Born
Margaret de Gaudrion Merrifield at 4 Dorset Gardens, Brighton in 1857, she was the eldest of two daughters born to
Frederick Merrifield (1831-1924) and Maria Angélique de Gaudrion (1824/5–1894). Her father was a clerk to the County Councils of East and West Sussex. Her mother was of French origin and the daughter of Colonel V.P.J. de Gaudrion, said to be from an old French family. She entered
Newnham College (then Hall) in 1875 intending to study political science, but was persuaded to take a
Classical Tripos by a friend, and passed with second-class honours in 1880. She was appointed a lecturer at the college the same year. She married fellow classical scholar
Arthur Woollgar Verrall on 17 Jun 1882, and they went on to have two daughters, Helen, born in 1883, and Phoebe, born in 1888, who died in 1890. Arthur Verrall was the first
Edward VII professor of English Literature, but Margaret remained active in lecturing and research even after her marriage, somewhat unusually for middle-class woman in that period. She collaborated with her husband on some work, notably the text of Pausanias for the
Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, published jointly with colleague
Jane Harrison in 1890. She edited some of his lectures after his death. Margaret was a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and her parents, sister,
Flora de Gaudrion Merrifield, and sister-in-law, Marian Verrall, were all suffragist campaigners. However, it appears that Margaret was not actively a Suffragist She was a member of the
Ladies Dining Society, a private women's dining and discussion club that had been established by
Louise Creighton and
Kathleen Lyttelton in 1890. Between 1914-1915, Margaret was the Secretary of the Cambridge University Hospitality Committee. The committee was formed to make arrangements for refugee Belgian students coming to Cambridge to continue their studies (often with their own professors). Her knowledge of French was undoubtedly useful in this work, but it petered out as the students drifted off into war service or to the front lines. This work was remembered at her burial in 1916, which was attended by leading members of the Belgian University Committee who contributed a wreath inscribed 'Le corps professorial Belge reconnaissant.' She died of cancer on the 2 July 1916, at her home, 5 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge. == Research into parapsychology ==