Mrs Mabel March (1896-)
Born in Stonehouse, the youngest daughter of Isabella and Thomas Pring, who ran Pring’s General Stores on George Street, she was brought up working in the well-known and locally respected family shop. Both Isabella and Mabel’s older sisters all had suffragist, even possibly suffragette, views and so Mabel grew up surrounded by ideas supporting women’s strength, capacity and rights. Mabel was also an early temperance activist, and this led her to membership of the Plymouth branch of the Girls’ Friendly Society. In 1925, she married Arnold March, and had two daughters. She became a stalwart member of the Stonehouse Mothers’ Union, and that provided one channel through which she focused her local activism, helping women in the local Stonehouse community – but she was also ready to reach out to those who fell outside the ‘respectable’ remit of the Mothers’ Union (with its emphasis on helping married women, but not single or divorced mothers). It was this determination which brought her into contact with the local women MPs who were prepared to speak out and work for improvements in the lives, conditions and rights of women, first Nancy Astor, and later, Janet Fookes. Having experienced war, and lived through the Blitz and seen its impact on the community, she had a powerful interest in women’s groups promoting international friendship and activism for peace, which continued through and after the war. She also sustained her local activism, campaigning for better pension rights for women, and gaining the affectionate and admiring nickname of the ‘Duchess’.