Blue Plaques St Albans (BPSA): the next Blue Plaque in St Albans is for Elsie Toms (1889-1982), historian and previous mayor of St Albans.
This will be installed tomorrow, 7th June at No 11 Normandy Road. At 11:30 am there will be a short ceremony outside this private house, with a dedication by Catherine Newley (BPSA member from St Albans Museum+Gallery)
Why a plaque:
Elsie Toms was a celebrated Albanian – Councillor, Alderman, Mayor, Magistrate, local historian and author – and Honorary Freeman of the city.
Importance to St Albans:
Prompted by the interest of new citizens of St Albans in their city, Dr Toms wrote her “TheStory of St Albans” which was first published in 1962, and became ‘the’ book on the history of St Albans for many years. Later she also wrote “The New Book of St Albans”.
History:
Elsie Annie Toms was born on 18 November 1889 in Bethnal Green in east London, where her father was a joiner. The family moved to St Albans when she was three years old – living first at 18 Church Crescent and then in Union Lane (now Normandy Road). She attended Garden Fields School, where she was highly commended for the special prize in history in December 1901.
In 1928 she received a BA degree from the University of London followed by an MA in 1930. In 1936, she was awarded her doctorate in history at Kings College. During the Second World War, she was the headmistress of Fulham Central School for Girls. She became a JP in 1954.
A keen suffragist in her younger days, Dr Toms came from a political family and worked for the Liberal Party in St Albans until they failed to grant women the vote. In 1919, when the St Albans Labour party was founded, she became a keen socialist member and helped to slash the Tory majority to only 791 in the general election of that year. “I had an awful job of canvassing in Hall Place Gardens, then an elite neighbourhood, and nearly had the dogs set on me several times” said Dr Toms on her 80th birthday in 1970. She was twice chair of the local Labour Party, becoming St Albans third lady Mayor in 1960.
She died on 28thMay 1982 at Strathmore House in Hall Place Gardens – in a world transformed since her canvassing days of sixty years earlier.
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