Connecting Southwark to The Strand, Waterloo Bridge is a Grade II listed structure that has been on the Thames since 1817 when its first bridge was built.
But did you know the history behind Waterloo Bridge’s nickname “The Ladies’ Bridge” and is it all just an urban legend? Is there any truth to the rumours?
Why is it called the Ladies’ Bridge?
In the 1930s, the bridge was deemed of strategic importance for the army during World War Two and plans were made to demolish the original bridge which had structural issues to replace it with a new structure designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.
Whilst some riverboat pilots today call the bridge ‘the Ladies’ Bridge’ and tell stories about the women who built the bridge who supposedly made up 65% of the effort to construct the new Waterloo Bridge, there is no official mention or record of their contribution. The then-Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison even declared that “the men that built Waterloo Bridge are fortunate men” at the bridge’s opening ceremony on December 10 1945.
Women’s wartime contribution
Women’s contribution to wartime effort is well-documented, over 640,000 women were in the armed forces during World War Two and many more flew unarmed aircraft, drove ambulances and fire engines, built planes, served as nurses and worked behind enemy lines.
By 1944, 25,000 women were part of the labour force in the construction industry so why is the idea that women had contributed largely to the construction of Waterloo Bridge left out of official records and documentation?
Where are the records of the women who contributed?
This could be explained by the fact that Peter Lind & Co., the company which hired many of the contractors who worked on the second bridge, went into liquidation in the 1980s and its employment records were consequently lost. According to the Women’s Engineering Society, around 350 women worked on Waterloo Bridge.
Professor and historian Christine Wall have been curious to uncover the truth of the part that women played in the construction of Waterloo Bridge and, in 2005 joined filmmakers Karen Livesey and Jo Wiser to create The Ladies Bridge Documentary. It was a difficult task to unearth the truth with little written or pictorial evidence of the existence of the women involved. Still, after revisiting The National Science and Media Museum archives, Wall made an astonishing discovery.
Wall found an image of three women dismantling the old Waterloo Bridge along with an image of a woman named Dorothy who has a welder and was pictured working on the bridge in the year before it opened.
Public messages sent through broadcasters and publications inviting those who knew of any women working on the bridge to get in touch were also sent out. One of those who did was David Church, his father worked on the Waterloo Bridge during the war and recollected that there were ‘two grades of ladies’. There were women in more senior roles who took charge of operating vehicles and wore uniforms similar to those worn by men, all-in-one overalls, whilst most of the women in less senior roles wore dungarees.
Thanks to the efforts of Wall, Livesey and Wiser, Historic England officially recognised women’s role in constructing Waterloo Bridge in 2005 with a Grade II re-listing. A campaign with the hopes of getting a blue plaque installed on the bridge in commemoration of the women who built it is ongoing, and you can sign its petition here.