Margaret Bondfield: A Life of Firsts
Margaret Grace Bondfield entered the world on 17 March 1873 in the small lace-making town of Chard, Somerset. She was the tenth of eleven children born to William and Ann Bondfield, a family rich in conviction but poor in means. Her father, a lacemaker with a restless, inventive mind, carried radical political instincts that had once placed him in the heart of local reform movements. Her mother, daughter of a Congregational minister, nurtured a quiet intellectual curiosity and moral resilience in her children. The Bondfield household was frequently haunted by unemployment and the threat of the workhouse, yet it also provided an environment where learning, debate, and public duty were encouraged.
Margaret proved an eager learner-nimble at the piano, fond of poetry, and notably quick-witted. Formal schooling ended when she was thirteen; economic necessity required that she work as a pupil-teacher at the local school. One year later, she left Chard to begin a drapery apprenticeship in Hove, a move that would expose her to the realities of Victorian shop life and set the stage for her life's calling.
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