A Rua do Sol ao Rato, onde moraram Carolina Beatriz Ângelo e Januário Barreto, em dezembro de 2019.Sergei Gussev, CC BY 2.0
Campo de Ourique
Home of Carolina Beatriz Ângelo and Januário Barreto (Rua do Sol ao Rato, 181)
In 1909 the doctor Carolina Beatriz Ângelo lived here with her husband, the republican doctor Januário Barreto. His funeral left from here in 1910; widowhood made her a “head of family”, the status with which, in 1911, she became the first woman to vote in Portugal.
According to an advertisement from 1909, the doctor Carolina Beatriz Ângelo had her surgery at no. 84 Rua Nova do Almada and lived at no. 181 Rua do Sol ao Rato. In 1902 she had married her cousin Januário Barreto, also a doctor and a republican activist.2 Their daughter, Maria Emília, had been born in 1903.4
Januário Barreto, a former pupil of the Casa Pia, died in 1910, “just a few months short of seeing proclaimed the Republic for which he had fought so hard”. His wake was held in this house, on a first floor, and the funeral cortege left from here for the Prazeres Cemetery, accompanied by a crowd. At the funeral the lawyer José de Castro spoke, deputy grand master of the Freemasons — the same man who entrusted Carolina and Adelaide Cabete with making the green and red flags of the republican revolution.1 Those were the flags raised in Lisbon on 5 October 1910.2
A widow, with a seven-year-old daughter, Carolina became a “head of family”.3 The electoral law of 1911 gave the vote to heads of family over the age of 21 who could read and write: she applied to be registered as a voter and won her case in court.2 On 28 May 1911, at the São Jorge de Arroios polling station, set up in the Clube Estefânia, she became the first woman to vote in Portugal.1She died on 3 October that year, on returning home, by then on Rua António Pedro, after a political meeting of “feminist ladies”.4
Map showing where Home of Carolina Beatriz Ângelo and Januário Barreto (Rua do Sol ao Rato, 181) is.
Opening the map…
Home of Carolina Beatriz Ângelo and Januário Barreto (Rua do Sol ao Rato, 181)Rua do Sol ao Rato, Lisboa (n.º 181, 1.º, na numeração de 1909–1910; não localizado na numeração atual)
In the revolt of February 1927 barricades went up here, and civilians and sailors were shot by firing squad beside the fountain. In 1931 the square was a front line again; in 1972, it was to the police station on the square that the police took those arrested at the Capela do Rato vigil.
Today: Capela do Rato (Chapel of Nossa Senhora da Bonança)
Over the turn of 1972 into 1973, Catholics opposed to the colonial war held a 48-hour vigil here. It was a woman, Maria da Conceição Moita, who announced it at the microphone; the riot police broke it up and took dozens of people away.
In 1946, the National Council of Portuguese Women, chaired by Maria Lamas, moved its headquarters to this lane in Amoreiras. On 28 June 1947, the police closed it “without prior notice”, putting an end to 33 years of the association.
A bread cooperative founded in 1904 in a working-class neighbourhood, and home to Bento de Jesus Caraça’s Popular University until 1946. According to the Democratic Women’s Movement itself, it was at an assembly here that the MDM was born, in 1968.
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Notes on the sources3
Where no. 181 stood in the 1909–1910 numbering: the street’s current numbering does not seem to reach that number (OpenStreetMap), and the point on the map marks only the street. The plans and records of the time, in the Lisbon Municipal Archive, may provide the answer.
The day of Januário Barreto’s death: 23 June 1910, according to a blog on the history of Benfica, the club of which he was the first chairman; Isabel Lousada gives only the year.
When the couple, or Carolina once widowed, left this house for the one on Rua António Pedro, in Arroios, and the number of that house.
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