Mary Ellen Cottrell [1868 – 1969]

Mary Ellen Cottrell (1868–1969), co-operator and labour activist, was born in Houghton Street, Brightside Bierlow, Sheffield, on 11 August 1868, the daughter of Richard Bryan, a seedsman, and his wife, Maria, née Tester. She became a pupil teacher and by 1891, when the family resided in Skirbeck, near Boston, she worked as a schoolmistress.

On 30 May 1896 she married Frank Cottrell (1872–1932), a printer’s compositor from ; he was the son of Jonathan Cottrell, brass worker. Settling in the area of Birmingham, they had three sons, born in 1897, 1902, and 1907; a fourth child died in infancy.

Mary Cottrell became active in the co-operative and labour movements in Birmingham, and joined the Ten Acres and Stirchley Co-operative Society (TASCOS). Established in 1875, by 1914 TASCOS boasted a membership of 8142. She was on the society’s education committee before becoming the first woman elected to its management board, in 1909. Later in life she referred to the prejudice against women holding management positions in cooperative societies in this period, recalling that she was considered a curiosity when she attended the Co-operative Union Congress in Plymouth in 1910.

Cottrell attributed her advancement in co-operative and public life to her early training in the Women’s Co-operative Guild (WCG). A TASCOS branch of the WCG had been formed in 1901 and she was a leading member. She took part in the guild’s regional educational work, addressing branch meetings on a range of subjects. Between 1913 and 1915 she delivered an annual course of lectures for the Midland Section, aimed at educating the membership and training ‘guides’, who would return to their local branches in an educational capacity. The topics encompassed co- operative principles, financial procedures, co-operation in wartime, ‘the national care of maternity’, and the legal position of women and children.

Cottrell stood unsuccessfully for election as a poor-law guardian for the West ward of the Union in 1907 as an Independent Labour Party (ILP) candidate. In December 1912 she was appointed as a WCG representative to the Birmingham Insurance Committee, founded to implement the provisions of the Insurance Act (1911). She represented Bournville Village council on the management committee of the Bournville Village schools, and during the First World War she represented the WCG on the Birmingham Citizens’ Committee, established in 1914 to administer welfare relief in the city. From July 1916 she was a member of the city’s naval and military war pensions committee.

In 1917 Cottrell became the first Labour woman councillor on , and only the fourth woman to represent a ward in the city. Nominated by the ILP, she was selected by the local Labour Party to the Selly Oak seat vacated when the sitting Labour councillor, George Shann, was made an alderman. Responding to accusations that the process was undemocratic and that male trade unionists had been side-lined, she explained that she was motivated by the need for another woman on the city council, and for the Labour group in particular to include a woman representative. She served on the public health committee, the maternity and infant welfare subcommittee, and on the housing and town planning committee, roles that corresponded with her interests but which also reflected the limited perceptions of acceptable roles for women in local government in the period. As one of only two women councillors she was invited to participate in local organizations and institutions, including the inaugural council of the Birmingham Civic Society founded in June 1918.

From April 1917 she was a member of the committee that introduced and supported a voluntary rationing and food control scheme in Birmingham and continued as a member of Birmingham Food Control Committee in 1918. Nationally Cottrell was a member of the Consumers’ Council from its formation in January 1918, and served as a co-operative representative on the Milk Advisory Board. It was to her influence that the Co-operative Union attributed the provision of additional milk rations for infants, children, and nursing mothers in February 1918. She was also a member of the Central Profiteering Tribunal and participated in the high prices inquiry instituted by the Trades Union Congress.

She narrowly lost her Selly Oak council seat in the municipal elections of November 1920, when she stood as a Labour, Co-operative, and Trade Union candidate, but returned to the city council in a by-election in November 1921 when she secured a majority of almost 2000.

In September 1922 she resigned her municipal seat to concentrate on her co- operative work. In April 1922, at her second attempt, Cottrell became the first woman elected as a director of the Co-operative Wholesale Society Ltd (CWS). Her candidature was strongly supported by local branches of the WCG, but the male co- operators who made up the management boards of the local co-operative societies (and therefore, had a vote) were less enthusiastic. The management board of Birmingham Industrial Co-operative Society initially refused to endorse her, but relented under pressure from the local WCG. She later commented to Margaret Llewelyn Davies that ‘It is quite useless just to nominate a “nice capable woman” from a management committee unless a great deal of time and effort is given to making her well known’ (Blaszak, 84). She remained as a director of the CWS board until she reached the age of compulsory retirement in October 1936, travelling widely on its behalf including India. She was also a member of the Empire Marketing Board, and was elected to the council of the Industrial Welfare Society in 1929.

Widowed in September 1932, Cottrell remained active in TASCOS and other local organizations well into the 1950s. Articles marking her eightieth birthday made much of the fact that she was about to depart for the International Soroptomists’ Convention in Harrogate. She died, of myocardial degeneration, at her home, 139 Oak Tree Lane, Bournville, on 18 November 1969 aged 101. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, article by Dr Siân Roberts – published online 09 August 2018 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb- 9780198614128-e-107316