Claudia Parsons


Claudia Parsons 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 hill station, British India in 1900. She went to Tormead School, an independent girls school in Surrey. She attended Guilford Technical Community College, where she completed a course on the auto-cycle engine. She read about the formation of the Women's Engineering Society, and went with her mother to meet Caroline Haslett, who alerted them about a technical course at Loughborough University. During World War I, Loughborough had served as an instructional factory for the Ministry of Munitions. In 1919 she enrolled on an automobile engineering course at Loughborough University. 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, Patience Erskine and the mechanical engineer Verena Holmes. After graduation, Parsons was accepted as a probationary graduate of the Institution of Automobile Engineers.

Career

Parsons became a chauffeur-companion and drove clients across Europe, the Far East, India and America. In 1938 she bought a Studebaker car in Delhi, nicknamed it Baker and drove with American anthropologist Kilton Stewart through Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Tunisia. She is recognised as being the first woman to circumnavigate the world in a car.
Parsons was a member of the Women's Engineering Society and submitted a number of articles to the journal The Woman Engineer, including 'What not to do when motoring abroad'.
During World War II Parsons studied to become a munitions worker with Verena Holmes, 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.
She wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Brighter Bondage and an autobiography Vagabondage, followed by China Mending and Restoration based on her later career in china restoration. Her final autobiography, Century Story, was published in 1995. Her cousin, the diplomat Sir Anthony Parsons 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 - Maggie Aderin-Pocock
2015 - Kate Bellingham
2016 - Helen Czerski
2017 - Emily Grossman
2018 - Jess Wade
2019 - Dr Suzanne Imber

Hall of Residence

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