Margery Corbett Ashby

Dame Margery Irene Corbett Ashby, DBE (19 April 1882 – 15 May 1981) was a British suffragist, Liberal politician, feminist and internationalist.

She was born at Danehill, East Sussex, the daughter of Charles Corbett, a barrister who was briefly 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.

She passed her Classics exam at Newnham College; Cambridge University did not at that time give degrees to female student. She married lawyer Brian Ashby in 1910. Their only child, a son, Michael Ashby (1914-2004), was a neurologist who gave evidence as an expert witness at the 1957 trial of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams.

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.

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