Mrs Alfred Benjamin Chibnall was born as Martha Edith Barber in Badingham, Suffolk, England on 27 February 1864. She was baptised on 7 July that year. In adulthood she preferred to go by her middle name, Edith.

She was the daughter of Chase Barber (1816-1897), a farmer, and the former Eliza Pretty (1832-1884), both Suffolk natives of Fressingfield and Wingfield, respectively.

Her siblings were Elizabeth (b. 1857), Edwin (b. 1859), Emily (b. 1860), Clara (b. 1862), Grace Ada (b. 1869) and twins Archibald Chase and Herbert George (b. 1867).

The Barber family appeared on the 1871 census as residents of North Hall farmhouse in Wrentham, Suffolk. In late-1875, the family sold up their property and relocated to Hastings, Sussex and by 1881, were residing at Sinnock Cottage from where Edith’s father worked as a gardener and she as a draper’s assistant. Edith’s mother died on 11 November 1884, followed by her father on 30 August 1897.

In London in 1888, Edith married a man 25 years her senior, her employer William Bowerman (b. 21 July 1829). Bowerman, a native of Bicester, Oxfordshire, was a recent widower following the death of his wife Emma, née Smith (1832-1888), a marriage by which he had no children.

Distressing Occurrence. — An enquiry was held the Clarence Hotel, Silverhill, on Monday morning, before Mr. Chas. Sheppard, Coroner for the Rape of Hastings, into the circumstances attending the death of Emma Bowerman.  From the evidence adduced, it appeared that the deceased, who was 60 years of age, and who had been confined in two lunatic asylums, was, previous to her death, staying at Silverhill with an attendant. On Saturday morning she went downstairs, followed by her maid, who, however, was not quick enough to prevent her getting into a lavatory, locking the door, and cutting her throat with a knife, which it supposed she surreptitiously became possessed of the previous evening. A medical man was at once sent for, but, on his arrival, she was dead. A verdict of "Suicide whilst insane" was returned. — Hastings and St Leonards Observer, Saturday 25 February 1888

A draper by profession who owned stores in St Leonards and Hastings and numerous rental properties, he was a Liberal Unionist who served as a town councillor from 1885 to 1888.

Edith and William welcomed their only child on 18 December 1889, Elsie Edith; the family appeared on the 1891 census as residents of 145 London Road in St Leonards, Sussex, complete with two servants.

The marriage between Edith and William lasted only a few years; William died on 3 May 1895 following an attack of acute bronchitis. His real estate was bequeathed to Edith and her daughter, providing them with a handsome income. Edith erected choir stalls in his memory in St Matthew's Church, Silverhill and a commemorative brass plaque is attached, facing the organ.

Edith and her daughter were still residents of 145 London Road in St Leonards when the 1901 census was conducted. She was remarried in St George’s Church, Bloomsbury, London, on 16 January 1907 to Alfred Benjamin Chibnall (b. 1840), a wealthy widowed farmer, landowner and parish councillor from Kempston, Bedford. He first married Helen Mayday Henman (1846-1905) and had eight children from that union.

This union is somewhat mysterious: they began living separate lives within two years when Edith started to use the name "Mrs Bowerman-Chibnall.” By 1910, Edith lived at Thorncliff in St Leonards and was already heavily involved in the women’s suffrage movement.  

Chibnall continued to reside in Kempston; he is omitted from Elsie’s correspondence, is missing from her photograph collections and did not accompany Edith and Elsie on their holidays. When Alfred died on 11 October 1929, he left his entire estate of £10,000 to male friends, and no mention of Edith or Elsie was made in his obituary.

Chibnall perhaps disapproved of his wife’s involvement in radical politics. By 1910, there were six societies in Hastings campaigning for women to have the parliamentary vote. Edith and Elsie joined the most militant, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in 1903 by Mrs Pankhurst in Manchester and spread throughout Britain. Edith was, in addition, an official of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and, during the university holidays, Edith joined a delegation to Parliament in 1910, which the police obstructed and which turned violent, resulting in 119 arrests and many injuries. She was injured on her second deputation in Parliament Square, London, on 22 November 1910.

91 : EDITH BOWERMAN CHIBNALL
"Of course, I was very roughly handled, like the rest of the deputation, but was not arrested ...... I went up to a policeman and said, "It is my intention to go to 10, Downing Street or die in the attempt."  His reply was to give me a blow on my head.  He then caught me by the hair at the back of my head and, flinging me aside, said, "Die then!"  I found afterwards that so much force had been used that my hair pins were bent double in my hair.  [Fortunately] my hair pns bent; had they been steel and broken, they would have pierced my head .......... My seal-skin coat was torn to ribbons." — Suffragettes: complaints against police (1911), The National Archives, London

Edith and Elsie boarded the Titanic at Southampton as first-class passengers (ticket number 113505, cabin E-33). They were travelling to New York in the first instance and then on to Cleveland, Ohio, where it was reported they were to be the guests of Mr T. W. Guthrie. Hastings and St Leonards Observer (18 May 1912) states that they intended to travel on to San Francisco and from there visit southeast Asia.

Mrs Chibnall and her daughter were both rescued in lifeboat 6.

Interviewed by the New York Herald shortly after stepping off the Carpathia, Mrs Chibnall reportedly stated that the impact with the iceberg was barely noticeable and that she and her daughter were rescued in one of the first three lifeboats to leave the Titanic. She also stated that whilst there was no panic among the first and second-class passengers, she did witness disorder amongst the steerage passengers, prompting Captain Smith to drive them away from the lifeboats with a revolver. She also claimed to witness a man thrown overboard who was drawn into a vortex of water caused by the explosion of the boilers, only to be shot out again and be rescued by a lifeboat. This was reprinted in the Hastings and St Leonards Observer on 18 May 1912.

Edith and Elsie completed their tour of the USA and Canada, where they were speakers at numerous suffrage conventions as planned before travelling to a relative of Edith’s in British Columbia, C. Fenn Pretty. Whether they completed their tour of Asia is uncertain.

Edith and her daughter Elsie remained fervent suffragettes, and both lived to see the first step at women’s suffrage in 1918 when British women over 30 were given the vote. She continued to work for charities and women’s causes throughout her life.

Edith Martha Chibnall (late Bowerman, née Barber) lived for the rest of her life in St Leonards, latterly at Lauriston, The Green; in her final months, she lived at Belfield Nursing Home, where she died aged 89 on 8 October 1953 from heart failure. Her estate was valued at £37939, 17s, 10d. She was laid to rest in Hastings Cemetery with her first husband, William Bowerman. When their daughter Elsie died in 1973, she was buried with them.