Born: Jessica Marguerite Bowie; also known as Marguerite Bowie-Menzler
Sector: Insurance
Let’s start with the name. In the early part of her career, Jessie used her first name; as she moved into the 1930s she was sometimes Jessie Marguerite, sometimes J. Marguerite. After the Second World War she is generally referred to as Marguerite. In the 1939 Register she is recorded as Marguerite Bowie-Menzler, her husband’s surname tacked on to her own but in newspaper articles about her work and career she is usually called Miss Bowie. I’ve decided to go with Marguerite for this post because this is the name she used when she wrote her only publication and is also the name used in her Times obituary (though since it got her year of her birth wrong, perhaps this is not the most reliable source…).
Next: her life. Marguerite said in 1929 that if women felt they were getting into a rut, the answer was to change careers and she certainly practised what she preached. She spent periods in the civil service, insurance, law and diplomacy. The footprint she left in the early part of her career is rather light. Her activities are listed, her achievements noted, but for her pre-war career in particular, details are so far somewhat lacking. This is the reality for many women in this period: much done, little recorded. Marguerite doesn’t seem to have been particularly keen to draw attention to herself by giving interviews and writing for magazines so it is through her speeches that we get the best sense of her. These were given mainly after the Second World War and relate more to politics than business.
So what do we know? Jessica Marguerite Bowie was born on 17th October 1894 in Brimington, Derbyshire. She was the eldest child of a piano tuner and her family moved around while she was growing up. She went to Oldfield School in Bath and then won a scholarship to Bath High School. A second scholarship to the University of Bristol followed, where she read Modern History, graduating in 1913 with a First. She went on to study for a Diploma in Education at Oxford University, which she completed in 1915.
Cross-sector working
In 1917, aged 23, she joined the Ministry of Labour. The work she did here shaped her lasting interest in equality and human rights. In her first job, she focused on investigating and enforcing minimum wage rights It was not always easy: in 1922 a legal case was brought against James Wickett, the manager of the Redruth Brewery, for ‘hindering and molesting’ her in the execution of her duty the previous August. He was found guilty. She instigated prosecutions of companies breaching the law, which sparked her interest in the legal profession, and then between 1923 and 1926 worked as a trade inspector, in charge of the South-Western area of Trade Boards.
In 1926 marriage forced her to leave the civil service. Her husband, Frederick Menzler, also had a varied career. During the First World War he served in the Royal Engineers, winning the Croix de Guerre Belge. After the war he joined the Government Actuary’s Department, where he worked until 1929, when he moved to the Underground Group of Companies, later London Transport. and then the Chief Development and Research Officer where he applied his experience of statistics to improving operational management. After retiring in 1954 he joined a stockbroking firm, where he worked for a further ten years. He died in 1968 and in two lengthy obituaries published in industry journals, Marguerite is not mentioned.
On entering the commercial world, Marguerite seems to have set up her own insurance brokerage, Walshe Bowie (Walshe was her father’s middle name). Insurance agents like Edith Beesley and Shelley Gulick sold and administered policies developed by the companies that employed them. As a broker, Marguerite worked for consumers, charging them a fee to find the policies that best met their specific needs. She was reported to be the first woman in the country working in this field. Some of the odder requests made of her were to find insurance policies for hens going to a poultry congress and rabbit skins crossing a heron pond.
Marguerite had fought for the rights of women to enter the legal profession and in 1927 she started studying for the Bar. In April 1934, she was called to the Bar at Middle Temple but there is no evidence that, after doing all the hard work, she ever practised as a barrister. 1930 was also the year that Marguerite became a member of the Women’s Provisional Club. She was quick to get involved, working on the organising committee between 1932 and 1934 and elected Vice President in 1938.
Women and universities
Throughout her life, Marguerite was passionate about women’s university education and supporting women in academia. In 1920 she joined the British Federation of University Women (BFUW), established in 1907. Its aims were to strengthen the voice of university women, encourage independent research work by women; increase co-operation across universities and stimulate the interest of women in municipal and public life.
In 1918, the BFUW had acquired Crosby Hall. Built in 1466 in the City of London, as part of a medieval mansion and at one stage belonged to Thomas More. It was moved from Bishopsgate to Cheyne Walk on Chelsea Embankment in 1910 so a bank could be built on its City site. No-one knew quite what to do with it but the BFUW saw an opportunity to create a residential club and meeting place for university women of all nationalities. It took a long lease on the building and in 1926 launched a campaign to build a residential wing with rooms for forty postgraduates. Marguerite worked alongside others including Alys Russell, an enthusiastic supporter of the British Federation, to raise funds. The site was opened by the Duchess of York in 1926 and the residential wing by Queen Mary in 1927.
The devastating First World War made Caroline Spurgeon, an early beneficiary of a BFUW grant and the firt women to be awarded a Chair at the University of London, looked at the opportunities for wider co-operation. She joined with Rose Sidgwick of the University of Birmingham and Virginia Gildersleeve of Barnard College in the USA to create an international federation of university women to help prevent another similar catastrophe. The Secretary from 1920 until 1935 was Theodora Bosanquet, a student of Mary Petherbridge and partner of Lady Rhondda. Marguerite was quick to get involved. In 1932 she became Vice-Treasurer, then in 1936 Treasurer. Again, the focus was on raising money to enable women to pursue their research and studies. In the mid 1930s, the Committee for the Emergency Assistance of University Women was formed, to assist university women deprived of the right to work and, in many cases, even to live in their native country. During the Second World War Marguerite used her position in London to help women refugees in the academic community. In 1947 she was elected President.
Public service: war and post-war
When war broke out Marguerite joined the Ministry of Home Security. She was responsible for the evacuation of children to the United States and Canada, public welfare in London Underground air raid shelters and welfare arrangements for fire wardens.
At the end of the war she worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in the reconstruction of the formerly occupied countries and for the dissolution of the Displaced Persons camps. When the United Nations Organisation was set up in San Francisco, she was appointed as advisor to and alternate delegate for the UK delegations to the Status of Women Commission and then in 1949 headed up a British delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights, the first woman to be head of delegation at the UN. She travelled around the UK speaking at meetings on the new Charter of Human Rights.
In 1955 Marguerite’s focus moved back to the UK and women graduates. She was elected President of the British Federation of University Women, overseeing its Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1957. She had been made a Director of Crosby Hall in 1944 and was Chair of the first Finance Committee. More fund-raising meant that a second residential wing could be opened in 1962. Marguerite remained involved until 1976, when she was 83 years old. In 1975, she started to write a history of Crosby Hall, with profiles of all those who had a room named after them in the two wings. ‘It has taken much longer than I had anticipated as I lost my reading sight soon after I began’, she wrote in her introduction, yet she persevered and it was finally published in 1981.
On Marguerite’s 90th birthday, the Governors of Crosby Hall gave a dinner in her honour when a painting of her by Margaret Ware was unveiled. If anyone knows where this is now, I’d love to know.
The two organisations to which Marguerite devoted so much of her energy, the BFUW and the IFUW still exist, with different names but pursuing the same agenda of helping women worldwide to exercise their right to education and economic independence.
Sources include:
Cornishman 29/3/1922; Western Morning News 20/6/1925; Daily Mirror 9/8/1929; The Guardian 20/6/1930; The Daily Telegraph 4/4/1950; The Daily Telegraph 19/10/1983; The Times 20/3/1987
‘Founders of Crosby Hall’ by Marguerite Bowie Menzler (1981)
‘F. A. A. Menzler’ by Bernard Benjamin in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (1969) Series A (General), Vol. 132, No. 1, pp. 129-130; Memoir: Frederich August Andrew Menzler by J H Gunlake in Journal of the Institute of Actuaries (1886-1994) (1969) Vol. 95, No. 1, pp. 177-181
‘The British federation of university women and the status of women in universities, 1907-1939’ by Carol Dyhouse (1995) Women’s History Review, Vol 4 No 4, P.465-485
Women Who Meant Business 