Margaret Bright Lucas
Encyclopedia
Margaret Bright Lucas was a temperance
activist and suffragist.
, Lancashire
. Her father was Jacob Bright (1775–1851), a cotton mill proprietor, and her mother, his second wife, Martha Wood (1788-1830).
A member of a well known Quaker family, several of her ten siblings, including John Bright
, Priscilla Bright (wife of Duncan McLaren
MP) and Jacob Bright
, became prominent in politics, activism and reform. Educated by the Society of Friends, she commented: ‘I developed slowly for we were strictly brought up and told that “children should be seen and not heard”’.
Margaret married Samuel Lucas
(1811–1865) on 6 September 1839. Samuel, a fellow Quaker, was a London corn exchange merchant. The couple went to Manchester
in 1845, when Samuel became involved in a cotton mill. The family moved back to London in 1850. Margaret became interested in politics during the anti - corn laws
protests in 1845. She aided her husband with the organization of meetings and the raising of finances. Until her husband's death in 1865, however, her main burdens remained within the family, including the rearing of her two children, Samuel, a deaf mute, and Katharine. By 1870 both children had married, Katharine to John Pennington Thomasson
(later MP for Bolton
).
Now relieved from her family duties, Lucas was now free to seek a clear plan to fit her Quaker moral ambitions. In1870, suffering from a chest infection, and feeling she needed a change of climate, she traveled to Halifax, North America to visit a cousin, Esther Blakey. Lucas easily mixed in the trans-Atlantic reform society that included strong Quaker involvement. Many suffragists and temperance reformers in the north-eastern United States warmly welcomed her as ‘John Bright's sister’. She would later reciprocate the same level of hospitality when American reformers came to Britain.
The American visit was a focal point in Lucas' public temperance career. There she was able to experience ‘the advanced views and institutions of a less trammeled social system’, influences she found ‘congenial’. Having signed the temperance pledge at the age of sixteen, she joined the American Independent Order of Good Templars in 1872, and became a grand worthy vice-templar in 1874. The Good Templars organized the British tour of 'Mother' Eliza Stewart
, whose participation in the protests against saloons in the Womens' Crusade led to the creation of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU) in 1874.
Lucas and Thompson spoke at a meeting in Newcastle upon Tyne
in 1876 which stimulated the founding of the British Women's Temperance Association
(BWTA). Lucas was elected BWTA president in 1878, but she also supported peace and anti-prostitution work, and served on the executives of the National Society for Women's Suffrage
and the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts
. Her main concern being temperance, she remained BWTA president until her death. In 1885 American WCTU leader Frances Willard
selected Lucas as first president of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This emphasized the organization's global commitment. Consequently, Lucas crossed the Atlantic again in 1886 to attend the WCTU convention in Minneapolis, at which she was warmly received.
Lucas embodied the phase of women's temperance that saw the movement's power as being primarily in the home and in the superiority of women's moral virtues. In her fourth annual report she commented: ‘I believe (that) in the household, women have a greater power over men, than men have over women, in inducing abstinence from intoxicating drinks’. During the 1870s, she also made increasingly conservative assessments of the reality of the British position regarding social protest. British women would not, Lucas believed, emulate the American crusade marches. ‘It is hardly likely we can go through the streets and kneel at the doors of the gin palaces’, she reasoned, but temperance women could in Britain hold processions and assemblies. They could also lobby, and in 1879 she presented the first women's petition in favour of Sunday closing to the House of Commons.
By 1883–4 it was becoming clear that the general failure to convert men to temperance required a more radical conclusion: ‘The conviction grows upon me that while Petitions educate the workers and the people something more is needed to make them effectual’. Had not ‘the time come’, she wondered, ‘when it becomes a duty to claim the right to vote on the side of Temperance?’. In spite of this, the BWTA remained only one of several women's temperance organizations, and it did not enter its major period of expansion until after her death. She died from tuberculosis on 4 February 1890 at her London home, 7 Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, and was buried in Highgate cemetery
with her husband.
Friends and colleagues described Lucas variously as a ‘homely British matron’, ‘well-preserved, erect and vigorous’, an 'earnest speaker', and ‘tall and stately’. She had an impressive shock of silvery hair when into her sixties. The BWTA achieved greater success under her successor, Lady Henry Somerset, but ultimately British temperance was destined to achieve less than its American counterpart. Lucas was however, an important link in the Anglo-American women's reform networks as well as being a pioneer in British women's temperance.
Temperance movement
A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...
activist and suffragist.
Biography
Margaret Bright was born on 14 July 1818 at RochdaleRochdale
Rochdale is a large market town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amongst the foothills of the Pennines on the River Roch, north-northwest of Oldham, and north-northeast of the city of Manchester. Rochdale is surrounded by several smaller settlements which together form the Metropolitan...
, Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
. Her father was Jacob Bright (1775–1851), a cotton mill proprietor, and her mother, his second wife, Martha Wood (1788-1830).
A member of a well known Quaker family, several of her ten siblings, including John Bright
John Bright
John Bright , Quaker, was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with Richard Cobden in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League. He was one of the greatest orators of his generation, and a strong critic of British foreign policy...
, Priscilla Bright (wife of Duncan McLaren
Duncan McLaren
Duncan McLaren was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Edinburgh.Born in Renton, Scotland, Duncan McLaren was the youngest of ten children of John McLaren and Catherine McLellan. Apart from two years of schooling, was self taught. After school, he was apprenticed to a merchant in Dunbar...
MP) and Jacob Bright
Jacob Bright
Jacob Bright was a British Liberal politician.Bright was born at Green Bank near Rochdale, Lancashire. He was the fourth of eleven children of Jacob Bright and Martha Wood. His father was a Quaker and had established a cotton-spinning business at Fieldhouse...
, became prominent in politics, activism and reform. Educated by the Society of Friends, she commented: ‘I developed slowly for we were strictly brought up and told that “children should be seen and not heard”’.
Margaret married Samuel Lucas
Samuel Lucas
Samuel Lucas was a British Journalist and abolitionist. He was the editor of the Morning Star in London, the only national newspaper in Britain to support the Unionist cause in the American Civil War. He died knowing that legal slavery in America had ended. In 2010 a U.S. Embassy attache visited...
(1811–1865) on 6 September 1839. Samuel, a fellow Quaker, was a London corn exchange merchant. The couple went to Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
in 1845, when Samuel became involved in a cotton mill. The family moved back to London in 1850. Margaret became interested in politics during the anti - corn laws
Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were trade barriers designed to protect cereal producers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland against competition from less expensive foreign imports between 1815 and 1846. The barriers were introduced by the Importation Act 1815 and repealed by the Importation Act 1846...
protests in 1845. She aided her husband with the organization of meetings and the raising of finances. Until her husband's death in 1865, however, her main burdens remained within the family, including the rearing of her two children, Samuel, a deaf mute, and Katharine. By 1870 both children had married, Katharine to John Pennington Thomasson
John Pennington Thomasson
John Pennington Thomasson was an English cotton spinner and Liberal Party politician. He was elected as a Member of Parliament for Bolton at the 1880 general election along with John Kynaston Cross in the double member constituency, signifying a great victory as two liberals were elected for the...
(later MP for Bolton
Bolton
Bolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...
).
Now relieved from her family duties, Lucas was now free to seek a clear plan to fit her Quaker moral ambitions. In1870, suffering from a chest infection, and feeling she needed a change of climate, she traveled to Halifax, North America to visit a cousin, Esther Blakey. Lucas easily mixed in the trans-Atlantic reform society that included strong Quaker involvement. Many suffragists and temperance reformers in the north-eastern United States warmly welcomed her as ‘John Bright's sister’. She would later reciprocate the same level of hospitality when American reformers came to Britain.
The American visit was a focal point in Lucas' public temperance career. There she was able to experience ‘the advanced views and institutions of a less trammeled social system’, influences she found ‘congenial’. Having signed the temperance pledge at the age of sixteen, she joined the American Independent Order of Good Templars in 1872, and became a grand worthy vice-templar in 1874. The Good Templars organized the British tour of 'Mother' Eliza Stewart
Eliza Daniel Stewart
Eliza Daniel Stewart, , was an early temperance movement leader. In 1872, she urged wives of "drunkards" to sue alcohol dealers and may have been the first proponent of what are now known as server liability laws. The next year she organized the first Women's Temperance League. In 1874 she played a...
, whose participation in the protests against saloons in the Womens' Crusade led to the creation of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Woman's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." Originally organized on December 23, 1873, in...
(WCTU) in 1874.
Lucas and Thompson spoke at a meeting in Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
in 1876 which stimulated the founding of the British Women's Temperance Association
British Women's Temperance Association
The British Women's Temperance Association was founded following a meeting in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1876 featuring American temperance activist "Mother" Eliza Stewart. Margaret Bright Lucas, who toured with Stewart during these meetings, was elected BWTA president in 1878...
(BWTA). Lucas was elected BWTA president in 1878, but she also supported peace and anti-prostitution work, and served on the executives of the National Society for Women's Suffrage
National Society for Women's Suffrage
The National Society for Women's Suffrage was the first national group in the United Kingdom to campaign for women's right to vote. Formed on 6 November 1867, by Lydia Becker, the organisation helped lay the foundations of the women's suffrage movement, furthered later by the National Union of...
and the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts
Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts
The Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established in 1869 by Elizabeth Wolstenholme and Josephine Butler in response to the Contagious Diseases Acts that were passed by UK Parliament in 1864...
. Her main concern being temperance, she remained BWTA president until her death. In 1885 American WCTU leader Frances Willard
Frances Willard (suffragist)
Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution...
selected Lucas as first president of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This emphasized the organization's global commitment. Consequently, Lucas crossed the Atlantic again in 1886 to attend the WCTU convention in Minneapolis, at which she was warmly received.
Lucas embodied the phase of women's temperance that saw the movement's power as being primarily in the home and in the superiority of women's moral virtues. In her fourth annual report she commented: ‘I believe (that) in the household, women have a greater power over men, than men have over women, in inducing abstinence from intoxicating drinks’. During the 1870s, she also made increasingly conservative assessments of the reality of the British position regarding social protest. British women would not, Lucas believed, emulate the American crusade marches. ‘It is hardly likely we can go through the streets and kneel at the doors of the gin palaces’, she reasoned, but temperance women could in Britain hold processions and assemblies. They could also lobby, and in 1879 she presented the first women's petition in favour of Sunday closing to the House of Commons.
By 1883–4 it was becoming clear that the general failure to convert men to temperance required a more radical conclusion: ‘The conviction grows upon me that while Petitions educate the workers and the people something more is needed to make them effectual’. Had not ‘the time come’, she wondered, ‘when it becomes a duty to claim the right to vote on the side of Temperance?’. In spite of this, the BWTA remained only one of several women's temperance organizations, and it did not enter its major period of expansion until after her death. She died from tuberculosis on 4 February 1890 at her London home, 7 Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, and was buried in Highgate cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....
with her husband.
Friends and colleagues described Lucas variously as a ‘homely British matron’, ‘well-preserved, erect and vigorous’, an 'earnest speaker', and ‘tall and stately’. She had an impressive shock of silvery hair when into her sixties. The BWTA achieved greater success under her successor, Lady Henry Somerset, but ultimately British temperance was destined to achieve less than its American counterpart. Lucas was however, an important link in the Anglo-American women's reform networks as well as being a pioneer in British women's temperance.