Vote for new female statue in Manchester
15 Dec 2015
Several of the six women nominated to be made into Manchester’s first female statue in over 100 years have links to the University
Manchester history graduate Ellen Wilkinson became nationally famous for leading the legendary Jarrow March of 1936 whilst MP for the town and later served as Labour education minister under Clement Atlee. The University's Ellen Wilkinson Building, located behind Manchester Academy, is named in her honour.
The other legendary ladies on the shortlist are:
- Elizabeth Gaskell - the well-known Victorian novelist has her archive stored in the John Rylands Library. Her house at Plymouth Grove was owned by the University until it became part of the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust.
- Louise da-Cocodia - an anti-racism campaigner and nurse who became Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Manchester. In 1989 she was awarded a honorary MA by the University for Services to nursing and the community.
- Margaret Ashton - elected Manchester’s first female councillor in 1908 as well as being a committed suffragist. She helped found the Manchester Baby Hospital alongside the University’s first female graduate in medicine, Catherine Chisholme. During her retirement she also campaigned on the behalf of the University.
- Emmeline Pankhurst - probably the UK's most well know suffragette. Her family have a deep connection with the University with her daughter Christabel studying Law at Manchester and their family home sitting on the edge of campus.
- Elizabeth Raffald - a successful business woman and cookery writer, who is thought to have devised the modern Eccles cake.
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The new statue is expected to be placed in one of the city centre's major squares and will be the first since Queen Victoria's likeness was installed in Piccadilly Gardens more than a century ago.