Partner Eliza Orme

Queer Places:
37 Belsize Ave, Belsize Park, London NW3 4BN, UK
16 Regent Villas, 81 Avenue Road, London NW8 6JD, UK

Reina Emily Lawrence (1860/1861 - February 24, 1940) was born in New York, one of nine children in a prosperous family, before moving with her relatives in 1881 to 37 Belsize Avenue in Hampstead, close to the newly opened Town Hall. In 1893 she obtained an LLB Bachelor of Law degree, positioning her among the pioneering generation of women to earn formal legal qualifications. Keen to become involved in public service during an era when opportunities for women in local government were severely limited, she volunteered in 1905 to serve on the Hampstead Distress Committee, which was established to assist unemployed people prior to the arrival of the Welfare State.

Although women were permitted to vote in local council elections, they remained barred from standing as candidates until the passage of the Qualification of Women Act in 1907. Seizing the opportunity when a by-election was called in Belsize Ward in December 1907, Reina ran for office with the active support of the Hampstead branch of the Women’s Local Government Association. In her election address, she focused her platform on housing, swimming baths, and infant mortality, while carefully assuring voters she was not a Suffragette to calm prevailing fears of female radicalism. She triumphed with a healthy majority of 319 votes, becoming the first woman to win a seat on Hampstead Borough Council, the first woman councillor in London, and one of the very first in the entire country.

During her tenure, she served effectively on the Council’s Baths, Distress, Public Health, and Works committees, though the council’s contemporary minutes curiously omitted any reference to her historic status as London's first elected woman councillor. When she stood for re-election two years later, she narrowly lost her seat by just six votes, yet she had successfully cemented the principle of female representation in local politics, famously observing that "no terrible revolution" had occurred as a result.

Alongside her historic municipal career, Lawrence shared a decades-long domestic and professional partnership with Eliza Orme, one of Britain's first women lawyers. Residing together in London, their household served as both a private sanctuary and a progressive hub, cementing their place within the genealogy of early LGBTQ history as independent career women who lived life on their own terms. Following the death of Eliza Orme in 1937, Lawrence lived her final years before passing away on February 24, 1940, at her home in London. Decades later, her legacy continues to be celebrated; in 2008, she was honored by a special Camden Council exhibition for her ground-breaking contributions to women in local government, and she has been nominated by the London Assembly for an English Heritage blue plaque at the site of her former Belsize Avenue home.

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