Name Margery Ashby | Role British Politician | |
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Died May 15, 1981, Danehill, United Kingdom Education Newnham College, Cambridge | ||
Dame margery corbett ashby
Dame Margery Irene Corbett Ashby, DBE (19 April 1882 – 15 May 1981) was a British suffragist, Liberal politician, feminist and internationalist.
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Background
She was born at Danehill, East Sussex, the daughter of Charles Corbett a barrister who was sometime Liberal MP for East Grinstead and Marie Corbett herself a Liberal feminist and local councillor in Uckfield. Margery was educated at home. Her German governess was the feminist polymath Lina Eckenstein. Eckenstein was to become her friend and assisted with her work. Though she passed her Classics exam at Newnham College, Cambridge University refused to grant her a degree because she was female. She married lawyer Brian Ashby in 1910. Their only child, a son, Michael Ashby, was born in 1914. He was a neurologist who gave evidence as an expert witness at the 1957 trial of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams.
Political career
With her sister Cicely and friends, she founded the Younger Suffragists in 1901. After deciding against teaching, she was appointed Secretary of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in 1907. She served as President of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance from 1923 to 1946. She received an honorary LLD at Mount Holyoke College, USA, in 1937 in recognition of her international work. In 1942 she went on a government propaganda mission to Sweden.
Ashby was also active in the Liberal Party and had a track record of flying the Liberal flag in some less hopeful constituencies that included 1918 Birmingham Ladywood, 1922 and 1923 Richmond, Surrey, 1924 Watford, 1929 Hendon, 1935 and 1937 Hemel Hempstead and finally the Bury St Edmunds by-election, 1944.
Archives
The archives of Margery Corbett Ashby are held at The Women's Library at the London School of Economics.