susandocher

Mary Macarthur

(1880 – 1921)

Mary was a suffragist and trade unionist. Born in Glasgow, and starting life as a writer and journalist, she joined a trade union, and essentially never looked back. She was General Secretary of the Women’s Trade Union League and helped form the National Federation of Women Workers and the Anti-Sweating League. She supported and campaigned for 1000’s of workers paving the way for the 1909 Trade Board Act which saw, for the first time, legally enforceable minimum wages in the UK, particularly in specific ‘sweated’ trades – industries with long working hours, poor working conditions and low pay, many of which relied on women workers.

Here, her place is earned as the leader of Cradley Heath’s women chain workers, leading a ten-week strike in 1910, which resulted in a minimum wage being introduced in the industry, lifting workers out of abject poverty.

It is fitting that Mary’s sculptor is Luke Perry – who comes from a family of chain workers. The statue captures Mary cradling a baby in her left arms while holding a hammer in her right. Her multi-tasking is admirable if a little unsafe….

I struggle to get the circular text around the base of the statue into any type of decent picture. On the drive back home I realise I could have taken a video. Sigh.

Remember Ada Salter? She invited Mary to London to help organise the Bermondsey Uprising – a mass protest of 14,000 women striking for better pay and working conditions. Small world.

Ekaterine Kate Frolov

(1986 – 2000)

This statue is a memorial to a 14-year-old girl who tragically lost her footing on a foggy day on Hillsborough and fell from the cliff. Ekaterine (or Kate as she was known) was from Russia and studying English at a language school in town.

Her family erected this bronze statue in 2009. It stands on Capstone Hill, overlooking Ilfracombe Bay. Sadly, the sculptor is unknown, but I love the free spirited essence of the pose, with Kate’s hair and scarf lifted by the wind. Beautiful.

Sophia Constable

(1862 – 1932)

We would probably not be aware of the year Sophie was born if it wasn’t for the fact she was an eleven-year-old girl when she was sent to Northallerton Prison in 1873, making her the youngest female ever to be incarcerated in the prison. Sentenced to three weeks hard labour for stealing a loaf of bed from a shop in Whitby, her defence of only stealing the threepenny loaf of bread because she was hungry just didn’t cut it. Following her sentence Sophie the next four years at a reformatory school.

Entitled The Ballad of Sophie Constable, it was unveiled 150 years after her sentence, and has these words at its base:

A life without choice, a future restricted
but all the same found guilty – convicted.
Guilty of stealing by ‘devious deception’
and the law to be followed without exception.
Sophia and her mild transgression,
Sophia Constable, aged eleven.

It wasn’t all bad – the wall Sophia faces states that she went on to work as a nurse, marry, have children and lived her life to the age of 70.

Northallerton Prison closed in 2013, and Sophie’s statue now stands close to where the women’s wing of the prison was situated.

Dame Eleanor Allan

(? – 1708)

Little is known about Eleanor. From what we do know, she was a widow who ran a tobacconist business in the late 1600’s, bought a farm in Wallsend and, when sold, used the proceeds to establish a school. The school was named after her and opened a year after her death in 1709. Originally set up to provide education for ‘40 poor boys and 20 poor girls, the Dame Allan School now commands school fees of around £15k per year. Check out the current term fees and judge for yourself if perhaps the original intention may have deviated somewhat (bursaries and scholarships are available).

The figure of Eleanor stands high on the gable end wall of College House wearing a mediaeval cloak and holding a book. It is thought the statue was installed around the time the building was put up in 1882, when the school transferred there.

As with many historical figures of that time, Eleanor’s fortune had links with the slave trade with a large part of her wealth formed on the back of slave labour in American tobacco plantations. Newcastle’s only other woman statue is, you may have guessed, Queen Victoria, whose extravagant effigy stands proud outside the Cathedral.

I reach the statue at 9.30 on a November evening. The façade is covered in netting to deter those pesky pigeons but with such poor light it’s a miracle I got any exposure at all. Maybe visit it during the day.

Elizabeth Gaskell

(1810-1865)

This is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night. I’m visiting women statues, I’m counting busts in this, and quite frankly, any sculptor listed on the Public Statues and Sculpture Association (PSSA) website, but a memorial tower? Should I check it out? Well, reader, by this entry you can guess that I did. With so few monuments honouring women in history, I guess I have to take all I can get.

And Elizabeth Gaskell is a case in point. Like Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy who was yesterday’s visit, this Elizabeth too appears to have been rather ignored through time.

Born in London, upon her mother’s death she moved to Knutsford to live with her aunt. Her early years there were happy, and she used the place as the backdrop to her novels Cranford and the place called Hollingford in Wives and Daughters.

She married Reverend William Gaskell in 1832 and moved to Manchester that same year. They worked amongst the poor of Manchester during a period of great social and industrial upheaval. Religion was at the heart of her life, and this drove her strong sense of duty in helping others. She took on roles as a volunteer teacher and charity worker, whilst writing and raising children. For the first 16 years of her married life, Elizabeth bore several children. While four daughters survived, her first child was still born and her only son, William, died at ten months of scarlet fever. As a distraction from her grief, her husband suggested that she write a novel. It was out of this sorrow that her first novel Mary Barton was born. Published anonymously in 1848, the novel scandalised much of Victorian society, partly through its bare account of the grim realities of everyday life and highlighting societal issues in the newly industrialised landscapes. Her work was deemed unconventional as its sympathies lay so squarely with the working class, but this turned out to be pivotal in their popularity.

Elizabeth was a prolific writer, with 8 novels under her belt alongside shorter works and her biography of Charlotte Bronte which was written as a request from Charlotte’s own father after Charlotte’s death. She also wrote ghost stories and had work published in Charles Dickens’ magazine Household Words.

The John Ryland’s Library in Manchester (cast your mind back or turn back the pages to Enriqueta Ryland) holds the world’s most important collection of literary manuscripts by Elizabeth Gaskell, including the only complete manuscript of Wives and Daughters – her last and unfinished novel and her celebrated biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë.

Oh, and on my previous visit to the Library I get a private viewing of a bust of Elizabeth, hidden away in a side room. Hopefully it makes up for the blurred and netted shot of the memorial tower.

Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy

(1833 – 1918)

Often overlooked in the history of the suffragette movement (perhaps because her name is so long), Elizabeth was a teacher, writer, poet as well as a suffragette. Born in 1833, she was given just two years of schooling while her brother was afforded a full education, progressing to professor of mathematics at Cambridge University. Elizabeth, however, was academic in her own right and despite a limited formal education she became a governess before opening her own private girls school and running it as headmistress. Elizabeth was committed to improving access and standards of education for women and girls and regularly lobbied on this issue with her work facilitating the foundation of Newnham College. She gave up her school in 1871 and moved to London to work for the women’s movement, becoming the first paid woman lobbying Parliament on laws detrimental to women including child custody, equal rights within marriage and owning property. In 1877, the women’s suffrage campaign was centralised as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and in 1889, Elizabeth was a founding member of the Women’s Franchise League. From there she moved on to found the Women’s Emancipation Union in 1891.

In 1903, Elizabeth was invited onto the executive committee of Emmeline Pankhurst’s WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union), finding a fresh movement for emancipation. She was at the time supportive of militant action and took part in the WSPU Hyde Park rally in 1908 at the age of 75, leading the ‘North country’ procession but 1912, her stance on the WSPU’s militant action had changed and she reverted to more constitutional methods.

Elizabeth died on 12 March 1918 in Manchester, six days after the Representation of the People Act received the royal assent granting the vote to some women.

Sister Dora (Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison)

(1832 – 1878)

Dora arrived in Walsall from north Yorkshire in 1865 – at the height of the industrial revolution. For the next 13 years she worked tirelessly to establish and run a professional medical service for the people of Walsall at a time when disease, epidemics, abject poverty and dangerous working conditions were commonplace. She looked after relatives of victims of the Pelsall mining disaster in 1872, in which 22 men and boys were killed, with 13 survivors. She formed a particular bond with the local railway company. Many workers, at some point in their working life, required medical treatment due to working hazards and Dora created a bond with them. In 1873, in recognition of her devotion, workers saved up their meagre wages to buy a pony and carriage to assist with her home visits to ailing patients. In 1875 an explosion occurred in a local iron foundry. Sister Dora was at the heart of emergency medical care which saw around 16 men seriously or fatally injured in the accident. That same year Walsall was hit by smallpox. Dora worked directly with the patients, risking her own life to help them.

When she died in 1878 thousands lined Bridge Street in the town centre to pay their respects with her coffin borne by eighteen railwaymen, engine drivers, porters and guards, all in working uniform.

The respect for Dora is still present in the town, with not one, but three statues attributed to her.

The first stop is the Walsall Manor Hospital. Parking is tight, so I stunt roll out of a moving car to take in the first and most recent tributes on the ground floor reception – a glass figure made from the old Infirmary windows, bringing old into new. Upstairs in a glass case is a plaster cast used to make the original 1886 statue. Known as the first non-royal woman to receive a public statue in the UK, the original was carved in white Sicilian marble, but, due to erosion, was replaced in 1956. This cast was given to the council in 1921 by the daughter of the original sculptor (F J Williamson).

Today, the bronze statue of Dora stands proud on The Bridge in Walsall town centre.

Lady Godiva

(? – 1066ish)

How far would you go for social injustice? Lady Godiva was a religious woman renowned for her generous gifts to churches and abbeys. Her birth date is unknown, but her marriage to Leofric, Earl of Mercia around 1035 is recorded. She was a wealthy noblewoman in her own right, but, seeing the plight of ordinary people, she pleaded with her husband – Lord of Coventry – to ease their burden of taxes. So far, so straightforward. However, he suggested, legend has it, that she ride naked through the town for the cause (party balloons optional). As the day approached, folk were ordered to stay indoors, windows barred and she rode through the town having only her long her covering her. Of course, one cheeky fella stole a look and was rendered blind, hence the turn of phrase, ‘Peeping Tom’. Still, Lord Coventry could have revoked taxes without his wife having to conduct a ride of shame. If only tax decreases were that simple, eh?

Fun fact! Lady Godiva’s original Anglo-Saxon first name was Godgifu(or sometimes spelled Godgyfu), which translates to “gift of God”. ‘Godiva’ is the Latinised version.

The statue actually goes by the title, ‘Self Sacrifice’. Sculpted by William Reid-Dick, it was commissioned in the 1930’s by another William (Bassett-Green) who was a wealthy Coventry businessman fascinated by the Godiva story. The project was stalled by the second World War and when the artist came to finish the work some 10 years later, the cost of creation had increased. However, Basset-Green refused to pay for any additional costs. After an anonymous donor making up the difference the unveiling happened in 1949.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

(1819 – 1880)

“It is never too late to become what you might have been”

– George Eliot

First dilemma of the day – shall we call her by her real name of Mary Ann Evans? Known by her pen name George Eliot, she was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era in the 19^th century. Using a male pseudonym ensured her works were taken seriously in an era when female authors were usually associated with romantic novels. She wrote seven novels over her lifetime, mostly notably The Mill on the Floss (1860), and Middlemarch (1872). Middlemarch in particular has been heralded as one of the greatest literary works ever written.

I can’t claim to have read any of her works, but I was interested in reading that she met and moved in with her partner George Henry Lewes, despite the fact he was already married and living with his wife and children. Scandal! Nevertheless, she lived with him until his death in 1878. After that she married a friend, John Cross, who was 20 years her junior. If all this happened in a TV soap opera you wouldn’t believe it.

The original statue stands in Nuneaton town centre, with a second bronze cast unveiled at George Eliot Hospital ten years later.

Modern Martyrs

Manche Masemola, Esther John and Grand Duchess Elizabeth

West Entrance, Westminster Abbey, London SW1P 3PA

Above the Abbey’s Great West Door stand ten statues to modern martyrs – Christians who gave up their lives for their beliefs. The martyrs are drawn from every continent and many Christian denominations and represent all who have been oppressed or persecuted for their faith. WARNING – it doesn’t end well for any of them.

Of these 10, 3 are women: Manche Masemola, Esther John and, squeezing in precariously due to her royal roots abandonment, Grand Duchess Elizabeth.

Manche’s short life makes for a sad, if not rather baffling, story. Born in 1913, Manche lived northeast of modern-day Johannesburg and became interested in the Christianity through the missionaries working nearby. Against her parents’ wishes she continued to attend religious classes until one day her parents took her away to be killed. She was 15 years old. After several years, her burial site became a place of Pilgrimage and in 1969 – this is the bizarre part – Manche’s mother was baptized into the church.

Born Qamar Zia in India in 1929, Esther John converted her faith secretly at first before running away and changing her name. In 1955 she moved to work in a mission hospital and a year later entered the United Bible Training Centre for teacher training. Completing her studies in 1959 she moved to Chichawatni and worked evangelising local villages, teaching women to read and working with them in the cotton fields. A year later, Esther John was found murdered in her bed.

Granddaughter of Queen Victoria, it is fair to say that Elizabeth had privileged beginnings. In 1884 Elizabeth married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the fifth son of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and in 1891 she adopted the faith. Amongst the rise of a country in revolution, Elizabeth’s husband was assassinated in 1905, after which point Elizabeth gave away her wealth and possessions and proceeded to open the Martha and Mary home in Moscow – a place of prayer and charity for devout women. By 1917 the Tsarist state had collapsed and the Bolshevik party set about eradicating the Orthodox Church, including those who followed it. A year later Elizabeth was therefore duly eliminated along with fellow religious sisters.

Despite visiting the Abbey three times, on all occasions I arrive when it is shut, hence sub standard photos from a distance. You can take better ones when you go.