Here’s a woman not afraid to call a spade a bleeding shovel. Born in 1695, Anne Stainton went to Virginia (famous as a hunting ground for women in search of a husband) with her sister who was married to William Gooch, the colonial governor. She described herself as

Two and thirty  years of Age, Ugly and Poor

Her brother-in-law said she was

cocky …openly declares she will never marry, this I imagine is rather her pride than her earnest, she constantly adding “I did not come here for a husband. I might have been married in England.”

Nor did she marry, despite women being at a premium in the colonies.

I find myself thinking she might have started a pressure group called Spinsters’ Lib.