Margaret 'Maggie' Magill

NZEI’s first woman president led an astonishingly full and active public life – something she encouraged in all teachers.

Margaret Magill (1888-1962) was principal of Thorndon Normal School and elected to NZEI’s Executive in 1926, serving as president in 1933-34. She stood down from the Executive on her retirement in 1945.

Her 1933 presidential address, “Education, the hope of the world” was strongly anti-armament and anti-nationalism – “we must begin the war against warfare in our schools”. She asked teachers whether they were “a complete social being?”, saying a teacher must have in their life the order and beauty that they envisaged in their pupils’ – “that opportunity for culture, for art, for being a complete person”.

This was essential, she said, so that teachers could adequately interpret the world to their students. “He [sic] must have the conditions which make for his wellbeing” because “teachers … are those who must remain sane so that their great task of conserving what is best in civilisation can be carried out.”

Magill’s many other activities included being on the executives of the Red Cross Society and of the New Zealand Free Kindergarten Association. She was also on the Eastbourne Borough Council for nearly 30 years, with a period as Deputy Mayor, and was a justice of the peace.

Her personal life was also ground-breaking. She is described as being a member of “a circle of female couples in Eastbourne”.1 For more than 40 years, Magill lived with Mimie Wood, who was secretary, accountant and librarian of the Royal Society. They were loosely connected to Katherine Mansfield’s companion Ida Baker.

On Magill’s retirement from NZEI, a front page editorial on its then journal National Education recorded that her work “has been distinguished by sound judgment, sane opinion and active co-operation. Her work has been marked by breadth of outlook and a complete absence of sectional bias. Her services to the N.Z.E.I have been outstanding.”2

An obituary for Miss Magill was published in National Education, December 3, 1962.

1 Lurie, Alison J. (2003) “Lady-Husbands and Kamp Ladies – pre-1970 Lesbian Life in Aotearoa/New Zealand”. PhD Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington