London Borough of Lambeth
Women are commemorated in Lambeth in a number of ways: on plaques, as sculptures, in building names, as mosaics and even on banknotes.
Plaques: There are Greater London Council blue plaques, both in Stockwell, to Violette Szabo (World War 2 secret agent, captured and executed in France) and Lilian Baylis (theatrical producer and manager). Emma Cons (social reformer, educationalist and theatre manager) is remembered with a large inscription carved in stone on the corner of the Old Vic. See below for more on Emma Cons and Lilian Baylis.
Sculptures: A statue of Mary Seacole (Jamaican-born nurse in the Crimean War) was unveiled in 2016 in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital. And a bust of Violette Szabo stands on top of the memorial to the Special Operations Executive (SOE) on Lambeth Road, opposite Lambeth Palace.
Buildings: Olive Morris House on Brixton Hill is one of Lambeth Council’s main buildings and is named after a Jamaican-born South Londoner who became a community leader, feminist activist and black nationalist in the 1970s. A technology school in Kennington is named after Lilian Baylis, and the hall in Morley College, Westminster Bridge Road, is named after Emma Cons.
Mosaics: A series of mosaics installed in 2012 on the outside of Morley College commemorate 14 notable local women. These range from Mrs Mallet, a 19th-century district visitor and charitable worker, through social reformer Octavia Hill to Jude Kelly, former artistic director of the Southbank Centre, and former Lambeth Council Chief Executive Heather Rabbatts.
Banknotes: The Brixton Pound was launched in 2009 to support Brixton businesses with notes issued in four denominations, illustrated with Brixton scenes and people. Olive Morris featured on the original £1 and Violette Szabo is on the second edition of the £20 note.
Emma Cons and Lilian Baylis: In the early 1880s Emma Cons and her supporters took over the Royal Victoria Hall – a boozy, rowdy home of melodrama known as the Old Vic – and turned it into a place of inexpensive but more edifying entertainment with a temperance coffee tavern attached. Weekly lectures by eminent scientists were added and these ‘penny lectures’ led to the founding of Morley College for Working Men and Women. Emma Cons was the first woman alderman on the London County Council. Her niece Lilian Baylis took over the management of the Old Vic in 1898 and introduced productions of Shakespeare plays in 1914. In 1925 she started a campaign to restore the derelict Sadler’s Wells theatre, which reopened in 1931. For the two theatres she founded opera, theatre and ballet companies that evolved into the English National Opera, the National Theatre and the Royal Ballet.
Photos on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/groups/cityoflondonhistory
Morley College mosaics: http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/6136
Brixton Pound notes: http://brixtonpound.org/showmemoney
Carol Stanley
London Borough of Westminster
Lady Isabella Caroline Somerset nee Somers-Cocks 1851-1921 memorial to her is on Victoria Embankment Gardens
Philanthropist, temperance leader and campaigner for women’s rights.
She was born in London the first of three daughters of Charles Somers-Cocks, her mother Virginia was a niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and first cousin of Virginia Woolf’s mother.
Lady Isabella was given a private education. Deeply religious so much so she contemplated becoming a nun in her youth
In 1872 Lady Isabella married Lord Henry Somerset – in 1874 she had a son. The marriage was not successful as Lord Henry was a homosexual, which at the time was a criminal offence.
Women were expected to turn a blind eye to their husband’s infidelity. Lady Henry defied convention by separating from her husband and suing him for custody over their son, thereby making his sexual orientation public (afterwards Lord Henry went off to Italy but they were never divorced) She won the court case in 1878 but was ostracised from society.
Baptised and raised as Anglican, she became a Methodist in the 1880s.
Her father died in 1883, leaving her estates in Gloucester & Surrey and properties in the East End
Lady Henry became interested in the Temperance movement and promoted birth control – she openly advocated “emancipation” of women.
In 1913, the readers of London Evening News voted Lady Henry as the woman they would most like as the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom.
She continued to work hard for the benefit of the poor, particularly women, using her wealth and prestige. She died in London on 12th March 1921 following a short illness.
wiki +
Lesley
London Borough of Camden
Dame Louisa Brandreth Aldrich-Blake, DBE (5 August 1865 – 28 December 1925) was one of the first British women to enter the world of medicine.
Born in Chingford, Essex, the daughter of the curate, she moved with her family to Welsh Bicknor. She graduated from the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women in 1893. She went on to take the University of London’s higher degrees in Medicine and Surgery, becoming the first British woman to obtain the degree of Master of Surgery. Throughout her career, Aldrich-Blake was associated with the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, becoming senior surgeon in 1910.
At the Royal Free Hospital, she was the first woman to hold the post of surgical registrar and also acted as an anaesthetist. During the First World War, many of the male surgical staff were deployed on foreign active service and Dr Aldrich-Blake took on increased responsibility for the surgery, becoming consulting surgeon to the hospital. She was the first to perform operations for cancers of the cervix and rectum
Edwin Lutyens – famed for the Cenotaph – designed this fine 1937 memorial which can be seen in Tavistock Square in the Borough of Camden.
Penny
City of London
The National Firefighter’s Memorial
This memorial has had something of a journey before it reached its final resting place at the top of the grand walkway from Tate Modern to St Pauls.
1990 The monument, originally the concept of Cyril Demarne was commissioned by the Firefighters Memorial Charitable Trust set up in 1990. John W Mills, his son –in –law, sculpted it. Initially, the structure was intended as a tribute to those men and women who fought so gallantly against fire on the streets of London during Blitz of WW2 when the city was struck by bombs on 57 consecutive nights in a sustained campaign of bombing. The ‘heroes with grimy faces’, in Churchill’s memorable phrase.
Mills took up the idea and used photos supplied by Demarne to create the composition of three firefighters hosing down a blaze. Two of them are ‘working a branch’, holding the hose in the correct official way to keep it under control. A sub-officer, Demarne himself, calls for assistance.
On the podium, the panels commemorating the women auxiliaries show an incident recorder and a despatch rider.
1991 Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, unveiled the memorial on 4 May. It started life in as a monument to the firefighters of London who lost their lives in the Blitz and was located in Old Change Court.
1995 Five years later, construction of the monster New Change building meant it was displaced to Carter Lane Gardens. The original idea was to return it to the new building but that never happened.
1998 It was decided to make the memorial a national monument that would commemorate not just the firefighters who died in World War II, but the lives of all firefighters throughout the United Kingdom who were killed in the line of duty. The National Firefighters Memorial was moved to its present site the plinth was elevated by a little over 1 m, and the names of all those killed in peacetime were added.
2003 The Princess Royal, patron of the Firefighters’ Memorial Charitable Trust, attended a service and ceremony of re-dedication on 16 September. A total of 1,192 names were inscribed in bronze onto the memorial.
A service of remembrance is held at the memorial annually on the Sunday closest to 7 September, the anniversary of the start of the Blitz.
firefightersmemorial.org
Judy
London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham
There are no specific memorials to women in the borough, apart from the War Memorials for Men and Women.
Residents are able to pay for benches with memorial plaques to loved ones, at prices raging up to £1,617.
All Saints Church, Putney Bridge, Fulham.
North Aisle.
MARY BARNARD. d 1842 who was a benefactor to the parish of Fulham has a memorial white marble tablet to her.
All Saints is described as a most satisfying church with the ambience enhanced by some decorative elements, including a figure of Virgin and Child.
NB. In the Tower there is a fine wall memorial by Grinling Gibbons, to Lady Dorothea Clarke and her husband.
Sculptural pieces outside the church.
A modern Modiglianlike Mother and Child by Helen Sinclair, 2000.
A fine War Memorial with a bronze standing female figure, holding a wreath by Alfred Turner.
A nearby walled garden enclosure with four female statues, entitled Protection, Adoration, Grief and a Leda in a different style.
Almshouses, founded 1680, rebuilt in 1869, Gothic sculptures of female saints, Miriam, Ann, Deborah, Dorian, Ruth, Mary and Faith, Hope and Charity.
Royal Borough Kensington & Chelsea
This borough has twenty-one blue plaques to women, mostly in the music and art professions but there are five notable women:
Jennie Lee, Politician who lived in Cliveden Place.
Rosalind Franklin, scientist and pioneer or molecular structures and DNA, lived in Drayton Gardens.
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, suffragettes, lived in Clarendon Road, Nottinghill.
Sylvia Pankhurst, suffragette, lived in Cheyne Walk.
Elisabeth
London Borough of Westminster
Women in Westminster
This year will see the first installation of a statue of a woman in Parliament square, and also one designed by one! Gillian Wearing has produced a tribute to Millicent Fawcett, showing the suffragist holding a sign that reads “Courage calls to courage everywhere” which is taken from a speech she gave after the death of her fellow campaigner Emily Wilding Davison at the 1913 Epsom Derby. She also wears one of Fawcett’s brooches, from which a bronze casting was taken from the original. The notion of a female statue to be erected in the square came about from a campaign in 2016 by Caroline Criado-Perez which brought together 85,000 signatures.
Carrying on with the theme of votes for women, Emmeline Pankhurst is remembered with a memorial by Sir Arthur George Walker in Victoria Tower Gardens. It was unveiled in 1930 by the Prime Minister at the time, Stanley Baldwin – who had opposed votes for women.
A monument of Florence Nightingale can be seen at Waterloo Place, also designed by Walker, and was completed in 1910. It shows Florence holding a lamp in her right hand, and is positioned next to the Guards Crimean War Memorial.
Boudicca and her daughters make an appearance by Westminster Bridge, as do the Queens Anne, Elizabeth I and Victoria which are dotted around the borough.
An example of a monument commemorating women is the Monument to the Women of the World War II (2005) by John W. Mills at Whitehall. It shows 17 sets of clothing and uniforms which symbolise the hundreds of different jobs women undertook during the Second World War, and then gave back to the men who returned after the end of the war. The lettering on the sides replicated the typeface used on war time ration books.
The Suffragette Memorial (1970) by Lorne and Edwin Russell can be seen at Christchurch Gardens, Victoria. The statue of a bronze scroll in the shape of a letter S balancing on a conical pedestal. “Nearby Caxton Hall was historically associated with women’s suffrage meeting and deputations to Parliament”.
Of the 309 blue plaques in London, 38 of those commemorate women, and mainly comprise of ballet dancers, actresses, writers and poets (many of them suffragists), nurses and a few exceptions. Many of them live around the Marylebone area and generally lived during the 19th and early 20th century.
Some of the most interesting or well known include women such as;
Emily Davies (1830 – 1921) an English feminist and suffragist, at 17 Cunningham Place, Lisson Grove.
Nancy Astor (1879 – 1964) she was the first woman to sit in Parliament, and lived at Found at 4 St James Square, St James.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861) famous poet and wife of Robert Browning, lived at 50 Wimpole Street, Marylebone. Also lived at 99 Gloucester Place, Marylebone and also 50 Wimpole Street, Marylebone.
Violet Bonham Carter (1887 – 1969) politician and writer, lived at 43 Gloucester Square, Paddington. She was the daughter of H.H Asquith (the Prime Minister from 1908 – 1916), and was Sir Winston Churchill’s closest female friend. Her grandchildren include the actress Helena Bonham Carter!
Emma Cons (1837 – 1912) philanthropist and founder of the Old Vic (bringing plays and opera to the working class), lived and worked at 136 Seymour Place, Marylebone.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836 – 1917) a suffragist and the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain lived here at 20 Upper Berkeley Street.
Vivien Leigh (1913 – 1967) actress who is best known for her role in Gone with the Wind lived here at 54 Eaton Square, Belgravia.
Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) “The Lady with the Lamp” is named as the founder of modern nursing, after coming into prominence whilst serving in the Crimean War. lived and died at 60 Grosvenor Street, Mayfair.
Mary Shelley (1797 – 1851) author of Frankenstein lived at 24 Chester Square, Belgravia.
Maria Tussaud (1761 – 1850) the famous wax artist who founded Madame Tussauds wax museum in London. She lived at 24 Wellington Road, St Johns Wood.
Erin
London Borough of Haringey
Of the 34 plaques in the borough, five are dedicated to women.
- Charlotte Eliza Lawson Riddell: Victorian author.
- Lillian Harvey: Actress and singer.
- Priscilla Wakefield: Quaker educationalist and writer
- Adelaide Tambo: Anti-apartheid activist.
- Mary Kingsley: Traveler and ethnologist
There are no statues or memorials to women and just one piece of art on public display. In Downhills Park in Tottenham is a sculpture, part of the Sustrans “Art in the Community” project and it is of Nicola Adams OBE.
She was born on 26 October 1982 and is a British professional boxer. Adams represented Haringey Police Community Club at boxing and is the first woman to win an Olympic boxing title. This she did in the flyweight division at London 2012. She retained her title four years later in Rio.
She is the reigning Olympic, World, Commonwealth Games and European Games champion at flyweight.
The plaque has not been updated to reflect her continuing success. The wording reads:
Nicola Adams MBE. First woman to win Olympic boxing gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics.
Stephen R
London Borough of Camden
Mary Wollstonecraft
Author of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’
Camden honours Mary Wollstonecraft with 2 memorials. Her original tomb in St Pancras churchyard was grade II listed on historical grounds, in January 1999. There is also a blue plaque in Polygon Rd NW1.
Mary Wollstonecraft was the second child and eldest daughter in a family of seven in a downward social spiral. Her father was feckless and violent and the family led an itinerant lifestyle as he attempted to become a gentleman farmer. Aged 19 she became a companion to Mrs Blood which made her very miserable but she formed a deep friendship with her daughter Fanny Blood. She returned home in 1780 to nurse her dying mother and in 1784 she lived with her sister Eliza and her husband. Eliza was newly married, a mother of a small infant and very depressed. Mary encouraged her to leave her husband and child, which she did. Mary had to support herself, Fanny Blood, Fanny’s sister and Eliza.
She founded a school within the dissenting community in Newington Green, a place where she could develop her considerable intellect. The school collapsed in 1785. She went to join Fanny Blood in Portugal. Fanny had married but was dying of consumption .After Fanny’s death in 1786 Mary moved to Ireland and became a governess to Lord and Lady Kingsborough’s children. Mary despised Lady Kingsborough who she regarded as vain, superficial and given to excessive sensibility. She wrote a pamphlet; ‘Thoughts on the Education of Daughters’ and was dismissed by the Kingsboroughs in 1787.
She had a life changing stroke of luck when she was hired as a translator, editorial assistant and later a reviewer by the radical London publisher Joseph Johnson. She thrived in her new life. In 1790 she wrote ‘Vindication of the Rights of Man’ in response to an article by Edmund Burke expressing nostalgic and conservative reflections about the French Revolution. This was followed in 1792 by the essay ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’ written as a response to the educational work ‘Emile’ by Jean- Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau had proposed that the sole purpose of a girl’s education was to make her a useful and supportive companion to a rational man. Mary used her essay to argue for equal educational opportunities as a right.
She went to France in the 4th year of the revolution and before the Jacobin terror had started when English travellers were still welcome. She had a relationship with a handsome American speculator called Gilbert Imlay; they never married although she called herself Mrs Imlay. Her first child, Fanny was born in Le Havre and shortly afterwards her relationship with Imlay broke down. He sent her to Sweden alone on business, she had two unsuccessful attempts at suicide but her letters from Sweden were published in 1796. The letters discuss female sexual desire and the conflict between sensibility and rationality for women.
In 1796 she returned to London to work for Joseph Johnson. She became friends, then lovers with William Godwin. Her second daughter Mary was conceived quite quickly and she persuaded Godwin to marry her. Mary Wollstonecraft died 10 days after the birth of her daughter (who became Mary Shelley author of Frankenstein) aged 38.
Prior to her death Mary had been working on a novel ‘Maria’. The novel covered themes such as the need of women for companionship and the freedom to express their sexuality as well as featuring a working class prostitute. William Godwin published Maria posthumously and also published a memoir of her life. This produced a great scandal as society had been largely unaware of her conceiving 2 children outside marriage. Her writings which had been well received in her lifetime fell into disrepute for the best part of a century. Mary had been buried in St Pancras Churchyard with William Godwin. When the Midland railway disrupted the burials in the graveyard in 1851, their grandson Percy Shelley, in accordance with the dying wish of Mary Shelley, moved their bodies to the Shelley family tomb in St Mark’s church Bournemouth. The vicar left Mary’s coffin outside the churchyard for 24 hours before agreeing to bury her.
By 1879 there was a progressive effort to resort her reputation and her work was an inspiration to Millicent Fawcett amongst others.
Principal Sources
BBC history in depth article by Professor Janet Todd (biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft)
www’historicengland.org.uk
Dilys
London Borough of Islington
Edith Garraud
- First female martial arts instructor
- With her husband she ran a ju-jitsu school in a house in Seven Sisters Road
- Created and trained a 30 strong suffragette protection team
- The aim of the defence unit was to protect its members from police arrest
- In 1910, she was pictured in Punch magazine taking on the police single handed
- She worked with the suffragettes between 1908 -1911
- She was only 4ft 11” tall
- Using ju-jitsu, she described how it had brought great burley cowards nearly twice their size to their feet and made them howl for mercy
- Edith Garraud died in 1971 aged 99 years
Terry
London Borough of Wandsworth
Wandsworth is a large borough and has six areas which it calls town centres. These are Wandsworth itself, Balham, Battersea, Nine Elms, Putney and Tooting. However, I was unable to identify any memorials in the form of statues or public art installations dedicated to named individual women anywhere in the borough. There are various sculptures depicting female figures but none of these represent specific persons. Battersea has a Second World War memorial in the grounds of Christ Church. Its dedication reads ‘Memorial to the men, women and children of Battersea who lost their lives in the World War, 1939-1945’. No names are recorded.
I turned my attention to plaques – first, the blue plaque scheme which is currently run by English Heritage. Their website lists 26 blue plaques in Wandsworth – 25 men and one woman. The woman in question is George Eliot and her blue plaque at Holly Lodge, Wimbledon Park Road installed by the LCC was the first south of the Thames. She lived at Holly Lodge from February 1859 until September 1860.
After blue plaques I considered the borough’s own green plaque scheme. Wandsworth Council began this scheme in 2007/2008 with the intention of creating a deeper pride in the borough and increasing residents’ knowledge of the area in which they live. Selection is implemented by council officers on the advice and guidance of a selection panel. So far 11 have been erected – seven places of local historical importance, three notable male residents and one woman. The woman is Dame Margaret Rutherford (1892-1972).
Margaret Rutherford was born in Balham and her green plaque is at the site of her birth, 15 Dornton Road. Her uncle was the British politician, Sir John Benn, and she was first cousin once removed to Tony Benn. Originally a teacher of piano and elocution, a legacy enabled her to attend the Old Vic School to study drama. She became a well-loved character actor and comedienne, appearing in the film adaptations of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. She is perhaps best remembered for playing Miss Marple in the 1960s in several films based loosely on Agatha Christie novels.
Paul
cityoflondonhistory 