Maggie and Rebecca

Standing outside Bath Abbey. I went for an international women’s day walk in Bath, where we were told about women with Bath connections who had played a role in various healthcare developments. - which covered the pre-roman Celtic goddes of the thermal springs, Sulis - right up to the woman, Prue Clench, who set up Dorothy House, the Bath area hospice, in 1976. It was interesting, and of course there were no statues of any of the women who pioneered orthopaedics, or had clean safe housing built for the poor.
Maggie is a friend who had a career in nursing and then teaching nursing at the University of the West of England. On retirement she trained as a Mayor’s Guide in Bath. 
Rebecca is a woman in the bible. She’s here representing the Temperance society, who campaigned against drunkenness- and the associated poverty, violence, illness, and accidents. Part of the problem was that drinking water was likely to give you cholera or typhoid. Rebecca was presented to the city in 1861, as a message and a drinking fountain providing safe clean water. The base of the statue is engraved WATER IS BEST.