On October 18

On this day in ...
... 1929 (80 years ago today), women were declared "persons" eligible to serve as members of the Senate of Canada. Issuing the ruling from its headquarters in London was the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of Great Britain; its interpretation of the word "person" in Section 24 of the British North America Act reversed a year-and-a-half-old decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, which had deemed "person" to refer only to the male person. The Privy Council's reversal constituted a victory for the "Famous 5" Canadians who appealed (image credit): Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Emily Murphy, and Irene Parlby. The case, according to this site, had begun

in 1918 when a lawyer appeared before Judge Emily Murphy and said her judgments were illegal because she was not a 'person' under British legal custom.

(Prior October 18 posts are here and here.)

On September 22, ...

... 1927 (80 years ago today), Britain's "colonial government declared the abolishment of slavery in Sierra Leone," where for a century the capital, Freetown, had been a hub for British anti-slave-trading activities. (For an analysis of how the recent, relatively trouble-free election and inauguration of Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma may augur a "splash of good news" about Africa, see here.)
... 1868, Louise Crummy McKinney (right) was born in Frankville, Ontario. Trained as a teacher, in 1903 she became a Canada-based organizer of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Elected to the Albert legislature in 1917, she became the 1st woman legislator in the British Empire. She took part in an appeal to the Privy Council through which women won the right to become Senators. McKinney died in Claresholm, Alberta, in 1931. "Her gravestone reads only 'Mother.'"