Margery Fry

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Margery Fry (11 March 1874 – 21 April 1958) was a British prison reformer as well as one of the first women to become a magistrate.

Margery Fry was born in London, the eighth child of Sir Edward Fry and his wife, Mariabella Hodgkin (1833 – 1930), who were Quakers. She was educated at home until at the age of 17 she went to Miss Lawrence's school at Brighton (later named Roedean). Her parents did not intend for her to go to university but eventually allowed her to go to Somerville College at Oxford in 1894 to read Mathematics (though her brother, the artist Roger Fry, apparently wanted her to do painting instead). After three years at university she returned to her parent's home until 1899 when she became Librarian at Somerville (1899-1904). In 1904 she became Warden of the new women's residence at Birmingham University (initially at an annual salary of £60). In 1913 she became financially independent after the death of her uncle Joseph Storrs Fry and in 1914 left her position at Birmingham. Starting in 1915 she helped organize Quaker relief efforts in Marne and later elsewhere in France.

After the war she lived with her brother Roger and began work on prison reform which she was to be involved in until the end of her life. She became secretary of the Penal Reform League in 1918 which merged with the Howard Association in 1921 to form the Howard League for Penal Reform; she was secretary of that until 1926. Also in 1919 she was appointed to the newly founded University Grants Committee on which she served until 1948. In 1921 she was also appointed one of the first women magistrates in Britain. In 1922 she was appointed education advisor to Holloway Prison (a prison for women in London).

From 1926 to 1930 she was Principal of Somerville College. She was also a governor of the BBC from 1937 to 1939 and a participant in The Brains Trust series starting in 1942. The Graduate (Middle Common Room, or MCR) accomodation building on Somerville college campus is called Margery Fry House in her honour.

She is known for among other things her opposition to the death penalty and her support of compensation for victims of crimes.

[edit] References

• "Margery Fry: The Essential Amateur" by Enid Huws Jones, Oxford University Press. 1966.
• "Margery Fry", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Written by Thomas L. Hodgkin, rev. Mark Pottle