Australian Christian pacifist, active in Brisbane and then Sydney.
Margaret Thorp was born in England into a Quaker family, members of the traditionally pacifist Society of Friends. She had an early introduction to extreme poverty because the family home was adjacent to a very poor district of Liverpool where her father, a physician, worked at a medical mission and where as a teenager Margaret conducted weekly discussions. She attended The Mount Quaker girls' school at York, and later studied peacemaking at Friends' Woodbrooke College in Birmingham.
Early experiences led Thorp to become an ardent lifelong believer in social equality and socialism, although she condemned the violence of some revolutionary movements. In an active life she joined many organisations working for peace, social justice, women's rights, and against racism, while retaining an interest in music and living a full life, with a number of male admirers.
She was even married for a time to Arthur Watts, who at one stage worked in Russia for the Save the Children Fund but she did not share his enthusiasm for Soviet developments and after six years or so these differences forced them apart.
The Thorp family arrived in Australia in 1911 when Margaret was 19, her parents having undertaken a two-year mission to support Friends' anti-conscription struggle here and in New Zealand.
This was a period of great social upheaval and the young woman was soon in action on equal pay for women, trade union conflicts about control of the means of production, as well as anti-war and conscription issues.
White Australia rules after the passage of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, and the Defence Acts 1901-9 had produced an emphasis on compulsory military training. Australia was the first English-speaking nation to introduce compulsory military training in peacetime and from 1 January 1911 it involved all Australian youths between the ages of 12 and 26—a prospect staunchly opposed by Quakers. Dr Thorp was involved in the foundation of the Anti Military Service league, which became the Australian Freedom League, and was a delegate to its first conference in Adelaide in 1913.
It was a rough, often brutal, time. On "Black Friday", during the Brisbane General Strike of 1912, women led by suffrage activist and anti-war advocate Emma Miller (later a close associate of Thorp and whose statue stands in Brisbane City Square today) were attacked by mounted police brandishing batons directed by the Police Commissioner himself during a procession to Parliament House.
Then came the 1914-1918 Great War and the birth of the Women's Peace Army in 1915, not only opposed to war but also campaigning for adult suffrage, equal pay for equal work, legal equality, improved child welfare laws, better educational standards, penal and other reforms. The English activist and her colleagues had a full agenda.
A women's organisation in Brisbane called a meeting at the School of Arts to support the compulsory recruitment of men into the armed forces to fight in Europe. It was 1917.
Margaret Thorp rose to reject conscription and point out the futility of this attempt to overturn a recent national referendum that had voted against compulsory army service. She didn't get a chance. Her comments "precipitated an uproar", a woman tried to force her out of the room, she was set upon by others, and "the gathering resolved itself into a seething mass of struggling women".
Thorp gamely struggled on to the platform but other women surged up and knocked her down. She was rolled on the floor, kicked, punched and scratched, finally thrown out of the hall. Undeterred, she returned with a policeman who said she had a right to address a public meeting, made two more attempts to speak but was pushed out again as the national anthem chimed in above the uproar. Once more she reappeared but was still unable to get a hearing. The resolution of the Women's Compulsory Service Petition League was carried, conscription advocates "hurling the vilest insults at the ‘antis'". An undaunted Thorp called for three cheers for no conscription and finally withdrew from the meeting.
In spite of attacks on her pacifism and other concerns, Thorp never lost the religious zeal that underscored her social action. A zeal which in fact often brought her into conflict, sometimes bitter, with members of the clergy whose Christian beliefs included support for war. At one stage she decided to visit all the parsons "to stir them up".
Being pacifist did not prevent her being very forthright in defence of her commitments and she gradually earned great respect from political opponents as well as supporters during a period of much bitterness. "Existing divisions were accentuated between Catholics and Protestants, monarchical imperialists and republican nationalists, conservatives and dissenters, as well as within these groups. It also set soldiers against civilians, women against women, and sometimes even family members against family members" Summy writes. But in 1916, when she was only 24, and had been in Queensland only one year, State Home Secretary John Huxham told Thorp he "felt proud to have such a person in Queensland".
That same year, Thorp was in Gympie with colleagues from the WPA and Australian Peace Alliance to gain support. No-one turned up for a special women's meeting, and the Town Council refused permission to use a licensed hall for a public meeting, so they decided on an open-air gathering.
Thorp delivered her standard speech: How can peace be made permanent? As she concluded a woman shouted "you ought to be at the wash-tub!" Summy continues "When a man came to Thorp's defence, he was quickly set upon by the woman who bashed at his head with a bag of apples", and later Thorp heard there'd been plans to "duck" her. It would be funny if it were not so serious. The speakers were rained off but after the shower the crowd came back and gave them a good hearing. Even so the mayor warned he would instruct the police to prohibit the holding of any meeting by this delegation in future.
In 1930 she had been appointed welfare officer for the New South Wales Society for Crippled Children and, in 1931, executive secretary of its central council of the women's auxiliaries. She visited Britain and the United States of America in 1935 to see the latest methods of treatment and rehabilitation.
In response to an urgent plea for help from the Friends in England, Watts resigned and sailed for Europe in February 1946. In Berlin she chaired the co-ordinated British relief teams charged with maintaining public health and child welfare. Compassionate and practical, she worked among the destitute and the displaced: 'Life was tiring and depressing—I often cried myself to sleep feeling utterly inadequate'. In 1947 she returned to Australia seeking supplies and money. Next year, at the request of (Sir) Richard Boyer, she toured the country for the United Nations Appeal for Children.
With first-hand knowledge of what many immigrants had suffered, in October 1949 Margaret Watts was appointed State executive secretary of the New Settlers' League of Australia (Good Neighbour Council of New South Wales from 1956). She and her staff helped immigrants to find work, provided interpreters, organized experts to advise and protect them when buying property, and arranged friendly visitors to lonely people in homes and hospitals. A justice of the peace (1955), she was appointed M.B.E. in 1957.
Following her retirement in 1962, the Quaker 'Meeting for Worship' at Devonshire Street, Surry Hills, remained the centre of her existence. Watts chaired (1966) the Quaker Service Council. Strongly critical of the futility of the Vietnam War, she tried to help Vietnamese orphans by arranging for their adoption in Australia. To the end of her life, she entertained—immigrants, Friends, Asian students—at her flat in Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point, which was filled with seventeenth-century carved, wooden furniture. She enjoyed music and sketching. In 1975 the Council on the Ageing named her the NSW Senior Woman Citizen of the Year.
Margaret Thorp died in hospital in Darlinghurst in 1978 and was cremated.
Margaret Thorp was born in England into a Quaker family, members of the traditionally pacifist Society of Friends. She had an early introduction to extreme poverty because the family home was adjacent to a very poor district of Liverpool where her father, a physician, worked at a medical mission and where as a teenager Margaret conducted weekly discussions. She attended The Mount Quaker girls' school at York, and later studied peacemaking at Friends' Woodbrooke College in Birmingham.
Early experiences led Thorp to become an ardent lifelong believer in social equality and socialism, although she condemned the violence of some revolutionary movements. In an active life she joined many organisations working for peace, social justice, women's rights, and against racism, while retaining an interest in music and living a full life, with a number of male admirers.
She was even married for a time to Arthur Watts, who at one stage worked in Russia for the Save the Children Fund but she did not share his enthusiasm for Soviet developments and after six years or so these differences forced them apart.
The Thorp family arrived in Australia in 1911 when Margaret was 19, her parents having undertaken a two-year mission to support Friends' anti-conscription struggle here and in New Zealand.
This was a period of great social upheaval and the young woman was soon in action on equal pay for women, trade union conflicts about control of the means of production, as well as anti-war and conscription issues.
White Australia rules after the passage of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, and the Defence Acts 1901-9 had produced an emphasis on compulsory military training. Australia was the first English-speaking nation to introduce compulsory military training in peacetime and from 1 January 1911 it involved all Australian youths between the ages of 12 and 26—a prospect staunchly opposed by Quakers. Dr Thorp was involved in the foundation of the Anti Military Service league, which became the Australian Freedom League, and was a delegate to its first conference in Adelaide in 1913.
It was a rough, often brutal, time. On "Black Friday", during the Brisbane General Strike of 1912, women led by suffrage activist and anti-war advocate Emma Miller (later a close associate of Thorp and whose statue stands in Brisbane City Square today) were attacked by mounted police brandishing batons directed by the Police Commissioner himself during a procession to Parliament House.
Then came the 1914-1918 Great War and the birth of the Women's Peace Army in 1915, not only opposed to war but also campaigning for adult suffrage, equal pay for equal work, legal equality, improved child welfare laws, better educational standards, penal and other reforms. The English activist and her colleagues had a full agenda.
A women's organisation in Brisbane called a meeting at the School of Arts to support the compulsory recruitment of men into the armed forces to fight in Europe. It was 1917.
Margaret Thorp rose to reject conscription and point out the futility of this attempt to overturn a recent national referendum that had voted against compulsory army service. She didn't get a chance. Her comments "precipitated an uproar", a woman tried to force her out of the room, she was set upon by others, and "the gathering resolved itself into a seething mass of struggling women".
Thorp gamely struggled on to the platform but other women surged up and knocked her down. She was rolled on the floor, kicked, punched and scratched, finally thrown out of the hall. Undeterred, she returned with a policeman who said she had a right to address a public meeting, made two more attempts to speak but was pushed out again as the national anthem chimed in above the uproar. Once more she reappeared but was still unable to get a hearing. The resolution of the Women's Compulsory Service Petition League was carried, conscription advocates "hurling the vilest insults at the ‘antis'". An undaunted Thorp called for three cheers for no conscription and finally withdrew from the meeting.
In spite of attacks on her pacifism and other concerns, Thorp never lost the religious zeal that underscored her social action. A zeal which in fact often brought her into conflict, sometimes bitter, with members of the clergy whose Christian beliefs included support for war. At one stage she decided to visit all the parsons "to stir them up".
Being pacifist did not prevent her being very forthright in defence of her commitments and she gradually earned great respect from political opponents as well as supporters during a period of much bitterness. "Existing divisions were accentuated between Catholics and Protestants, monarchical imperialists and republican nationalists, conservatives and dissenters, as well as within these groups. It also set soldiers against civilians, women against women, and sometimes even family members against family members" Summy writes. But in 1916, when she was only 24, and had been in Queensland only one year, State Home Secretary John Huxham told Thorp he "felt proud to have such a person in Queensland".
That same year, Thorp was in Gympie with colleagues from the WPA and Australian Peace Alliance to gain support. No-one turned up for a special women's meeting, and the Town Council refused permission to use a licensed hall for a public meeting, so they decided on an open-air gathering.
Thorp delivered her standard speech: How can peace be made permanent? As she concluded a woman shouted "you ought to be at the wash-tub!" Summy continues "When a man came to Thorp's defence, he was quickly set upon by the woman who bashed at his head with a bag of apples", and later Thorp heard there'd been plans to "duck" her. It would be funny if it were not so serious. The speakers were rained off but after the shower the crowd came back and gave them a good hearing. Even so the mayor warned he would instruct the police to prohibit the holding of any meeting by this delegation in future.
In 1930 she had been appointed welfare officer for the New South Wales Society for Crippled Children and, in 1931, executive secretary of its central council of the women's auxiliaries. She visited Britain and the United States of America in 1935 to see the latest methods of treatment and rehabilitation.
In response to an urgent plea for help from the Friends in England, Watts resigned and sailed for Europe in February 1946. In Berlin she chaired the co-ordinated British relief teams charged with maintaining public health and child welfare. Compassionate and practical, she worked among the destitute and the displaced: 'Life was tiring and depressing—I often cried myself to sleep feeling utterly inadequate'. In 1947 she returned to Australia seeking supplies and money. Next year, at the request of (Sir) Richard Boyer, she toured the country for the United Nations Appeal for Children.
With first-hand knowledge of what many immigrants had suffered, in October 1949 Margaret Watts was appointed State executive secretary of the New Settlers' League of Australia (Good Neighbour Council of New South Wales from 1956). She and her staff helped immigrants to find work, provided interpreters, organized experts to advise and protect them when buying property, and arranged friendly visitors to lonely people in homes and hospitals. A justice of the peace (1955), she was appointed M.B.E. in 1957.
Following her retirement in 1962, the Quaker 'Meeting for Worship' at Devonshire Street, Surry Hills, remained the centre of her existence. Watts chaired (1966) the Quaker Service Council. Strongly critical of the futility of the Vietnam War, she tried to help Vietnamese orphans by arranging for their adoption in Australia. To the end of her life, she entertained—immigrants, Friends, Asian students—at her flat in Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point, which was filled with seventeenth-century carved, wooden furniture. She enjoyed music and sketching. In 1975 the Council on the Ageing named her the NSW Senior Woman Citizen of the Year.
Margaret Thorp died in hospital in Darlinghurst in 1978 and was cremated.
Australian Christian pacifist, active in Brisbane and then Sydney.
Margaret Thorp was born in England into a Quaker family, members of the traditionally pacifist Society of Friends. She had an early introduction to extreme poverty because the family home was adjacent to a very poor district of Liverpool where her father, a physician, worked at a medical mission and where as a teenager Margaret conducted weekly discussions. She attended The Mount Quaker girls' school at York, and later studied peacemaking at Friends' Woodbrooke College in Birmingham.
Early experiences led Thorp to become an ardent lifelong believer in social equality and socialism, although she condemned the violence of some revolutionary movements. In an active life she joined many organisations working for peace, social justice, women's rights, and against racism, while retaining an interest in music and living a full life, with a number of male admirers.
She was even married for a time to Arthur Watts, who at one stage worked in Russia for the Save the Children Fund but she did not share his enthusiasm for Soviet developments and after six years or so these differences forced them apart.
The Thorp family arrived in Australia in 1911 when Margaret was 19, her parents having undertaken a two-year mission to support Friends' anti-conscription struggle here and in New Zealand.
This was a period of great social upheaval and the young woman was soon in action on equal pay for women, trade union conflicts about control of the means of production, as well as anti-war and conscription issues.
White Australia rules after the passage of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, and the Defence Acts 1901-9 had produced an emphasis on compulsory military training. Australia was the first English-speaking nation to introduce compulsory military training in peacetime and from 1 January 1911 it involved all Australian youths between the ages of 12 and 26—a prospect staunchly opposed by Quakers. Dr Thorp was involved in the foundation of the Anti Military Service league, which became the Australian Freedom League, and was a delegate to its first conference in Adelaide in 1913.
It was a rough, often brutal, time. On "Black Friday", during the Brisbane General Strike of 1912, women led by suffrage activist and anti-war advocate Emma Miller (later a close associate of Thorp and whose statue stands in Brisbane City Square today) were attacked by mounted police brandishing batons directed by the Police Commissioner himself during a procession to Parliament House.
Then came the 1914-1918 Great War and the birth of the Women's Peace Army in 1915, not only opposed to war but also campaigning for adult suffrage, equal pay for equal work, legal equality, improved child welfare laws, better educational standards, penal and other reforms. The English activist and her colleagues had a full agenda.
A women's organisation in Brisbane called a meeting at the School of Arts to support the compulsory recruitment of men into the armed forces to fight in Europe. It was 1917.
Margaret Thorp rose to reject conscription and point out the futility of this attempt to overturn a recent national referendum that had voted against compulsory army service. She didn't get a chance. Her comments "precipitated an uproar", a woman tried to force her out of the room, she was set upon by others, and "the gathering resolved itself into a seething mass of struggling women".
Thorp gamely struggled on to the platform but other women surged up and knocked her down. She was rolled on the floor, kicked, punched and scratched, finally thrown out of the hall. Undeterred, she returned with a policeman who said she had a right to address a public meeting, made two more attempts to speak but was pushed out again as the national anthem chimed in above the uproar. Once more she reappeared but was still unable to get a hearing. The resolution of the Women's Compulsory Service Petition League was carried, conscription advocates "hurling the vilest insults at the ‘antis'". An undaunted Thorp called for three cheers for no conscription and finally withdrew from the meeting.
In spite of attacks on her pacifism and other concerns, Thorp never lost the religious zeal that underscored her social action. A zeal which in fact often brought her into conflict, sometimes bitter, with members of the clergy whose Christian beliefs included support for war. At one stage she decided to visit all the parsons "to stir them up".
Being pacifist did not prevent her being very forthright in defence of her commitments and she gradually earned great respect from political opponents as well as supporters during a period of much bitterness. "Existing divisions were accentuated between Catholics and Protestants, monarchical imperialists and republican nationalists, conservatives and dissenters, as well as within these groups. It also set soldiers against civilians, women against women, and sometimes even family members against family members" Summy writes. But in 1916, when she was only 24, and had been in Queensland only one year, State Home Secretary John Huxham told Thorp he "felt proud to have such a person in Queensland".
That same year, Thorp was in Gympie with colleagues from the WPA and Australian Peace Alliance to gain support. No-one turned up for a special women's meeting, and the Town Council refused permission to use a licensed hall for a public meeting, so they decided on an open-air gathering.
Thorp delivered her standard speech: How can peace be made permanent? As she concluded a woman shouted "you ought to be at the wash-tub!" Summy continues "When a man came to Thorp's defence, he was quickly set upon by the woman who bashed at his head with a bag of apples", and later Thorp heard there'd been plans to "duck" her. It would be funny if it were not so serious. The speakers were rained off but after the shower the crowd came back and gave them a good hearing. Even so the mayor warned he would instruct the police to prohibit the holding of any meeting by this delegation in future.
In 1930 she had been appointed welfare officer for the New South Wales Society for Crippled Children and, in 1931, executive secretary of its central council of the women's auxiliaries. She visited Britain and the United States of America in 1935 to see the latest methods of treatment and rehabilitation.
In response to an urgent plea for help from the Friends in England, Watts resigned and sailed for Europe in February 1946. In Berlin she chaired the co-ordinated British relief teams charged with maintaining public health and child welfare. Compassionate and practical, she worked among the destitute and the displaced: 'Life was tiring and depressing—I often cried myself to sleep feeling utterly inadequate'. In 1947 she returned to Australia seeking supplies and money. Next year, at the request of (Sir) Richard Boyer, she toured the country for the United Nations Appeal for Children.
With first-hand knowledge of what many immigrants had suffered, in October 1949 Margaret Watts was appointed State executive secretary of the New Settlers' League of Australia (Good Neighbour Council of New South Wales from 1956). She and her staff helped immigrants to find work, provided interpreters, organized experts to advise and protect them when buying property, and arranged friendly visitors to lonely people in homes and hospitals. A justice of the peace (1955), she was appointed M.B.E. in 1957.
Following her retirement in 1962, the Quaker 'Meeting for Worship' at Devonshire Street, Surry Hills, remained the centre of her existence. Watts chaired (1966) the Quaker Service Council. Strongly critical of the futility of the Vietnam War, she tried to help Vietnamese orphans by arranging for their adoption in Australia. To the end of her life, she entertained—immigrants, Friends, Asian students—at her flat in Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point, which was filled with seventeenth-century carved, wooden furniture. She enjoyed music and sketching. In 1975 the Council on the Ageing named her the NSW Senior Woman Citizen of the Year.
Margaret Thorp died in hospital in Darlinghurst in 1978 and was cremated.
Margaret Thorp was born in England into a Quaker family, members of the traditionally pacifist Society of Friends. She had an early introduction to extreme poverty because the family home was adjacent to a very poor district of Liverpool where her father, a physician, worked at a medical mission and where as a teenager Margaret conducted weekly discussions. She attended The Mount Quaker girls' school at York, and later studied peacemaking at Friends' Woodbrooke College in Birmingham.
Early experiences led Thorp to become an ardent lifelong believer in social equality and socialism, although she condemned the violence of some revolutionary movements. In an active life she joined many organisations working for peace, social justice, women's rights, and against racism, while retaining an interest in music and living a full life, with a number of male admirers.
She was even married for a time to Arthur Watts, who at one stage worked in Russia for the Save the Children Fund but she did not share his enthusiasm for Soviet developments and after six years or so these differences forced them apart.
The Thorp family arrived in Australia in 1911 when Margaret was 19, her parents having undertaken a two-year mission to support Friends' anti-conscription struggle here and in New Zealand.
This was a period of great social upheaval and the young woman was soon in action on equal pay for women, trade union conflicts about control of the means of production, as well as anti-war and conscription issues.
White Australia rules after the passage of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, and the Defence Acts 1901-9 had produced an emphasis on compulsory military training. Australia was the first English-speaking nation to introduce compulsory military training in peacetime and from 1 January 1911 it involved all Australian youths between the ages of 12 and 26—a prospect staunchly opposed by Quakers. Dr Thorp was involved in the foundation of the Anti Military Service league, which became the Australian Freedom League, and was a delegate to its first conference in Adelaide in 1913.
It was a rough, often brutal, time. On "Black Friday", during the Brisbane General Strike of 1912, women led by suffrage activist and anti-war advocate Emma Miller (later a close associate of Thorp and whose statue stands in Brisbane City Square today) were attacked by mounted police brandishing batons directed by the Police Commissioner himself during a procession to Parliament House.
Then came the 1914-1918 Great War and the birth of the Women's Peace Army in 1915, not only opposed to war but also campaigning for adult suffrage, equal pay for equal work, legal equality, improved child welfare laws, better educational standards, penal and other reforms. The English activist and her colleagues had a full agenda.
A women's organisation in Brisbane called a meeting at the School of Arts to support the compulsory recruitment of men into the armed forces to fight in Europe. It was 1917.
Margaret Thorp rose to reject conscription and point out the futility of this attempt to overturn a recent national referendum that had voted against compulsory army service. She didn't get a chance. Her comments "precipitated an uproar", a woman tried to force her out of the room, she was set upon by others, and "the gathering resolved itself into a seething mass of struggling women".
Thorp gamely struggled on to the platform but other women surged up and knocked her down. She was rolled on the floor, kicked, punched and scratched, finally thrown out of the hall. Undeterred, she returned with a policeman who said she had a right to address a public meeting, made two more attempts to speak but was pushed out again as the national anthem chimed in above the uproar. Once more she reappeared but was still unable to get a hearing. The resolution of the Women's Compulsory Service Petition League was carried, conscription advocates "hurling the vilest insults at the ‘antis'". An undaunted Thorp called for three cheers for no conscription and finally withdrew from the meeting.
In spite of attacks on her pacifism and other concerns, Thorp never lost the religious zeal that underscored her social action. A zeal which in fact often brought her into conflict, sometimes bitter, with members of the clergy whose Christian beliefs included support for war. At one stage she decided to visit all the parsons "to stir them up".
Being pacifist did not prevent her being very forthright in defence of her commitments and she gradually earned great respect from political opponents as well as supporters during a period of much bitterness. "Existing divisions were accentuated between Catholics and Protestants, monarchical imperialists and republican nationalists, conservatives and dissenters, as well as within these groups. It also set soldiers against civilians, women against women, and sometimes even family members against family members" Summy writes. But in 1916, when she was only 24, and had been in Queensland only one year, State Home Secretary John Huxham told Thorp he "felt proud to have such a person in Queensland".
That same year, Thorp was in Gympie with colleagues from the WPA and Australian Peace Alliance to gain support. No-one turned up for a special women's meeting, and the Town Council refused permission to use a licensed hall for a public meeting, so they decided on an open-air gathering.
Thorp delivered her standard speech: How can peace be made permanent? As she concluded a woman shouted "you ought to be at the wash-tub!" Summy continues "When a man came to Thorp's defence, he was quickly set upon by the woman who bashed at his head with a bag of apples", and later Thorp heard there'd been plans to "duck" her. It would be funny if it were not so serious. The speakers were rained off but after the shower the crowd came back and gave them a good hearing. Even so the mayor warned he would instruct the police to prohibit the holding of any meeting by this delegation in future.
In 1930 she had been appointed welfare officer for the New South Wales Society for Crippled Children and, in 1931, executive secretary of its central council of the women's auxiliaries. She visited Britain and the United States of America in 1935 to see the latest methods of treatment and rehabilitation.
In response to an urgent plea for help from the Friends in England, Watts resigned and sailed for Europe in February 1946. In Berlin she chaired the co-ordinated British relief teams charged with maintaining public health and child welfare. Compassionate and practical, she worked among the destitute and the displaced: 'Life was tiring and depressing—I often cried myself to sleep feeling utterly inadequate'. In 1947 she returned to Australia seeking supplies and money. Next year, at the request of (Sir) Richard Boyer, she toured the country for the United Nations Appeal for Children.
With first-hand knowledge of what many immigrants had suffered, in October 1949 Margaret Watts was appointed State executive secretary of the New Settlers' League of Australia (Good Neighbour Council of New South Wales from 1956). She and her staff helped immigrants to find work, provided interpreters, organized experts to advise and protect them when buying property, and arranged friendly visitors to lonely people in homes and hospitals. A justice of the peace (1955), she was appointed M.B.E. in 1957.
Following her retirement in 1962, the Quaker 'Meeting for Worship' at Devonshire Street, Surry Hills, remained the centre of her existence. Watts chaired (1966) the Quaker Service Council. Strongly critical of the futility of the Vietnam War, she tried to help Vietnamese orphans by arranging for their adoption in Australia. To the end of her life, she entertained—immigrants, Friends, Asian students—at her flat in Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point, which was filled with seventeenth-century carved, wooden furniture. She enjoyed music and sketching. In 1975 the Council on the Ageing named her the NSW Senior Woman Citizen of the Year.
Margaret Thorp died in hospital in Darlinghurst in 1978 and was cremated.
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