Five... blue plaques to women that shaped the city
We stand on the shoulders of giantesses
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter…
In honour of Women’s History Month, this edition’s a handful of blue plaques in the city commemorating the remarkable lives of London women throughout the centuries.
The city’s blue plaques are legion, but the proportion representing women has always been ridiculously low — reflecting, as Anna Eavis (then Curatorial Director and Secretary of the English Heritage Blue Plaques Panel) said in 2018: ‘…a historic blindness to both the role women have played in our society, and the type of roles deemed worthy of celebration…’
And sure, a few extra blue plaques honouring women isn’t going to be a panacea for all social ills — but representation matters, and so do the stories we tell about our history as a city and the people whose contributions we acknowledge as having shaped it. As a wise person once said:
‘I get a buzz every time I spot a plaque to an unfamiliar name. Each one is a portal through ignorance, if only we choose to take it…
…These are the most compelling memorials of all. They benefit everyone by garnishing the common pot of knowledge…’
— Matt Brown, On the Importance of Plaques to People You’ve Never Heard Of
Happily there’s a route to bringing some more balance to the blue-plaque-landscape, via the English Heritage website’s invitation to make your own nominations for blue plaques commemorating people of historic significance to London.1 Plus, of course, there are other London plaque programmes working to tell stories that are often lost to the history books — including the Nubian Jak Community Trust, sharing the stories of extraordinary lives via their Blue, Black and Bronze Plaque projects.
Noor Inayat Khan
Unlike many of the women who served as secret agents behind enemy lines during the second world war, Noor Inayat Khan has a blue plaque commemorating her heroism and also a statue in a quiet corner of a Bloomsbury public garden — though as this Guardian article explores, it took a long time and a lot of campaigning for that recognition to be achieved. Her statue also became the first freestanding memorial to a woman of an Asian background anywhere in the UK.
Khan was the daughter of a Sufi mystic and a poet, born in London and raised in Paris. Returning to London during the war, she volunteered for the intelligence services. Testimony from her brother (who also volunteered for service) tells us that she struggled with the conflict between her pacifist principles, and her belief that she had a duty to try to fight the advance of Nazism. After joining the SOE, Khan became the first female radio operator in occupied France, and remained in post while most of her fellow operatives were hunted down by the Gestapo.
After her eventual capture, she refused to hand over sensitive information despite many months of imprisonment, questioning and torture. Other prisoners reported hearing her cry at night; by day and under Nazi interrogation she was defiant to her last breath. She was taken to Dachau camp and shot on 12 September 1944, aged just 30. Her final word was reportedly ‘Liberté’.
Khan was awarded the George Cross posthumously for exceptional bravery.
Plaque: 4 Taviton Street, in Bloomsbury
Ada King, Countess of Lovelace
Lovelace (1815-1852) was a celebrated mathematician and technological developer, at a time when few women entered those fields, working closely with Charles Babbage on the analytical engines — mechanical prototypes of the computer — and often credited as being the world's first computer programmer.
At the age of 27, already around 10 years deep into her pioneering work in the field that would later become computing, Lovelace wrote to Babbage:
‘I do not believe that my father [Lord Byron] was (or ever could have been) such a Poet as I shall be an Analyst; (& Metaphysician).’
Truly also a pioneer in the field of betting-on-yourself. We love to see it.