Bradford Civic Society unveiled the plaque to Florence Moser (1856-1921) on International Women s Day yesterday. Alan Hall from the City Society writes: “ We take for granted that all girls must go out into the world as domestic servants, and again and again the truth has to be faced that all girls are not intended by nature to be domestic servants any more than all girls are fitted to be teachers or nurses . These words by Florence Moser, concerning the lack of career opportunities for women at the turn of the 20th century, show clearly that she was an early feminist, though she would not have called herself that. Rather, she saw herself as a philanthropist with a special interest in the plight of working women. She is best remembered for her work with mothers and young children.
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TODAY it’s a nondescript convenience store in a northern town. But above it is a little room where two sisters mapped out a campaign that was to change the lives of millions of women in the UK. I’ve recently learned about two remarkable Yorkshire women with significant legacies. One was Florence White, who grew up in a Bradford back-to-back, was working in a mill aged 12 - and became the “champion of Britain’s spinsters”. Like many women born in the late 1800s, she lost her fiance in the war that wiped out almost a generation of young men. Instead of accepting her fate as one of the ‘surplus’ unmarried women shunned by society, Florence founded the National Spinsters’ Pension Association. In that room above a shop she plotted a huge campaign, backed by over a million people, that got the state pension age reduced for women. She was, says historian Dr Melissa Dennison who has written about Florence, one of the groundbreaking women of the past 100 years. Her name i
Florence Moser was a childcare pioneer. Picture: Bradford Museums and Galleries A WOMAN who provided childcare for working mothers in Victorian Bradford, in premises known as “The Nest”, is to have a blue plaque in her honour. Florence Moser, who became a pioneer in nursery care and early years education, is one of four Bradford women honoured in Bradford Civic Society’s blue plaque scheme addressing an historic gender inbalance of memorials in the city. Florence s plaque will be installed by the society on International Women’s Day next week. A ‘forgotten philanthropist’, Florence Moser was a prominent member of Bradford’s 19th century German-Jewish community and a major funder of the fledgling Bradford Royal Infirmary, as well as several other charities. But it was her work in supporting the city’s working mothers that led to her to break new ground in childcare. Florence established “The Nest”, off Westgate in the city centre, where working mothers