Her father was Jacob Bright (1775–1851), member of the Society of Friends,[1] and a cotton mill proprietor; and her mother, his second wife, Martha Wood (1788–1830).

Until her husband's death in 1865, however, her main burdens remained within the family, including the rearing of her two children, Samuel, a deaf mute, and Katharine.

In 1870, suffering from a chest infection, and feeling she needed a change of climate, she travelled to Halifax, Nova Scotia to visit a cousin, Esther Blakey.

Having signed the temperance pledge at the age of sixteen, she joined the American Independent Order of Good Templars in 1872, and became a grand worthy vice-templar in 1874.

The Good Templars organised the British tour of 'Mother' Eliza Stewart, whose participation in the protests against saloons in the Women's Crusade led to the creation of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874.

‘It is hardly likely we can go through the streets and kneel at the doors of the gin palaces’, she reasoned, but temperance women in Britain could hold processions and assemblies.

By 1883–4, it was becoming clear that the general failure to convert men to temperance required a more radical conclusion: ‘The conviction grows upon me that while Petitions educate the workers and the people something more is needed to make them effectual’.

As president of the Bloomsbury branch of the Women's Liberal Association, she lost no opportunity in all her public addresses of emphasizing the fact that temperance legislation, to be successful, required woman's vote.

[6] Lucas died from tuberculosis on 4 February 1890 at her London home, 7 Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, and was buried in Highgate cemetery with her husband.

In 2007, the grave of Margaret and Samuel Lucas was given listed status by the English Heritage in honor of their work in the anti-slavery movement.