McCoubrey, Margaret (1880–1955)

Scottish suffragist, trade unionist and economist . Born in Eldersley, Scotland, in 1880; died in Carnlough, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, in 1955; attended Manchester University; married.

Margaret McCoubrey was born in 1880 in the small town of Eldersley, Scotland, near Glasgow. At age 12, she went to work in a men's outfitters shop, but also continued her education and in 1896 qualified as a junior shorthand typist. McCoubrey secured employment as the secretary to the managing director of the first private telephone service in Scotland in 1899, and also became a teacher at Skerries Business Training College. She was named deputy headmistress of the college in 1904.

McCoubrey married and moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1905. Five years later, she joined the suffragist movement, becoming a militant. She also developed an interest in trade unionism, and served as general secretary of the Cooperative Guild from 1910 to 1916. During World War I, she was active in the pacifist movement, and taught economics and history in the educational department of the Cooperative Guild.

Following the end of World War I, McCoubrey was elected Labour Party councillor for the Dock Ward of Belfast in 1920. During the 1920s, she spent a year studying economics at Manchester University and contributed scholarly pieces to economic and trade-union periodicals, including the Co-op News and the Wheat Sheaf. McCoubrey moved to Carnlough, County Antrim, in 1933, to run Drumalla House, a nonprofit retreat for members of the Belfast Girl's Club Union. She remained active in politics and the trade-union movement as an orator (her voice was powerful enough for her to disdain the use of a microphone) for the rest of her life, and died in Carnlough in 1955.

sources:

Newmann, Kate, comp. Dictionary of Ulster Biography. The Institute of Irish Studies, the Queen's University of Belfast, 1993.

Grant Eldridge , freelance writer, Pontiac, Michigan