It is well known that the number of heritage plaques on buildings across cities have an under-representation of women from the past. For example, in 2018 English Heritage noted that London’s Blue Plaques scheme had only 14% women but also that only a third of nominations from the public were for female characters.
However, continued work to improve this ratio has meant there are a few more plaques being put up for women in recent years. Whilst walking around Newcastle after speaking at the wonderful Historical Association Conference, I managed to find two plaques for some remarkable 18th century women of the city and another that notes a site of importance to the suffragette movement.
Mary Astell
Firstly, on the railings outside the cathedral of the city with its beautiful gilded clock, I found a plaque for Mary Astell, unveiled in 2023. Born in Newcastle in 1666, Astell was educated by her uncle that was a clergyman of the cathedral and used the books in its library. She never married and maintained her independence as an educated woman, gaining close friendships with a circle of literary women in London such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who helped get her work published.
After Bathusa Makin, Astell was one of the first English women to advocate that women are as rational as men and deserve education, publishing a pamphlet in 1694 called A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest. It’s impressive to think that Astell was writing a century before the more well-known Mary Wollstonecraft, yet advocating for essentially calling for similar change – for women to have an education and not be unfairly oppressed. She later became headteacher for an early girls’ charity school in Chelsea.
Her writings were no doubt an inspiration for the generations of educated women that followed after, though sometimes proved controversial due to some of her comments on religious obedience and conservative rather than liberal politics. Her moving words on the plaque left me thinking as I walked on; ‘if all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?’
Anne Fisher
Next, on the railings outside St John’s Church was a plaque for Anne Fisher, unveiled in 2019. Born in Cumberland in 1719 and initially working as a teacher, she wrote A New Grammar: Being the Most Easy Guide to Speaking and Writing the English Language Properly and Correctly which helped to standardise the language and ran to over 40 editions well into the 19th century.
In 1751 she married the bookseller and publisher Thomas Slack in Newcastle and birthed nine daughters. Together the couple also founded the Newcastle Chronicle which is still in circulation today and passed down to their daughter Sarah Hodgson on their deaths. She is buried in the churchyard which now bears her plaque.
Plaques for Historical Events in Women’s Suffrage
Finally on the side of a building on Grey Street which was formerly the Turk’s Head Hotel, a plaque unveiled in 2017 commemorates two events from the suffragette movement. Firstly, the release of local suffragette Kathleen Brown on 19th July 1909 from Holloway Prison. She was one of the earliest members of the WSPU to go on hunger strike and returned to Newcastle Central Station in triumph to a waiting crowd of supporters.
Brown was an important regional suffrage leader, though is less well-known than her London counterparts so this plaque helps to bring to light her name.
Equally, the Turk’s Head Hotel was where suffragettes marching from Edinburgh to London gathering petition signatures stopped for refreshments on 21st October 1912. Many establishments would not serve them, so we can perhaps infer some solidarity from the male business owners here.
In some ways it is ironic yet fitting that this plaque is on Grey Street, named after the 2nd Earl Grey whose monumental column erected in 1838 stands nearby. Charles Grey served as the Whig Prime Minister during the passage of the 1832 Great Reform Act which is well known to have helped equalise constituency boundaries and extended the right to vote for more men.
However, it was this act which actually explicitly stated that a voter could only be a ‘male person’ – this legally excluded women from the franchise for the first time, stopping all occasional earlier occurrences of women such as propertied widows being able to vote.
Whilst Grey got a dominant and permanent commemoration for his work almost immediately after the events, Kathleen Brown and the suffragettes have only just received this small plaque over 100 years later.
Setting up these interesting plaques around the city streets of Newcastle is useful and important for passers-by to notice the local contributions of both men and women to the city’s development, as well as wider national causes. Greater representation of women’s roles in the past will ensure that residents and visitors alike are all able to recognise and name an equal number of male and female characters who have walked the same streets, just as they do now.
