page_title: Monica Maurice
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Monica Maurice / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Heeley - Wolf Safety Lamp Company
context_page_description: Helen Monica Maurice OBE was an industrialist and Managing Director and Chairman of the Wolf Safety Lamp Company, Sheffield, and the first, and for 40 years the only, woman member of the Association of Mining Electrical Engineers. She was known as “the Lady of the Lamp” in the coal fields of Yorkshire.
context_section_description: Her long and distinguished career began in February 1930, first as secretary to her father at the company, where she also studied the technique of electric mine lamp design, the manufacture of alkaline storage batteries, and maintaining installations in efficient running order, among other aspects. In 1931 she was apprenticed as an engineer in Germany with the former parent company, Friemann and Wolf, then the world's largest and most celebrated firm of mine lampmakers. She trained in the drawing office, laboratory, machine shops and foundry, among other departments. For practical experience, she also visited the coal mines of Westphalia.  She made several other visits to Germany throughout the 1930s, and on one occasion 'she wandered into a restricted zone and saw what she thought was a guidance system. This she reported to the British authorities on her return, but they were not interested. At the outbreak of war though, she was summoned to London for a three-day debriefing. All this experience, her knowledge of technical German and her familiarity with many of the industrial sites proved invaluable.'
  In 1932 Monica was made a director and a departmental manager of her family's company, with responsibility for the planning and successful operation of vast numbers of lamps at collieries in every important coalfield in the UK. This was the start of a career that continued over sixty years until her retirement in 1992. In 1934 she was elected a Director of the Wolf Safety Lamp Co. (Wm. Maurice), Ltd; she was later Managing Director from 1951 to 1979 and Chairman from 1951 to 1988. In 1930 she gave a paper on 'Mines and Miners in Art and Letters' (in French) at the Congres International des Mines, de la Metallurgie et de la Geologie Appliquee, at Liege, France, which was subsequently printed in the congress's Proceedings. In 1931 she attended the meetings of the International Conference of Illuminating Engineers during their first visit to England. In July 1935 she deputised for her father at another meeting of the same organisation, held in Berlin and Karlsruhe, Germany, and played an active role in promoting arrangements for the establishment of an international standard of lighting for mines. She joined the Women's Engineering Society (WES) as a member in 1935 and organised the fourteenth annual conference for WES in 1936 in Sheffield. She was the second woman (after Caroline Haslett) to be elected a Companion of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and in 1938 became the first – and until 1978 only – female member of the Association of Mining Electrical Engineers.
  During World War II, while production at the Wolf factory continued, Monica served on the British Standards Committee for mine lamp bulbs, personal safety and safety footwear, along with standardisation of screw threads during wartime. In 1947, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, she took part in a British intelligence overseas survey mission to Germany to determine the extent and subsequent recovery in certain specialised industries. According to her obituary, during this visit her group were reporting their arrival at a town near Cologne 'when an arrogant young British captain dismissed their request for accommodation and supplies. She came forward and quietly suggested that she might be forced to pull rank and suddenly rooms were available in the local hotel, as well as fuel and rations for the onward journey.'
  In 1975 Monica Maurice was appointed OBE. In later life she lived in Ashford in the Water in the Peak District of Derbyshire, and died on 20 September 1995.
  Her son John Jackson became Chairman of the company and two grandsons, Miles Jackson and Alex Jackson, also work for Wolf Safety.
caption: The Wolf Safety Lamp Company in Heeley
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