Daniel Defoe, William Booth, Edgar Allen Poe, the Kray Twins, Alan Sugar, Tony Blair, Idris Elba – Hackney’s list of noteworthy men is impressive and extensive.
But what about the women? Mary Wollstonecraft’s association with the borough has recently been crystallised by the unveiling of not one, but two statues in her honour, and there are a number of petitions to have Diane Abbott similarly celebrated. However, to acknowledge all of Hackney’s bold and inspirational women would mean hundreds, even thousands of statues – one feature article can’t appreciate them all.
The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is “choose to challenge”. Nowadays it’s generally acknowledged, overtly at least, that gender bias and inequality is a weed to be uprooted and destroyed. Women all over the world are challenging instances of gender discrimination, and considerable gains have been made. Hackney has long carried this flame and, as far back as the 17th century – long before women’s strengths were recognised – the borough has been home to a number of pioneers, unafraid to challenge the status quo.
Initially, champions of women’s rights focused on education, recognising its importance in allowing women to access opportunity despite the concept being considered radical, even dangerous, by many at the time.
Hannah Woolley
In 1636, when she was just 14, Hannah Woolley began teaching and later opened a school in Hackney. After being widowed in 1661, Woolley embarked on a successful writing career (rare for a woman of her time), blending women’s “traditional subjects” of recipes, domestic management and instructions in etiquette with frank observations of society. Characteristic of these observations was her suggestion, in A Gentlewoman’s Companion (1673), that, “We are debar’d from the knowledge of humane learning, lest our pregnant Wits should rival the towering conceits of our insulting Lords and Masters” – a clear challenge to the male-dominated society of her time.
Around Wolley’s time, Hackney became known as “The Ladies University”, and by the end of the 17th century three out of thirteen of the best girls’ boarding schools in the country were based here. Later, in 1824, Susanna Corder, a Quaker educationist, established Newington Academy for Girls in Fleetwood House, Stoke Newington. The school broke new ground in teaching girls traditionally male subjects such as astronomy, chemistry and physics.
Having asserted women’s right to an education, many of Hackney’s women began to turn their attention to social causes. Without the right to vote, it was difficult for women to make their voices heard yet many found creative ways to force women’s issues onto the agenda.
Rebecca Jarrett
One such woman was Rebecca Jarrett. The youngest of seven children, Jarrett was prostituted by her alcoholic mother from the age of 12. Child prostitution wasn’t uncommon in Victorian London. By the time she was 36, Jarrett was an alcoholic and ran her own brothel, exploiting vulnerable women and girls as her own mother had exploited her. However, after falling gravely ill and being taken in by Josephine Butler, an early feminist and social reformer based in Winchester, Jarrett escaped the world of prostitution and began to use her experiences to help others.
Although her contribution has been largely overlooked, Jarrett played a central role in the infamous Eliza Armstrong case of 1885. Newspaper editor William Stead recruited Jarrett to help him highlight the problem of child sexual exploitation by proving that a young girl could be bought from her parents and forced into prostitution. Together, they bought 13 year old Eliza Armstrong from her mother, who knew her daughter’s apparent fate, for £5 (about £650 today) and pretended to let Stead have his way with her. Stead wrote of their experiment in the Pall Mall Gazette, causing a scandal and ultimately prompting parliament to pass the Criminal Law Amendment Act for the ‘Protection of Women and Girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes’.
The campaign was a success, albeit not entirely. Stead and Jarrett both appeared in court for the assault and abduction of Eliza Armstrong, receiving three and six month sentences respectively. Having served her time, Jarrett continued her rescue work until finally settling on Mare Street, near London Fields.
As Jarrett neared the end of her life, another social reformer had enrolled at the Royal College of Music. Around the time that the philanthropist Charles Booth intensified his campaign to improve conditions for London’s working-class, Olive Christian Malvery arrived in England from India.
Olive Christian Malvery
Appalled by the poverty and suffering she witnessed on her way to and from classes, Malvery made it her mission to expose these horrific conditions. Her story began in Hackney, at the Girls Guild for Good Life – an organisation designed to steer women away from “undesirable” habits such as gambling and drinking toward more acceptable pursuits such as needlework and cookery – in Hoxton Hall. Malvery saw that, in order to help these women, she must first understand them – and that meant living and working among them.
Across the borough, she disguised herself as various low-paid, low-skilled, often ‘undesirable’ women – a flower seller, a barmaid, a factory worker, a street singer – and documented her experiences in a series of articles for Pearson’s Magazine.
In words that could have been penned today, Malvery observed:
There is a certain glamour about immense wealth that the whole world acknowledges, yet not many people concern themselves with the methods employed in the production of that wealth
Her works were eventually compiled in The Soul Market, the royalties from which she used to build two shelters for London’s homeless women.
Even after 1918, when women were granted the right to vote after years of ardent campaigning, Hackney’s women have continued to find alternative and creative methods of forcing women’s issues to the fore.
Hackney Flashers
The wonderfully named Hackney Flashers, an all-female photography collective, is a good example. The Flashers produced two seminal exhibitions, each of which toured the country for several years each. The first, titled Women and Work (1975), examined the low-skilled and low-paid work that characterised female employment across most of London. Women at work were rarely the subject of art, and it was even rarer to find a woman behind the camera, but this exhibition not only highlighted the plight of women working in awful conditions, but also touched on related issues such as domestic violence and everyday sexism.
These women used their art to challenge gendered stereotypes and to assert women’s contribution to the life and prosperity of the nation
The exhibition opened many peoples’ eyes to women’s struggle, particularly when it came to balancing a job and their household responsibilities. The Flashers’ second exhibition, Who’s Holding the Baby? (1978) explored this (with special emphasis on the impact a lack of adequate childcare provision had on women’s lives), but also sought a solution. In clear contrast to the existing state of affairs, the exhibition proposed husbands took more responsibility for their children, and upheld Hackney’s Market Nursery as an example to be followed.
Through the lens of Hackney, these women used their art to challenge gendered stereotypes and to assert women’s contribution to the life and prosperity of the nation.
More recently, Hackney’s women have begun to challenge many of the principles upon which mainstream feminism is based. This is not as counterproductive as it at first sounds. Traditional feminism tends to see women as a united force, fighting as one ‘sisterhood’ against a common enemy (usually defined as the patriarchy). This notion fails to appreciate that not all inequality is created equal and that not all women experience discrimination in the same way.
Sheba and the Feminist Fables
In 1981, Sheba, a feminist press, sprang up in Dalston. Sheba sought to show the world that anyone could write, not just middle-class white people with an Oxbridge education. The organisation showcased the work of ordinary, non-privileged women who tended to be marginalised from society.
One of Sheba’s first titles, Feminist Fables – a retelling of traditional myths from a lesbian-feminist viewpoint – is recognised as a harbinger of the demise of the ‘universal’ feminist identity and it has been extremely influential in the discussion of female sexuality.
Titles such as Anja Muelenbelt’s For Ourselves and Joanni Blank’s The Playbook for Kids About Sex adopted a sex-positive attitude, encouraging women of all ages to explore and enjoy their bodies. Organisations such as Sheba sought to drive progress further, recognising the multiplicity of female voices and championing the work of women of colour, lesbians and other non-traditional women’s experiences.
There are so many more women for whom Hackney has provided inspiration, a safe space, a creative outlet and a platform for their radical ideas. We might not read about them in the history books, or see their portraits hung on the walls, but Hackney’s women have proven that women not only have a place in history, but a role in shaping it.
