Plaques for Forgotten Women will bring city closer to blue plaque parity

And the Express will mark the day with a special edition, including details of the Forgotten Women of Wakefield, as well as a series of guest editors.

On Friday evening, two new blue plaques will be unveiled for Florence Beaumont and Gertrude McCroben, a former headteacher of Wakefield Girls High School, who introduced sport to the school curriculum.

For more information on Florence Beaumont, Gertrube McCroben and the Forgotten Women of Wakefield project, click here.

The plaques will be revealed following the performance of a commissioned play, Difficult Women?, which features the stories of Florence, Gertrude and other influential females the project has been exploring.

Difficult Women? follows the character of Liam Dent, a fictitious politician who sparks protests by claiming problems such as closing the gender pay gap aren’t pressing issues. He bumps into a voice from the past in the form of Florence, who shows him the lives of some of Wakefield’s women.

It has been written by Steven Williams, alongside Paul Bateson of Wakefield-based theatre company Cuckoo’s Egg, whose main focus has been the scenes with Gertrude.

Steven said: “The play isn’t about making the case for why we should remember these brilliant women, they make the case themselves through their own stories. It is rather to challenge why they were forgotten in the first place.”

Visit forgottenwomenwake.com for tickets to Friday’s show.