Events Calendar...
Talk: Necessary Women; The Untold History of Parliament’s Working Women
9 October @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
£10.00
Necessary Women; The Untold History of Parliament’s Working Women, with Mari Takayanagi
3-4pm, Thursday 9th October 2025
When suffragette Emily Wilding Davison hid overnight in the Houses of Parliament in 1911 to have her name recorded in the census there, she may not have known that there were sixty-seven other women also resident in Parliament that night: housekeepers, kitchen maids, and wives and daughters living in households. This talk, with historian and archivist Mari Takayanagi, tells their story.
Women have touched just about every aspect of life in Parliament. From ‘Jane’, dispenser of beer, pies and chops in Bellamy’s legendary refreshment rooms; to May Ashworth, Official Typist to Parliament for thirty years through marriage, war and divorce; and Jean Winder, the first female Hansard reporter, who fought for years for equal pay; the lives of these women have been largely unacknowledged – until now.
Drawing on new research from the Parliamentary Archives, government records and family history sources, historians and parliamentary insiders, Mari’s recent book Necessary Women (with Elizabeth Hallam Smith) brings these unsung heroes to life. Join Mari at Gladstone’s Library to learn about women left out of the history books – including Mary Jane Anderson, a previously unknown suffragette.
Dr Mari Takayanagi is a historian of women and Parliament from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, and Senior Archivist at the UK Parliamentary Archives.
Her research interests include legislation affecting women’s lives and gender equality, early women MPs, and women staff in the House of Commons and House of Lords. Her most recent publications are ‘Suffrage Centenaries’ in the Routledge Companion to British Women’s Suffrage (Routledge, 2024), and as co-editor with Erika Rackley and Rosemary Auchmuty, Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years (Hart Publishing, 2024).
Her monograph, Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament’s Working Women, co-authored with Elizabeth Hallam Smith, was published in 2023 by The History Press.
Please note, tickets cannot be refunded or used for another event if ticketholders are unable to attend. All ticket purchases support us to care for the Library building and the collections it holds. As a charity, Gladstone’s Library receives no government funding, so all purchases, Gift Aid and donations, are deeply appreciated.
Please note that tickets for this event are e-tickets. Book online and have your ticket emailed directly to you.
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