Eunice Murray

Eunice Guthrie Murray MBE (21 January 1878 – 26 March 1960) was a Scottish suffrage campaigner, author and historian. Murray was educated at St Leonards School. While her sisters Dorothy and Sylvia attended university, Eunice did not. She undertook voluntary work, including with the League of Pity, the temperance movement and the settlement movement. She was also a member of the Arbitration and Peace Society during the time of the South African War. and was soon appointed its secretary for the whole of Scotland outside the major cities. She became its leading figure in Glasgow, and was president of its Scottish Council in 1913. She opposed the undemocratic nature of the Women's Social and Political Union and so did not become involved with it. However she was arrested in November 1913 for addressing a crowd outside Downing Street after she had attended the International Woman Suffrage Alliance conference in Budapest. Murray did not blame the suffragettes for being militant as she decided that the government was the instigator of their behaviour. During the war, Murray also worked at William Beardmore and Company munitions factory and on confidential business, and found time to write her novel, The Hidden Tragedy. Murray continued to be involved with the Women's Freedom League into the 1930s.

In around 1919-1923 she was elected to Dunbartonshire Country Council, where she worked on topics including women's equality, education, housing and health. Scottish Women of Bygone Days in 1930 and A Gallery of Scottish Women in 1935. Scottish Women of Bygone Days is notable as an early example of a social history approach to Scottish history, when much of the research at the time focused on political history. She became interested in folklore and wrote Scottish Homespun which was illustrated with pictures of dolls dressed in the outfits she was discussing. Murray made many of these outfits. She campaigned for the creation of a Scottish folk museum.

She donated money to the National Trust for Scotland and served on its committee after 1931. Murray was awarded an MBE in 1945. She never married and died in her family home in Cardross.

Selected works

Articles on the history of women's suffrage in the Glasgow Forward newspaper (1908). Pamphlets, including: 'The Power of Women in the Church', 'Women's Place in the Early Church', 'Women and the Church', 'Women in the Ministry', 'The Illogical Sex', 'Prejudices Old and New' (1913), 'Liberal Cant' (1914), 'Woman - The New Discovery' (1916), 'Women's Value in Wartime' (1917). The Hidden Tragedy (1917) Frances Murray, a Memoir by her Daughter (1920) Scottish Women of Bygone Days (1930) A Gallery of Scottish Women (1935)