On 13 October 1908 Margaret Travers Symons tricked her way in to the Houses of Parliament where she became the first woman to speak in the House of Commons.
Margaret Ann Travers Symons was a suffragette. She was born on 18 August 1879 in Paddington.Her father was an architect. She had a short marriage to a man from New Zealand and became known as Margaret Travers Symons. She became the secretary to the aging Labour politician Kier Hardie.
Her employer, Hardie, was a friend and lover of Sylvia Pankhurst and of the campaign to grant votes to women. They were founding members of the East London Federation of Suffragettes which was a breakaway group of the WSPU. Travers Symons was a suffragette and had briefly been the treasurer of the WSPU branch in London. Symons knew a member of parliament and she was aware that women were allowed to be escorted as visitors around the parliament buildings. She arranged that she would be taken around the parliament buildings where there was a peep hole where women could see into the main chamber.
On 13 October 1908 she escaped from her escort and burst into the House of Commons where a debate was in progress about. She shouted "Votes for Women" and she was escorted from the building. This was an evening when the suffragettes were campaigning outside parliament. Emmeline Pankhurst was arrested later for organising the demonstration and she was sentenced to three months in prison.
The stunt was reported in major newspapers as she had made history be being the first woman to speak in the House of Commons. She was also unusually one of the few able to divorce her husband in 1911 for his adultery.
Margaret was a journalist and, from 1902, was secretary to the Independent Labour Party's (ILP) Keir Hardie. She seems to have joined the WSPU in 1906, briefly serving as honorary treasurer of the new London committee of the WSPU before the position was taken over by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence.
In 1908, she caused a commotion by entering the Chamber of the House of Commons and shouting out, 'Attend to the women's questions!' at the same time as suffragettes were shouting from outside. As punishment, the permit she had as a journalist, which allowed her to be inside the House of Commons, was taken away. —History
