Ethel Gooch

Ethel Gooch (née Banham; 12 December 1887 – 6 February 1953) was a British teacher and politician. She was the first woman councillor of the town of Wymondham, Norfolk, and the first woman to chair its urban district council. On her death, she was called "one of the pioneers of the Labour movement in rural Norfolk".

Life Ethel Banham was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, into a Primitive Methodist family.

In 1918, Edwin Gooch helped to found the South Norfolk Labour Party in Church Street, Wymondham.

Ethel became Wymondham Council's first woman member in 1935, and its first woman chairman in 1951. Alun Howkins, author of Edwin Gooch's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, described Ethel as "a formidable and important figure in the history of Norfolk Labour politics". In 2017, Gooch was remembered with a historical tour around Wymondham's town centre.