In a previous article in February, I described the blue and other types of plaque that can be found in Southampton.
We have just celebrated International Women’s Day. The origins of the day can be traced back to Therea Malkiel, a 35-year-old labour organiser in New York who established a National Women’s Day in 1909. Her Jewish family had fled the racist pogroms in the former Russian Empire in what is today Ukraine. The day was then adopted by the international socialist movement.
So, it seems appropriate to mention several local notable women, of which only one has a blue plaque.
Elsie Sandell (1891–1974) was a writer of local history books and Echo articles. Elsie was key in getting the D Day memorial tapestry made by local women’s groups. It is usually outside the City Archives in the Civic Centre basement.
Elsie does not have a plaque, but Sandell Court in Bassett is named in her honour.
Southampton born Kate Sclater (1863–1940) became a leader of the successful1888 Match Girls Strike at the Bryant and May factory in Bow, East London.
George Bernard Shaw is said to have based his Eliza Doolittle character in Pygmalion on Kate.
Miss Ethel Newman (1876–1940) lived all her life in Hawthorn Cottage on the Common, now the site of the Hawthorns Urban Wildlife Centre.
Ethel administered the Titanic Relief Fund money to bereaved dependents. She rode her bicycle around Southampton to regularly visit the families.
Lucia Foster Welch (1864–1940) was a female emancipation supporter who hosted Emmeline Pankhurst when she held a rally in Southampton in February 1911. Lucia was the first woman to become a councillor in 1918. As the very first female mayor of Southampton in 1928 she greeted pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart after her transatlantic flight. A painting of Lucia is outside the mayor’s Parlour at the Civic Centre. Her house still stands in Oxford Street and surely deserves a blue plaque recognising her achievements. There is however a Solent University Hall of Residence that has her name.
In 2022, Jacqui Rayment became Southampton’s 800th mayor, only the 31st female and the first one to be a Lord Mayor. There is a recent portrait of her outside the Mayors Parlour at the Civic Centre.
Opera singer Anastasia Robinson does not have a plaque but does have a large mural at 88-90, Lodge Road. She often worked with G.F. Handel and was resident at Bevois Mount House from 1723-1755.
Emily Davies (1830-1921) is one woman that does have a blue plaque on her birthplace at 6, Carlton Crescent. A suffragist, she became co-founder of the all-female Girton College, University of Cambridge. In 1994, Southampton Council at first mistakenly affixed the plaque to number 8! A Solent University Hall of residence is also named after her.
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