Mrs Humphry Ward (1852-1920), "the greatest woman of her time"

When the novelist Mrs Humphry Ward died 100 years ago on 24 March 1920 she was called "the greatest woman of her time". In 1908 she founded the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League. Also in 1908 she founded the Passmore Edwards Settlement for orphans in London's Tavistock Square. It is now called the Mary Ward Centre. In 1916 she went closer to the British front line than any other woman gathering material for a book that was intended to encourage the Americans to join in the War. The horrors she described probably had the opposite effect. In the 1970s I requested the Greater London Council to put up a plaque to Mrs Ward on the Mary Ward Centre. This was refused on the grounds she hadn't lived there.