Miss Margaret Benson (16 June 1865–13 May 1916)

British author, religious philosopher and Egyptologist. Daughter of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, and Mary Benson, nee Sidgwick. Margaret Benson was noted for her formidable intelligence and was one of the first women to be admitted to Oxford University, where she attended Lady Margaret Hall. She was the first woman to be granted permission to excavate in Egypt which she undertook with her companion Janet Gourlay at the Temple of Mut during 1895-97. She spent fifteen years writing a book, The Venture of Rational Faith which postulated the existence of a merciful God; she subsequently lost her faith. Benson suffered from physical and mental ill-health, causing her a mental breakdown in 1907. Between 1907 an 1912 she was confined to an asylum at The Priory, Roehampton in Surrey, England. From late 1912 she lived under supervision at a private house in Wimbledon, South West London where she died in 1916, aged 51.