Mary Merryweather was born circa 1926 into a Quaker family. From the late 1840s, she was employed to run evening classes for the workers at Courtaulds silk factory in Essex, along with schools for the children of the workers. A close friend of Bessie Parkes, whom she met in 1856, she was, with Bessie, co-opted onto a sub-committee of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science in 1861 to promote emigration schemes for women (see GCPP Parkes 6/80). In 1860, Mary Merryweather was one of the first intake at the Florence Nightingale Training School For Nurses at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. In 1863, she was recruited at the age of 37 to be the first Matron / Lady Superintendent of the nursing training school at Liverpool Royal Infirmary. The system she developed there of engaging nurses and supplying them to the hospital for a fixed sum was considered economical: it was for this reason that Mary and her sister Elizabeth were persuaded to go to the Westminster Hospital in 1874 as Lady Superintendent and Matron respectively. Mary remained there until 1879. (Elizabeth left the Westminster not long afterwards, on the death of Mary, at which point the two posts were combined on the Nightingale pattern.) In the 1870s Mary was also a member of the executive of The Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act which opposed forcible treatment of women suspected of being infected prostitutes.