Margaret Cicely Winterbotham
General information▶Date of birth: 21 December1891 Place of birth: Cheltenham ▶Father: James Batten Winterbotham Mother: Eliza Hunter McLaren ▶Spouse(s): Handley Douglas Hooper Date(s) of marriage: 21 September 1915 Place(s) of marriage: St Paul’s Church, Cheltenham ▶Occupation: Missionary ▶Lifestory: (Margaret) Cicely Winterbotham was a member of a prominent Cheltenham family, who married a clergyman and accompanied him as a missionary to East Africa; she used her influence to advocate strongly for more women missionaries and for improvements to the condition of women in Africa. Winterbotham was born in Cheltenham in late 1891, the fourth and youngest daughter of Cheltenham solicitor James Batten Winterbotham JP, and his wife Eliza Hunter (née McLaren). At the time of the 1901 and 1911 censuses she was living with her family at Cranley Lodge, Wellington Square, in Pittville, and was educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She acted as a bridesmaid at her brother James’s wedding at St Giles’s Cathedral in Edinburgh in 1906, and again at her sister Ethel’s marriage at St Paul’s Church in Cheltenham in 1913. She visited Switzerland and Paris with her family in Spring 1909, and in 1910 “made her début as a public speaker” as President of the Cheltenham Junior Liberal League. She had a good voice, in 1911 sang at a Cheltenham Philharmonic Society concert, and in 1912 was placed in the Second Class by the local Board of Education for Painting from Still Life. In 1915, still living at Cranley Lodge and aged twenty-three, she married the Revd. Handley Douglas Hooper, almost a year her senior, born in Freretown, Kenya, in 1891, the only son of the Revd. Douglas Arthur Lownds Hooper, a pioneer missionary in East Africa, based in Uganda, Mombasa, and then in the Kenyan Highlands at Kahuhia. After their honeymoon in Cornwall they prepared to travel to Kenya, where they remained as missionaries with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) for ten years. Their base was the station at Kahuhia that Handley’s father had developed. Handley served as an officer in the Kenyan Mission Volunteers during the First World War, and became the missionary in charge of a native central school in Kikuyu (Church Missionary Society Kenya Mission). Cicely opened a girls’ boarding school, and both became concerned about the conditions and rights of African citizens. Their first son was born at Fort Hall (now Murang’a) in 1916; their second son was born, at Kikuyu, three years later and in 1924 Cicely gave birth to a daughter at Kahuhia. In 1926 the family returned to Britain, and the Revd. Handley Hooper became the African Secretary of the CMS in London, and Cicely Hooper was active on behalf of the CMS promoting the cause of women missionaries and writing articles about the position of African women in Kenya and similar topics (such as “Hope Deferred” in the Church Militant of 15 January 1926), and extending her influence through short books such as If I lived in Africa (Junior Background Series, No. 1; 1927), the fictionalised stories Beyond the night (1929) and New patches. Women’s customs and changes in Africa (1935), and also The way of partnership. With the CMS in East Africa (1939). Handley worried that the CMS was as male-dominated as African society. At the time of the 1939 Register Margaret and her husband Handley lived in Beckenham in Kent: Handley Hooper was a Minister of Religion (Anglican) and now London CMS Headquarters Secretary, and Margaret lived at home with “unpaid domestic duties”. Their two sons lived with them: Cyril James Douglas Hooper (born in August 1916) was then a Missionary Schoolmaster, and their younger son John Bartlett Hooper was an Undergraduate at Queens’ College, Cambridge. She accompanied her husband in 1947 when he travelled to the United States. Margaret retired with her husband to Cheltenham in 1961, where he died in 1966. She lived latterly at 29 Old Bath Road in Cheltenham, and died in the town in October 1982. Her personal estate at death was valued at £46,269. Copies of the Hooper family papers are held at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide. ▶Moved to Pittville from: (born in Cheltenham) Moved from Pittville to: Kenya ▶Date of death: 14 October 1982 Place of death: Cheltenham ▶Date of burial: Place of burial: ▶Notes: Gloucestershire Echo 19 November 1910. See also Regina Kinuthia’s Pietermaritzburg M.Th. thesis, ‘A Critical Analysis of the Factors that Attract African Women to Conversion to Christian (1900-2000) with Special Reference to the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) Diocese of Mt Kenya Central’; Gerald H. Anderson, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions (1998).] ID: 6801 Contributor(s): John Simpson
Found 28 family members on the Pittville History Works Database (based on “relation to head” in the 1841-1911 census records and 1939 register records) John Brend Winterbotham, Emily Selfe Winterbotham, Reginald John Winterbotham, Henry Noel Winterbotham, John Brend Winterbotham, Henry Martin Winterbotham, Mary Prouse Winterbotham, William Winterbotham, Lauriston Winterbotham, Mary Batten Winterbotham, James Batten Winterbotham, Francis Heskins Winterbotham, Lydia Batten Winterbotham, Catherine Brenda Winterbotham, Charles B. Winterbotham, Jane H. Winterbotham, Agnes R. Winterbotham, Hannah Tucker, Katherine Roubiliac Conder, Helen Elizabeth Conder, Eliza Hunter Winterbotham, Clara Frances Winterbotham, John Brend Winterbotham, James Percival Winterbotham, Lilian Mary Winterbotham, Cyril William Winterbotham, Ethel Beatrice Winterbotham, Margaret Cicely Winterbotham |