Pioneering Women in London
The access to education and employment which women are entitled to today is the result of the individual achievements and tireless campaigning of countless women throughout history. In the UK, it was often in London where women took the historic first steps into roles previously closed to them. Below, we look at just some of London’s pioneering women who are commemorated by blue plaques.
Breaking New Ground
The women commemorated in the early years of the blue plaque scheme (begun in 1866) were largely writers and stage performers as these were the few occupations where women were celebrated at the time. Nonetheless, their achievements were immense. Fanny Burney (1752–1840), whose plaque is the oldest surviving to a woman, was considered the mother of English fiction, while playwright Joanne Baillie (1762–1851) was considered second only to Shakespeare during her day.
By the mid-19th century, however, women were rallying to secure more opportunities for themselves and to expand their working lives into the arenas of politics, medicine and science. Later plaques recognise their battles and achievements.
Politics
Around the same time the blue plaques scheme began, women formed groups to campaign for their rights. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) held mass demonstrations including the ‘mud march’ of February 1907, promoted parliamentary private members’ bills and sought to educate people about suffrage.
More militant campaigning was led by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline (1858–1928) and Christabel (1880–1958) Pankhurst and Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960) and with members including Princess Sophia Duleep Singh (1876–1948). The Women’s Freedom League (WFL) was a splinter group from the WSPU and was non-violent but used direct action such as census boycotts and resistance to taxation.
All these groups won an initial victory when some women were given voting rights in 1918 (and a bigger victory a decade later in 1928 when women were granted equal voting rights with men). The 1918 bill was followed by the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, which allowed women to sit in Parliament for the first time. Early MPs included Nancy Astor (1879–1964) and Eleanor Rathbone (1872–1946).
Read more about the road to women’s suffrageMedicine and Healthcare
Along with campaigns for voting rights and representation, access to employment and respect for their professions were major themes for women’s rights campaigners. When Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836–1917) became the first woman in Britain to qualify as a doctor in 1865, her perseverance paved the way for the acceptance of women in medicine.
Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and Ethel Gordon Fenwick worked to raise the status and standards of the nursing profession. Fenwick founded the British Nurses’ Association in 1887, and it later became the first women’s professional body to receive a royal charter. A supporter of women’s suffrage, she believed that ‘the nurse question is the woman question’.
Some of the medical women subsequently honoured under the blue plaque scheme include psychoanalysts Anna Freud (1895–1982) and Melanie Klein (1882–1960), pioneering dentist Lilian Lindsay (1871–1960), ophthalmologist Ida Mann (1893–1983) and neurosurgeon Diana Beck (1900–1956).
Education
Around the same time Anderson was applying to study medicine, her good friend Emily Davies (1830–1921) was campaigning with Barbara Leigh Bodichon (1827–91) to enable women to take other courses at university too. In 1869, they founded Girton College to offer residential study and degree-level education to women. Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929) co-founded Newnham Hall (later College), also in Cambridge, in 1875.
Frances Mary Buss (1827–94) founded the first school to offer girls an academic education in 1850. She put Latin and mathematics on the curriculum and fundraised tirelessly to provide this education affordably or free.
The work of pioneers of nursery education Rachel and Margaret McMillan contributed to the passing of the Education Act (Provision of School Meals) Act in 1906. During the Second World War, Marjory Allen (1897–1976) led the Nursery School Association and campaigned for evacuee needs and for nursery centres. She later created the World Council for Early Childhood Education and introduced adventure playgrounds to the UK.
Science
One of the early students at the new Girton College was the physicist Hertha Ayrton (1854–1923). In 1902 she was the first woman to be proposed for membership of the Royal Society. She was rejected on the grounds that, as a married woman, she had no standing in law.
Kathleen Lonsdale (1903–1971) succeeded in becoming one of the first two women appointed member of the Royal Society in 1945 for her research in crystallography, which helped treat kidney and bladder stones. Her former professor William Bragg obtained a grant to provide her with domestic support, and Lonsdale believed passionately in enabling women to have a family and a scientific career.
Rosalind Franklin (1920–58) performed vital X-ray work on DNA molecules – research that proved crucial to Crick and Watson’s discovery of the structure of DNA, for which they won the Nobel Prize in 1962. Franklin died four years before the award, and proper recognition for her considerable role in identifying DNA molecules as the building blocks of life only came later.
Botanist Agnes Arber (1879–1960) published 8 books and over 90 scientific papers in her career. In 1921 she was made President of the botany section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and in 1948 she became the first woman to be awarded the Linnean Medal.
Wartime
The extent to which women’s wartime contributions directly influenced female emancipation is much debated, but the world wars highlighted the variety of roles women could hold in society.
The bravery of the nurses who served abroad during the First World War gained much public attention, particularly in the cases of Edith Cavell (1865–1915) and Dame Maud McCarthy (1858–1949). As head of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), Helen Gwynne-Vaughan (1879–1967) had to prove herself and the value of her personnel to people sceptical about women working with the army.
During the Second World War women took on increasingly diverse roles. Some of their contributions only came to light long after their deaths.
Joan Clarke (1917–96) had a remarkable career as a code-breaker. She was the most senior of the few female cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, and the longest-serving member of Hut 8, which cracked the Enigma code.
Secret agent Violette Szabo (1921–45) was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross following her (ultimately fatal) missions into occupied France. Noor Inayat Khan and Christine Granville were also both awarded the George Cross (Khan posthumously) for their bravery while serving as Special Executive Officers (SEOs) for the British in France.
These roles were secret but some women were more visible. Amy Johnson (1903–41) died while serving in the Air Transport Auxiliary and was mourned in the press. War correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908–98) stowed away on a hospital ship to report first-hand on the Allied invasion of France in 1944. Lee Miller (1907–77) was the only photojournalist present at the siege of St Malo in northwest France. She later documented the appalling discoveries at four concentration camps. Una Marson (1905–65), the first black producer at the BBC, highlighted the contribution of those in the West Indies to the war effort via her programme Calling the West Indies.
Activism
Many activists sought to address the battles women faced in their everyday lives.
African American freedom fighter Ellen Craft (c.1826–c.1891) campaigned both for women’s suffrage and against slavery. In addition to broadcasting, Una Marson campaigned with Dr Harold Moody (1882–1947) on behalf of the League of Coloured Peoples, Britain’s first significant, black-led campaigning organisation. Olive Morris (1952–79) was a founding member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group (BBWG) and helped people struggling with the housing crisis (which was particularly hard for black people) by providing guidance on squatting.
In an earlier era, Mary Hughes (1860–1941) offered a refuge (and often even her own bed) to people struggling with homelessness. Surveyor Irene Barclay (1894–1989), the first woman to qualify as a chartered surveyor in Britain, spent her career working to help people living in slum conditions.
Even our pets have benefited from women’s activism: Maria Dickin (1870–1951) founded the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals in 1917 to treat the animals belonging to people struggling financially. She changed the course of veterinary medicine through her work and her charity continues to operate today.
Your Heroines
Although many pioneering women have been commemorated under London’s blue plaque scheme, there are many more who deserve to have their place in history recognised. The scheme relies on public suggestions and we welcome proposals for consideration by the English Heritage team. For more information on the criteria and procedure for nominations, please see our guidance on proposing a plaque.
(Top image © Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)