London tour guides mark International Women's Day with walks celebrating Britain's unsung female heroes

Tour guide Katie Wignall
Roman Fox
Kit Heren8 March 2020

London tour guides are marking International Women's Day by sharing the history of some of the capital's most under-appreciated women.

The tours include talks on a woman believed to be Britain's first black nurse, an early advocate for women's sexual education and an 18th-century aristocrat who invented a new art form aged 72.

Annie Brewster was a nurse at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, in the 1880s.

Katie Wignall, who organises the tours, believes she is one of many British women who have been overlooked by history in favour of men.

Ms Wignall added: “I’ve noticed a lot of the history we celebrate is men’s achievements, most of the blue plaques are for men, most of the statues are of men.

“I wanted to do some walks to celebrate more unsung heroes."

She continued: “There’s been a history of overlooking the achievements of women as a side note to the history of humanity as a whole, which has tended to be focused on male achievements.”

Annie Brewster
Barts Health NHS Trust Archives and Museums’

Annie’s grave was only rediscovered last year by the award-winning author and historian Stephen Bourne.

Mr Bourne said that although it is tempting to think of Annie as a trailblazer today, it is unlikely this would have been the case in her lifetime.

Mr Bourne told the Standard: “We know from hospital records that her colleagues loved her.

“People think Victorian Britain everyone was racist, but they weren’t.

“There may have been other black nurses, we’ll never know. We only know she was black because her photo appeared in a hospital journal.”

Ms Wignall, who usually leads tours for her organisation Look Up London, is running this series of walks alongside seven other guides.

Tours are taking place across central London: in Whitechapel, Marylebone, Chelsea, St James’, the Temple and Hampstead. Walks are also taking place in the National Gallery and the British Museum.

Tour guide Muriel Carré
Katie Wignall

Muriel Carré is the guide for the British Museum tour, which celebrates the work of two remarkable - and under-appreciated - pioneers in biology and the arts respectively.

Marie Stopes was a researcher in plant fossils at the British Museum in the early twentieth century, when, according to a biography by Stephanie Green, she discovered a locked cupboard containing an array of books about human sexuality.

This was a subject Ms Stopes knew very little about despite being married, according to Ms Carré.

Within a few years of this discovery, Ms Stopes wrote a radical new book on sex education - Married Love. The book quickly sold out six editions in the UK and was banned in the US.

But Ms Carré doesn’t shy away from telling her audience about the darker side of Ms Stopes’ career.

A few years after Married Love, she published Wise Parenthood, which dealt with the subject of birth control - a radical topic, but one which Ms Carré says may have been informed by Ms Stopes’ pro-eugenics stance.

In the Second World War, she exchanged letters with Adolf Hitler on the topic.

Tour guide Emily Lawrence Baker
Katie Wignall

A happier subject for Ms Carré’s audience is Mary Delany, an eighteenth-century artist who is credited with inventing the paper collage art form.

Ms Delany, according to Ms Carré, was married off to an inattentive husband in his 60s when she was just 17. He died eight years later.

Ms Delany remarried and made friends with the Duchess of Portland, a great natural history collector.

According to Ms Carré, it was when Ms Delany mistook a piece of red paper for a petal from one of the duchess’ flowers that she was inspired to create the new art form.

Several of her artworks are on display in the British Museum.

Ms Carré, who also runs the Marylebone tour, said: “It’s great that I can tell people about these wonderful women.

“People walk past and they like the art, but they tend not to appreciate the life behind it.”

Tour guide Katie Wignall
Roman Fox

When hearing about these underappreciated women, it might be easy to develop some negative feelings towards the men who stole their thunder.

But the guides are keen to emphasise how inclusive their tours are.

Ms Wignall said: “I’ve made it very clear that men are very welcome on the tour. We’ve had lots of very enthusiastic chaps, and one of our guides is a man.”

Emily Laurence Baker, who runs a tour called Kickass Chelsea Women featuring Mary Quant, Elizabeth Fry and Anya Hindmarch, among others, said the day “shouldn’t feel exclusive to other groups."

She continued: “It is a celebration of women’s achievements but also a reminder that women still have a long way to go.”

The walks run until March 8 - International Women’s Day itself. But Ms Wignall will carry on looking for more unsung heroes.

“The stories are out there” she said. “You just have to look hard for them.”

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