About: Queens of Industry

Queens of Industry were women who were chosen by their industries, through local, regional and national beauty-pageant style competitions, to become the mascots or official representatives of their fields. This twentieth-century phenomenon began in 1925 when a Railway Queen was crowned to mark the centenary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. It spread to the other major industries in Britain, first to textiles such as cotton, wool and silk, and then to other industries including coal. The practice stopped in the 1980s in Britain, but continued in other countries into the twenty-first century.