Manuscript of Mary Danvers Stocks

The archive consists of a Fawcett Society programme for Spring 1954; manuscript of a talk given by Mrs Stocks to a local London audience about the story of the campaign for the women’s vote and Dame Millicent Fawcett

Mary Stocks (1891-1975) was the daughter of Roland Danvers, a General Practitioner, and Helen Constance Rendel. She was educated at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, London and at the London School of Economics (LSE) where she studied economics, graduating in 1913. In 1913 she married John Leofric Stocks. Mary went on to have an academic career at the University of Oxford, LSE, King’s College of Household and Social Science, Manchester University and Westfield College London, of which she was Principal from 1939-1951. Whilst still at school, Mary had become a member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She carried a banner in the 1907 ‘Mud March’ and stewarded at meetings, distributed literature, attended conferences and addressed street corner meetings. In 1914 she became a member of the Executive Committee of the NUWSS and in 1928 remained involved in the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. In addition she was active in the birth control movement and was a member of various royal commissions and statutory committees, including the Unemployment Statutory Committee. Mary Stocks also wrote and broadcast widely. Her publications include ‘The Industrial State: A Social and Economic History of England’ (1921), ‘The Case for Family Endowment’ (1927), a biography of Eleanor Rathbone and histories of district nursing, the Manchester University Settlement and the Workers Educational Association. In addition, she published two autobiographical volumes, ‘My Commonplace Book’ (1970), which contains an account of her suffrage activities, and ‘Still more commonplace’ (1973). She was created a life peer in 1966. She died in 1975.

This collection is available for consultation. Readers are advised to contact The Women’s Library in advance of their first visit.

Deposited in the Fawcett Library in 1996 by George Zografos

Fonds Description (1 folder only)

Correspondence between Mary Stocks and Gilbert Murray, 1918-1958, may be found at the Bodleian Library (MSS Gilbert Murray); correspondence with the League of Dramatists, 1933-1955 and with Marie Stopes, 1923-1956 are amongst the British Library manuscript collections (Add MSS 63444; Add MS 58540). Family papers, comprising household accounts of Constance Brinton, 1904-1946, may be found at the London School of Economics (Coll Misc 281). The Women’s Library also holds an oral history interview with Mary Stocks conducted in 1974 (8SUF).