Women of Whitby: Yorkshire museum explores the untold stories of past and present women from coastal town that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula in exhibition

The volunteers at Whitby Museum have used its digitised, searchable Whitby Gazette archive to gather their research for each untold story of the incredible women of Whitby.

The wider public were also given a chance to nominate Whitby women to be featured in the exhibition and as a result, there are many stories brought to life.

From anti-slavery protesters and suffragettes and suffragists to bankers, mayors and footballers, these women broke barriers of societal norms.

The exhibition ‘Our Lasses: Inspirational Women of Whitby’ started on Tuesday, February 4 and will end on Sunday, June 15, 2025.

The event will be held from Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 4.30pm and it showcases the fascinating women of Whitby through the ages to the present day.

Admin assistant at Whitby Museum, Sarah Porteus, told The Yorkshire Post: “It’s something that we’ve wanted to do for quite some time and never got round to it.

“We’ve always wanted to tell the stories of women of Whitby which were really untold and it was two or three years ago when we started planning the exhibition.

“We started looking into whose stories we could feature; we were blown away by the amount of people whose stories we told.

“It ranges from the women in politics, we’ve got Mary Nelson, who was one of our great Mayors, all the way down to Hannah Hobson who got transported for rioting to Australia in the late 1700s; it’s all about her life and how she ended up where she ended up.

“Sophia Constable was arrested for stealing a loaf of bread at aged nine, but it turned out weirdly to be the making of her because she got an education she wouldn’t have got when she went to prison.

“Storm Jameson worked for PEN, an organisation for authors and campaigning for literary freedom, and she finds herself on a Nazi hitlist because of the work she had been doing and she’s a Whitby native. It’s such a range, we weren’t aware of how many great women there had been.”

After asking the public to nominate their woman of Whitby, they discovered so many other stories that they were not aware of.

Whitby Museum manager, Hazel Wright, said: “Doris Fortune wasn’t on our radar, but a lot of people mentioned her. She had done a lot of great things for charity and the poorest in society.

“We’ve got women from the world of business; Elizabeth Botham, whose family still runs the bakery in Whitby, while looking after 14 children.

“Margaret Campion, who was a banker in a time when women weren’t involved in banking and then we’ve got the footballer Beth Mead and we’ve got her signed boots.

“These stories are about the people who came from lowly backgrounds. Just as inspirational are those who really made something of themselves.

“Dorothy Ripley protested against slavery in America and ended up getting an audience with the president, they’re just incredible stories.”

Ms Porteus added: “She was born in 1767, she died in 1831 in America. It’s not an easy thing to go to America but she had these really strong convictions that meant she had to go, she needed to tell the president off because he was holding slaves. It’s incredible.”

Ms Porteus was amazed to learn more about the suffragette movement.

“The biggest education for me was discovering that they weren’t all suffragettes.

“They could have been suffragists, who were peaceful and when you looked into the figures, they didn’t actually need to persuade men of Whitby that women needed the vote because the men of Whitby were really quite behind them.

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“It was Westminster they needed to convince. The characters in there were fascinating and the more we delved into them the more they came to life.

“A lot of these women were breaking ground in what was a man’s world, that’s another area we highlight including the women who were part of the RNLI service and went out in the rescue boats.

“Again, that was very male-dominated previously but now there are quite a lot of female lifeboat volunteers.”

A woman nominated her mother, Ada Sampson, who dived into the River Esk to rescue a boy who fell into the water.

“When [Ada’s daughter] was about six was told very sternly to stay put and not move whilst her mother had taken off her woollen coat and dived into the Esk to try and rescue a small boy who had fallen in the water,” Ms Porteus said.

“It’s just an astonishing story. It had been more or less forgotten, she was well decorated at the time, she got a medal and lots of people were very thankful for it but it sort of faded into history.

“It shouldn’t be forgotten because if you’ve ever seen the Esk in March and the temperature of the water, it’s an astonishing thing to have done. It was great to bring these women back to life.”

The process of putting this event together came partly from speaking to living relatives of these women and doing research in their archives including their digitised Whitby Gazette which dates from 1854 to 2014.

“We have spoken to family members in some cases where we know there are living relatives,” Ms Porteus said.

“The other thing we were lucky with is our library and archive; we hold a lot of documents relating to Whitby families such as the Smales family.

“Some of the Smales women were out in the First World War in the frontlines doing medical things and taking photos.

“Another great thing was our touch screen Whitby Gazette which we have got back to edition one.

“Everything that ever happened in Whitby got documented in the Whitby Gazette and now we can search for that. It was astonishing how much information we could get from that.”

You can buy tickets to see the exhibition on the Whitby Museum website. An adult annual pass is £8.50.