Marion A. McBride

Marion A. McBride, also spelled MacBride (January 5, 1850 – September 18, 1909), was an American journalist and clubwoman. She founded several women's press associations, most notably the New England Woman's Press Association. She wrote and lectured on domestic science, and was active in charitable causes and local politics. It was largely due to McBride's activism that the state of Massachusetts began hiring matrons for city police stations and built a separate facility for female inmates in Boston.

Biography

Marion A. McBride (née Snow) was born on January 5, 1850, in Easthampton, Massachusetts, the only child of Joseph Preston Snow. She was educated in New York, but spent most of her life in the Boston area.

Journalism career

She began her career at the New-York Tribune before taking a job in 1880 as a special editorial writer for The Boston Post . She was a reporter and correspondent for the Boston Post from 1881 to 1885. After leaving the Post she worked as a freelance writer, contributing regularly to The Boston Globe, the New York Herald, the New Orleans Picayune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Northampton Herald & Post, the Chicago Inter Ocean, and the St. Louis Chronicle. She headed a department of American Art, and wrote articles about domestic science for The Decorator and Furnisher, The New England Magazine, and other periodicals. the Ohio Woman's Press Association, the Southern Woman's Press Association, and the New England Woman's Press Association (NEWPA). McBride initiated the founding of NEWPA in 1885.

Police matron bill

Her Boston Globe obituary suggests that she was best remembered in Boston for her work with "Mrs. Charpiot's home for intemperate women," and for her work on the police matron bill. Massachusetts was the first state to pass such a law.

Charitable and other activities

In the early 1880s, McBride organized the first Woman's Department at the annual New England Manufacturers' and Mechanics' Institute fair in Boston. She also headed the Woman's Department of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. She was a national superintendent of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and served for many years as secretary of the Woman's Charity Club.

She died at her home on Hillside Avenue in Arlington Heights, Massachusetts, on September 18, 1909. Her obituary cites "Paralysis" as the cause of death. She was survived by a son, James McBride, who worked as a naval architect at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.