Early life
Margaret Amy Chubb, the eldest child of William Lindsay Chubb (1856–1937), a medical practitioner, and his wife, Isabel Margaret Pringle, was born on 8 January 1893 at Darenth House, Sandgate, Kent, where she spent most of her first two decades. She attended Conamur School, Sandgate, to 1911 as a day girl and was happy there. In 1912 Margaret Chubb went to Oxford to read modern history at Somerville College, a period which she also enjoyed. She made many friends at Oxford, some of whom remained close to her for the rest of her life. She went down in 1915 with a second-class honours degree and, as war service, joined the Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps (QMAAC). From 1916 to 1917 she worked in the recruiting department of the War Office doing higher grade secretarial work. From 1917 to 1919 she was deputy assistant to the chief controller of the QMAAC and from 1919 to 1920 she was head of the employment department of the London Society for Women's Service.Family life
In 1918 Chubb married Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke (1893–1948), the elder son of Lionel Pyke QC. Their only child, David (''b''. 1921), became a doctor and for 27 years was a consultant physician at King's College Hospital, London, and registrar of the Royal College of Physicians. Geoffrey Pyke had achieved fame in 1915 by escaping from Germany. He had been sent there as correspondent to the ''Daily Chronicle'' but had soon been arrested and interned at Ruhleben camp outside Berlin. A few months later he escaped from the camp and made his way on foot to the Dutch frontier. After that he divided his time between lecturing on his experiences and founding, with others, the ''Cambridge Magazine'', a critical review. In 1923 the Pykes moved to Cambridge, largely to found an infant school, the Malting House School. Geoffrey Pyke had original ideas about the education of very young children, encouraging them to learn, as far as possible, for themselves, adults being there to help and guide them and to answer questions rather than instruct them. These ideas gained influence through the writings ofProfessional life
Margaret Pyke was a family planning pioneer who worked in the family planning movement for 36 years, until her death in 1966. When five birth control societies merged to form the National Birth Control Council (NBCC) in 1930, Margaret Pyke was its first administrator. The NBCC changed its name to the National Birth Control Association in 1931 and then to the Family Planning Association in 1939. Since 1998 it has been known as FPA. In 1930 the purpose of the NBCC was "that married people may space or limit their families and thus mitigate the evils of ill health and poverty". Margaret Pyke was “tireless in creating and sustaining” the new NBCC clinics which were established across the UK to provide advice on contraception, marriage and all aspects of sex. The branches “were staffed entirely by volunteers (except for the doctors) and worked in borrowed premises”. In 1954, Margaret Pyke became the chair of the Family Planning Association and in 1955 coordinated the visit of the minister of health,Death
Margaret Pyke died suddenly from a cerebral haemorrhage on 19 June 1966 at Ardchattan Priory, Argyll, while staying with friends in Scotland. Her body was cremated at Glasgow.References
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