Friends of Hastings Cemetery

on 15 October Muriel Matters married William Arnold Porter (1870?–1949), a dentist, who had apparently proposed to her several times, during the previous three years, despite his doubts about her suffrage activities; there were no children.

Subsequently known as Mrs Matters-Porter, she continued her political commitment and became organizing secretary of the British Committee of the International Council of Women.

She travelled to Spain, where she trained under Maria Montessori; she returned to London to help run Sylvia Pankhurst's school attached to the Mother's Arms in Bow.  In July 1916 she joined the Women's Peace Crusade in Glasgow, and after the war she spoke at meetings of the Glasgow branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.  By this stage she was also active in the British Dominions Woman Suffrage Union.

By 1924 Muriel Matters-Porter and her husband were living in Hastings, at 6 Beach Terrace, which was several times badly damaged in storms, until purchased by the Council in 1928, "Purchased for £1025 from Dr W A Porter” She stood unsuccessfully as Labour Party candidate in that year's general election.

Hastings and St Leonards Observer, 26 Nov 1927
      LABOUR CANDIDATE RESIGNS
MRS. MURIEL MATTERS PORTER AND THE LOCAL PARTY
The Hastings Labour Party is left without a prospective Parliamentary candidate on the resignation Mrs. Muriel Matters Porter, who fought the last election in the Labour interest.

In June 1926 she had taken part in the Peacemakers' Pilgrimage, together with a number of other members of the Women's Freedom League.  Subsequently she seems to have become less politically involved, devoting much of her energies to lecturing and travelling widely.  Her husband died in 1949, and she moved to 7 Pelham Crescent, (where there is a blue plaque).  Muriel lived there from 1949 to 1969.  Contemporary accounts report her skinny dipping off Pelham Beach.  Muriel Matters-Porter died of pneumonia at St Anthony's, 82–4 West Hill Road, St Leonards, on 17 November 1969. She was cremated at Hastings Borough Crematorium on 24 November, and her ashes scattered in the Garden of Remembrance.

Wealth at death  

£30,408: administration, 16 Jan 1970, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

In 2014 a Blue Plaque was affixed to 7 Pelham Crescent.

And in the same year the Parliamentary Library Reading Room in South Australia was named in honour of Muriel Matters

A ceremony to name the ‘Muriel Matters Room’ was held in the South Australian Parliamentary Library on 5 August 2014.

Council offices renamed after suffragist

Hastings Borough Council offices on Hastings seafront have been renamed Muriel Matters House.

By The Newsroom December 2016

And in the same year the Parliamentary Library Reading Room in South Australia was named in honour of Muriel Matters

A ceremony to name the ‘Muriel Matters Room’ was held in the South Australian Parliamentary Library on 5 August 2014.