Mary Danvers Stocks

Economist, activist (BSc Economics 1913)

Whatever I shall do, I shall never put into the School, the measure of what I got out of it in [my] student days!

Mary Danvers Stocks

Mary Danvers Stocks credit National Portrait Gallery
Mary Danvers Stocks, credit National Portrait Gallery

Mary Danvers Stocks (1891-1975) graduated from LSE with a first class BSc in Economics in 1913. She taught at the School during the First World War and was one of 24 women teaching at LSE in 1918, when the first women got the vote.

An extensive career in academia included 12 years as Principal of Westfield College. Mary also devoted her life to public service, campaigning and activism, from her childhood support of the Boers aged 8 to teenage membership of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. As an adult she campaigned for issues from the ordination of women priests and equal pay to university education and the NHS. She published books, served as often the only woman on government committees, and developed what became a successful career in broadcasting.

Her work was rewarded in 1966 when she received a life peerage and became Baroness Stocks of Kensington and Chelsea.

Read more

Mary Danvers Stock on the LSE History blog by Clara Cook

24 LSE women in 1918

University of London Leading Women gallery: Mary Danvers Stocks