MBL stayed largely in London during the first world war. She describes a frightening night of gunfire from the air, with imminent expectation of bombing, at the end of October 1916. Having got their two children and their nurse to a large and solid building for safety, she and her husband stayed at home while the house shook, because their next-door neighbours, who had an air-raid shelter, had offered hospitality so grudgingly that they did not care to accept. Long afterwards she remembered how fearfully frightened she was.

Having been sentenced to fourteen days in Walton Gaol , Liverpool, with hard labour (with the option of a fine), CL went on hunger strike. Nobody tested her heart or felt her pulse when she was first force-fed. A total of eight forcible feedings followed: painfully, counter-productively (since she vomited more than she took in), and on the first occasion with a contemptuous parting slap from the doctor, about which she duly and gently protested the next day. The tube to her stomach (her mouth held open with a steel gag) made her vomit every time. She was released into the care of her younger sister on 23 January (by which time her identity had been established by a process of detection).Christabel Pankhurst told this story at a WSPU meeting the day after Lytton's release, and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and another male supporter made contributions to the Union's funds in her honour.

The Bulwers' marriage was tempestuous, abusive, and scandal-ridden. Edward was not only unfaithful but also abusive. On one occasion he bit a chunk out of Rosina's cheek during a fight; another time, she burnt her husband's favourite shirt.

One William Bradley was killed in a series of fights with sword and dagger, involving CM and another man, Thomas Watson , who apparently gave the fatal blow.

She had a narrow escape when, hitching alone on her way to the Alps, she accepted a lift from two men who tried to abduct and rape her.

These were luxurious but hardly secure places. Powis Castle had been besieged and captured during the English Civil War, and when Winifred was about seven an armed anti-Catholic mob broke into the Lincoln's Inn Fields house.

FA thought later that in marrying him she had displayed all the foresight and prudence of a lemming, since he was soon routinely smacking her in the mouth.

She was in New York in September 2001 when the World Trade Center was hit by hijacked planes. At the time she was, she said, a stranger to myself: working hard, living as a frum Orthodox Jew, anticipating a mapped-out life of suitable husband, children, a quietly successful career, religious observance, and social service. She knew people who worked in the World Trade Center, and often bought coffee and a bagel there. The close encounter with death changed everything for her, as it did for many people she knew there.

Following what she herself believed to be an overdose of her thyroid pills, leading to episodes of wild excitement and violence, MA was given electroconvulsive therapy at a private clinic in Pinner in Middlesex.

DB 's father was violent and physically abusive towards her. In keeping with his views on sexual freedom, Wald Barnes organised his daughter's sexual initiation, an event which Djuna experienced as rape. Wald may have committed the act himself, or he may have arranged for a neighbour to rape his daughter.

MB reported to the American Loyalists Claims Commission that she herself was captured by American patriots in 1777.

SB was irrationally attacked with a knife by a total stranger in a Paris street.

Being judicially whipped (till the Blood ran down my Back) was not the only violence she encountered: she also met with attack from outraged members of the public. A man stuck a knife in her apparently because he did not like her walking arm-in-arm with a woman, and on another occasion as she was preaching in a market-place a Butcher swore he would cleave my Head in twain; and had his Cleaver up ready to do it, but their came a Woman behind him and caught his Arms, and staid them till the Souldiers came and rescued me.

AEB , whose husband was away seeking a wartime refuge for them, fled on foot from her New York estate, Tomhanick, at the approach of the British general Burgoyne .

In South Carolina she showed remarkable courage during an Indian attack.

EB 's house in London was damaged in a bombing raid for the first time: by a time-bomb.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography sees her account of her early years as reflecting not only deprivation but also verbal denigration, and emotional abuse.

JB 's daughter later recorded her mother's shock and outrage when her husband, in his first Fit of Passion, used violence against her.

She understood not only that [t]here was a war on, but also that [p]ossibly there would always be a war on. Without any conscious knowledge of her parents' fear and uncertainty, she dreamed that there were Germans planning to kidnap them.

Political violence in Ireland resulted in death for some of Catherine's family members over a span of several generations: her second cousin was executed in east Galway by the Black and Tans in 1921, and her uncle, a Catholic judge, was shot in the front hall of his house in Belfast in 1975.