by Steve Ramsey
history
Dame Margery Corbett Ashby (1882-1981) grew up in the village of Danehill but her political
activities influenced the political scene both nationally and abroad. “Probably no one has done more for the emancipation of women during the [20th] century,” said her obituary in The Times.
of
womankind Dame Margery Corbett Ashby was the first President of the Danehill Parish Historical Society, which was founded in the 1970s. A few years later, she had to miss a meeting, and called Society member Hylda Rawlings to make her excuses. “Going on holiday?” Hylda asked. “Not exactly. I’m going to Turkey. There’s a world council of women there.” She would be addressing them, in a room about the size of the Albert Hall. “But why?” continued Hylda. “Well, they think I was responsible for getting the Turkish women the vote. I was at a dinner party, and was put next to the Ataturk. We were talking quite casually together and I just said to him ‘you’re such an enlightened ruler who has done so much for your country; I do wonder why you haven’t ever given your women the vote’. He made some quite noncommittal remark and changed the conversation, but four months later, Turkish women got it.” “Is anybody going with you?” Hylda asked. “My son is going to take me to the airport, and I’ll be met with an interpreter when I get there,” she replied. “Doesn’t your family worry about you?” “Oh yes, my dear, they do, but if you can’t do what you like when you’re 94, you never will, you know.” Remarkably active until shortly before her death in 1981, aged 99, Margery Corbett Ashby devoted her long life to the cause of women’s rights. After Dame Millicent Fawcett died in 1929, Dame Ashby became “the accepted, if invincibly modest, leader
in Britain in the cause of women’s rights,” The Times wrote. Or, as Dame Ashby put it: “I was in the thick of it all. I have had everything thrown at me, including dried haddock.” She spent her childhood in Danehill, in a manor house now occupied by Cumnor House School. Her wealthy parents, as Liberals, were “regarded as traitors to their class,” Dame Ashby said. Her father, Charles Henry Corbett, was an “exceptionally wise and well read” barrister who was elected Liberal MP for East Grinstead in 1906, to great local surprise in this safe Conservative seat. He and his wife were keen advocates of women’s rights, and Charles was “described in the House of Commons as the best friend women had there,” Dame Ashby said. Dame Ashby’s mother Marie, “with her daughters, was often seen in East Grinstead High Street calling for women’s suffrage,” Ann Kramer writes in Sussex Women. At one suffrage meeting, “some 1,500 people turned up to hear Marie and two other speakers, but mayhem broke out when youths started pelting them with eggs, tomatoes and stones. As the speakers ran for safety to a neighbouring house, the police stood by inactive, helping only when the mob began breaking into the house.” When some women got the vote in 1918, Marie switched her energies to saving children from the workhouse, placing dozens of kids with foster families. Marie “used to pay 10 shillings a week for their keep,” Hylda Rawlings says. “On a Saturday morning, Marie would have a big pile of ten shilling notes. She’d go out to all these foster houses, giving them ten shillings. Dame Ashby said she’d had letters from people all over the world, saying they’d
I was in
the thick of it all. I have had
everything thrown at me, including dried
haddock.
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S u ss e x L i v i n g February 2013
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