Apart from royalty, and naked models, you will not find many women among London’s statues but that must mean any who appear must have been remarkable people. These are all I can find. Oddly, Nightingale, Blake and Pankhurst are all by the same sculptor: AG Walker.
Any comments - or a suggestion for a London secret? Please e-mail me.
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Louisa Blake
Edwin Lutyens - famed for the Cenotaph - designed this fine 1937 memorial to Dame Louisa Brandreth Aldrich Blake (1865-1925), dean of the London School Of Medicine For Women. She was the first female surgeon in Britain and the first to operate on cancers of the cervix and rectum.
Tavistock Square WC2
Tube: Russell Square
Margaret Ethel MacDonald
The wife of Ramsay MacDonald died in 1911, at their home nearby, just before he became the first Labour Prime Minister. A feminist and socialist, this lively bronze by Richard Goulden (more noted for his war memorials) shows her with nine children - she did much charity work with the young.
Lincoln’s Inn Fields WC2
Tube: Holborn
Edith Cavell
Cavell was shot in 1915 by the German army during World War I for helping Allied soldiers escape from Occupied Belgium. Her death was used as a propaganda tool although she herself said: ‘Patriotism is not enough,
I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.’
St Martins Place WC2
Tube: Charing Cross
Emmeline Pankhurst
Pankhurst (1858-1928) was a leader of the Suffragettes who fought for the vote for women, a right not won until 1928. Imprisoned 13 times between 1908 and 1914, She suspended her campaign at the outbreak of World War I, when many women did men’s jobs - hastening votes for women over 30 in 1918.
Victoria Tower Gardens SW1
Tube: Westminster
Catherine Booth
Methodist lay preacher William Booth founded the Salvation Army in 1878 and his wife Catherine (1829-1890) bore him eight children. Painfully shy, she nevertheless broke the convention that women did not speak at adult meetings to become a powerful preacher in her own right.
Champion Park SE5
Rail: Denmark Hill
Florence Nightingale
This statue, sculpted in 1867 by AG Walker, backs onto the Crimean War Memorial. Oddly, she carries an oil lamp, instead of her actual candle lantern. Nurses leave a wreath here every year on May 12 - the anniversary of the death of ‘The Lady With The Lamp’ who transformed military hospitals.
Waterloo Place W1
Tube: Trafalgar Square
