This week saw the unveiling of the latest English Heritage blue plaque.
It marks one Caroline Norton, a 19th century writer celebrated for her pioneering legal battles against her drunk and violent wastrel of a husband which resulted in some of the first legislation to enshrine women’s rights.
The plaque is at Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, where, in 1877, the always-unlucky-in-love Norton died just three months after marrying again.
It’s a riveting story that deserves to be told yet, relatively, Mayfair doesn’t really need any more plaques – like Chelsea, Bloomsbury, Hampstead and the like, it’s already dotted with them. You can go on blue plaque walks there. But Southgate, where I live, has none.
There’s a plaque to Ho Chi Minh on the Haymarket, for example – sublimely placed next to an Americanised sports bar – but no one gets cross about it. It’s simply there to mark the connection.
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