window at the War Office and did two months hard labour in Holloway Prison together with prominent activists including Emmeline Pankhurst. Like them she went on hunger strike, and was force-fed through rubber tubes – all the more agonising for her because she had a broken nose.

Sadd Brown's letters to her family, scribbled on toilet paper and smuggled out of prison, are still available, and make poignant reading. To her young children she writes, "I have such a funny little bed, which I can turn right up to the wall when I don't use it. I am learning French & German so you must work well or mummy will know lots more than you." She never shows the slightest sign of flinching from the cause.

World War 1 saw the suffrage movements suspend their actions and support the war effort.

Women's contributions to jobs traditionally done by men made the old arguments against women's suffrage very difficult to support, and women gained the vote in 1918. This wasn't the end for Myra Sadd Brown, who went on to become a leading figure in the international women's suffrage movement. Her husband died in 1930, while Myra went on to travel in 1937 to be present at the birth of a grandchild. Planning to return home on the Trans-Siberian Railway, she suffered a stroke in Hong Kong in 1938. She was cremated there, but is commemorated on a Sadd family memorial in the Maldon United Reformed Church churchyard.