Margaret Bright Lucas

Margaret Bright Lucas (1818–1890) was a temperance activist and suffragist.

Margaret Bright was born on 14 July 1818 at Rochdale, Lancashire. Her father was Jacob Bright (1775–1851), a cotton mill proprietor, and her mother, his second wife, Martha Wood (1788–1830).

A member of a well known Quaker family, several of her ten siblings, including John Bright, Priscilla Bright McLaren and Jacob Bright, became prominent in politics, activism and reform. Educated by the Society of Friends, she commented: ‘I developed slowly for we were strictly brought up and told that “children should be seen and not heard”’.

Margaret married Samuel Lucas (1811–1865) on 6 September 1839. Samuel, a fellow Quaker, was a London corn exchange merchant. The couple went to Manchester in 1845, when Samuel became involved in a cotton mill. The family moved back to London in 1850. Margaret became interested in politics during the anti – corn laws protests in 1845. She aided her husband with the organisation of meetings and the raising of finances. Until her husband's death in 1865, however, her main burdens remained within the family, including the rearing of her two children, Samuel, a deaf mute, and Katharine. By 1870 both children had married, Katharine to John Pennington Thomasson (later MP for Bolton).

Now relieved from her family duties, Lucas was now free to seek a clear plan to fit her Quaker moral ambitions. In1870, suffering from a chest infection, and feeling she needed a change of climate, she travelled to Halifax, North America to visit a cousin, Esther Blakey. Lucas easily mixed in the trans-Atlantic reform society that included strong Quaker involvement. Many suffragists and temperance reformers in the north-eastern United States warmly welcomed her as 'John Bright's sister'. She would later reciprocate the same level of hospitality when American reformers came to Britain.

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