Queer Places:
32 Grey Eagle St, Spitalfields, London E1 6NJ, UK
6 Wellington Way, Bow, London E3 4DH, UK
East Ham Jewish Cemetery
East Ham, London Borough of Newham, Greater London, England
Minnie Lansbury
Memorial Clock, Electric House, Bow Rd, Mile End, London E3 2BL, UK
Minnie Lansbury née Minnie Glassman (February 9, 1889 – January 1, 1922) was an English leading suffragette and an alderman on the first Labour-led council in the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar, England.[1] Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women and men's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.
Minnie was born at 32 Grey Eagle Street, Spitalfields, London, on 9 February 1889, the daughter of Isaac Glassman, boot finisher and later a coal merchant, and Annie Goodkindt. Her parents were Jewish migrants from Poland. She was the first wife (married 1914) of Edgar Isaac Lansbury, son of George Lansbury, mayor of Poplar and later leader of the Labour Party. After Minnie's death, Edgar married actress Moyna Macgill and became the father of actor Angela Lansbury, Bruce Lansbury and Edgar Lansbury Jr.[2] Minnie Lansbury became a teacher, and joined the East London Federation of Suffragettes in 1915. She worked for Sylvia Pankhurst's East London Federation of Suffragettes, of which her husband became treasurer, and served with Julia Scurr on the Poplar war pensions committee, who helped widows and those wounded in the war to make claims, and also oversaw the welfare of children in the borough orphaned by the war. Minnie and Edgar Lansbury joined the Communist Party after its formation in 1920. She was elected alderman on Poplar’s first Labour council in 1919, after a change in the law allowed some women to receive Parliamentary suffrage[2] and stand as candidates. In 1921, she was one of five women on Poplar Council who, along with their male colleagues including her father-in-law George Lansbury, were jailed for six weeks for refusing to levy full rates in the poverty-stricken area. Due to her imprisonment, she developed pneumonia and she died at her home, 6 Wellington Road, Bow, London, on 1 January 1922 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery, East Ham.[3]
There is a Minnie Lansbury Memorial Clock on Electric House in Bow Road, Tower Hamlets that was erected in the 1930s. The Memorial Clock was restored in 2008 and re-fitted on Electric House. The clock was restored through a public appeal organised by the Jewish East End Celebration Society and the Heritage of London Trust. From the appeal the Heritage of London Trust raised over £13,000, which was given to Tower Hamlets Council to complete the restoration. Angela Lansbury was among those who made a donation towards the restoration of the clock. The restored clock, now painted green and gold, was officially unveiled in the presence of relatives of Minnie Lansbury and local people on Thursday, 16 October 2008.[4]
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