Interview with Wendy Forrest, creator of Women from Hackney’s History
From strikers to suffragettes, poets to prophets; the women of Hackney have always been a force to be reckoned with, as illustrated by The Hackney Society’s Wendy Forrest in her new publication, Women from Hackney’s History.
“The book includes six centuries of dissenting voices and women who refused to accept the world they were born into, from the 16th century to the 21st,” Forrest explains. “We looked for women who were interesting, and illustrated the challenges women have faced, and the many ways women have taken more control over their own lives.”
Women such as Beatrice Hastings, the bohemian Oxford-educated Edwardian poet and writer who embarked on love affairs with fellow writers Katherine Mansfield and Wyndham Lewis. Or prostitute and activist Rebecca Jarrett, who dwelled in Hackney within the same years as Hastings. Prostituted by her father as a girl, Jarrett eventually saved dozens of young children from the same fate she suffered, and would serve jail time in her efforts to fight against child prostitution.
Evidently, it is of no coincidence that this book of women’s history is centred around Hackney. “The first published female poet and the first female composer were schooled in Hackney,” Forrest points out. “Many of Hackney’s female actors and music hall artistes campaigned for votes for women and were active in the suffrage movement.”
Forrest did not work alone. “The core group came from The Hackney Society and Hackney History,” she says of the dozen Hackney-based women who contributed to the project. “We were definitely limited when lockdown hit just after we started work. We wanted to involve all women from all Hackney communities … but you really need to be able to meet with people and we couldn’t.”
Women from all walks of life
Lil Warren, an arts director, says she is proud to have been asked to contribute. “Women from Hackney’s History includes some of my favourites like Edith Garud, who I am currently researching, Marie Lloyd, Nelly Power and Hettie King,” she says. “But I especially love the inclusion of ‘hidden’ contributors.”
Aside from the big names, which also include writer and women’s right activist Mary Wollstonecraft, Forrest says she felt it was important to cover lesser known individuals in the book, which boasts over 100 women throughout history.
“Ordinary lives can often teach us more about the past,” Forrest says. “We wanted a rounded view of women’s history that doesn’t show all women as heroines or saints but includes child murderers and blackmailers, too. We got behind some of Hackney’s female institutions – like the Refuge for the Destitute or the Ayah’s home – to find stories of the women who lived there.”
The Ayah’s Home was an institution that provided accommodation for Indian and Chinese nannies who were dismissed from their jobs with no route back to their home country during the period of Imperial Britain. Housing around 100 women a year, it was the only one of its kind at the time; and in a vein not dissimilar to Women from Hackney’s History, it was run by women, for women.
“This is Hackney so there are plenty of radicals and artists,” Forrest says. “And the radicals and artists are often the same people. These are properly gutsy women and we need them now as much as ever.”
