A museum dedicated to east end women’s history is to be opened next year in Barking Town Centre.

The East End Women’s Museum is already available online and has organised a number of temporary exhibitions in a variety of venues.

Among the women from history who are featured online is celebrated Canning Town dancer Josie Woods. Born in 1912, Josie was discovered by music hall star Belle Davis and went on to take Paris by storm at La Revue Negre in the 1920s.

The daughter of a Dominican father and a mother who described herself as a ‘gypsy’, Josie appeared at the London Palladium, and in 1940 helped to launch the American ‘Jitterbug’ in London.

In spite of a successful stage career, as music halls began to wane during the 1940s and ‘50s, Josie became a film extra, appearing in Nitwits on Parade (1949) and Old Mother Riley’s Jungle Treasure (1951). In an early protest against racism in the film industry, Josie led a strike of black extras on the latter film over late payment of their fees.

In 2001, she moved to California to be near her jazz musician son, Ralph, and died there in 2008, warranting obituaries in a number of national newspapers.

You can read Josie’s fascinating history and learn more about the museum here.

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