Margaret bondfield (1873-1953)

a lady ahead of her time

'The Lace Hands Daughter'

Margaret Bondfield known in private life as "Maggie", was born on 17 March 1873 in the our small country town of Chard. She was the tenth of eleven children, and third of four daughters born to William Bondfield and his wife Ann, née Taylor, the daughter of a Congregational minister.

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William Bondfield, Margaret's father, was born in 1814, a year which became known as the winter of the “great snow” because of its bitterly cold winter. He became a lace-worker, and was well known locally for his radical views. He married Anne Taylor quite late in life but still managed to raise a large family. While some of the children became successful as newspaper editors, engineers, teachers or missionaries, it was his eleventh child, Margaret Grace, who was to become famous as the first women in Great Britain to become a cabinet minister.

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Margaret was educated at Chard High Street School and at thirteen became a pupil teacher there for a year. As a pupil teacher Margaret was paid just 3 shillings a week. There were few job opportunities for educated girls in Chard and most local girls worked in the mills, the collar works, or they were in service.  So, a year later at the tender age of 14, she moved from Chard and became apprenticed to a draper in Brighton.

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Margaret, was sincerely religious throughout her life thanks to her families influence and early association with the Chard Congregational Church. She was described aa a  bright bustling young women without any of the “primness” ascribed to her by some of her critics.

Margaret moved to Brighton in 1887

Forging Lifetime Values

Whilst in Brighton she “lived in” at the drapers and she became friendly with one of the customers, Louisa Martindale, who was a strong advocate of women’s rights. Margaret became a regular visitor to the Martindale home where she was introduced to other radicals living in Brighton.

When she finished her apprenticeship Margaret found work in various drapery shops and it was here that she began to see how difficult working conditions were for working class people. In 1894 she went to live with her brother Frank in London and found work in a shop. Her personal experiences of shop work made her aware of poor working conditions for shop workers.

She wrote about the conditions that she lived in 'sleeping in bare, dingy, stuffy, dormitories, intolerably hot in summer, miserably cold in winter, never being alone even when washing. No place to keep ones things, except in a box under the bed. Nights spent with a poor consumptive girl who just coughed and coughed'