Agatha Louisa Chapman was a British-born economist at the Canadian Bureau of National Statistics from 1942 to 1947.
15 Facts About Agatha Chapman
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Agatha Chapman was the only woman to attend the first United Nations Sub-Committee on National Income Statistics in 1945, which led to the United Nations System of National Accounts.
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Agatha Chapman was born in England in 1907, and immigrated to Canada in 1918.
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Agatha Chapman's father had been a high court judge in India, while her uncle William Johnston Tupper had been Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba.
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Agatha Chapman was the great-granddaughter of Sir Charles Tupper, a Father of Confederation, premier of Nova Scotia from 1864 to 1867 and, briefly in 1896, sixth prime minister of Canada.
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Agatha Chapman was one of the first, if not the first, woman economist hired by the fledgling central bank, which itself had only been operating five years.
7.
Agatha Chapman was the only woman to attend the first United Nations Sub-Committee on National Income Statistics in 1945, which led to the United Nations System of National Accounts.
8.
Agatha Chapman so impressed economist Richard Stone with her grasp of national accounting that he insisted her name be added to the official report of the meeting thus recording her as the only female contributor to attend the first meeting of that Sub-Committee.
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Agatha Chapman admitted to being a member of the Canadian Soviet Friendship Council, though this was nothing unusual at the time as the Russians had been viewed as close allies during the war, deserving Canadian support.
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Agatha Chapman was formally charged on 18 September 1946, and surrendered to police the next day to be arraigned before a magistrate and released on $2,000 bail.
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Agatha Chapman had hoped to get back to working on Canada's national accounts but this was not to be.
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Agatha Chapman went on to spend three years at Cambridge University when it was the epicentre of postwar national accounting.
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Agatha Chapman returned to Montreal to work in a left-wing research consultancy with another former Bank of Canada employee and fellow exonerated accused spy, Eric Adams.
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Agatha Chapman's income dwindled and, suffering from arthritis, she committed suicide on 17 October 1963, aged 56 in Montreal.
15.
Agatha Chapman jumped to her death from her Bishop Street apartment.