Mary Danvers Brinton Stocks (1891–1975)

Mary Danvers Stocks, Baroness Stocks, née Brinton, was born in London, the daughter of Roland Danvers Brinton, a wealthy physician, and his wife Constance, a relative of the Strachey family. She attended St. Paul's Girls' School and as a teenager, campaigned for women's right to vote with the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She enrolled in the newly-opened London School of Economics (LSE) in 1910 and earned a first class BSc degree in Economics. After graduating, she married philosopher John Leofric Stocks, a fellow of St John's College, Oxford, with whom she had three children. During World War I, Mary Stocks returned to the LSE to teach there and at King's College for Women while her husband was serving in Europe with the Army. After the war, she and her husband moved to Oxford, where he taught economic history. In 1924, the family settled in Manchester, where her husband became a professor of philosophy. Mary became editor of the feminist journal Woman's Leader and was involved with the nonprofit Workers' Educational Association. She supported family allowances, access to birth control, and equal pay for women. She served on various committees studying crime and gambling during the early 1930s, as well as government task forces on the postal department, the BBC, and grants to universities. In 1937, the family moved again to Liverpool, where her husband was briefly vice-chancellor. After he died suddenly in 1937, Mary moved back to London. In 1939, she became principal of Westfield College, where she remained, including a period when the college was temporarily relocated to Oxford during World War II, until her retirement in 1951. She stood for Parliament several times but unsuccessfully. She became famous later in life, when she became a radio broadcaster and appeared frequently on shows such as "The Brains Trust" and "Any Questions." She eventually entered the House of Lords in 1966, having been created a life peer as Baroness Stocks of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. With her longtime friend Eleanor Rathbone, Mary wrote frequently on social and educational issues and published biographies of Rathbone (1949) and Ernest Simon (1963). She also published her autobiography, entitled My Commonplace Book (1970), and History of the Workers' Educational Association (1953).