Theatre Royal, Top of Catherine St

1
Theatre Royal, Top of Catherine St

• The first English woman to 'legally' appear on
  the stage in England was one Margaret Hughes,
  playing Desdemona in a production of Moor of
  Venice (a reworking of Shakespeare's Othello). A
  special prologue was written by the poet Thomas
  Jordon to introduce the first Woman that came to
  a in the tragedy. She would go on to join the
  original Theatre Royal (Drury Lane) company and
  play many more roles in a career which would
  bring her riches through the romantic attentions
  of Prince Rupert (to whom she gave a daughter).

2
Bloomsbury Group

• Comprised of Artists, Writers, Economists, Art
  Critics. A group of English intellectuals active
  from the early 1900's until the 1930's, who met
  for discussion in the Bloomsbury area of London
  in the early 20th century. The romantic record of
  the group's members is noteworthy, because they
  demonstrated a sexual freedom that was ahead of
  their time. Founder of Bloomsbury group and
  Hogarth press.
• Virginia Woolf, 1882 1942, WriterThroughout her
  life Virginia suffered a long history of Mental
  Illness. In March 1941, her mental condition
  deteriorated alarmingly and unable to face
  another bout of illness, Virginia Woolf took her
  own life. By the time of her death she had gained
  a prominent place in English letters, as a great
  novelist and essayist, feminist and modernist.

3
Vanessa Bell, 1879 -1961 Painter.

• Sister of Virginia Woolf, she married Clive Bell,
  a poet and an art critic who was also a member of
  the Bloomsbury group. The two had an open
  marriage, both taking lovers throughout their
  life together. Vanessa first had a love affair
  with the artist and critic Roger Fry, and later
  fell in love forever with the talented artist
  Duncan Grant. She is considered one of the major
  contributors to British portrait drawing and
  landscape art in the 20th century.

4
Louisa Aldrich-Blake, 1865 1925, Surgeon

• Louisa was one of the first British women to
  enter the world of medicine. Graduating from the
  Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women
  in 1893, she went on to take the University of
  London's higher degrees in Medicine and Surgery,
  becoming the first British woman to obtain the
  degree of Master of Surgery. Throughout her
  career, Dr. Aldrich-Blake was associated with the
  Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, becoming the
  senior surgeon in 1910. At the Royal Free
  Hospital, she was the first woman to hold the
  post of surgical registrar and also acted as an
  anesthetist. The climax of her career came in
  1924, when in the jubilee year of the medical
  school, when she was made a Dame Commander of the
  Order of the British Empire.

5
Mecklenburgh Square

• The square was designed by Samuel Pepys Cockerell
  and Joseph Kay for the Foundling Estate in the
  early 19th century and named after Queen
  Charlotte, spouse of King George III and formerly
  Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. She was known
  as a patroness to the arts, known to Johann
  Christian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, among
  others. She was also an amateur botanist who
  helped establish Kew Gardens. It was designed by
  Samuel Pepys Cockerell and Joseph Kay for the
  Foundling Estate in the early 19th century.The
  Grade II-listed 2-acre garden was first laid out
  in 181012. It remains close to the original
  design, with fine mature planes and other
  ornamental trees, formal lawns and gravel paths.
  One section is devoted to plants from New
  Zealand, including a number of rarities.
• The house, No 34, was shared by the Women's Trade
  Union League, the National Anti-Sweating League
  and the People's Suffrage Federation.
• Dorothy Glover (1901 - 1971), a theatre designer,
  lived somewhere in the square. From 1938 to 1940
  she had an affair with Graham Greene. Together
  they produced four children's books. Dorothy
  Glover (using the name Dorothy Craigie) drew the
  pictures and Greene wrote the text.

6
Authors Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby These
two authors shared a flat in the 1920s at N0. 52
Doughty Street

• Vera Mary Brittainwas an English writer, feminist
  and pacifist, best remembered as the author of
  the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth,
  recounting about her struggle for education and
  her experiences as a nurse during the Frist World
  War and the growth of her ideology of Christian
  pacifism. When her companion, Winifred Holtby,
  died in 1935, Vera subsequently wrote about their
  relationship in her book Testament of Friendship.

7
Winifred Holtby, 1898 1935

• Winifred Holtby was a writer and journalist.
  Holtby's early novels - Anderby Wold (1923), The
  Crowded Street (1924) and The Land of Green
  Ginger (1927) - met with moderate success. She
  was also a prolific journalist and, over the next
  decade and a half, she wrote for more than 20
  newspapers and magazines, including the feminist
  journal Time and Tide, the Manchester Guardian
  newspaper and a regular weekly article for the
  trade union magazine, The Schoolmistress.

8
Persephone Books (reprints by Women) Lambs
conduit Street

• Founded in the Spring of 1999 by Nicola Beauman.
  The name Persephone was chosen because it has a
  timeless quality sounds beautiful is very
  obviously feminine and symbolizes new beginnings
  (and fertility) as well as female creativity. At
  first it was not realized that Persephone also
  symbolizes many other aspects of women's lives,
  for example, less cheerfully, she represents
  married hell (being raped and imprisoned by her
  uncle Hades). But mainly she is an image of
  women's creativity, and that is why our logo,
  based on a painting on a Greek amphora, shows a
  woman who is not only reading (the scroll) but
  also symbolizes domesticity (the goose).
• Persephone prints mainly neglected fiction and
  non-fiction by women, for women and about women
  from the twentieth century. The titles are chosen
  to appeal to busy women who rarely have time to
  spend in ever-larger bookshops and who would like
  to have access to a list of books designed to be
  neither too literary nor too commercial.

9
St Bartholomews Hospital 1123 - Oldest hospital
in England

• Although Elizabeth Blackwell was admitted to
  train as a doctor at Barts back in 1850, women
  would not be admitted as students on equal terms
  for another 100 years. In Barts' more recent
  history, women have played important roles, as
  students and teachers, and also as leading
  researchers, doctors and consultants. Women,
  including Professor Parveen Kumar and Professor
  Frances Balkwill, have made significant advances
  and contributes in teaching, research and patient
  care.

10
Emily Faithfulls Victoria Press - 83 Farringdon
Street

• Faithfull was a member of The Society for
  Promoting the Employment of Women. She was
  convinced that work as a typesetter could be a
  well-suited trade for women seeking occupation
  (by the nineteenth century, this was generally a
  well-paid industry). She founded the press, and
  then went on to train and hire other women as
  typesetters for her shop. She generated hostility
  from the male-dominated Printer's Union, in
  London. The Union denied women access to
  typesetters work, using the justification that
  women lacked the mechanical ability and the
  intelligence to be typesetters. Faithfull however
  persevered, and her press continued for years.
  Publications from her press included two
  periodicals The English Women's Journal and The
  Victoria Magazine, both of which promoted the
  employment of women.

11
Margaret Macdonald statue, Lincolns Inn Fields

• This is a bronze statue by the sculptor Richard
  Goulden. It was placed here in memory of
  Margaret MacDonald who spent her life helping
  others being was involved in voluntary social
  work, including visits for the Charity
  Organisation Society in Hoxton. She was the
  daughter of John Margaret Gladstone. She was
  born in Kensington in 1870, was married to Ramsay
  MacDonald in 1896 and lived with him at 3
  Lincoln's Inn Fields. Here her children were born
  and here she died in 1911. She brought joy to
  those with whom and for whom she lived and
  worked. Her heart went out in fellowship to her
  fellow women in love to the children of the
  people whom she served as a citizen and helped as
  a sister. She quickened faith and zeal in others
  by her life and took no rest from doing good.