Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb

In 1812, Lamb, the aristocratic wife of future British prime minister William Lamb, embarked on a tempestuous public affair with the celebrated English poet George Gordon Byron, whom she described as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Byron shot to stardom with his narrative poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” published in 1812, and went on to become a major figure in the Romantic movement. After he broke off his months-long liaison with Lamb, who he once called “the cleverest, most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing, dangerous, fascinating little being that lives,” she tried to stab herself and later burned Byron in effigy in front of local villagers. Lamb remained seemingly obsessed with her former paramour and spread rumors that he was having an affair with his half-sister, Augusta, who in 1814 gave birth to a child alleged to have been fathered by the poet. In 1816, following a brief, disastrous marriage to William Lamb’s cousin, Annabella Milbanke, the scandal-tinged Byron (who over the course of his life became notorious for his many affairs) left England permanently. That same year, Lamb published a novel, “Glenarvon,” which was loosely based on her relationship with the literary bad boy. In 1824, the 36-year-old Byron died from illness in modern-day Greece, where he’d gone to help support the war for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. Lamb, who published several novels after “Glenarvon,” died four years later.

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Abraham Lincoln and Mary Owen

It might not have been an epic breakup, but for the man who would go on to become one of America’s greatest presidents, the split was awkward. In 1831, Lincoln, then in his early 20s, moved to New Salem, Illinois. There, he became enamored with a young woman named Ann Rutledge, who got sick and died in 1935. Later, a local married woman with whom the broken-hearted Lincoln was acquainted, Elizabeth Abell, told him she’d convince her sister, Mary Owens, to come to Illinois if Lincoln would promise to tie the knot with her. Lincoln had briefly met the Kentucky-based Owens a few years earlier while she was visiting her sister and found her attractive. After the future president jokingly said yes to Abell’s offer, Owens arrived in town under the assumption she was betrothed, and Lincoln realized he’d made a mistake. Determined to keep his word, though, Honest Abe didn’t break off the engagement. However, the future 16th U.S. president, who moved to Springfield, Illinois, in 1937 to work as a lawyer, did write to Owens to let her know she wouldn’t like the state capital. Lincoln’s accidental engagement subsequently unraveled, and in 1839 he met Mary Todd at a dance in Springfield. The two wed in 1842.

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Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn

The poster boy for bad breakups, the teenage Henry became king of England in 1509 and soon afterward married his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his older brother Arthur. By the mid-1520s Henry had grown unhappy that Catherine hadn’t produced a male heir; although she’d given birth multiple times, only one daughter lived past infancy. Additionally, the Tudor king had become besotted with Anne Boleyn, the sister of one of his mistresses. Intent on tying the knot with Boleyn, Henry, a Catholic, asked Pope Clement VII for an annulment of his first marriage. The pope refused, not wanting to upset Catherine’s nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Henry married Anne in 1533 anyway and was excommunicated by the pope. The monarch subsequently had himself declared head of the Church of England and took over the nation’s monasteries, selling off much of the land. Anne, who gave birth to a daughter in 1533, eventually fell out of favor with Henry when she failed to provide him with a son. In 1536, she was found guilty of trumped-up treason charges and beheaded. Henry had four more wives: Jane Seymour, who died shortly after giving birth to a son; Anne of Cleves, whose marriage to Henry was annulled so he could wed wife No. 5; Catherine Howard, who was beheaded for treason and adultery; and Catherine Parr, who avoided the fate of her predecessors and managed to stay married to the king until his death in 1547.

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King Edward VIII and Great Britain

In December 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne—in effect breaking up with Britain—so he could wed Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee with whom he’d been having an affair. The oldest son of King George V and Queen Mary, Edward was proclaimed king in January 1936 following the death of his father. Later that year, when the new monarch informed British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin he planned to marry Simpson, who’d just been granted a divorce from her second husband, Baldwin tried to talk him out of it, arguing that the Church of England, government officials and the British people wouldn’t accept a divorced woman as queen. Edward chose love over the crown and became the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate. On December 11, 1936, he publicly announced his decision during a radio broadcast, stating: “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.” Prince Albert, Edward’s younger brother (and father of Britain’s current queen, Elizabeth) became king and Edward, who became known as the Duke of Windsor, left England. In 1937, he and Simpson married in France. The two spent the rest of their lives mainly on the European continent and in the U.S., and for many years had a strained relationship with the British royal family. However, when Edward died in 1972 he was buried in the cemetery for royals near England’s Windsor Castle; his wife was laid to rest there when she died in 1986.

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But some American suffragists

In 1907, an American Quaker named Alice Paul was studying in England when she joined British women in their campaign for suffrage. Over the next three years, while doing graduate work at the Universities of Birmingham and London, Paul was arrested and jailed three times for suffragist agitation. After returning to the United States, she joined the National American Suffrage Association, founded by Carrie Chapman Catt, but soon grew impatient with that organization’s mild-mannered tactics. In 1913, Paul and fellow militants formed the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, later the National Woman’s Party. Their demonstrations outside Woodrow Wilson’s White House in 1917 culminated in the so-called “Night of Terror” that November, during which guards at Virginia’s Occoquan Workhouse brutally beat some 30 female picketers. At the time, Paul herself was serving a seven-month stint in prison, where she was force-fed and confined to a psychopathic ward. In January 1918, a district court overturned all the women’s sentences without ceremony; that same month, President Wilson declared his support for the Susan B. Anthony Amendment (later the 19th Amendment) granting female suffrage.

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Britain was far more militant than its counterpart in the United States.

The movements for female suffrage in Britain and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had many common links, but there were some significant differences between them. For one thing, British women seeking the vote called themselves “suffragettes,” while Americans preferred the more gender-neutral “suffragists.” A far more important difference was the degree of militancy of the two movements. Under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst and the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), thousands of suffragettes demonstrated in the streets, chained themselves to buildings, heckled politicians, broke store windows, planted explosive devices and engaged in other destructive activities in order to pressure Britain’s Liberal government to give women the vote. In a particularly gruesome (and public) display, Emily Wilding Davison was fatally trampled by a racehorse owned by King George V when she tried to pin a sash advertising the suffragette cause to the horse’s bridle during the Epsom Derby in 1913. More than 1,000 suffragettes were imprisoned between 1908 and 1914; when they engaged in hunger strikes to draw public attention to their cause, prison officials responded by force-feeding them. Such militant tactics ceased when World War I broke out, as Pankhurst and the WSPU threw all their support behind the patriotic cause. In 1918, the British government granted suffrage to all women over the age of 30, ostensibly in recognition of women’s contributions to the war effort.

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Susan B. Anthony (and 15 other women)

In 1868, a group of 172 black and white women went to the polls in Vineland, New Jersey, providing their own ballots and box in order to cast their votes in that year’s national election. Between 1870-72, around 100 women tried to register and vote in the District of Columbia and states around the country. Finally, in 1872, Susan B. Anthony led a group of 16 women in demanding to be registered and vote in Rochester, New York. All 16 were arrested, but only Anthony would be tried for violating the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed “the right to vote…to any of the male inhabitants” of the United States over 21 years of age. Judge Ward Hunt would not permit Anthony to take the stand in her own defense, and eventually directed the jury to issue a guilty verdict. He sentenced Anthony to pay a $100 fine, which she refused to do, challenging the judge to hold her in custody or send her to jail. Hunt declined, knowing this would allow her to appeal her case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although her case was closed at that point, “Aunt Susan” earned widespread respect and inspired younger women with her courageous example, helping to ensure that her cause would eventually triumph some 14 years after her own death.

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