Margaret Lennan was a Scottish snooker and

billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . There are three major subdivisions ...

player. She was runner-up in the 1936

Women's Professional Billiards Championship The Women's Professional Billiards Championship was an English billiards tournament held from 1930 to 1950. The tournament was first organised by Burroughes Hall, Burroughes and Watts in 1930 and 1931, before the WBA ran the event until its con ...

Biography

Lennan started playing billiards at the age of 17, and received coaching from Alec Donaldson, father of future world snooker champion

Walter Donaldson Walter Donaldson (February 15, 1893 – July 15, 1947) was an American prolific popular songwriter and publishing company founder, composing many hit songs of the 1910s to 1940s, that have become standards and form part of the Great American Song ...

. She won a Ladies Billiards Championship in 1922. in 1928 she won an unofficial "British Isles Championship" by beating

Joyce Gardner Joyce Gardner (1910–1981) was an English professional English billiards player. She was the Women's Professional Billiards Champion from 1931 to 1933, and from 1935 to 1938. Early life Joyce Winifred Frances Gardner was born on 24 August 191 ...

, and the following year became the first woman to qualify as a billiards coach. The

Women's Billiards Association The Women's Billiards Association (WBA), founded in 1931 and based in London, United Kingdom, was the governing body for women's English billiards and snooker, and organised the Women's Professional Billiards Championship and Women's Profes ...

was formed in 1931, and Lennan was one of four professional players appointed to a committee to organise the professional championships, the others being

Ruth Harrison Ruth Harrison (; 24 June 1920 – 13 June 2000) was an English animal welfare activist and writer. Biography Harrison was born in London, the daughter of the author Stephen Winsten and the artist Clara Birnberg. She was educated at Bedfor ...

and Eva Collins. She played in both

and the Women's Professional Snooker Championship in the 1930s, reaching the final of the

in 1936 and losing 2872–3000 to

. Collins was awarded a certificate from the Billiards Association and Control Council for the record break by a woman of 176, made on 3 February 1931 and another for her championship record break on 153 in the 1935

This record was superseded by Ruth Harrison's break of 197 in 1937. Lennan had moved from

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

to Hillesden, Prestbury, at the beginning of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, and given up billiards in 1942 due to the pressure of her

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

work. She said in 1946 that she had taken to playing

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

instead of

Titles and achievements

Snooker Billiards

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lennan, Margaret Scottish snooker players Female snooker players Female players of English billiards Scottish players of English billiards