Mrs Margaret Travers Symons

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Family information: Father was an architect. Her husband deserted her in 1906.

Additional Information: Margaret was a journalist and, from 1902, was secretary to the Independent Labour Party's (ILP) Keir Hardie. She seems to have joined the WSPU in 1906, briefly serving as honorary treasurer of the new London committee of the WSPU before the position was taken over by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. In 1908, she caused a commotion by entering the Chamber of the House of Commons and shouting out, 'Attend to the women's questions!' at the same time as suffragettes were shouting from outside. As punishment, the permit she had as a journalist, which allowed her to be inside the House of Commons, was taken away. Almost two years later, and after an apology to the Speaker of the House of Commons in 1910, her permit was finally reinstated. In 1911, she was arrested and sentenced to five days in prison for breaking a window. During and after the First World War, she worked in Egypt as a journalist.