Margaret Mee

Margaret Mee
Born	Margaret Ursula Brown 22 May 1909 Chesham, England, UK
Died	30 November 1988 (aged 79) Seagrave, Leicestershire, England, UK
Occupation	Botanical Artist
Spouse(s)	1) Reginald Bruce Bartlett; 2) Greville Mee

Margaret Ursula Mee, MBE (22 May 1909 – 30 November 1988) was a British botanical artist who specialized in plants from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. She was also one of the first environmentalists to draw attention to the impact of large-scale mining and deforestation on the Amazon Basin.

Margaret Ursula Brown was born in Whitehill, Chesham in 1909. She attended Dr Challoner's Grammar School, Amersham, followed by The School of Art, Science and Commerce, Watford. After a short period of teaching in Liverpool she decided to travel abroad.

In 1933 she was in Berlin and witnessed the burning of the Reichstag and subsequent Jewish boycott which confirmed her left-wing views. During the Second World War she worked in Hatfield as a draughtswoman at the de Havilland aircraft factory.

She married twice. Firstly to Reginald Bruce Bartlett in January 1936. Like her husband, she became a committed trade union activist for the Union of Sign, Glass and Ticket Writers and joined the Communist Party. Margaret addressed the TUC in 1937, proposing the raising of the school-leaving age and was subsequently offered, but declined, a job with Ernest Bevin. The marriage to Bartlett was not happy and, after a long separation, ended in divorce in 1943. She later married Greville Mee, who was also attending Saint Martin's School of Art, in the late 1940s.

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