Last month we only had four, commemorating three men and a flying bomb.
Now we've got a fifth, and this time it commemorates 1400 people and all of them are women. So that's progress.
The new blue plaque has been added to the wall outside Bow Quarter, the former Bryant and May match factory. It remembers The Match Girls' strike of 1888. No names, just a collective nod.
I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the story of the Match Girls' Strike. It's the most historic thing to have happened within five minutes walk from my house so I've covered it far too often already.
This was my first mention 20 years ago in November 2002.
I live within sight of the old Bryant and May match factory, site of the great matchgirl strike of 1888. The factory employed some 1,400 workers, mainly young women under the age of 20. They worked in appalling conditions for up to 13 hours a day and many suffered through handling the poisonous phosphorous used in match production. When journalist Annie Besant exposed the conditions in the factory, the management sacked three women simply for talking to her. The matchgirls then all walked out on strike, launching a golden age of Victorian trade union unrest.
A system of heavy fines was in place for offences such as talking, lateness, dropping matches or going to the toilet without permission. (Sounds much like working in a modern call centre). Many of the women suffered from 'phossy jaw', a particularly nasty form of bone cancer caused by handling the yellow phosphorous used in match production. First your skin turned yellow, then your hair fell out, then the whole side of your face turned green and then black, discharging foul-smelling pus, and finally you died. Workers rights were certainly not top of the management's list of priorities.
And this was from my fully comprehensive 125th anniversary post in July 2013.
Before the end of the month, the inaugural meeting of the Union of Women Match Makers was held. Annie Besant was its first secretary, with her organisational skills helping to maintain the momentum. The Matchmakers' Union would become one of the most important in the country, and inspired other poor workers to band together and fight for their rights. The following year the Gas Workers’ and General Labourers’ Union was formed, and won an 8-hour day. And then the East End's dockers went out on strike, closing down business on the Thames for a month, and Britain's trade unions became ever more important.
You might think that Annie Besant deserved the blue plaque, given everything she initiated, but English Heritage's citation is quite insistent on spreading the credit more widely.
What's worse for Annie is that she did have a blue plaque outside, a cheaper local version, but that's been removed to make way for the proper English Heritage plaque that doesn't mention her at all. Them's the breaks.
It's all part of a drive to make London's blue plaques more diverse. As you might expect from a programme that began in 1866 most of the 950 plaques commemorate men, and white men at that, and generally well-to-do white men. Here in Bow we now have a plaque that goes against the grain by commemorating working class women, most of whom were of Irish descent and many of whom were Jewish.
Currently only 14% of London's blue plaques commemorate women, and that's after a deliberate attempt to boost the numbers which started back in 2016. Also only 4% were dedicated to Black and Asian figures from history so they've been busy trying to fix that too. The E3 postcode actually contains the very first blue plaque honouring a notable figure of minority ethnic origin, namely Mahatma Gandhi who earned his in 1956 for staying at lowly Kingsley Hall.
At last count only 60% of London's population was white, with 18% Asian and 13% black, so there's a long way to go for blue plaque balance yet. Admittedly you have to have been dead for 20 years before English Heritage will consider you for shortlisting, and historically the ethnic breakdown of the capital was rather different, making finding appropriate candidates a little harder. But the selection committee reassure us that they haven't lowered the bar when trying to achieve greater diversity, they're just broadening their outlook beyond previous cultural confines.
But only Bow has a blue plaque for 1400 stroppy teenagers, because sometimes going out on strike for fairer conditions improves the lives of all of us.
