Margaret Bramall ( Margaret Elaine Taylor; 1 October 1916 – 11 August 2007) was a British social worker and charity director. She led the The National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (now called Gingerbread) from 1963 to 1979.

Life

Bramall was born in

Penge Penge () is a suburb of South East London, England, now in the London Borough of Bromley, west of Bromley, north east of Croydon and south east of Charing Cross. History Penge was once a small hamlet, which was recorded under the name Pence ...

in 1916. Her parents were Nettie Kate ( Turquand) and Raymond Taylor. She attended

St Paul's Girls' School St Paul's Girls' School is an independent day school for girls, aged 11 to 18, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England. History St Paul's Girls' School was founded by the Worshipful Company of Mercers in 1904, using part o ...

in Hammersmith and then went to Oxford to take history at

Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...

. She was at one time briefly a member of the Communist party but primarily a supporter of the Labour party and an agnostic. She tried to lead a campaign after a fellow student was expelled for having a man in her room, she went on demonstrations and she helped to feed the Jarrow marchers in 1936. In 1963 Bramall became the director of The National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child. She had first hand experience of being a single parent following her divorce but she never used this as a lever. The charity she then led was founded in 1918 by

Lettice Fisher Lettice Fisher ( Ilbert; 14 June 1875 – 14 February 1956) was the founder of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, now known as Gingerbread. She was also an economist and a historian. Background and education Lettice ...

to reform the Bastardy Acts which discriminated against illegitimate children and to mitigate the high mortality of children born to parents who were not married. Bramall raised the organisation's aspirations to end all discrimination and campaign for single parents’ rights. The charity set up finance education schemes and training programmes to help single parents find a place in the new economy. In 1973, the charity renamed itself as the National Council for One Parent Families. Bramall was able to gain influence over the Finer Report investigating the needs of one parent families. Many of its 230 recommendations for improving the lives of single parent families were from the 280 proposed by her organisation. Bramall was disappointed by the reports impact and its "lost opportunity" to help what she estimated as one million children. Bramall is quoted as saying that unmarried mothers were seen as "a challenge to society, to our accepted ethical and religious concepts, and to the institution of marriage itself". Bramall was said to have been "eased out" of her job in 1979.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bramall, Margaret 1916 births 2007 deaths People from Penge Social workers