Edith Picton-Turbervill

WOMEN'S RIGHTS CHAMPION

Edith Picton-Turbervill is widely remembered as a committed women’s rights champion. During WW1 she was actively involved in YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) where she worked to provide hostels and canteens for the women munitions’ workers.
Edith was the first woman to preach at a statutory Church of England service (100 years ago) and later went on to campaign for women to be allowed to enter the priesthood.
In 1929, she became the first welsh woman to become a Labour MP for Salop in 1929, and the first woman to sit on the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament.
She introduced the Sentence of Death (Expectant Mothers) Bill, which then went on to become law, enacting that no pregnant woman should be executed. Also, as part of a government commission, Edith wrote a published report in 1937 on female child labour in Malaya and Hong Kong, advocating stringent ordinances, leading to the governments of Malaya and Hong Kong agreeing to adopt her plans in principle.