{{Short description|British suffragette}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}} {{Use British English|date=August 2019}} {{Infobox person | name = Daisy Parsons<br><small>MBE</small> | image = Daisy Parsons.jpg | image_size = | caption = | birth_name = Marguerite Lena Millo | birth_date = {{birth date|1890|5|21|df=y}} | birth_place = Poplar, London, England | death_date = {{death date and age|1957|9|29|1890|5|21|df=y}} | death_place = Stratford, Essex, England | death_cause = | known_for = Suffragette activist<br>politician }}
'''Marguerite Lena Parsons''' MBE ({{nee}} '''Millo'''; 21 May 1890 – 29 September 1957), known as '''Daisy Parsons''', was a British suffragette. She was part of a delegation to the Prime Minister in 1914. She later became a councillor and, in 1937, she was West Ham's first woman mayor.
==Life== Parsons was born in Poplar in London in 1890. Her father, Alfred Albert Millo, dealt in jewellery when he was well. Her mother, Elizabeth, worked as a charlady. She had five younger brothers and she left school early so that she could care for them.<ref name="turb">{{Cite news|url=https://turbulentlondon.com/2016/06/02/turbulent-londoners-daisy-parsons-1890-1957/|title=Turbulent Londoners: Daisy Parsons, 1890-1957|date=2 June 2016 |work=Turbulent London|access-date=21 November 2017|language=en-US}}</ref> At fourteen she was a maid working for the local librarian.<ref name="gbc">{{Cite news|url=http://greatbritishcommunity.org/daisy-parsons/|title=Daisy Parsons|date=8 March 2016|work=The Great British Community|access-date=21 November 2017|language=en-GB}}</ref> Parsons took piecework in a tobacco factory and she was surprised to find how little she earned compared to the men, who also had comfortable restroom for breaks, women only had toilets.<ref name="turb" /> She brought up an orphaned niece and three daughters with her husband, Robert Stanley (Tom) Parsons,<ref name="wales" /> who was a driver for the Stepney Borough Council and a union activist.<ref name="turb" /> They married on 19 December 1908 in the Congregational Chapel, Barking Road, Plaistow.<ref name="gbc" />
When Parson's eldest child became due for a vaccination she applied to have an exemption but she was told that only fathers could apply.<ref name=wales/> alt=|thumb|The 1914 deputation - Parsons is on the right Parsons was inspired by Minnie Baldock in Canning Town<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Atkinson |first=Diane |title=Rise up, women! : the remarkable lives of the suffragettes |publisher=Bloomsbury |year=2018 |isbn=9781408844045 |location=London |pages=364, 503 |oclc=1016848621}}</ref> and so she joined Sylvia Pankhurst's East London Federation of Suffragettes and became the secretary of the branch in South West Ham. In 1914, Sylvia Pankhurst went on hunger strike and refused to stop until the Prime minister received women so that they could present their case for the vote. Asquith agreed and Parsons was able to tell him of her problems, as she was one of the six women chosen including Jessie Payne, led by Mrs Julia Scurr.<ref name=":0" /> She told Asquith that she gave birth to children but she had little say in deciding "what is good for them." During World War I, the East London Federation of Suffragettes opened a baby clinic and Parsons was the manager.<ref name=wales/> She was remembered as assertive and persuasive.<ref name="turb" />
After the war, she was asked to help the local council distribute help for mothers. She joined the ''Maternity and Child Welfare Committee'' in 1919. In 1922 she was elected as a socialist borough councillor on the West Ham Council. In 1931 she was deputy Mayor, a Justice of the Peace in 1933,<ref name="turb" /> and then in 1935 she was made an Alderman<ref name=wales/> and the following year she became West Ham's first female Mayor.
As Mayor, she opened the local lido, got to drive the first local trolleybus<ref name="gbc" /> and returned to the youth club in Canning Town which had inspired her.<ref name="IshkanianSzreter2012">{{cite book|author1=Armine Ishkanian|author2=Simon Szreter|title=The Big Society Debate: A New Agenda for Social Policy?|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yJ7QSShCt6AC&pg=PA75|date=1 May 2012|publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing|isbn=978-1-78100-208-7|pages=75–}}</ref>
During World War Two, Parsons organised children's evacuation locally and helped organise the Women's Voluntary Service. Her brother and a niece were killed in the Blitz.<ref name="turb" />
Parsons was awarded the honour of the Freedom of West Ham in 1939, and MBE in the New Year Honours of 1951 and she died in Stratford in London in 1957.<ref name="wales">Tim Wales, ‘Parsons, Marguerite Lena (1890–1957)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/66797, accessed 21 November 2017]</ref>
There is a mural made as communal art at Hermit Road Park, a testament to how well she was regarded in this area.<ref name="gbc" />
==References== {{reflist}}
{{s-start}} {{s-civic}} {{succession box|title=Mayor of West Ham|years=1936–1937|before=Cuthbert St Clair Collins|after=Esther Bock}} {{s-end}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Parsons, Daisy}} Category:1890 births Category:1957 deaths Category:People from the London Borough of Newham Category:Mayors of places in Greater London Category:Women mayors of places in England Category:British suffragettes Category:British women's rights activists Category:People from Poplar, London Category:Women councillors in England Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire