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A black background with white brush lettering that reads ‘Rebel Women of Sunderland’.
A black background with white brush lettering that reads ‘Rebel Women of Sunderland’.

Margaret Dryburgh

A black and white, graphic portrait of Margaret Dryburgh with a stripe of teal in the background. White brush lettering to the left reads ‘Margaret Dryburgh’. A black circle by the woman’s head is more brush lettering that reads ‘Rebel Women of Sunderland’.

Margaret was born on Nelson Street in Monkwearmouth. Her father was a Presbyterian minister and through church she learned about music. She sat in the back pew and felt the tremor of the organ under her skin as her dad’s sermons echoed around her.

She began teaching at Ryhope Grammar School, then moved to Asia to work as a missionary. She shone as a secondary school teacher and quickly became the principal of the Choon Goan School in Singapore. She took local children for picnics, cutting the crusts from sandwiches and laying soft blankets in the parched grass. She taught her students to sing, and they raised money for local communities as crowds trickled coins into plastic buckets. She was known to buy milk for the poorest children, smiling as the cream got caught on their lips.

During WW2, Margaret was afraid and boarded a ship to escape Japanese soldiers with other missionaries, but they were captured at sea and taken to a Prisoner of War camp in Sumatra. The camp was cruel and the women who lived there were weak with hunger, but Margaret helped them preserve their dignity. She set up a magazine where she copied out recipes she remembered from home and diligently drew crossword puzzles with a ruler and pencil. She organised fashion shows and dances and the women almost forgot they were prisoners, for a couple of hours.

Margaret met Norah Chambers in the camp, who was also devoted to music and longed to hear the melodies from her life back home. They set up a vocal choir, using the different timbres of their voices to mimic the smooth cadence of violins, violas and cellos. Margaret wrote the music for Debussy, Chopin, Brahms and Beethoven from memory. The choir brought the women together because they could communicate without sharing a common language. The soldiers came to watch the concerts, astounded that Margaret had managed to fill such a hopeless place with light.

The women in the camp said the songs saved their lives. Being in the choir gave them a sense of worth and purpose, even as their bodies were deteriorating through lack of food and sleep. Margaret wrote a song called ‘Captive’s Hymn’, performed by the choir at a concert to mark their 2nd Christmas in captivity. It is still sung today, in memory of her ability to grow joy in the heart of terror.