Mary Agnes Hamilton

Mary Agnes Adamson was born in Withington, a suburb of Manchester, the first of six children. Her parents were poor, but her father eventually became Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Glasgow University. Her mother came from a Quaker family and had been one of the first women to become a student at Newnham College, Cambridge. At Age 18, she also enrolled in Newnham College, where she became active in the women's movement and joined the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies. She received an Honours degree, and after graduation began teaching history at the University College of South Wales. In 1905 she married a colleague, Charles Hamilton, and resigned her post at the university. Hamilton remained politically active, and joined the Independent Labour Party. In 1920, she worked as a journalist for the magazine Time and Tide, The Economist magazine, and others. She co-edited Review of Reviews with Philip Gibbs, and she was the deputy editor of the socialist newspaper the New Leader. She began running for political office in 1923 and became Labour MP for Blackburn in 1929. While in office, she worked for equal pay for men and women and also to remove the marriage bar on women teachers. She lost the 1931 election, and became governor of the BBC from 1932 to 1936, and then a member of the London County Council from 1937-1940. During the Second World War she was head of the American Division of the Ministry of Information. In 1944, she published her first volume of political memoirs, My Good Friends. She wrote several more books, working to support herself after her disastrous marriage. Her non-fiction includes books of history and geography, political analyses of the Labour Party the Trade Unions, biographies, and autobiograpies.