Claudia Sydney Maia Parsons (15 August 1900 – 5 June 1998) was a British engineer, writer and traveller. One of the first three women to graduate as engineers in England, she also wrote several books and was the first woman to circumnavigate the world by car.

Early life and education

Parsons was born in the

Shimla Shimla (; ; also known as Simla, List of renamed Indian cities and states#Himachal Pradesh, the official name until 1972) is the capital and the largest city of the States and union territories of India, northern Indian state of Himachal Prade ...

hill station,

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

in 1900 into an Anglo-Indian family. Her father was in the Indian Army and her mother came from a family with generations of employment in the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

. At the age of two Claudia and her older sister Betty were taken to Britain to be cared for by their grandmother and aunt in Guildford. Their mother returned to India and had a third daughter, Avis. Parsons attended

Tormead School Tormead School is an independent day school for girls aged 4–18 years old in Guildford, Surrey, England. It comprises a reception, prep school, senior school and sixth form. It was founded in 1905 and is a member of the Headmasters' and Hea ...

, an independent girls school in

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

. She attended

Guilford Technical Community College Guilford Technical Community College (Guilford Tech, "G-Tech", or GTCC) is a public community college in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina. It is the fourth largest institution in the North Carolina Community College System and the largest in ...

, where she completed a course on the auto-cycle engine. She read about the formation of the

Women's Engineering Society The Women's Engineering Society is a United Kingdom professional learned society and networking body for women engineers, scientists and technologists. It was the first professional body set up for women working in all areas of engineering, pred ...

, and went with her mother to meet the organisation's Secretary,

Caroline Haslett Dame Caroline Harriet Haslett DBE, JP (17 August 1895 – 4 January 1957) was an English electrical engineer, electricity industry administrator and champion of women's rights. She was the first secretary of the Women's Engineering Society a ...

, who alerted them about a technical course at

Loughborough University Loughborough University (abbreviated as ''Lough'' or ''Lboro'' for post-nominals) is a public research university in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. It has been a university since 1966, but it dates back to 1909, when L ...

. During World War I, Loughborough had served as an instructional factory for the Ministry of Munitions. In 1919 Parsons enrolled on an automobile engineering course at

. She was one of four women, "lady engineers", who were studying engineering out of three hundred students, and graduated in 1922. Her fellow students were Dorothea Travers (one of the first women to be elected to the

Institution of Automobile Engineers HORIBA MIRA Ltd. (formerly the Motor Industry Research Association) is an automotive engineering and development consultancy company headquartered near Nuneaton in Warwickshire, United Kingdom. It provides product engineering, research, testing, ...

), Patience Erskine and the mechanical engineer

Verena Holmes Verena Winifred Holmes (23 June 1889 – 20 February 1964) was an English mechanical engineer and multi-field inventor, the first woman member elected to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (1924) and the Institution of Locomotive Engineers ...

. After graduation, Parsons was accepted as a probationary graduate of the

Career

Parsons became a chauffeur-companion and drove clients across Europe, the Far East, India and America. This included driving the American heiress Dolly Rodewald through Bosnian forests filled with howling wolves in a 1930 Ford A model in the middle of a huge snowstorm. In 1938 Parsons bought a

Studebaker Studebaker was an American wagon and automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana, with a building at 1600 Broadway, Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 as the Studebaker Brothers M ...

car in Delhi, nicknamed it ''Baker'' and drove with American anthropologist Kilton Stewart through

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...

and

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

. She is recognised as being the first woman to circumnavigate the world in a car. Parsons was a member of the

and submitted a number of articles to the journal ''The Woman Engineer'', including 'What not to do when motoring abroad'. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Parsons studied to become a

munitions Ammunition (informally ammo) is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. Ammunition is both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines) and the component parts of other weap ...

worker with

, and eventually worked as a machinist and a Munitions Factory inspector. After being released from the Freeman's factory after she defended an employee, Parsons worked for the Ministry of Labour until 1949 during which time she wrote an analysis of the engineering trade as a training course for engineering officers.

Publications

Parsons wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, ''Brighter Bondage'' in 1935. The Women's Engineering Society review of ''Brighter Bondage'' reads “so many of the adventures ring true that one is inclined to speculate as to which bits are purely imaginary. Certainly most of it is less improbable than many of the wild tales we have heard from her". An autobiography, ''Vagabondage'' followed in 1941. This was followed by ''China Mending and Restoration'' (1963) based on her later career in china restoration. Her final autobiography, ''Century Story'', was published in 1995. Her cousin, the diplomat

Sir Anthony Parsons Sir Anthony Derrick Parsons (9 September 1922 – 12 August 1996) was a British diplomat, ambassador to Iran at the time of the Iranian Revolution and Permanent Representative to the UN at the time of the Falklands War. Career Anthony Par ...

wrote the introduction. Parsons never married, and when she was asked why she responded that men "very often threatened to stop me doing what I wanted to do".

Commemoration

Claudia Parsons Lecture

has held a lecture in her honour annually since 2014. 2014 -

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2015 -

Kate Bellingham Katherine Bellingham (born 1963)Royal Society of Chemistry
– s ...

2016 -

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2017 -

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2018 -

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2019 -

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Hall of Residence

has named a new hall of residence after Claudia Parsons, with the first intake of students in September 2019.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Parsons, Claudia 1900 births 1998 deaths 20th-century British engineers British women engineers Alumni of Loughborough University 20th-century women engineers Women's Engineering Society Chauffeurs People from Shimla British travel writers British women travel writers 20th-century British women writers