25 Facts About Caroline Haslett

Dame Caroline Harriet Haslett DBE, JP was an English electrical engineer, electricity industry administrator and champion of women's rights.

Caroline Haslett was the first secretary of the Women's Engineering Society and the founder and editor of its journal, The Woman Engineer.

Caroline Haslett became the first director of the Electrical Association for Women in 1925.

In 1919 Haslett left Cochran's to become the first secretary of the Women's Engineering Society and first editor of The Woman Engineer magazine, which she continued to edit until 1932.

The Institution of Electrical Engineers and the Electrical Development Association had turned the proposal down, but Caroline Haslett saw its possibilities.

Caroline Haslett was very enthused by the concept and persuaded Lady Katharine Parsons, then president of WES, to host a meeting to discuss it.

Caroline Haslett was a member of the Women's Provisional Club for Professional and Businesswomen alongside architect Gertrude Leverkus, Eleanor Rathbone, Dr Louisa Martindale and Lady Rhondda.

Caroline Haslett was an executive member of the Six Point Group, founded by Lady Rhondda in 1921, to press for changes in the law of the United Kingdom on six points of equality for women: political, occupational, moral, social, economic and legal.

Caroline Haslett remained secretary of WES until 1929, when she became honorary secretary, and she was the society's president from 1940 to 1941.

Caroline Haslett was the sole British woman delegate to the World Power Conference in Berlin in 1930 and only woman of any nationality to speak at the event.

Caroline Haslett was a member of the Women's Consultative Committee and the Advisory Council of the Appointments Department, Ministry of Labour; a member of the Correspondence Committee on Women's Work of the International Labour Office; and the first woman to be made a Companion of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.

In 1932 the National Safety First Association extended its activities to home safety, and Caroline Haslett was appointed as chair of the Home Safety Committee, a post she held until 1936.

Caroline Haslett became the first woman vice-president of the association in 1937.

Caroline Haslett served as vice-president and first female chairman of the British Electrical Development Association.

Caroline Haslett represented the UK government on business missions in the US, Canada and Scandinavia, and after the Second World War she took a leading role in conferences organised for women in Germany by the British and American authorities.

Caroline Haslett was an effective networker and used invitations to lunch as a starting point for many useful working relationships.

Caroline Haslett threw a lunch in her honour at the Forum Club in 1942.

Caroline Haslett took a personal interest in the collier and its crew and her photograph hung in the officers' mess.

On 12 December 1952, Caroline Haslett wrote to the editor of The Times on the subject of the Great Smog extolling the benefits of an all-electric house over the visible pollutants caused by burning coal in the home.

Caroline Haslett edited The EAW Electrical Handbook for the Electrical Association for Women, first published in 1934, which went into seven editions by 1961.

Caroline Haslett was the author of numerous journal articles and conference papers.

Caroline Haslett was elected a Companion of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1932.

In 1945, Caroline Haslett's portrait was created by Ethel Leontine Gabain as part of a series commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee, it is held by the Imperial War Museum.

Caroline Haslett retired to live at the home of her sister, Mrs Rosalind Lilian Messenger, at Bungay, in Suffolk, where she died from a coronary thrombosis on 4 January 1957, aged 61.

The National Portrait Gallery hold 7 portraits of Caroline Haslett, including a 1949 oil by Sir Gerald Kelly, put on display in Room 28 on Floor 2 in the 2023 redisplay and she features in the gallery's online walking tour of Mayfair.