Our very own Martha Jane Bury has been out and about on the bus stops advertising boards in both Blackburn and Darwen for International Woman’s Day.
Martha who is burried in the Western Cemetery and known as the White Lady was the first 1893 President of the Darwen Co-operative Woman’s Guild and leading light in the national movement.
She was a pioneer for the rights of working class women and one of the first women to be elected to the Blackburn’s Board of Guardian.
Martha was born in Blackburn in 1850 the daughter of George Walmsley, headmaster of Park Road School, Blackburn and Jane Pearson. Her farther died when she was two and she began working in the mills when she was 11 and moved to Darwen when she was 17, Martha married John William Bury in 1882 and she continued working in the mills until she was 41 by which time she had 5 children (one died in infancy).
She was actively associated with the Congregational Church and the towm’s temperance movement.
Martha died in 1913.
FODC March 2018