underwriting its expenses. Political career In March 1910, Bentham became a member of the executive of the Women's Labour League. She stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate for Kensington Borough Council in 1909, and London County Council in 1910, before being elected a member of Kensington Borough Council in 1912, representing the ward of Golborne, a position she held until 1925. After World War I she was appointed a magistrate, one of the first women in the role, working in the children's courts and serving on the Metropolitan Asylums Board. In 1918, the Women's Labour League was absorbed into the Labour Party, and Bentham was elected to the National Executive Committee, coming top of the women's ballot. She sat on the body from 1918–1920, 1921–1926, and 1928–1931. She also served on the Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women's Organisations, of which she was vice-chair for a time. She stood unsuccessfully as the Labour Party candidate for Islington East in the General Elections of 1922 and 1923. Bentham was finally successful in the 1929 general election, the fifteenth woman MP, the first ever woman Quaker and doctor, and at 68 years of age the oldest woman to be elected to Parliament. This coincided with the election of the second ever Labour Government headed by Ramsay MacDonald. She spoke only infrequently in the House of Commons in her two years in Parliament. One of her longest speeches was during debate on the Mental Treatment Bill. She died on 19 January 1931, at her flat in Beaufort Street, Chelsea, just after her 70th birthday, as a result of heart failure following influenza, and was cremated in Golders Green. Bentham's death triggered a by-election, held on 19 February in which the Labour candidate, Leah Manning, was elected to succeed her. Private life Bentham never married and had no children. She was raised an Anglican but became a member of the Quaker meeting at Friends House, London in 1920. Citations References 2003 (reprint). Times Guide to the House of Commons, 1929, 1931, 1935, Politico's, London. External links 1861 births 1931 deaths Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Female members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies 20th-century Irish medical doctors British suffragists Members of Kensington Metropolitan Borough Council Politics of the London Borough of Islington UK MPs 1929–1931 English women medical doctors Alumni of the London School of Medicine for Women