The Chainmaker’s Wife

Cover reveal! I changed my mind – a woman’s prerogative. This is the final cover.

The Chainmaker’s Wife follows Jack and Rosie’s story in the chainmaking town of Hawley Heath in England’s Black Country from 1911 through the First World War to 1919, and what a tumultuous time it was in British history, especially for women. Rosie is caught up in the fight for women’s suffrage and is torn between the suffragette activists, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, and the more peaceful suffragists led by Millicent Fawcett and Mary Macarthur.

In The Chainmakers’ Daughter, we left Jack and Rosie after the successful 1910 strike of the women chainmakers of Hawley Heath against Matthew Joshua, the local chain master. After Matthew’s death, Jack and Rosie are thrust into running the factory for Marion, Matthew’s widow, with all the challenges that involves – strikes and shortages are just two problems they face when war is declared. Rosie and Jack both meet war head on, but with very different and equally dangerous consequences.

I’ve loved researching this time in British history from a woman’s perspective, and it opened my eyes to the inequalities that existed and the sheer persistence of the women who fought for the rights we take for granted today. Education, property rights, marriage rights, the vote, equal pay for equal work. Every one of these things took decades to achieve. Did you know, for example, that rape in marriage didn’t become illegal until the Sexual Offences Act of 2003? Or that the government and the church stood against virtually every improvement women fought for in their lives during the 19th and 20th centuries?

That we have come a long way from the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 that allowed women to keep their earnings is not in dispute, and that was fought for, but should it have taken over a hundred years of struggle to achieve what we now have? Proving a woman’s worth is still an ongoing struggle for many of us.

The Chainmaker’s Wife is coming very soon, so look out for it, and if you haven’t read The Chainmakers’ Daughter yet, get it at http://mybook.to/ChainmakersDaughter