fixed legal minimum rates of wages she led in 1910 a memorable strike of the women in order to compel the employers to pay the new rates of wages without the delay permitted by the Trade Boards Act of 1909.
In 1911 Miss Macarthur married Mr. William Crawford Anderson, chairman of the executive committee of the Independent Labour Party, and from 1914 to 1918 member for the Attercliffe division of Sheffield. In 1914, at the request of Queen Mary, Mrs. Anderson became honorary secretary of the central committee on women's employment, and in this office, and as a member of the committee of the Prince of Wales's fund, and of numerous reconstruction and other committees, such as the national insurance advisory committee, she rendered important service to the country during the European War. She exerted a powerful influence on behalf of munition workers, and was one of the authors of the Wages (Temporary Regulation) Act (1918), under which wages were stabilized after the armistice. At the general election of 1918 she spoke in many constituencies on behalf of the labour party, and standing herself as labour candidate for the Stourbridge division of Worcestershire, was nearly successful in winning the seat.
The deaths of both her parents not long after the general election was followed by the death from pneumonia of her husband in February 1919. In search of distraction Mrs. Anderson visited America. In 1920 she paid a second visit to attend as a representative of Great Britain the first labour conference convened under the League of Nations. This conference, and the possibility which it revealed of alleviating the lot of the workers throughout the world, rekindled her faith and ardour, and she returned to England to arouse enthusiasm for the ‘labour charter’ which she had helped to fashion at Washington. In her oratory, which was always moving, there was detected at this period a new and deeper note which her friends attributed to the maturity that comes of suffering. But at the zenith of her powers she became ill and underwent an operation which revealed the presence of a malignant ailment from which there was no hope of recovery. A second operation was attempted, without success, and she died at Golders Green 1 January 1921, leaving one daughter.
[Mary A. Hamilton, Mary Macarthur: A Biographical Sketch, 1925; personal knowledge]
ANSON, Sir WILLIAM REYNELL, third baronet (1843–1914), warden of All Souls College, Oxford, was born at Walberton, Sussex, 14 November 1843, the eldest son of Sir John William Hamilton Anson, second baronet, by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Major-General Sir Denis Pack [q. v.]. After three years at a private school at Brighton he went to Eton in 1857, becoming there after a time the pupil of Edmond Warre [q. v.], afterwards head master. From Eton he passed in 1862 to Balliol College, Oxford, and after taking first classes in classical moderations and the final classical school he was elected to a fellowship at All Souls College in 1867, an event which was to determine his subsequent career. For a few years after this he read for the bar and practised on the home circuit; but in 1874, within a year of succeeding to the baronetcy, he returned to Oxford as Vinerian reader in English law. In 1881 he was elected warden of his college, the first layman to hold that office.
Anson's election occurred at a difficult moment in the history of All Souls. The Statutory Commission of 1877 had recently introduced far-reaching reforms in the tenure of fellowships and the disposal of college revenues, and it seemed doubtful how far the historic continuity of All Souls could be retained. For Anson the duty of his college was clear; it lay in the loyal acceptance of the new order, combined with the preservation of what was permanently valuable in the spirit of the old. He believed, and he set himself as warden to prove, in words which he had used himself in speaking of his friend and colleague, John Andrew Doyle [q. v.], ‘that there was room for a college of an exceptional type, devoting itself through its professoriate and its library to university purposes, encouraging advanced study by the endowment of research, securing through a system of prize fellowships the continued interest in academic life of men engaged in public work, and yet retaining its old character as a collegiate society’. His own temperament, which was cautious without being obstructive, made him admirably qualified to be the leader of such a policy. How well he succeeded in it can be fully appreciated only by the members of the college that he guided so wisely during the thirty-three years of his wardenship.
It was characteristic of Anson that he at once recognized that the exceptional opportunities attaching to the headship of All Souls laid peculiar obligations upon
8
