Daisy Postgate (9 December 1892 – 20 April 1971) was a British political activist. Born in

Bow, London Bow () is an area of East London within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is primarily a built-up and mostly residential area and is east of Charing Cross. It was in the traditional county of Middlesex but became part of the County o ...

as Daisy Lansbury, she was the sixth child of George and Bessie. When she was born, the family were living in poverty, but their situation steadily improved, and she attended school until the age of fourteen. She then spent three years assisting her mother with housework and caring for her younger siblings, then studied shorthand and typing, becoming a bookkeeper and typist for her brother

Edgar Edgar is a commonly used English given name, from an Anglo-Saxon name ''Eadgar'' (composed of '' ead'' "rich, prosperous" and '' gar'' "spear"). Like most Anglo-Saxon names, it fell out of use by the later medieval period; it was, however, r ...

.Margaret Cole, "Postgate, Daisy", ''Dictionary of Labour Biography'', vol.II, pp.303–304 In 1912, Daisy became her father's personal secretary, a position she held until his death in 1940. In this role, she supported the

Independent Labour Party The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberal Party (UK), Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse worki ...

. She shared a flat with May O'Callaghan and Nellie Cohen, and the three were active in the

East London Federation of Suffragettes The Workers' Socialist Federation was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom, led by Sylvia Pankhurst. Under many different names, it gradually broadened its politics from a focus on women's suffrage to eventually become a left comm ...

and its successors. In 1913, she helped

Sylvia Pankhurst Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (5 May 1882 – 27 September 1960) was a campaigning English Feminism, feminist and Socialism, socialist. Committed to organising working-class women in East End of London, London's East End, and unwilling in United King ...

to evade police capture by disguising herself as Pankhurst. Through the

National Guilds League Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds "in an implied contractual relationship with the public". It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influent ...

, she met Raymond Postgate, and the two married in 1918. The couple had two children:

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Seco ...

, who became a microbiologist, and Oliver, who became an animator. Daisy increasingly worked as a secretary for her husband, it being her main job after her father's death, and she played a leading role in the first years of the Good Food Guide. From the 1960s, her health was increasingly poor, and she died in 1971, a few weeks after Raymond.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Postgate, Daisy 1892 births 1971 deaths People from Bow, London Lansbury family