Papers of Lucy Anne Evelyn Streatfeild (nee Deane), factory inspector and social worker

Scope and Content

Photocopies of business diaries re factory inspection, 1893-7, and of papers relating to commissions of enquiry into concentration camps in Boer War and WAAC in First World War.

Administrative / Biographical History

Lucy Anne Evelyn Deane was born in Madras, India, in 1865, where her father was posted with the British army.

She was awarded diplomas from the National Health Society in 1892-3, and became a sanitary inspector of workshops and factories that employed women on behalf of the vestry of St Mary Abbots, Kensington, in 1893. L A E Deane was appointed a factory inspector by the Home Office in 1894, a position she undertook until her resignation in 1906 due to ill health.

In 1901 Deane was appointed a member of the Commission of Enquiry into Concentration Camps in the Boer War and was critical of the running of the camps.

Deane married Major Granville Edward Stewart Streatfeild in 1911. In the same year she was appointed as Chief Woman Organiser of women outdoor staff of the National Health Insurance Commission. She was also a member of the Departmental Committee on the Linen Trade in Ireland. In 1912 Mrs Streatfeild became a member of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service. During the 1914-18 war Lucy Streatfeild served on the Commission of Enquiry into the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, and she was also involved in the Kent Committee of Women's Land Army. She was awarded the CBE in 1918, and subsequently served as a Justice of the Peace and member of Kent County Council. She died in Kent in 1950.

Reference: Dictionary of National Biography.

Access Information

This collection is available to researchers by appointment at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. See http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/using/

Other Finding Aids

Custodial History

The collection was deposited with the Centre in 1974 by the Howard League for Penal Reform. Copies of the records were taken, and they were subsequently returned to the Howard League in 1975.

The original Streatfeild papers are kept at the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics, where they were deposited in 1986.