She was born in
Campsie, by
Milton,
Stirlingshire, and educated in
Glasgow and at the
Home and Colonial Training College in
Gray's Inn Road,
London. After her father died, she moved to Cambridge, but soon after, returned to
London. Touched by the poverty in the
East End of London in 1868, she opened the Home of Industry at 60
Commercial Road in Spitalfield. She influenced members of the
Scottish Christian Union, a
temperance association of women, independent but affiliated to the
British Women's Temperance Association, such as Mary White and
Anne Bryson, who took her ideas back to influence women activists in Glasgow, and
Margaret Catherine Blaikie, who established the Emigration Home for Destitute Children in Lauriston Lane,
Edinburgh. In the 1870s, she organised for Home children to be sent to Canada from her home in London, and also had arrangements with
Dr Barnardo's Homes in London,
Quarriers homes in Scotland, and
Smyly homes in
Dublin, Ireland similar to arrangements with English and Scottish homes. In Canada, she had set up a number of Homes,
Marchmont,
Galt in
Ontario and in
Knowlton,
Quebec The Doyle Report of 1875 into the emigration of children from these homes cast a shadow over the process of exporting children although it acknowledged the benevolent motives of MacPherson and others. Her sister, Louisa MacPherson, married Charles Henry Birt, and helped her sister in her mission. In 1873, she established a home in
Liverpool called
The Sheltering Home. MacPherson died in 1904. ==References==