"Cash for Petitions" - MP for Walthamstow involved

l-r: Mark Carney, Stella Creasy, Caroline Criado-Perez

The campaign to retain a famous woman on at least one of our banknotes has won a significant advance. Since Elizabeth Fry - the previous sole woman - was replaced on the fiver by Sir Winston Churchill, under the benign governorship of Mervyn King, it looked like our folding cash was an indication that women don't really count. 

However thanks to a campaign started by Caroline Criado-Perez and spread very effectively through change.org, yesterday the new Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, announced the design for a new £10 note showing the (only surviving) image of Jane Austen. 

The Guardian today reports on the significant role played by Walthamstow's MP:

"Stella Creasy MP, who helped organise a letter from 46 Labour MPs to David Cameron in support of the campaign, said: "Britain has many women in its history of whom we should be proud, and today's decision is part of creating a culture of expectation that there will be many more in our future too." Read the full article here.

The new design launch took place yesterday at the Jane Austen Museum in her old house Chawton Cottage in Hampshire. As well as the portrait of Austen, the new note will include images of her writing desk and quills at Chawton Cottage, in Hampshire, where she lived; her brother's home, Godmersham Park, which she visited often, and is thought to have inspired some of her novels, and a quote from Miss Bingley, in Pride and Prejudice: "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"