she was ten years old. Margaret with her mother and two siblings returned to her grandfather Hamilton's home in Ireland. Margaret's mother, Mary, took up a kindergarten course in London and became a teacher. Later, Mary helped her mother to run a guest-house near Belfast. Hamilton was one of the first-ranking leaders of the Irish nationalist movement. Besides her father's religious temperament, Margaret imbibed the spirit of freedom and love for her country through her grandfather Hamilton. Margaret was educated at Halifax College, run by a member of the Congregationalist Church. The headmistress of this college taught her about personal sacrifice. She studied subjects, including physics, arts, music, and literature. At the age of seventeen in 1884, she first started a career in teaching at a school in Keswick. In 1886, she went to Rugby to teach in an orphanage. A year later, she took up a post at the coal-mining area of Wrexham in North Wales. Here, she revived her spirit of service and love for the poor, which she had inherited from her father. At Wrexham, Margaret became engaged to be married to a Welsh youth, who died soon after the engagement. In 1889, Margaret moved to Chester. By this time, her sister May and brother Richmond were living in Liverpool. Soon, their mother Mary joined them. Margaret was happy to be reunited with her family. Occasionally, she went to Liverpool to stay with them. Margaret resumed her studies in the field of education. She became acquainted with the ideas of the Swiss education reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and with the German Friedrich Fröbel. Both Pestalozzi and Froebel emphasized the importance of preschool education. They opined that education should begin by gratifying and cultivating the normal aptitude of the child for exercise, play, observation, imitation, and construction. A group of teachers in England was attracted to this novel method of teaching, and they tried to put it into practice. Thus, the 'New Education' was advocated and Margaret, too, became a part of it. Soon, she became a favourite writer and speaker at the Sunday Club and the Liverpool Science Club. In 1891, Margaret settled in Wimbledon and helped, a Mrs. de Leeuw, to start a new school in London. The new experiment in teaching gave her great joy. After a year, in 1892, Margaret started her own independent school at Kingsleygate. At her school, there were no restrictive