New blue plaque to honour Oldham Suffragist

Plans have been lodged for a blue plaque to commemorate an Oldham suffragist.

An application has been submitted by Oldham council for the installation of the sign to commemorate Marjory Lees at the Werneth Park Community Centre on Frederick Street.

It would be installed next to the existing plaque on the Grade Two-listed building which honours her mother, politician and activist Dame Sarah Lees.

The proposed wording would read: “The home of Marjory Lees 1878 – 1970. Suffragist, philanthropist, social welfare activist. Donated this house and park to the borough, 1936.”

Marjory Lees was born in Oldham, Greater Manchester in 1878, and like her mother, became active in local politics and the wider women’s suffrage movement.

She made charitable donations to the local community, began a career as a poor law guardian and became president of the Oldham Women’s Suffrage Society.

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Marjory also took part in the Suffrage Pilgrimage in 1913, travelling from Oldham to London, in which 50,000 suffragists and supporters of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) converged on Hyde Park for a rally calling for votes for women. This was the culmination of a five-week, nationwide Women’s Suffrage Pilgrimage.

In 1919, she was elected to Oldham council following her mother’s resignation from the same seat, serving on the council until she stepped down in 1934.

Sarah Lees was an English Liberal politician, activist, and philanthropist who was the first female councillor elected in Lancashire in 1907, and the first female Mayor of Oldham in 1910, only the second woman in England to hold such a position.

The Dame Sarah Lees Memorial