Mabel Tylecote

Dame Mabel Tylecote (née Phythian; 4 February 1896 – 31 January 1987) was a British Labour Party politician, activist, humanitarian, and educationist from Manchester, England.

Biography Born on 4 February 1896 to John Ernest Phythian and Ada Crompton Prichard in Crumpsall, Manchester, Mabel Phythian's father was a solicitor and Liberal member of Manchester City Council from 1892 to 1898. In 1915, she attended the Victoria University of Manchester. and she graduated in 1919 with an Upper Second in History. In 1930, she defended a doctoral thesis on adult education, which she published in 1957 under the title The Mechanics' Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire before 1851. The family lived at Stockport.

She was on the (Manchester) Committee of the Free German League of Culture in Great Britain, founded by published by German and Austrian refugee organisations and supportive British groups, including Albert Einstein, the artist Oskar Kokoschka, writer Thomas Mann and actress Sybil Thorndike. The League had its own publishing company, Inside Nazi Germany, and a major artist, John Heartfield, producing most of its illustrative material.

Tylecote served as a Manchester City Councilor (1940-1951) and Stockport City Councilor (1956-1963), and stood as a Labour Parliamentary candidate at five parliamentary elections from 1938 to 1955, in Fylde, Middleton and Prestwich, and Norwich South. She received an honorific degree from Victoria University of Manchester in 1978.

The building was opened by Manchester City Council in 1973 as a purpose-built adult education college. After the college closed in 1991, MMU (then Manchester Polytechnic) took over the building and renamed it in Tylecote's honour. The building was demolished in 2017.

Works The Mechanics' Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire Before 1851 (Manchester University Press: 1957) The Education of Women at Manchester University, 1883 to 1933 (Manchester University Press: 1941)