International Women's Day 2025: Seven remarkable women who helped shape the West Midlands

We join people across the world celebrating increcible women who have helped society to rally against bias, stereotypes and discrimination. Championing a world that's diverse, equitable and includsive. And not forgetting a world where difference is valued and celebrated. Each year more and ore women are applauded for their significant contribution to society and here, in the West Midlands, we are honoured to have some of the best women of all. Here's a look at seven of the most incredible women who have helped to shape the West Midlands.

Commonly considered to be the founder of Wolverhampton, Wulfrun is thought to have been born in Tamworth circa 935, a member of the Mercian nobility, and possibly the granddaughter of King Aethelred I.

She was taken prisoner when the Danes seized Tamworth Castle in 943, presumably for a ransom. 

In 985, King Ethelred II granted Wulfrun 'ten hides of land at Heatun', which meant 'high or principal farm or enclosure'.  In 994, Wulfrun gave 10 hides of land to build a church and monastery at a place called Heantune, which may have been the same land. Initially dedicated to St Mary, the church was renamed St Peter's in the mid 11th century, and its construction is generally considered to mark the beginning of the the city.

By 1070 the community at Heantun had become known as Wolvrenehamptonia, roughly translated as Wulfrun's High Town.

Lady Wulfrun is thought to have died circa 1005.

In 1974, the Express & Star commissioned the celebrated sculptor Sir Charles Wheeler to create a statue of Lady Wulfrun, on the steps in front of the church she founded.

Legend has it that during the Cradley Heath chainmakers' strike of 1910, a downtrodden female worker was confronted by Mary Macarthur on the picket line as she turned up for work. Torn between who to obey, the young woman looked dolefully to her boss for guidance, a scary bull of a man, with a thick Black Country accent. In turn, the menacing boss looked into the steely eyes of Macarthur, the formidable trade union leader, and sheepishly told his employee: "I s'pose yo'd better goo."

The daughter of a wealthy Scottish draper, Macarthur moved to London in 1903, where she became secretary of the Women's Trade Union League. An uncompromising campaigner for women's right to vote, she found herself at loggerheads with many of the suffragist leaders, who were prepared to accept a limited franchise which would give some women the vote, as a stepping stone towards full universal suffrage.

Internal disagreements within the Women's Trade Union League meant that the Trade Union Congress was unwilling to admit it, so Macarthur responded in 1906 by setting up the National Federation of Women Workers, which was 'open to all women in unorganised trades or who were not admitted to their appropriate trade union.'

It was the 10-week Cradley Heath chainmakers' strike which really put her in the public eye, though. Before the strike, thousands of mainly female chainmakers were said to be earning little more than 'starvation wages'. 

Macarthur observed that 'women are unorganised because they are badly paid, and poorly paid because they are unorganised.'

The dispute ended on October 22, 1910, when the last of the employers agreed to pay an agreed minimum wage, the first of its kind. Money left over from the strike fund was used to build the Cradley Heath Workers' Institute, which has since been moved to the Black Country Living Museum.

She unsuccessfully stood as Labour candidate for Stourbridge in the 1919 General Election. She died from cancer, in January, 1921, at the age of 40.

Often described as 'the Florence Nightingale of Walsall', Dorothy Pattison became one of the best-loved figures in the history of the town.

Born in 1832, daughter of a Church of England clergyman, she enrolled as a nun in 1864. Four months after taking her vows, she was sent to Walsall to serve in a new cottage hospital, after another nun had been taken ill.

Industrial accidents were very common at this time, and in Walsall railway workers in particular found themselves in need of hospital treatment. In her early days, many working-class men in the town were suspicious of the sisters, believing they would take advantage of the patients' dependence on them to further their message. But Dora proved adept at winning them over, demonstrating a tolerance of their prejudices and a readiness to nurse patients in need of care, regardless of how they responded to her dress or beliefs. She prayed for her patients as well as nursing them, but never used the influence given to her to press her faith on them.

A combination of Dora's outstanding medical skills, coupled with her cheery but no-nonsense manner, led to her developing a great bond of friendship with many of her patients, and the railwaymen in particular.

So great was their love for the nurse, that these modestly paid rail workers managed to raise £50 to pay for a pony and open carriage so that Dora could more easily visit her housebound patients. A dozen of her former patients turned out in their best suits to present her with the carriage in June, 1873.

In 1875 the town was hit by a smallpox an epidemic, and a special hospital was set up in the unfortunately named Deadman’s Lane – now sensibly renamed Hospital Street – where Sister Dora worked for six months, risking her own life to treat infected patients. Many credited her work during this time, and her obsession with cleanliness in particular, in preventing the town from being over-run by the disease.

The following year, an infection closed the hospital at The Mount, around the same time as an explosion at an ironworks which left many men with horrific injuries. The hospital moved to temporary accommodation rented from the London North-Western Railway in Bridgeman Place, overlooking the town's station.

During 1876, Sister Dora attended 12,127 patients, and it is thought the workload which seriously affected her health. In 1877 she contracted breast cancer, but continued to work, keeping her illness a secret. When she was no longer able to tend to patients, she went to London to study Joseph Lister's controversial new work with antiseptics which she was convinced would be the future of medical care. She ordered that all these new measures, which are now basic medical practice, would be implemented in Walsall shortly before her death at the age of 46, on Christmas Eve, 1878.

Dora's funeral, four days later, was a spectacle unlike any other that the town had witnessed before. Attended by usual dignitaries, and choirs from churches of every denomination, it was most remarkable for the stampede of ordinary working people also wanting to pay their respects. After the official procession entered the cemetery, the gates were closed behind, but so desperate were the masses to see her last moments, that the masses who had been shut out broke them down. Despite this, it is said that they all remained quiet and respectful as she was laid to rest.

A group of working men in the town decided that a straightforward grave was not enough for the much-loved nurse, and began an appeal to pay for a statue in the town. It took seven years to collect the £1,200 to pay for an 8ft white marble statue of Dora, most of the money coming in small sums from works collecting-boxes. The statue, mounted on a plinth, was unveiled in 1886. By 1957, the years had taken its toll on the marble monument, and the people of the town readily subscribed towards a replacement cast in bronze.

Eliza Tinsley was one of the great pioneers of the Black Country chainmaking industry, at time when the region led the world.

Born Eliza Butler in Wolverhampton in 1813, she married successful nailmaker Thomas Tinsley, and lived at The Limes, a grand mansion in Sedgley.

Thomas died in 1851, leaving her to bring up five children alone, and she also inherited her husband's nailnail-making business. Having learned a great deal from her late husband, she expanded the Cradley Heath-based business considerably and renamed it Eliza Tinsley. The Industrial Revolution, and growth of the shipping industry saw a massive growth in demand for chains, and Eliza spotted an opportunity to broaden the company's product line. By 1871 the company had 4,000 employees producing nails, chains, rivets and anchors.

Known locally as 'The Widow', she was known as a fair and knowledgeable businesswoman, visiting customers in the UK and even sending a representative out to Melbourne, Australia to set up a company in her name.

Eliza retired in 1872, aged 58, and died 10 years later at home.  A ward at Rowley Regis Hospital was named in her honour, and the Eliza Tinsley name continues to trade to this day.

The Limes also still stands, although it has since been converted into flats.

Known as 'the Swan of Lichfield', the famous poet was actually born in Derbyshire in 1742, but moved to the city after her father took up a post of Canon-Residentiary at the cathedral in 1749.

She initially benefited from her father's progressive views on female education, and became active in Lichfield’s literary community, which included William Hayley, Erasmus Darwin, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth.

Seward’s works include Elegy on Captain Cook; to which is added An Ode to the Sun (1780), Monody on the Death of Major André (1781),  Lichfield, an Elegy (1781). 

Other works included A Poetical Novel in Four Epistles (1784), as well as Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin (1804), a biography of Erasmus Darwin, the Lichfield-based grandfather of Charles Darwin. Her Collection of Original Sonnets appeared in 1799,.

She lived for the rest of her life at Lichfield Bishop's Palace, and died aged 66 in March 1809.

Another widow who made a fortune in business following the death of her husband, Julia Hanson would become synonymous with one of the region's biggest breweries.

It is believed that Julia first started brewing at The Saracen's Head, kept by her father John Mantle, in the 1840s. In 1848, her husband Thomas set up a wine-and-spirit merchants at Upper Tower Street, Dudley. When Thomas died in 1870, Julia was left to run the business with her 17 year-old son, Thomas Piddock Hanson.

Julia died in 1894, the year before the family took over the Peacock Hotel and brewery at the top of Dudley High Street, establishing Hanson's as the dominant producer of mild ale in the area.

Within a few years it took on another shop in Wolverhampton Street, which became the Talbot Vaults, and a malt house was built in Bourne Street to supply the brewery.

Hanson's was taken over by the Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries in 1943, and over the decades that followed Hanson's had a near monopoly on pubs in the Dudley area. The brewery was closed in 1992, and an Asda supermarket now stands on the site. 

Like Mary Macarthur, Emma Sproson played a crucial role in getting the vote for women, although her background could scarcely have been more different.

Born in April 1867 in West Bromwich, Emily Lloyd grew up in grinding poverty, the daughter of hard-drinking canal-boat builder John Lloyd. In the mid-1870s the family moved to Wolverhampton, and as a child Emma began to work part-time, running errands or picking coal off the local tips and slag heaps.

Circa 1876, at the age of nine, she left home and went into domestic service. Aged 13, she went to work in a shop, but was sacked after accusing the owner's brother of making sexual advances towards her. Unemployed, she moved to Lancashire to find work, becoming a Sunday School teacher and joining a church debating society. It may have been at this time that her political awakening took place.

Historian Jane Martin described a public meeting where George Curzon (the future Lord Curzon) refused to answer a question from Emma on the basis that 'she was a woman and did not have the vote'.

Lloyd had returned to Wolverhampton by 1895, having made enough money to set up a business - probably a shop in the front room of the house she shared with her mother.

Around the same time she joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and in August 1896, she married Frank Sproson, secretary of the party's Wolverhampton branch. She became involved with the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) after Emmeline Pankhurst addressed an ILP meeting, and began a letter-writing campaign to local newspapers.

In 1907 she was among a group of marchers arrested for trying to force their way into the House of Commons. Given the choice between a fine or two week's in jail, she opted for the latter. The following month she was arrested, again on a march from Caxton Hall to parliament, and was sent to Holloway Prison for a month.] By the turn of 1908, she became disillusioned with the way Pankhurst and her sister ran the WSPU, and instead joined the Women's Freedom League (WFL), a non-violent suffrage group. 

Sproson was also a member of the Women's Tax Resistance League, refusing to pay tax in protest until women were given the vote. In May 1911 she was jailed again, this time for seven days,  for refusing to pay her dog licence. Her dog was shot by police.

During her time in prison, Sproson went on hunger strike and was accorded political prisoner status.

In November 1911 she was one of five WFL members who took part in a delegation to Prime Minister Herbert H Asquith, but the following year she became disillusioned with the organisation's leadership, and decided to focus on local politics.

In 1921, Sproson became the first female councillor in Wolverhampton, having won Dunstall ward for the Labour Party. To mark her victory she waved a red flag from the balcony of Wolverhampton town hall, earning the nickname 'Red Emma'.

During her time on the council, Sproson campaigned on mental health and housing for single mothers. In 1922 she exposed alleged financial corruption at the local fever hospital, much to the displeasure of the local Labour Party. As had happened with the WSPU and WFL, she once more found herself at loggerheads with her leaders, and left the Labour Party during the mid-1920s.

She stood as an independent in 1927, but lost her seat, and retired from politics.

Sproson died on December 22, 1936.