Monday, August 6, 2018

BIRTH | Aug 6–Inez Milholland Boissevain 1886-1916

This poster of Inez is
available for $30.
August 6, 2018–Inez Milholland was born this day in Brooklyn, New York. She was the first child of John E. Milholland, a second-generation immigrant from Northern Ireland and a newspaper editor who became wealthy as owner of a pneumatic tube system he sold to post offices. John Milholland was married to Jean Torry, a proper Bostonian with Scottish ancestry.

Inez grew up first in Brooklyn and then on Madison Square Park in Manhattan in the Flatiron District (subject of a recent story in The New York Times). 

Inez was married in London in July 1913 to Eugen Boissevain (my grandmother's brother) after a whirlwind courtship aboard a Cunard liner (the Mauretania, sister ship of, and faster than, the Lusitania). 

She died in November 1916 while traveling only with her sister Vida on a speaking tour to take Woodrow Wilson to task for not supporting the Anthony Amendment. She collapsed during a speech in Los Angeles, right after the sentence: "How long, Mr. President, must women wait for liberty?" This was a popular banner that the National Woman's Party picketers carried during the long picket of the White House that turned the tide in favor of suffrage.

An enlarged durable version of the poster of Inez that was prepared after her death is available from Boissevain Books for $30: https://bit.ly/2OIDLNL.

I wrote about Inez and her death on the 100th anniversary of her death two years ago:
https://bit.ly/2i7HnLO

Inez Milholland was recently nominated among ten women to be the subject of a statue in NY City:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/nyregion/women-monuments-new-york-city.html

Thanks to Long Island Suffrage for remembering Inez's birthday! http://longislandwomansuffrage.com/?p=3132


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