Old records mostly wrote about men: kings, constables, bishops and builders. That doesn't mean women weren't here! These are women connected to Tower Hamlets that we know about. Can you find out about more?
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Roisia
Founded a hospital here
With her husband Walter Brunus she founded the priory and hospital of St Mary Spital in 1197. Spitalfields is thought to be named after it.
JT
Joan of the Tower
1321–1362
Born here
The youngest daughter of King Edward II and Isabella of France, born in the Tower of London on 5 July 1321. She became Queen of Scotland as the first wife of King David II.
MW
Mary Wollstonecraft
1759–1797
Born here
A writer and philosopher, born in Spitalfields. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) she argued that women only seemed less able than men because they lacked education. She was the mother of Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.
EA
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
1836–1917
Born here
Born in Whitechapel, she was the first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon. She co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women, and became Britain's first woman mayor, in Aldeburgh.
MH
Mary Hughes
1860–1941
Helped people here
A voluntary parish worker who lived in the Blackwall Buildings and then in a converted pub on Vallance Road, where she gave food and shelter to people in need.
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Minnie Lansbury
1889–1922
Born here
A suffragette born off Brick Lane in Stepney. In 1919 she became the first woman elected as an alderman on Poplar's first Labour council. A memorial clock to her stands on Bow Road.
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Alma Cogan
1932–1966
Born here
A pop singer of the 1950s and early 1960s, born in Whitechapel. Called the 'Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice', she was the highest-paid British female entertainer of her time.
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Lynne Bennett
Started a farm here
She founded Stepney City Farm in 1979, when it was called Stepping Stones.
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In 1680 Ralph Davenant, the rector of Whitechapel, his wife and his sister-in-law left a large sum of money for a schoolmaster to teach forty boys of the parish.