Margery Ashby

Margery Corbett Ashby, the daughter of Charles and Marie Corbett, was born at Danehill, Sussex in 1882. Margery and her younger sister, Cicely, were educated at home. Charles Corbett taught the girls classics, history and mathematics and Marie taught them scripture and the piano. A local woman gave them lessons in French and German.

At the age of eighteen, Margery and her younger sister Cicely and a group of friends formed a society called the Younger Suffragists. In 1901 Margery won a place at Newnham College, Cambridge to read Classics. At university she joined the Cambridge branch of the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and by the time she was nineteen she had become secretary of the Constitutional Suffrage Movement.

Although Margery passed her examinations, because she was a woman, Cambridge University refused to grant her a degree (Cambridge University granted the first degrees to women in 1947). In 1904 Margery obtained a place at the Cambridge Teachers Training College but after completing the course she decided that teaching was not for her.

In 1907 Margery Corbett was appointed Secretary of the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies and was giving the responsibility of editing their journal. Disappointed with the poor record of the Liberal Party with respect to women's suffrage, Margery left the Women's Liberal Federation and with her mother and sister helped form the Liberal Suffrage Group. Margery also played an active role in the by-election where Bertrand Russell unsuccessfully stood as the women's suffrage candidate. The following year Margery became a member of the National Committee of the NUWSS.

In 1909 Margery became involved in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and was a speaker at their conferences in Berlin and Stockholm. Margery Corbett married the barrister, Brian Ashby in 1910.

In November 1914, Margery gave birth to her only child. This restricted her activities during the next few years but she was to do war work in hospitals and on the land. Margery also ran a canteen at an outbuilding of Woodgate, in an attempt to provide good food for local schoolchildren.

Margery Ashby and her son Michael in 1918.

After the passing of the Qualification of Women Act in 1918 Margery Ashby became one of the seventeen women candidates that stood in the post-war election. Margery was the Liberal candidate for Ladywood, Birmingham. During the election campaign Margery advocated feminist policies that would have given women full political equality with men. This was the first of seven unsuccessful attempts by Margery Corbett Ashby to get into the House of Commons.

In 1919 Margery was a member of the International Alliance of Women who attended the Versailles Peace Conference. The following year she took part in the first post-war congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. In 1923 she was elected president of the organisation and she held the post until her retirement in 1946.

In 1932 she was the British delegate to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. Margery resigned from this position in 1935 in protest at the British government's refusal to support any practical scheme for mutual security and defence. In 1937 she was one of the signatories of as declaration in the press asserting that war could be avoided if the League of Nations took positive action.

Margery continued to be active in politics after the Second World War. In 1952, at the age of seventy, she became editor of International Women's News. Margery continued to be active in politics and was probably the only woman in Britain to be involved in suffrage campaign before the First World War and the Woman's Liberation Movement in the 1970s.

Margery's last political demonstration was at the age of ninety-eight when she took part in the Women's Day of Action in London. Margery Corbett Ashby died at Danehill on 22nd May 1981.

(1) Margery Corbett Ashby wrote about her childhood in the 1970s. Her account was included in her Memoirs published after her death in 1997.

We were educated at home. Lessons were divided. Mother took scripture and music… My father taught us history, geography, mathematics and Latin. From the age of four I read everything I could lay my hands on. I remember lying on the floor reading contemporary accounts of the Indian Mutiny and the Crimean War in my grandfather’s library, where there was a complete set of Illustrated London News. He had bookshelves to the ceiling… In my father’s library the big bookcases also went up to the ceiling.

(2) Margery Corbett, letter to The East Grinstead Observer (7th February 1913)

May I point out the delays which habitually occur in the case of legislation concerning women. We waited and worked 20 years for the White Slave Traffic Act. We are still working and waiting for the amendments to the divorce laws of 1859. we are still waiting for the raising of the age of consent from 16 to 18 as has happened wherever women have gained the vote. We are working and waiting for measures dealing with the inferior position of women under the law in regard to the guardianship of her children, insurance and such matters as the position of illegitimate children.

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