On This Day

August 4, 1879

Birth of Margaret Wintringham, Liberal MP for Louth 1921-24

Margaret Wintringham was the first woman Liberal to be elected to the House of Commons. A teacher by profession, Wintringham was selected to contest Louth in the by election caused by the death of her husband Thomas, who had won the seat from the Conservatives only a year earlier. In the Commons, she was an active MP – supporting campaigns to extend the franchise to women on the same basis as men and to enable women peers to sit in the House of Lords in their own right. She struck up a close friendship with Nancy Astor, the first Conservative woman MP, and the two formed an effective partnership in the Commons. Wintringham lost her seat in the 1924 general election and although she never returned to Parliament, she remained active in the Liberal Party, serving as President of the Women’s Liberal Federation and on the party’s National Executive Committee. Margaret Wintringham died in 1955.