20 Facts About Margaret Hills

Margaret Hills was a British teacher, suffragist organiser, feminist and socialist.

Margaret Hills was the first female councillor on Stroud Urban District Council and later served as a Councillor on Gloucestershire County Council.

Margaret Hills's siblings were botanist Agnes Arber, classicist Donald Struan Robertson and portrait artist Janet Robertson.

Margaret Hills is the great aunt of musician Thomas Dolby.

Margaret Hills attended North London Collegiate School and obtained an open scholarship in 1901 to attend Somerville College, Oxford and obtained first class honours in 1904.

Margaret Hills was later awarded a Bachelor of Arts by Trinity College Dublin in 1906, in common with many other Oxbridge Women as neither University awarded women degrees.

Margaret Hills attended the Cambridge Training College for Women from 1904 -1905 and obtained a Teacher Training Certificate and joined the staff of the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School for Girls, Mansfield and left the school at Christmas 1907 to seek a teaching post in London "she finally decided to give up teaching for the present and work for the cause[ Women's Suffrage]".

The first recorded occasion of Margaret Hills being involved in Women's Suffrage was as a floor speaker at a Women's Suffrage meeting in St Augustine's Hall, Highgate, London in February 1908.

Margaret Hills was appointed as Organiser for the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage in May 1909 By1911 this had become the Manchester and District Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies and she described herself as Organising Secretary in the 1911 census.

Margaret Hills was an organiser and speaker in various key public debates about women's suffrage, including a debate at the Royal Albert Hall in November 1912, and in the Co-operative Hall, Burnley in 1910.

Margaret Hills lobbied both the nascent Labour Party and the Miner's Federation, including Robert Brown, Provost of Dalkeith and Secretary of the Scottish Miners Federation, who was fielded as the first Labour Party candidate to contest the seat in the 1912 Midlothian by-election.

Margaret Hills was a pacifist and opposed the First World War.

Margaret Hills was organising secretary to the original British organising committee and responsible for negotiating the supply of passports for attendees with the Government.

Margaret Hills was a member of the Executive Committee of the Movement for Democratic Control.

Margaret Hills is credited with driving through housing improvements including Stroud's first slum clearance scheme at Middle Hill, off Bisley Old-Road, Stroud.

In 1937 Margaret Hills was elected to Gloucestershire County Council, where she remained as a councillor until 1952.

Margaret Hills served on the education committee after she ceased to be a councillor.

Margaret Hills's work is remembered in the name of a housing estate in the town.

Margaret Hills met her future husband, Harold Margaret Hills, in 1913, whilst holidaying at Pella, Italy where they were introduced by mutual friend Fenner Brockway.

Harold Margaret Hills had trained as a doctor before the War and was employed at Long Grove Hospital, Epsom which was a London County Council mental hospital, to which he returned to after the war for a time.