Late, great engineers: Caroline Haslett - a life electrifying

There probably aren’t many images of women engineers in London’s National Portrait Gallery, but somewhere in the archive there’s a bromide print of Dame Caroline Harriet Haslett. Produced by Elliott & Fry, the undated portrait shows a young woman in three-quarter profile, seated at a desk looking down at some papers. The caption informs us that “Haslett first worked as a secretary in an electrical firm in 1911, reaching management level during the First World War. After the war she qualified as an electrical engineer, and in 1919 became the first Secretary of the Women’s Engineering Society, editing Woman Engineer and the Electrical Age.” It goes on to explain that she was founder and director of the Electrical Association for Women (EAW) – “advocating the importance of using electricity to reduce domestic chores” – and would become the first female vice-president of the RSA, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.