INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
LOCAL HEROINES
To mark International Women’s Day, Miriam Balanescu delves into the under-acknowledged history of female change-makers in the city (HER)STORY telling
t hardly needs to be said that women have been crucial to moulding the history of every city, town and village worldwide – including Cambridge. And yet, despite making up over half of the global population, the utterly unique ways in which women have contributed to each social and political landscape remains
looking for the newspaper stories, the name of ‘Florence Ada Keynes’ kept popping up in the keyword searches. I just pulled that string and suddenly this really little-known or long-lost and forgotten history of the women who made modern Cambridge instantly appeared.” Keynes was the first female councillor and second mayor of Cambridge, the co-founder of the Folk Museum which eventually became the Museum of Cambridge, chair of the largest Union of Women Workers and a social reformer – instigating the first ever job centres, free dental care and glasses for children. Antony’s research additionally unearthed Cambridge’s first female mayor, elected between 1924 and 1925, who was
largely untold. International Women’s Day, held on 8 March, recognises the progress and achievements of this hefty slice of the population, honouring the work that often goes under the radar in the hope of shaping up gender parity today. Known to many as the ‘Cambridge
Town Owl’, local historian Antony Carpen is one of a fleet of researchers digging into the lives of fascinating female figures who have been pivotal to creating Cambridge as we know it today.
There are not enough women with blue plaques
the brains behind Drummer Street Bus Station, along with activists such as Daisy Hopkins. Daisy helped bring
about the end of the unlawful
Antony has been involved in a variety of projects, from Cambridge Herstory (an online resource educating people about how Cambridge women have shaped the four waves of feminism) to Lost Cambridge (his blog, which records his research into women who made waves in Cambridge). Each is targeted at documenting this past, which it is verging on scandalous that society has forgotten. “It all started from going through photos in the archive of the Museum of Cambridge,” Antony recalls. “There were a whole host of buildings that had been demolished and I wanted to know the story behind them. When I discovered the British newspaper archive and started
imprisonment of women suspected of being sex workers by the University of Cambridge vice-chancellor, in his private prison the ‘spinning house’. Aged 17, after innocently giving directions to a university student in 1892, she was falsely imprisoned herself – and upon her release, sued him. It was following this period, Antony says, that Cambridge became a stomping ground for radical women. “Cambridge University fellows were – until the 1880s – not allowed to marry,” he explains. “And so when that rule was changed (around the time that both Newnham College and Girton College were founded), you had a lot of these young fellows marrying the students and effectively the college-leavers
38 MARCH 2023 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
Powered by FlippingBook