Margaret and her family
Born in 1861, Margaret was the second of seven children and the only girl. Her father (see photo) was an Anglican clergyman and her grandfather on her mother’s side a judge. The family lived comfortably in a pleasant square in London’s Marylebone. You might assume from all this that hers was a very conventional Victorian background.
But was it? Margaret’s uncle, Professor Spencer Beesly, worked with Karl Marx, and thanks to his outspoken left wing views was accused of wanting to be ‘the Marat of the English revolution’. On the other side of the family, her feminist aunt Emily Davies helped J. S. Mill to organise the first parliamentary petition for votes for women. There were others too: in fact, Margaret grew up surrounded by radical relations.
Despite her absorption in work and her wide circle of friends, family always played a central part in the adult Margaret’s life. There were many happy times, but her middle years brought great sadness too. Less than ten years after her mother’s sudden and unexpected death in 1895, her youngest brother Theodore drowned in a swimming accident. Less than a year later another brother, Arthur, contracted cancer. He died in 1907 after a long drawn out illness. Tragically, Arthur’s widow, the beautiful and fascinating Sylvia du Maurier, then also developed cancer and died three years after her husband. Their five orphaned sons, well known now as the ‘lost boys’, were adopted by the playwright J. M. Barrie. Margaret, especially close to Arthur, was closely involved with his family during this time.
Margaret later bore a heavy load during her ailing father’s final years. At the time she would have been automatically expected to take this on as the only daughter, and unmarried to boot. But in any case, she would not have had it any other way.
Manchester Guardian praising her organisation of a huge Women’s Co-operative Guild festival, so he could show it to his friends.
Not surprisingly, Margaret’s parents saw to it that, unlike most of her female contemporaries, she had a proper academic education. This culminated in two years at Girton College, Cambridge, founded not long before by her aunt, Emily Davies. Although Margaret had a wonderful time at Girton, she left suddenly without undertaking her final year. This was partly because her sick mother wanted her back home, but also a niece recalled her explaining that college life did not provide an outlet for her ‘enormously strong social sense and [her] desire to ameliorate the conditions of the poor’ .
She was especially close to her mother Mary (see photo), describing her as ‘mother and sister in one’. Coming from a Unitarian background which stressed the importance of tolerance, equal rights and social action, Mary helped her daughter with her Guild work as much as she could. She also loved to discuss Margaret’s health, how friends and family were doing, and last but not least clothes –writing enthusiastically on one occasion: ‘So you chose the dark red! … Shall you have a ‘toque’ to match? They’re all the rage’.
Margaret’s clergyman father, John Llewelyn Davies, a classicist and much involved with church affairs, was also an active Christian Socialist and supporter of women’s causes, with a wide network which included many of the intellectual great and good of the time. He, too, approved of Margaret’s work. In the early stages of her Guild career he proudly carried around a cutting from the