Margaret Beavan was born at 28 Bowring Street, Toxteth Park, Liverpool, on the 1st of August 1877, the eldest daughter of Jeffrey Beavan, a bookkeeper and later fire insurance manager, and his wife, Ellen Catherine Williams who lived in comfortable circumstances. The family did at one time briefly emigrate to the United States, however, the climate proved unsuitable for the younger children, with Margaret herself suffering from bronchitis, and they returned home. Margaret regularly attended Sefton Park Presbyterian Church and with her sister Jessie attended Belvedere School, Princes Park as day pupils, where she was in the same form as the preacher and suffragette Maude Royden. At school she did not like to lose and, though only small, she entered all sports with great determination. As head girl of Belvedere in her final year, she encouraged pupils to help those less well off, donating a Christmas tree to poor children in the dockland areas. She went to study Maths at Royal Holloway, London and, upon returning home, began teaching for the Earle Road Mission, a working-class Sunday school overseen by Sefton Park Church. When Maude Royden approached her to run classes for disabled children, she moved from the Earle Road Mission to the Liverpool Victoria Settlement on Netherfield Road North, Everton where she took a special interest in looking after invalid children.
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| Belvedere School, Princes Park circa 1900 |
This led in 1901 to Margaret setting up the Liverpool Child Welfare Association, ( formerly the Invalid Child Association ), which sent children to the countryside to convalesce and she was its chief from its inception in 1907. In 1909 she was elected as Councillor for Princes Park and continued to work tirelessly to improve child care, founding the Leasowe Open Air Hospital in 1913, providing post hospital care plus the Royal Liverpool Babies Hospital, the Ellen Gonner Convalescent Home and the Tired Mothers' Rest Home. Nationally, she was Vice President of the National Association of Maternity and Child Welfare and a member of the National Council of Women of Great Britain.
She became the first female Magistrate in the city and after being elected as a ward councillor for Princes Park in 1924, in 1927 she was selected as Liverpool’s first woman Lord Mayor from 1927 to 1928. A dinner was held in her honour at the Lyceum Club, Bold Street on the 19th of December 1927 and significantly it was the first occasion on which women were entertained within the gentleman’s club. As a Magistrate at the country’s first dedicated juvenile court that was established in Liverpool in 1925, she had a keen interest in youth justice. One of her most bold statements as Lord Mayor was to call for people under the age of 21 to only be sent to prison in exceptional circumstances. This came after a visit to Walton Gaol in March, where she learned boys who had met certain levels of behaviour were allowed to play football, chess and dominoes.
After handing over her Lord Mayoral duties she was invited to sit on the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure, which spent a year looking at the powers of the police to investigate crimes and the role of the Director of Public Prosecutions. She was then nominated as the Conservative candidate for the Everton constituency for the General Election of May 1929, due to the retirement of the existing MP Herbert Woodcock. Margaret was widely expected to successfully defend the seat for her party and become Liverpool’s first female at Westminster, but with unemployment on the rise and the General Strike of 1929 fresh in the minds, she was beaten by Labour’s Derwent Hall Caine. She officiated at the break-through of the first Mersey Tunnel (the Queensway) in 1931. However, early in 1931 Margaret contracted pneumonia and went to the Leasowe Hospital. She failed to recover and died on the 21st of February. Liverpudlians lined the streets to watch the funeral procession of 'the little mother of Liverpool'. .Amongst the many tributes was one from the Stipendiary Magistrate Stuart Deacon who said, "She has blazed a trail and the torch she has left behind will be carried by others in years to come".
The Margaret Beavan Special School on Almonds Green, in West Derby, was named after one of the most influential women Liverpool has ever seen but it shut down in 2004 and was left derelict. Margaret's confusing politics have sadly overshadowed her many great public achievements and dedication to the people of Liverpool.
see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2020/12/a-liverpool-exemplar-william-roscoe.html
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