Every week we’ll highlight famous Glaswegians...

1 Eunice Murray was a writer, campaigner and Scottish President of the Women’s Freedom League, which operated offices and a tearoom on Sauchiehall Street. Born on January 21, 1878, her father David was a prominent lawyer and active campaigner on feminist issues, helping to found the Glasgow Ladies’ Higher Education Association in 1876, and her mother Frances Porter Stoddard, was the daughter of an American family living in Port Glasgow with links back to the campaign for the abolition of slavery.

2 Murray was the first Scottish woman to stand for Parliament after some women were given the vote in 1918. She stood in Bridgeton and although she did not win the seat, she paved the way for others to follow and continued to champion women’s rights throughout her life.

3 In her diaries, which are kept in the Women’s Library at London University’s School of Economics, she records her distaste for Winston Churchill, who was the Liberal candidate in the Dundee by-election in 1908. “I think him a very poor speaker and wonder what all the fuss is about,” she said.

4 Murray joined the Women’s Freedom League and became secretary “for scattered members” — those who lived outwith Scottish cities — and by 1913 was president of the League in Scotland. She was arrested on several occasions, including in 1917 when she tried to address a protest in Downing Street.

5 In 1923, Murray was elected as a member of Dunbartonshire County Council. She became a co-founder of the first branch of the Women’s Rural Institute in Dunbartonshire and was eventually made president. She died, aged 82, in March 1960, from a stroke.