[1] The estate was over 3,000 acres and her father was a mine royalty owner and a Conservative; he was a JP and a member of the Penybont Rural District Council.

It was social and philanthropic work which drew her to the labour movement, leading her to conclude that 'fundamental changes in law were necessary to obtain better conditions of life for the people'.

They were living in squalid conditions, isolated from the local community, and Edith attempted their moral improvement through religion[1] and the provision of a reading room.

She held the Bishop of London's Inter-Diocesan Diploma for evangelical work; and all her life the place of women in the Church remained a central concern.

Maude Royden and Isabella Ford were among those who gave her active support in the campaign, and although she had little hope of winning the seat, she did increase the Labour Party's share of the vote.

Picton-Turbervill was the unsuccessful Labour candidate for Stroud in Gloucestershire in 1924 and had some sharp comments on party Prime Minister MacDonald's silence on the Zinoviev letter, which turned out to be a forgery.

[6] Although an Anglican, she was frequently asked to preach in the local chapels of the Wrekin area, and at the 1929 general election she won the seat by nearly 3,000 votes.

[7] When the results were announced "some in the vast crowd, sang the doxology 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow' – this was caught up by a large number and swelled into a loud chorus".

Speaking in July 1931, she argued that the "use of trained policewomen creates a better social order in our cities",[9] and advocated for more women to be employed by the police.

[10] Edith had fully expected this, and in her own account of these days emphasised the enormous influence of the radio broadcasts of MacDonald and Philip Snowden in winning support for the National Government.

As she wrote later: "The panic, however, that had been created with regard to money was so great that I verily believe if a chimpanzee had stood in that election for the National Government he would in some circumstances have been returned to Parliament.

In 1935, she visited Turkey as head of the British delegation to the International Congress of Women Citizens, and as such met President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

In 1935, she was a member of the Next Five Years Group and in 1936 was asked to join a Government Commission to Hong Kong and Malaya to inquire into the mui tsai question.

The two other commissioners, Sir Wilfred Woods and C. A. Willis, retired members of the Ceylon and Sudan Civil Services respectively, thought that the existing legislation simply needed to be more actively enforced.

They thought it politically unwise to do as Edith suggested in her report – to extend the system of registration and inspection to all transferred children, whether they were called mui tsais or whatever.