Monumental Welsh Women by Julie Nicholls

In 1918 women were granted for the first time voting rights (although still somewhat limited until 1928). When the Centenary of this event arrived in 2018 there was still no statue of a woman in Wales (and only 27, discounting the royals, in England.). A group was set up with the aim of campaigning for the erection of statues to at least five eminent Welsh women. Our speaker played a significant role in this association.

A short list was created of an appropriate five: Betty Campbell, Elaine Morgan, Margaret Haig Thomas (known as Lady Rhondda), Sarah Jane Rees (better known by her Bardic name of Cranogwen) and Elizabeth Andrews.

The idea was to raise funds to create these statues- each in the home town of the lady concerned. Following the (random) order of the ladies above we have statues already sited in Cardiff, Mountain Ash, Newport, Llangrannog and the final one probably near the Penderyn Distillery.

Since our speaker is a Newportonian she concentrated her talk on the Newport representative, Lady Rhondda -but did include an outline of the lives of the other four.

Margaret Thomas was born in London in 1883 and her father was the rich colliery owner D. A. Thomas. She was an only child and spent her childhood in Llanwern House, Newport. By 1908 she had become an ardent suffragette and showed this by setting a post box alight in Newport, which earned her a spell in prison. She had always worked for her father and became his ‘right-hand man’.

In 1915 they were returning from the United States after a business trip when their ship, the ‘Lusitania’ was infamously torpedoed by a German submarine. They were both rescued but she had been in the water a long time and suffered from hypothermia. Her father died a few years later and so she inherited his title and became Viscountess Rhondda. She was not allowed, however, to sit in the House of Lords. In her subsequent years she featured as an important industrialist, becoming the first female President of the Board of Directors and she founded the influential feminist magazine ‘Time and Tide’ and served for many years as its editor. Her statue can now be found at the east side of the Millennium Footbridge in Newport.

There is only space here for a brief mention of the other four ladies:

Betty Campbell: A black woman, born in the poverty of Tiger Bay but through determination and hard work became the first black head teacher in Wales.

Elaine Morgan: A TV script writer for over 30 years with BAFTA success. Also interested in anthropology with a global best selling book ‘The Aquatic Ape’

Cranogwen: A Welsh speaker who qualified as a master mariner and taught the subject in a special navigational school in Llangrannog. She was the first woman to win the chair at the Royal National Eisteddfod.

Elizabeth Andrews: A Welsh speaker who was a prominent political activist. One of her main achievements was to force the compulsory introduction of pit head baths to stop the coal dust on the men being brought into homes and affecting the health of all residents there.