Ada Salter (née Brown; 1866–1942) was an English social reformer, environmentalist, pacifist and Quaker, President of the Women's Labour League and President of the National Gardens Guild. She was one of the first women councillors in London, the first woman mayor in London and the first Labour woman mayor in the British Isles. Born on 20 July 1866 in Raunds, Northamptonshire, Ada Brown was active in the Methodist church and on the radical wing of the Liberal Party before she joined the West London Mission in Bloomsbury to work as a Sister of the People in the slums of St Pancras. The Sisters were run by Katherine Hughes, an inspirational Christian socialist, but in 1897 Ada transferred to the Bermondsey Settlement. There she met Alfred Salter, agnostic and socialist, a resident engaged in medical research into infectious diseases on a farm in Sudbury (now Wembley), Middlesex. Under her influence Alfred converted to Christianity and joined the Liberal Party. They both committed to the Society of Friends (Quakers) and started to attend the Deptford Meeting. They were married in Raunds on 22 August 1900. Ada was President of the Women's Liberal Party in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe but in 1906 she left the Liberal Party when it failed to honour its promise of granting the vote to women and soon joined the ILP (Independent Labour Party). The ILP was the political party most favourable to the rights of women and wanted to stand women candidates, including Ada, at the next council elections. Re-elected to Bermondsey Council in 1919, Ada was appointed Mayor of Bermondsey in 1922, making her the first woman mayor in London and first Labour woman mayor in Britain. She had launched in 1920 her famous Beautification Committee and now she launched her housing campaign, demolishing the slums that could be demolished and beautifying the slums that could not. By the 1930s she had planted 7000 trees, decorated buildings with window-boxes, and filled all open spaces with flowers
