Monica Maurice

Helen Monica Maurice OBE (30 June 1908 – 20 September 1995) was an industrialist and Managing Director and Chairman of the Wolf Safety Lamp Company, Sheffield, and the first, and for 40 years the only, woman member of the Association of Mining Electrical Engineers.

Early life and education

Monica Maurice was born in Hucknall Torkard, near Nottingham, and brought up in the industrial north Midlands, the eldest of three daughters. Her father was William Maurice, founder of the Wolf Safety Lamp Company, a manufacturer of safety lamps for mining and quarrying; he had purchased the business rights from Friemann and Wolf of Zwickau, Saxony, Germany, in 1910.

She and her sisters were all educated at a pioneering co-educational preparatory school at Grindleford, Derbyshire, and at the independent school Bedales in Hampshire, where she studied from 1922 to 1927. As her son William wrote in her obituary, she had a talent for languages and design and continued her studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris, and at Hamburg University in Germany; 'even as a young girl there was a steely determination to be successful'. She completed her education at Mrs. Hoster's Commercial Training College, London, where she acquired 'a first-class knowledge of office management and qualified as a shorthand writer and typist in three languages'.

Career

Her long and distinguished career began in February 1930, first as secretary to her father at the company, where she also studied the technique of electric mine lamp design, the manufacture of alkaline storage batteries, and maintaining installations in efficient running order, among other aspects. She then trained in Germany with the former parent company, Friemann and Wolf, then the world's largest and most celebrated firm of mine lampmakers. For practical experience, she also visited the coal mines of Westphalia. She made several other visits to Germany throughout the 1930s, and on one occasion 'she wandered into a restricted zone and saw what she thought was a guidance system. This she reported to the British authorities on her return, but they were not interested. At the outbreak of war though, she was summoned to London for a three-day debriefing. All this experience, her knowledge of technical German and her familiarity with many of the industrial sites proved invaluable.'

In 1932 Monica was made a director and a departmental manager of her family's company, with responsibility for the planning and successful operation of vast numbers of lamps at collieries in every important coalfield in the UK. In 1934 she was elected a Director of the Wolf Safety Lamp Co. (Wm. Maurice), Ltd; she was later Managing Director from 1951 to 1979 and Chairman from 1951 to 1988. In 1930 she gave a paper on 'Mines and Miners in Art and Letters' (in French) at the Congres International des Mines, de la Metallurgie et de la Geologie Appliquee, at Liege, France, which was subsequently printed in the congress's Proceedings. In 1931 she attended the meetings of the International Conference of Illuminating Engineers during their first visit to England. In July 1935 she deputised for her father at another meeting of the same same organisation, held in Berlin and Karlsruhe, Germany, and played an active role in promoting arrangements for the establishment of an international standard of lighting for mines. She joined the Women's Engineering Society as a member in 1934, was the second woman (after Caroline Haslett) to be elected a Companion of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and in 1938 became the first – and until 1978 only – female member of the Association of Mining Electrical Engineers.

In 1947, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, she took part in a British intelligence overseas survey mission to Germany to determine the extent and subsequent recovery in certain specialised industries. According to her obituary, during this visit her group were reporting their arrival at a town near Cologne 'when an arrogant young British captain dismissed their request for accommodation and supplies. She came forward and quietly suggested that she might be forced to pull rank and suddenly rooms were available in the local hotel, as well as fuel and rations for the onward journey.'

In later life she lived in Ashford in the Water in the Peak District of Derbyshire, and died on 20 September 1995.

Personal life and interests

Monica Maurice married a Canadian doctor, Arthur Newton Jackson (1904–1985), on 18 June 1938, the Chapel of Our Lady on Rotherham Bridge in South Yorkshire; they had two sons and one daughter. At her wedding she wore a fashionable red silk gauze dress, a bold choice for the time, and which is now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

She had a passion for cars and planes, qualified as a pilot in early 1935, and was the first woman in Sheffield to obtain the 'A' certificate of the Air Ministry. In December 1935, The Woman Engineer noted that she 'is now practising advanced aerobatics as weekend recreation. Incidentally, she is a good horse-woman and keen on swimming and dancing.' Her obituary recorded that she also had an insatiable passion for cars and that by the 1930s she would race a friend to the York Aviation Flying Club at Sherburn in Elmet, North Yorkshire, of which she was a member.