Women of Distinction - Great Britain

Date of issue: 14 October 2008

1st class - Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Millicent Garrett was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England. As a suffragist, she took a moderate line, but was a tireless campaigner, concentrating much of her energy on the struggle to improve women's opportunities for higher education. In 1871, she co-founded Newnham College, Cambridge. She later became president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (the NUWSS), a position she held from 1897 until 1919.

48p - Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, LSA, MD (June 9, 1836 - December 17, 1917), was an English physician and feminist, the first woman to gain a medical qualification in Britain.

50p - Marie Stopes
Marie Stopes (October 15, 1880 - October 2, 1958) was a Scottish author, eugenicist, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of family planning. Stopes edited the journal Birth Control News which gave anatomically explicit advice, and in addition to her enthusiasm for protests at places of worship this provoked protest from both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. Her sex manual Married Love, which was written while she was still a virgin, was controversial and influential.

56p - Eleanor Rathbone
Eleanor Florence Rathbone (May 12, 1872 - January 2, 1946) was an Independent British Member of Parliament and long-term campaigner for women's rights.

72p - Claudia Jones
Claudia Jones (February 15, 1915-December 24, 1964) was born in Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad. She was a feminist, Black Nationalist, political activist, community leader, journalist, and communist in the U.S.. She is also remembered in the UK as 'the mother of Notting Hill Carnival'. As a result of the post-war cocoa price crash in Trinidad, when she was eight years old, she moved to Harlem, New York. She went on to win the Theodore Roosevelt Award for Good Citizenship at her junior high school.

81p - Barbara Castle
Barbara Castle (October 6, 1910 - May 3, 2002) was a British left-wing politician, born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire (and brought up in Pontefract and Bradford, Yorkshire), who adopted her family's politics, joining the Labour Party. Elected to Parliament in 1945, she rose to become one of the most important Labour party politicians of the twentieth century.