Dr Paula Warrington

I'm mostly here for comedy, running and cute rat pics. 😆🏃‍♀️🐀

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

Back to reality today, but on Sunday I scored a 9:22 PB by running the London Marathon in 04:39:01 - and I met my fundraising target for The Rationalist Association too! @RunComPod @NewHumanist

#LondonMarathon #ThanksaBillion #ThankYouMarshal

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

On holiday in Shropshire this week - and here's where I posted a postcard. Castle Hill postbox and All Stretton 'micro museum'. #PostboxSaturday

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

"The mist crawls from the canal / Like some primordial phantom of romance"

Early run to beat the heat, just as the mist was lifting off the water meadows and the Grand Union Canal.

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

My running buddy issued a parkrun challenge and I finished within 30 mins for the first time since Sept '23. 😲

Since it's not a race, neither of us 'won' ... but I did cross the line 16 secs ahead. 😉

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

My workplace closes for six days over Easter ... so technically this was a 'weekend' run. 😊 Four gentle miles along the canal in the sun.

Back to work tomorrow...

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

Day off running today: enjoyed a Bank-Holiday hike in the sun instead. 🚶🏽‍♀️ Fourteen and a half miles to, around and back from the local deer park. Glorious.

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

Rounded off my first week back with a trot round my local parkrun with a running-club friend. 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️

Refuelling with coffee and hot cross buns. 😋

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

Ventured out with my running buddy this morning ... for my first run since 31 October. 😬 I knew it had been a while, but five months? Blimey. 😆 Easy, chatty, fun run. Don't know why I left it so long! 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

@philipreeve1 Take me to the edge of Devon / Tell me that my soul's forgiven... 😊

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

@WeirdMedieval I don't know whether there's a charge, but The Theodore Bullfrog has a nice room for meetings/parties: https://t.co/OCtUXsK1m8

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

Writing and hiking: sounds like bliss. 😊

I can't make this one, unfortunately, but maybe you can...

[Rachel Hewitt @drrachelhewitt]

You'll stay in a gorgeous Victorian hotel in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, with all meals provided and intensive days of writing workshops mixed with day- and night-time hikes, for some fresh air.
The Early Bird booking price is only available until 19 Feb, so don't miss out!

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

@RunComPod Is it a good idea? Maybe, maybe not.

Will you do it anyway? Almost certainly... 😆

Feel better soon!

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

I know of Alice Hawkins, of course (statue by the market and grave in Welford Road cemetary), but I hadn't heard of Margaret Nevinson - born on this day in Leicester.

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day teacher and suffragist Margaret Nevinson, born OTD in 1858 in Leicester: Poor Law Guardian, first woman magistrate in London, playwright. The last bit caught my attention. She used her writing to highlight one of the many injustices of coverture.

Coverture was a Norman import. Anglo-Saxon women had the right to own property but from the eleventh century, a married woman was the chattel of her husband, and property cannot own property. Everything a woman had - children, belongings, earnings - belonged to him. She had “no veto over or means of opposing” his decisions and if you’ve ever wondered why temperance was the earliest fight for women’s rights, this is why: when he drank away his wages every Friday, she couldn’t feed their children.

Margaret was trapped in an unhappy marriage for 48 years. Her husband was often away and even he wasn’t, they ate separately except on Sundays. She refused to let it define her, devoting her time to the cause of women’s suffrage. Ironically, it was the only thing they agreed on.

She was elected as a Poor Law Guardian in Hampstead in 1904, overseeing workhouses and allocating limited funds and assistance to the poor and elderly. It was the only elected position open to women in the days before women’s suffrage and she took a keen interest in the impact on women from working-class backgrounds.

On 8 May 1911, Edith Craig, daughter of Ellen Terry, staged Margaret’s play ‘In The Workhouse’ as one of a triple bill of plays at the Kingsway Theatre, Holborn. A one-act play based on a true story and set in the ward of a workhouse with religious texts on the “yellow washed walls”, its seven actresses wore “pauper dress: dark blue cotton gowns, ill-fitting, with white caps and aprons.” One character laments, “Doing time is better than this. Even in Holloway, ye runs round the yard and sees a bit of sky for an hour.”

Another character, Mrs Cleaver, was married to a taxi driver who lost his licence for being inebriated on duty and now the whole family was confined to the workhouse. A skilled dressmaker, she managed to find enough work to support herself and her children as well as somewhere for them to stay and applied to leave. The Board of Guardians refused. She was legally under the control of her alcoholic husband. Because he chose to stay in the workhouse, so must she.

Penelope, a young single mother was “put off marriage at an early age” after her drunken father beat her mother to death. Her five children were all provided for by their fathers but as an unmarried mother, she had full custody. “I’m going back tomorrow to my neat little home, which my lady-help is minding for me, to my dear children and my regular income, and I can’t say as I envies you married ladies either your rings or your slavery.

Lily, a young woman expecting to marry her child’s father, changed her mind, saying to her baby, “I think we won’t get married, my pet! Better keep single, I say, after what we’ve heard tonight.”

The play wasn’t sensationalist or caricature or allegory. It was real life, drawn from Margaret’s experience of working with women trapped by poverty, hunger and domestic violence, and its message was clear: no matter what class you were, as a married woman, you had no rights.

Audience reaction was divided between those who applauded it for telling the unpalatable truth and those who found it offensive. The Morning Post (now the Telegraph) praised it but The Times and the Daily Mail did not. One review headlined LONDON SHOCKED BY LEWD PLAY GIVEN BY SUFFRAGETTES claimed: "Votes for women's cause injured by a drama so coarse in theme and so perverted in moral that many prominent ladies withdraw their support."

Margaret pointed out, “The criticisms are strange and bewildering; only about five per cent have at all understood the point of the play…there is an air of injured innocence in the tone of some of the critics revolting and hypocritical to those of us who are prepared to face horrors if only we can reform these evils.”

“These facts told to a street corner audience invariably arouse great indignation, for the poor know by bitter experience that they are true; to bring them to the knowledge of our legislators is harder.”

The play sparked a debate in the House of Lords and so shocked the House of Commons that it legislated in 1913. Margaret noted with satisfaction that “the order by which a pauper husband had the right to detain his wife in the workhouse by ‘his marital authority’ is now repealed.”

Workhouses were not formally abolished until 1930. Coverture was not finally knocked on the head until 1990 when women were finally taxed independently on their own incomes and given their own personal allowances. 1990. It only took 924 years.

Responding to criticism of her play, Margaret said “The only apology I make is for its realism.”

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

Snowy trudge over fields today, re-listening to everyone's favourite @runcompod episode: The Tale of Tonks' Telephone. Regret ... recriminations ... redemption ... rejoicing. 🎧😆

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

2026 is the year I'll finally get to trek the Atlas mountains.😊 Training began with a 14-mile hike to the local deer park -- fuelled by Christmas cake and Leicestershire cheeses.

Happy New Year, huffers and puffers! 😆

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

@artymortyarty I remember this being shown in the UK. Don't think I watched four series ☺️ but I definitely saw several episodes.

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

I've been playing catch-up with my Bigfoot Advent colouring, but I'm back on track. 😄

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

'Tis the season... ✏️🎨🖌️

[Moose Allain Ꙭ @MooseAllain]

Every year we make a free-to-download-and-print-off-yourself colouring-in Advent Calendar. This year’s heavily features Bigfoots. Please share!
Download it for free here… https://t.co/QS4uS9ksLH

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

Tonight: Allie Bailey, There is No Wall

My Wi-Fi has given up the ghost, so I'm going to be trying to connect via a low-tech phone. 🤓

Join us!

[Niall Harbison @NiallHarbison]

A very special message from me and Mr Stormzy along with his daily walk…

🏃‍♂️ Tomrorow I’ll try run a marathon to stop 100,000 puppies like him being born in suffering

🏥 We already have a mobile unit paid for. To sterilize 5000 dogs

✂️ Now we want to try and pay for 7000 operations in December. Each operation stops 10-15 puppies being born on the streets.

💴 You can support here. Every little helps with 24 hours to go…

https://t.co/4RQVXIJnOJ

[Dr Paula Warrington @p_warrington]

Half term this week for my running buddy means an opportunity for a pre-work run. Five chatty miles around campus and Vicky Park, with an autumnal chill in the air. 🍃