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Women Tell Their Stories At The Museum Of London

By Corinne Field

07/04/2004

Image: Shows a black and white photograph of a policewoman directing traffic in London. There are two buses on the right of the picture and an impressive building behind her.

Photo: Stella Emmanuel talks about being a police officer in the 1950s. Courtesy of Museum of London / Henry Grant collection.

Click on this link to hear Stella's story

Corinne Field shut up for five minutes and made for London to do some serious listening.

Women Talk is a new oral history installation at the Museum of London running until June 27.

Made up of some 67 stories by over 45 people, the stories paint a vivid picture of life in London and the issues facing women during the 20th and early 21st centuries. Their memories tell you so much more about social history and women’s history than any object or photograph could.

The installation marks a bold decision to put personal memories centre stage and is a chance to celebrate the vast archive of between two and three thousand hours worth of interviews that the Museum of London has collected over the past 12 years.

Annette Day, Curator of Oral History and Contemporary Collecting, says, "It is just a great way of really getting to the nitty gritty of women’s lives. There are so many fantastic stories in the collection that focus on women and particularly the role of women."

Image: Shows a black and white photograph of a woman reading a book. Her hair is in a bun and she is wearing a v-neck shirt with what looks like a string of pearls round her neck.

Photo: Alan Rolfe talks about his mother, Ethel, who worked as a teacher between the wars. Courtesy of Alan Rolfe.

Click on this link to hear Alan's story

Excerpts taken from longer life story interviews, carried out for past projects or simply to keep the collection up to date, feature against a backdrop of images from each period of history mixed with portrait photographs of some of the women.

Annette decided to focus on the work-life balance, a topic that came up time and again in the life story interviews.

"So many people talk in their interview about their work and their home and juggling the balance, it is a perennial topic," she says.

Image: Shows a black and white photograph of a mother crouched next to a small child sat in a baby seat with her teddy bear in what looks like her front garden.

Photo: Connie Hoe talks about the birth of her daughter during the Second World War. Courtesy of Connie Hoe.

Click on this link to hear Connie's story

Ranging from a renowned Russian harpist talking about how her mother supported her entire family in the 1920s to a mortuary technician who struggled to find work in a field still considered off-limits to women in the 1990s, Women Talk covers a period that arguably marks the greatest social change women have ever seen.

The women’s memories reveal changing attitudes and opinions, from attitudes towards child labour in the 1920s and mixed race marriage in the 1940s to views towards women in the church and the issues facing the children of immigrants today.

Although it is mostly women talking there are a couple of token male voices like Alan Rolfe who talks about his mother setting up a school for slum boys in the early part of the 20th century.

Image: Shows a black and white photograph of a young Claire Rayner. She is dressed in nurses uniform and has two books tucked under her left arm. In the background is a plant.

Photo: Claire Rayner talks about becoming involved in sex education, based on her own experiences in the 1950s. Courtesy of Claire Rayner.

Click on this link to hear Claire's story

One of the aims of Women Talk was to experiment with the display of oral history. Annette says, "I think there is still a long way to go with how we display oral history really effectively. We are trying to experiment and trying to do something new, I certainly don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before."

Neither have I. Instead of the usual pair of headphones in the corner of a larger exhibition Women Talk has it’s own innovative space. Set up in a small room with subtle lighting, there are four zones each covering a different period of history.

In each zone there are four cushioned seats, which I am informed will soon include funky backrests – much needed if you plan to listen to the full two-hours in one sitting. The seating areas face a video screen set into the wall.

You still have to wear headphones but they are portable. The presentation is run off a DVD on permanent loop, which is how the sound and images are kept in sync. There is a radio transmitter in each of the zones, which instructs the pick up of one track or another and, as you wander between the zone, the sound fades in and out.

Annette is the narrator, a conscious decision. She introduces each new voice, telling you who is speaking, when they were born and how they came to be in London.

"One of the things about me being the narrator was we were very keen not to have one of those actory voices," she says. "It is a selection from a much larger body of material so me being the narrator is a way of acknowledging the fact that it is my choice."

Image: Shows a colour photograph of a woman standing at the top of a modern staircase. The handrail is metallic and the wall in the background is made of wood. The woman has short dark hair and glasses and is wearing a black trouser suit.

Photo: Nilgun Canver is Turkish and has been a local councillor in London since 1998. Courtesy of Nilgun Canver.

Click on this link to hear Nilgun's story

Annette tells me part of the inspiration for Women Talk was to increase access to the oral history collection and explore London’s diversity. As only the second Curator of Oral History at the museum she is responsible for conducting many of the interviews and building up the collection. London’s Voices and Women Talk are her creations and she is a firm believer in the power of personal memories.

"I think they are enormously important because they get to the parts of the present and the past that we just can’t represent and reflect in any other way," she says.

"For example, the woman who talks about how amazing it was for a Jewish girl to join the Wrens, I don’t know how you can reflect those kinds of experiences in any other way. I don’t know how you could do it through objects or even through text. It wouldn’t have the same immediacy and impact."

She adds, "It’s also about the strength of the voices and the emotion, hearing someone laughing or hearing the sadness in someone’s voice. It’s just a really, really powerful, really effective resource and I think it deserves a very prominent place in museums."

Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, London’s Voices is a three-year programme of exhibitions and activities that explore and celebrate London’s diversity through the memories and opinions of Londoners. It includes 18 separate projects and Women’s Talk is the last one in the series.

If you can’t make it to the museum to see the installation for yourself then you can listen to the stories and look at some of the images by visiting the London Voices website and clicking on the link for Women Talk.

Museum of London
Museum of London, London Wall, London, EC2Y 5HN, England

T: 0870 444 3852
Open: Museum and Shop opening times: Open daily 10am to 6pm. Last admission 5.30pm Café opening times: Open 10.00am to 5.00pm

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