The Will of Margaret Alice Murray: Egyptologist, Witch, Feminist

Debbie Challis

4 hours ago

5 min read

I spent 10 years working under a bust of the eminent Egyptologist Margaret A Murray in the Edwards Room - the staff / study area - at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at UCL. I worked there from 2007 to 2017 and took part in many libations made in her honour after events. If there was a leak in the roof or the internet disappeared, we would say ‘the curse of Margaret is upon us’ (or perhaps that was just the late Helen Pike and myself bigging up the drama). At the Portico, there is a boggart called Bryan who sneaks in from Boggard Lane near Glossop to play mischievous tricks on us all. Sometimes, I think I may actually be Bryan or he me. . . The thing is, Margaret Murray would have agreed with me and possibly seen (and been) Bryan too.

When the Portico announced the Witches and Healers exhibition with portraits by cinematographer Rosie Reed Hillman and a re-reading of books around witchcraft by four critical friends, Judith (Jude) Beckett, a member, got in touch to ask if we wanted to borrow her copy of My First Hundred Years - Margaret Murray’s autobiography, which was published on her 100th birthday 13 July 1963. Jude’s father was the artist Stephen Rickard, a sculptor and later a glass engraver, who had made that very same bronze head of Murray in the Petrie Museum in 1960. I had to contain my excitement until had time to reply properly. Thus it was that on my birthday and day off, I went to visit Jude at her home to look at a model he had made of the head as well as collect the book for the exhibition (see above and below).

The title of Rosalind Janssen’s history of Egyptology, The First Hundred years: Egyptology at University College London, 1892-1992, is itself a nod to Murray’s book. Janssen writes that the bust was commissioned in 1961, yet the bust clearly says 1960 - see below. It was commissioned ‘privately by her old pupil Dr. Violet MacDermot' and had her name in hieroglyphics inscribed around her neck.

The bust Jude owns is the one made by her father for ‘submission at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition of that year, and the casting of the second copy, taken at the same time, was underwritten by UCL.’ Janssen notes that:

’there was no unveiling ceremony, perhaps because, as Dr. MacDermot told me, Margaret Murray was not her “usual sparkling self at the time", and the work fails to do her justice. She herself was not particularly impressed when she came to view it in the Pottery Room, in its original location’. (Janssen, 1992, 74).

I rather think the bust does capture Murray’s personality and willpower at the age of 97. Jude recalls being scared of Murray as she and her siblings were allowed in to be with him while he sculpted her head, possibly as he was scared of her too. Jude remembers being rather intimidated as a 5 year old. Her older siblings remember her being sharp, talking about how broomsticks came about for witches and the ‘little people’ that were all around. This is why I think she would have appreciated Bryan, the Portico boggart.

Dr Violet Denise Maxwell MacDermot, a doctor and coptic scholar, was married until 1966 to the Labour politician (and former intelligence officer) Niall MacDermot, who was MP for Lewisham North from 1957-59 and then later for Derby from 1962-70. The couple divorced in 1966. Jude thinks the commission came about as her father knew Niall and Violet through the Labour Party and lived in Manor Park Lewisham until 1967, later moving to the ‘Old Vicarage’ in Woolwich.

When we turned the bust over, we found a label - see photo - saying that it had been on display at the National Lifeline Art Fair at Chenil Galleries in Kings Street, Chelsea. Jude said the address of her former family home meant that the exhibition must have been after 1967 and on a newspaper archive search, I *think* it may have been one in April 1870 curated by actor / artist Esmond Knight to raise money for ex-prisoners, their families and support with issues of addiction. The other exhibition named National Lifeline Art Fair at Chenil Gallery was in 1967 and of actor’s children making portraits of their parents, again for charity. If anyone has any more information, I’d love to know it!

My First Hundred Years

And the story of Jude’s book is just as remarkable. Jude found My First Hundred Years in the Oxfam shop in Sale in December 2015, only a few days after her dad had passed away. Contained in the book were various clippings of Murray’s 100th birthday, publication of the book and repeat of the interview on BBC Radio that Murray had done with Leonard Cottrell. The books is also signed - rather shakily - by Murray herself. A card enclosed sends Murray’s best wishes to a Mrs L. Cornelius and the postage stamp says it was sent from Welwyn Garden City, where Murray was in a rehabilitation hospital (the Queen Victoria) from mid 1962 until her death in November 1963. A few clippings of obituaries are also included.

Who Mrs L. Cornelius is I have not been able to find out, but she was clearly a fan. It is her married name but obviously I can’t check census reports, and, so far, newspaper archives or the phone books have given no joy . . . I am hoping that in writing this blog and including Murray’s book in the exhibition - kindly loaned by Jude - I may find out.

The book will be open on Murray’s chapter on the occult and is included to reference her extraordinary influence on Wicca and feminist uses of witchcraft as a form of renewal and casting off patriarchal structures of religion. Although, Murray’s witch cult and ritualist theories have long been questioned, even derided, they were hugely influential from the 1920s to the 1960s and are being reclaimed - in part - by modern witches and feminists. A modern printing of Murray’s Witch-Cult book and Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townend Warner - one of my favourite humourous feminist books - will also be on display.