Jane Duffus is an author, journalist and editor from Bristol. She has written two volumes of the Women Who Built Bristol, with a third one coming out in March. Jane will be talking about the forgotten women of Bristol in her workshop “Even More Women Who Built Bristol” at our International Women’s Day Celebration on Saturday 8 March at Bristol City Hall.
What inspired you to start The Women Who Built Bristol books?
Volume One came out in February 2018 to coincide with the centenary of when (some) women won the vote. I’ve always been interested in social history and especially the history of women as we are so often only told the men’s history of anywhere.
Of course, the 750 women profiled throughout the three volumes of The Women Who Built Bristol cover lots of other areas besides suffrage. So there are also women linked to war, medicine, activism, the arts, education, science, sports and much more.
How did you approach the research? Where did you start?
I get asked this so much that I’ve attempted to answer it in a chapter at the start of Volume Two. In short, I’ve had to look far and wide to find these amazing women and it continually staggers me that so many ground-breaking women from our city’s past have been forgotten.
I spent a lot of time trawling census reports and newspaper archives for hints that lead to a story about an overlooked woman. And I also spend a fair amount of time in cemeteries (gravestones can be loaded with clues). Other have come from street signs, building names, and sometimes readers email me with suggestions about a distant relative of theirs who once did something fascinating.
There’s no end to the many ways that I come to hear of these women, but each time that I do find a new one it’s like a little firework going off in my heart.
What can we expect in this third volume?
Volume Three contains a third set of 250 unfairly overlooked women, and some of my favourites include: a wartime welder, a suffragist photographer, a market gardener matriarch, a former editor of Vogue, a feminist strongwoman, a globe-trotting astronomer, and several shopkeeping sisters who defied the odds.
Oh, and the indefatigable Miss FM Townsend, who is depicted on the front of this book beneath her enormous hat which functions as the foundation for all of the 250 women and girls of Bristol included in these pages.
Who is one of your favourite women who built Bristol?
Now that’s a hard question – how do you choose a favourite out of 750?! Looking at Volume Three, I have great fondness for Elizabeth Burns who lived behind the Hippodrome, who in 1910 was surprised to learn she had unintentionally broken the world record for having the most children of the same sex.
I also love the story of Polly Reynolds, who lived in Bedminster in the early 1900s and bought and sold second-hand clothes, which provided a lifeline for the hard-working but poorly-paid people who lived nearby.
Hester Davis strikes me as a non-sense type of gal. In 1880, during a famine which caused food prices to soar, she led a group of women who accosted a wagon passing through Warmley that was loaded with flour. While the driver galloped off for help, Hester and the other women sold the flour to their neighbours for a fair price and left the driver the coins to collect when he returned. Meaning that for the first time in months, the families of Warmley ate well that night.
To order a signed copy of any books in ‘The Women Who Built Bristol’ series, please order direct from Jane at: janeduffus.com. All orders of Volume Three from Jane’s website come with a free copy of ‘Volume 3.1’ – a limited edition booklet containing an extra 10 women who are not included in any of the previous three volumes.
Book launch event
For one night only, What The Frock! Comedy returns to Bristol - to mark the launch of 'The Women Who Built Bristol: Volume Three' by author Jane Duffus.
