There are eleven statues in the town of Bedford, and not one of them is of a woman. A vigorous local campaign has grown up to put that right.
The campaign group Women of Bedford wants to erect the first statue in the town to celebrate a woman - educational reformer, suffragist and politician Amy Walmsley.
To find out more about Amy Walmsley, take a look at this brief but brilliant video clip, Out and About with Marion.
I met the eponymous Marion some years ago at an event run by Huguenots of Spitalfields. Within half an hour of first meeting her in the middle of London, I discovered that our families had one of the Bedford Harpur Trust schools in common. Some would say that these long-established schools are the pride of the county, or at least of the town.
The Harpur Trust: British (English) School © The Higgins Bedford
Squished in between doughty Cambridgeshire and metropolitan London, Bedfordshire has an impressive history and my all-girls school was keen to cram it into my head.
Nonetheless, I can only name two of the existing town statues: the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan, and prisoner reformer John Howard. I think there might be one or two others in the square John Howard looks out from, but their identities escaped my notice as a child.
If I hadn’t moved to London the minute I was old enough to escape, I’d now be inclined to do my lockdown walks as a detective tour of Bedford statues, to find out whereabouts they all are, and who they represent.
Bedford Suspension Bridge by Michael Croker © Michael Croker; photo credit: Bedford Borough Council
It’s a pleasure to see Marion giving a tour of well-known Bedford streets. In any case, those streets are often in my dreams, as I walk to school again and again, over and over, trying fruitlessly to rectify or redeem the past.
You can read more here about controversial, loved and unloved statues.
This is good stuff, Jo! I loved the little video and had never heard of Amy Walmsley. I did hear a wonderful programme about Maria Montessori and often think how we ignore these ideas about allowing little people to learn though the delights of play at our long term peril. Play is everything in my opinion and not just on devices but out in the world if possible. As to statues of women – my favourite near us is Elizabeth Frink’s work outside Salisbury Cathedral of Mary Magdalen turning her back and walking determinedly away from the church. Frink felt that the church was not doing enough for the poor and unrecognised in society. It is such a bold and strong statement and I admire the way that the powers that be allowed Frink to show a woman asserting her power and presence. We need statues of such women all over the country to remind us that, as Mao said, women hold up half the sky (and as the pandemic has shown us, probably a lot more of it…).
That is so interesting about Elizabeth Frink’s statue of Mary Magdalene. And so is your comment about women holding up half the sky. We have inherited a Greek conception of the universe in which the active male god is the sky (Zeus) while the passive female is the earth (Gaia). But look a little deeper and earlier and you will find that for the pre-Greek Egyptians the overarching sky is a goddess (Nut) and the recumbent but green and growing earth is a god (Geb). Herodotus’ Histories has a section on his travels in Egypt where he says that, socially, everything is the other way round in Egypt to how it is in Greece. In Egypt, the men stay at home and weave, while the women go out to market. Women had careers and inherited property in their own right in Ancient Egypt, while in Classical Greece (later in time), married and aristocratic women were very much kept in the home.
I had never heard about Amy Walmsey. I enjoyed watching the video
Some really interesting women in Bedford in the last century were the members of the Panacea Society, a millenarian cult who believed that the original garden of Eden had been located in Bedford! Founded by the redoubtable Mabel Baltrop, their house has been preserved as a museum, and it contains some kind of ark of the covenant which can only be opened if all the bishops of the Church of England gather around it (or something like that!).
I have visited the museum. It’s quite fascinating. A female-led religious cult, with 12 female apostles, etc. Mabel Balrtrop called herself ‘the Daughter of God’. Not only did they think that the Garden of Eden had been in Bedford, but that Jesus would return in the Second Coming to Bedford.
http://panaceatrust.org/about/history-of-the-panacea-trust
I love the detail in that last sentence, Richard! I could never really get my head round Jerusalem being “builded here” in the UK, let alone imagining the rather smallish town of Bedford specifically blessed with the Second Coming.
Hooray for the Women of Bedford! May there be a ripple effect–I can think of just one statue of a woman in Canterbury and,yes, she is a royal–Queen Ethelburga. Apparently she was responsible for bringing Christianity to the North of England, all the way from Kent. I make no further comment.
Thank you Joe, most interesting. I love your illustrations and the video clip of Marion. Growing up in Manchester I remember one statue of a woman, a monstrously huge figure of Queen Victoria in Piccadilly Gardens. I think any other females were probably decorative nude figures as in “Adrift” by John Cassidy. (http://www.johncassidy.org.uk/adrift.html)
On the subject of not enough statues of women (we now have Emily Pankhurst in St Peter’s Square) – have you heard of Kate Mosse’s “Inspirational Women Campaign” #womaninhistory for International Women’s Day, 8th March?
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/mosse-backed-star-names-inspirational-women-campaign-1236238#
I’ve just nominated Käthe Schuftan by emailing
Wow. Training 1000 women teachers. Amy Walmsley sounds like someone truly worthy of recognition. I shall be interested to find out more about the Bedford Women’s Campaign.
I love your picture of the Harpur School.