Doughty Street women take to the streets

You may not know Lyons Street, Lawson Street, Kerr Street or Singh Street. If not, that’s hardly surprising, for they are actually known as Doughty Street, Guilford Street, Roger Street and Gray’s Inn Road. In celebration of International Women’s Day 2018 and 100 years after women first got the vote, Doughty Street’s women members asked why the streets they walk each day are named after men, mainly wealthy landowners and benefactors, rather than the many inspiring and influential women who lived or worked nearby, such as Jane Lyons, Marie Lawson, Harriet Kerr and Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. For eight days, they are renaming the streets around their Bloomsbury-based chambers after eight leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, documenting their journey on Twitter via the hashtag #DoughtyStWomen.