THE Foundling Hospital in London was revolutionary in its day, taking in illegitimate or abandoned children, and raising them until they were able to find work. One of the very first children’s homes, it was an unusually far-sighted enterprise because in 1739, when it was founded, it was more common for the well-off to believe the indigent deserved their lot, and want nothing to do with them.

The hospital was the idea of shipbuilder Thomas Coram, but to read about it you would think it was all his and other men’s work. Now it has been revealed that Coram feared ruining his reputation if the venture did not come off. Unable to find any men with a backbone to stand by him, he persuaded the Duchess of Somerset to front the scheme when it was proposed to King George II. This she did, having gathered the support of her influential friends. Initially the king resisted, but at this point these formidable women began to badger their fathers, husbands and brothers.

As a result, George capitulated and Coram’s philanthropic vision was realised. The walls of the Foundling Hospital were subsequently hung with portraits of the former cowards who were eventually coaxed into helping. But of the women who made it happen? Not a trace, beyond a single page in Coram’s notebook listing their names.

The hunt is now on to find images of the 21 charitable ladies to whom this institution owes its existence. Sadly, this is only one among many such stories where the role of women has been airbrushed out, and their shoes filled by men.

Last weekend I was reading a lively memoir by a remarkable woman who established Edinburgh’s first Female Benefit Society, in 1785. Mrs Eliza Fletcher was a society lady with a mind as sharp as the foremost men of the day. She mixed with the likes of Lord Henry Cockburn, Lord Brougham, and the fearsome Francis Jeffrey (who thought women’s place was in the home). With a handful of her closest friends, Mrs Fletcher set out to help maidservants and women too ill to work. The city’s fathers, church-goers all, were not impressed, as Mrs Fletcher recalled: “For ladies to take any share, especially a leading share, in the management of a public institution, was considered so novel and extraordinary a proceeding as ought not to be countenanced.”

Defying those who sneeringly called it the “sick club”, Mrs Fletcher and Co also ignored the opprobrium associated with women in distress, not a few of whom were prostitutes. Years later Mrs Fletcher’s daughter proudly remembered her mother helping one such woman to find employment, a husband and a future.

The New Town of Edinburgh Female Benefit Society, which flourished for almost 50 years, was groundbreaking in its aims, yet I had never heard of Eliza, and expect I am not alone. This, and the story of the Foundling Hospital, make you look at history with a suspicious eye. Where are all the women?

It’s not as if we’re a new species. In almost every aspect of human endeavour, we have been closely involved, be it in running farms, houses or businesses, managing hospitals and asylums, teaching, and so on. Yet to read the history books, we did little after Skara Brae beyond bearing children and baking scones. Shockingly, it’s only a century since Elsie Inglis, offering her services as a surgeon to the Royal Army Medical Corps, was dismissed with the words “my good lady, go home and sit still”. If that was the attitude to an experienced doctor in 1914, what hope 500 years before?

Fortunately the documentation on Inglis and her intrepid field hospitals is extensive. Less luckily, the archives are all but silent on the achievements of countless women before her. Sometimes it’s only thanks to a man that we glean an insight. The manager of an Ormiston coal mine in 1840, for instance, reported that miners were not prepared to do the heaviest jobs, or those which required crawling through water bent double. Women and girls did it instead. Just as Hebrideans carried their men to their boats. Or led cattle drives. Or built houses and harbours.

That these lives remain hidden is largely because public records and positions of power were the preserve of men. Even educated ladies lived beneath the radar unless they ended up in court. Their diaries, like their books, paintings and music, were usually not considered worth keeping, let alone publicising.

As a result, the armies of women who paved the way for us have marched in silence, under cover of dark. You catch glimpses of them in Flora MacDonald, or Mary Slessor, or Grace Darling and their kind. Their readiness to rise to a challenge suggests other women may have acted similarly. Yet even though they took a sometimes heroic part in almost every sphere, females remain a footnote at best. History, of course, is written by the victors, and to the victor the spoils – in this case the leading role. Women’s invisibility down the years confirms that our place was meant to be backstage, never treading the boards.