Dame Peggy Fenner, who has died aged 91, served for 22 years as a Conservative MP, first for Rochester and Chatham, and then, when the seat was abolished, for Medway. Her image was that of the typical Tory "suburban housewife": pleasant and no-nonsense, with gut rightwing ideas. She was against Sunday shopping, pornography and abortion; in favour of capital punishment. A strong speaker, she particularly relished heckling her opponents.
Fenner had a troubled, modest childhood. Born in Lewisham, south-east London, she was cared for from infancy by her grandparents. Her parents divorced when she was three, and she never saw her father again. Educated at a London county council elementary school in Brockley, Kent, she went on to Ide Hill school in Sevenoaks, but left at 14 to become a mother's help. In 1940 she married Bernard Fenner, an architect.
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