Person    | Female  Born 20/7/1870  Died 8/9/1911

Margaret Ethel MacDonald

Feminist and social reformer. Daughter of John & Margaret Gladstone. Born 17 Pembridge Square, her mother dying soon after. Brought up to do good works, she became a socialist, joined the Labour party and married Ramsay MacDonald in 1896, who after her early death would become the first Labour prime minister.

She was interested in the working woman and worked herself to improve the lot of these women. She joined and worked with the Women's Industrial Council, concerned with women working at home in London. Recognising that women needed training to acquire skills for work she participated in the setting up of the first trade schools for girls in 1904.

Ramsay and she lived in a flat at 3 Lincoln's Inn Fields where her children were born and where she died. Ramsay wrote a memoir of her and her ashes are buried at Lossiemouth, Scotland with her husband's.

The photo comes from a book written about her by Ramsay after her death.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Margaret Ethel MacDonald

Commemorated ati

Margaret MacDonald

Bronze statue unveiled on 19 December 1914. Sculpted by Goulden to Ramsay's d...

Read More

Other Subjects

Emma Cons

Emma Cons

Social reformer and theatre manager. Born London. Knew and was influenced by Octavia Hill, John Ruskin and Henrietta Barnett. Her involvement in the temperance movement led to her taking on the lea...

Person, Gender Issues, Politics & Administration, Social Welfare, Theatre

3 memorials
Mary Harris Smith

Mary Harris Smith

Accountant. Born in Kingsland, the area around where Dalston Junction station now is. She became interested in accounting by helping her father who was a banker. In 1887 she set up her own accounti...

Person, Gender Issues, Other

1 memorial
Daisy Parsons

Daisy Parsons

Marguerite "Daisy" Parsons was born in Poplar as Marguerite Lena Millo. When she was young her parents moved to Canning Town, part of West Ham. Working in a factory showed her how men and women wer...

Person, Gender Issues, Politics & Administration

1 memorial
Pamela Colman Smith

Pamela Colman Smith

A British-American occultist, artist, illustrator, writer and storyteller. Most famous for the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, first published 1910, she created the standard classic deck of the English-sp...

Person, Art, Craft / Design, Gender Issues, Literature, Paranormal, Jamaica, USA

1 memorial
Sir Noel Coward

Sir Noel Coward

Actor, playwright, composer, film director, author, singer. Born Helmsdale, 5 Waldegrave Road, Teddington. Died at home in Jamaica, where he was buried. Obsessed with the theatre, he was a child a...

Person, Cinema, Gender Issues, Music / songs, Seriously Famous, Theatre, Jamaica

4 memorials