I was interested to read Anna Kessel’s article (Where are all the blue plaques for women? G2, 3 October). I submitted a blue plaque application to the English Heritage Trust on behalf of the feminist economist, statistician and civil servant Clara Collet (1860-1948) earlier this year. While admitting that the volume and content of her work was significant, the blue plaque team denied the application on the grounds that she was not high-profile enough.
My response was that that was rather the point: in a patriarchal civil service, her work had been largely unrecognised. However, her research on the high rates of infant mortality found that women working was not the cause of infant mortality, as contemporary government thinking had supposed, but the symptom. The cause was poverty itself. The welfare reforms of the early 20th century were kick-started by such research. I suggest that English Heritage Trust should begin to redress this imbalance.
Christine Wheeldon
Herne Bay, Kent
• Mike Read, head of the Blue Plaque Trust, considers there are too many plaques. Last year Peterborough Civic Society erected 20 new blue plaques in the city centre. These plaques commemorate important buildings and people from the city’s heritage. None of the plaques featured women, something we intend to rectify in the next installation phase. Edith Cavell, partially educated in Peterborough, was considered but, at the time, cathedral authorities did not give permission for installation on one of their buildings.
Since the plaques installation I have spoken to at least a dozen groups (incidentally predominantly female) and have asked for suggestions for prominent local women. Although some suggestions have been made, the connections of a few are considered too tenuous or obscure.
Too often plaques have been erected to dead male rock stars who just happened to have stayed in a particular hotel for one night. Location can also be an issue - any plaque has to be clearly visible from a public highway and, in Peterborough’s case, within easy walking distance of the city centre. City centre locations have tended to be civic, ecclesiastical or commercial.
The society is currently considering a prominent pre-war sportswoman but her achievements were national and international, her birthplace outside the city and the local school she attended now demolished. Where to erect a plaque?
Mike Read rightly infers that the proportion of plaques to women will gradually increase. However, it is now incumbent on us all to revisit criteria to see how we can rebalance and provide wider recognition to those hitherto considered low priority.
Toby Wood
Vice-chairman, Peterborough Civic Society
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