Lady Donaldson, 82, Lord Mayor (Not Lady, Please!) of London - The New York Times The New York Times World |Lady Donaldson, 82, Lord Mayor (Not Lady, Please!) of London Search Continue reading the main story Lady Donaldson, the first woman to be lord mayor of London in the 800-year history of the office, died on Saturday at a hospice near her family home in Lymington, England. She was 82. For one term in 1983, Lady Donaldson held the highest title of the City of London. In 1981 and 1982, she was also the first woman to be the City's sheriff, a position established 500 years before that of lord mayor. The ancient City is not London, although it is surrounded by London. Established by a royal charter in the 12th century, it is now famous as England's financial center. By tradition, when the queen makes a state visit there, the lord mayor, carrying a sword, meets her at the city limit. The monarch gently pushes aside the proffered sword to signify acceptance of the lord mayor's sovereignty.

After being sheriff and lord mayor, Lady Donaldson went on to lead organizations concerned with cancer and the ethics of in-vitro fertilization, to serve on Britain's press complaints commission and to be chairwoman of a committee overseeing the ombudsman appointed to supervise the banking industry. Advertisement Continue reading the main story No women have succeeded Lady Donaldson as lord mayor. Because she was married to a baron, she was called lady rather than her own title of dame, which goes with the lord mayor's job. She also insisted on being called lord mayor, rather than lady mayor, and fined anybody who feminized her title a pound. ''The fact that I'm a woman is purely biological,'' she said in an interview with The Associated Press in 1983. ''If it encourages other women to take more positions of responsibility, then it'll have achieved something, but I'm not a feminist.'' Dorothy Mary Warwick was born in Wickham, Hampshire, on Aug. 29, 1921. Her father, Reginald George Gale Warwick, was an ironmonger. Her mother, Dorothy Alice Warwick, was a schoolteacher and the first woman to serve on her local governing council.

Miss Warwick left high school to spend a year teaching English in Paris. On her return, she began training in Oxford to become a nurse. In London during World War II, she treated soldiers returning from Dunkirk and victims of the blitz. Toward the end of the war, she met John Donaldson, a lieutenant colonel in the army, through his mother, whom Miss Warwick cared for in the hospital. They were married in 1945. Her husband, an eminent lawyer and judge, was appointed master of the rolls, one of the highest-ranking posts in Britain's judiciary. ''We've always led two separate lives -- perhaps that's why our marriage works so well,'' Lady Donaldson said to The New York Times in 1983. ''We've always got something to talk about.'' In addition to her husband, Lady Donaldson is survived by a son, two daughters and six grandchildren. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Before becoming sheriff, Lady Donaldson was the first woman to be a City alderman. Another woman, Edwina Coven, was elected 17 months earlier, but was vetoed by her fellow aldermen.

It was the Court of Aldermen that elected Lady Donaldson lord mayor after she had been nominated by the City's livery companies, a mixture of charitable trusts, gentlemen's clubs and guardians of craft standards and training. Lady Donaldson shunned the lord mayor's traditional garb, as her obituary in The Daily Telegraph yesterday pointed up. ''If I were 20 years younger and considerably slimmer I might have considered wearing knee breeches like the men,'' she said. ''I hope to do better than the men who wear a suit under the robes. I'll only need a bra and slip.'' Dame Mary Donaldson - Telegraph Dame Mary Donaldson 12:02AM BST 07 Oct 2003 Dame Mary Donaldson, who died on Saturday aged 82, had a remarkable career in public service and was the first - and so far only - woman to become Lord Mayor of London. Her election, in 1983, as the first female Lord Mayor in the 800-year history of the office generated considerable interest in the media. But Mary Donaldson always disclaimed the mantle of the feminist. "Of course there are things which men can do better than women," she remarked.

"But equally, women have attributes which men can never possess. Personally, I find it difficult not to become over-involved in issues concerning people, whereas a man is more likely to be detached. But perhaps a little emotion at times is no bad thing." She called herself "Lord Mayor", disdaining to use a feminine title. Those who incorrectly referred to her as the "Lady Mayoress" were "fined" £1, paid into a collection box for the NSPCC. As for dress, "If I were 20 years younger and considerably slimmer I might have considered wearing knee breeches like the men . . . I hope to do better than the men who wear a suit under the robes. I'll only need a bra and slip and, when it is very hot, pop socks." Related Articles Sir Hugh Bidwell 18 Feb 2014 Dame Mary (she was appointed GBE in 1983) took as her theme for her year's term of office "It's people that matter". Like all Lord Mayors, it was her duty to hold banquets for visiting heads of state; among those she entertained were the Emir of Bahrain and President Mitterrand.

She also travelled widely, promoting British exports. She was born Dorothy Mary Warwick at Wickham, Hampshire, on August 29 1921; her father was an ironmonger, her mother a schoolteacher who was also the first female member of her local council. Mary later recalled: "I was taught that everything had to be earned, a lesson which has always stood me in good stead." At the age of 16 she left Portsmouth High School for Girls to spend a year in Paris teaching English; on her return to England she began training in Oxford to become a nurse. After she moved to Middlesex Hospital, London, her patients included soldiers returning from Dunkirk and victims of the Blitz. She also cared for burned airmen at Stoke Mandeville. Towards the end of the war she met John Donaldson, then a lieutenant-colonel serving with the Army, and later to become Master of the Rolls. They were introduced by his mother, who was being treated in Middlesex Hospital. Donaldson took Mary to the theatre, and when they married in Hampshire on his next home leave in 1945, the bride wore a borrowed wedding dress and carried a bouquet of bronze chrysanthemums.

Mary Donaldson once said that she was "never one for playing bridge and drinking coffee"; and throughout her early married life she combined bringing up her three children with voluntary work, supporting charities such as the Red Cross. In 1960 she was appointed a JP for Inner London, serving until 1965 on the Inner London Juvenile Court Panel. It was after her children had grown up that Mary Donaldson decided that she wished to stand for election to her local authority, which in her case was the Corporation of London. When she raised the matter in the City, however, the response was not encouraging: no woman had been elected in 800 years, although there was nothing to prevent her trying. Undaunted, she stood successfully in 1966 for the ward of Farringdon Without, which embraced her home in the Temple, thus becoming the first woman to win election to the City's Court of Common Council. In 1975 she became the first woman alderman (17 months earlier, another woman, Mrs Edwina Coven, had been elected but had then been vetoed by her fellow aldermen).

Mary Donaldson went on to be the first woman Sheriff of the City of London, in 1981 and 1982, before being elected Lord Mayor in the following year. But local government was not the only arena in which Mary Donaldson chose to serve: she also had a particular interest in health and education. From 1967 to 1969 she was chairman of the Women's National Cancer Control Campaign; and she was chairman of the Interim Licensing Authority for Human In Vitro Fertilisation and Embryology from 1985 to 1991. She was president of the British Association of Cancer United Patients (Bacup) from 1985 to 1993. She was vice-president of the British Cancer Council in 1970; a member of the North East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board (1970-74); of the North East Thames Regional Health Authority (1976-81); and a governor of the London Hospital from 1971 to 1974, and of Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children from 1978 to 1980.

She was a member of the Inner London Education Authority (1968-71) and a governor of the City of London School for Girls (1971-83), of Berkhamsted Schools (1976-80) and of Charterhouse (1980-85). Mary Donaldson served on the committee of the Royal Humane Society (1968-83). From 1991 to 1995 she was a member of the Press Complaints Commission, and she was chairman of the Council of the Banking Ombudsman from 1985 to 1994. She was vice-president of Counsel and Care for the Elderly from 1980. She was a liveryman of the Gardeners' Company and a member of the Guild of Freemen. She was an honorary Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. In 1984 she was appointed Grand Officier, Ordre National du Merite. Mary Donaldson, who enjoyed gardening, sailing and skiing, was a staunch support to her family and friends. She and Lord Donaldson were a devoted couple, and he survives her with their son and two daughters.

Obituary: Dame Mary Donaldson | Politics | The Guardian Dame Mary Donaldson Tuesday 7 October 2003 21.17 EDT First published on Tuesday 7 October 2003 21.17 EDT Share on Messenger Close "It's people that matter", the slogan adopted by Dame Mary Donaldson when she was elected as the Lord Mayor of London, was, in reality, the principle that provided the foundation to her long and committed lifetime of public service. She was proud to be non-party political, and although she achieved many "firsts" as a woman, she was disdainful of the idea that she might have done so in the interests of being a trail-blazing feminist. Dame Mary, who has died aged 82, wanted to make the world a better place, and her extraordinary record of public appointments was a measure of the extent to which she was prepared to bend her exceptional energy and interest. She was gratified by her most significant historical achievement as the first - and still, to date, the only - woman Lord Mayor of London.

Yet public recognition mattered less to her than, for example, the work she did to help establish the cancer charity Bacup (British Association of Cancer United Patients), of which she was president for eight years. Before that she had been chairman (she refused to call herself "chairwoman" or "Lady Mayoress" and at Guildhall even fined people in aid of charity if they incorrectly addressed her) of the Women's National Cancer Control Campaign from 1967 to 1969 and then vice president of the British Cancer Council. When she herself subsequently developed the disease and underwent a double mastectomy, she intensified her efforts to encourage other women to seek checkups and to try to help remove the fear and stigma attached to cancer. Born in Hampshire, she was the daughter of an ironmonger and his schoolteacher wife. Mother showed daughter the way to do things by becoming the first woman elected to her local council, so it was perhaps little surprise that Mary would never regard any hurdle as too high. She went to Portsmouth High school for girls, an achieving school, and resolved to train as a nurse.

She left school at 16 and, after a year teaching English in Paris, trained and then qualified as a state-registered nurse in 1946. Throughout the second world war she worked at the Wingfield Morris orthopaedic hospital (now the Nuffield), Oxford, and at the Middlesex hospital in London. Her work involved treating civilian victims of bombing, wounded soldiers who had made it home from Dunkirk, and pilots. It was an experience that would inform her later career. In 1945 she married John Donaldson, whom she met when his mother had been a patient at the Middlesex; he would become one of the country's most eminent judges. As Sir John Donaldson, he was Master of the Rolls from 1982 to 1992, and before that achieved some public notoriety as president of the National Industrial Relations Court, a controversial body established under the Heath government, which arguably exacerbated the poor relations between the government and the unions. He is now Lord Donaldson of Lymington. Mary Donaldson had three children and was utterly committed to family life.

"I am old-fashioned enough," she observed once, "to believe that a child needs two parents." However, this didn't stop her from a little light charity work, and in 1960 she became a magistrate and a member of the Inner London Juvenile Court Panel. That led to her decision to stand for the Farringdon Without ward on the common council of the City of London - her local authority. Her successful election made her the first woman in 800 years to sit as a member of the corporation. She applied herself with customary diligence, became involved in committee work and took on a huge range of public commitments. She was a school governor of a succession of schools - the City of London school for girls, Berkhamsted schools and Charterhouse school - a member of several regional hospital boards, and a governor of the London hospital and the Great Ormond Street children's hospital. From 1968 to 1971, she was the only non-party political member of the Inner London Education Authority, a position she found frustrating because of the intensely political nature of the body.

In 1975 she became the first woman to take her place as an alderman of the City of London, and, in 1981, the first woman in 1,200 years to become the Sheriff of London. This was a post she had to take on in order to become Lord Mayor in 1983. She had a successful and lively year in the post, which she upheld in traditional terms. She did not wear the classic medieval knee breeches, however - although she said she would have done so if she had been a bit slimmer - and once admitted that she did not get too hot in her Lord Mayor's robes because she only wore a bra, a slip and pop socks underneath. A more difficult job was to follow. She chaired the Interim Licensing Authority for Human In Vitro Fertilisation and Embryology for six years from 1985, handling the challenging moral issues that arose from research in this area. She then became a member of the Press Complaints Commission from 1991 to 1996. She was garlanded with awards and honorary doctorates, and was made a GBE in 1983.

She is survived by her husband, her son and two daughters. · Dorothy Mary Donaldson, philanthropist, born August 29 1921; died October 4 2003 Dame Mary Donaldson Wickham Hampshire What We Do Dame Mary Donaldson, born in Wickham, was the first female Lord Mayor of the City of London in 800 years Dame Mary Donaldson was a remarkable woman. She was born in her father’s ironmongers shop in Wickham on 29th August 1921 and baptised Dorothy Mary but was called Mary for most of her life. Her father Reginald George Warwick was an ironmonger and her mother, also called Dorothy, nee Bennett, was a local school teacher. Her father came from Wickham but her mother was from Preston in Lancashire and seemed to have been very influential in Dame Mary’s life. She was herself a politically motivated woman, becoming the first female member of her local council. Dame Mary Donaldson was taught by her parents that everything in life had to earned, it was advice that would guide her through the rest of her life. Dame Mary Donaldson.

First female Lord Mayor of the City of London Dame Mary Donaldson was educated at Portsmouth High School for Girls and when she left in 1937 at the age of sixteen, she travelled to Paris to spend a year there, teaching English.. During 1937 Europe was in political turmoil and one wonders what effect that had on the young Mary. On her return to England she went to Oxford to train as a nurse and on qualifying went to work at the Middlesex Hospital in London. She nursed in London through WWII, staying there through the Blitz to nurse the injured and of course nursed those soldiers returning home to England. She also nursed at Stoke Mandeville, where she cared for airmen who had suffered terrible burns. Towards the end of the war she met John Donaldson, then a lieutenant-colonel serving with the Army, and later to become Master of the Rolls. He was visiting his mother who was being treated in Middlesex Hospital. Donaldson took Mary out on a date and in 1945 they married in Hampshire. Once married, Mary stopped nursing and brought up her three children. She continued to involve herself in charity work, in particular work for the Red Cross.

Her compassion for others remained a driving force in her and in 1960 she was appointed a JP for Inner London, serving until 1965 on the Inner London Juvenile Court Panel. The first woman ever to win election to the City of London’s Court of Common Council It seems as if her mother’s political streak coursed through her veins for when her children had grown up, Mary Donaldson decided that she wished to stand for election to her local authority, the Corporation of London. This was an enormous challenge to the powers that be. Incredibly no woman had been elected in 800 years. One can imagine the opposition of many in the City. She lived in the Temple area of the City and in 1966 she stood successfully for the ward of Farringdon Without, thus becoming the first woman ever, to win election to the City’s Court of Common Council. In 1975 she became the first woman alderman and then in 1981 and 1982, went on to become the first female Sheriff of the City of London, before being elected Lord Mayor in 1983.

Dame Mary Donaldson never stopped being a nurse at heart though and continued an interest in both health and education. From 1967 to 1969 she was chairman of the Women’s National Cancer Control Campaign and she was chairman of the Interim Licensing Authority for Human In Vitro Fertilisation and Embryology from 1985 to 1991. She was president of the British Association of Cancer United Patients (Bacup) from 1985 to 1993 and governor of many schools including the City of London School for Girls. Mary took as her theme for her year in office ‘It’s People that Matter’ Dame Mary Donaldson died in 2003. What a remarkable woman and inspiration to others. From a humble ironmongers shop in Wickham to first female Lord Mayor of London, what an achievement. The Warwick Lane Shopping Centre The building where Dame Mary Donaldson was born, now Warwick Lane Shopping Centre You can visit the building where Dame Mary Donaldson nee Warwick was born. It is now the Warwick Lane Shopping Centre in Wickham,with individual craft and antique shops.

Sit and enjoy a coffee at the Wickham Coffee House which has the bonus of free WIFI. The coffee shop website has some great old photos of Wickham. To find out more visit the Warwick Lane website . The centre manager, Steve Manning is hoping to get funding to have a permanent blue plaque placed on the building, commemorating the birth place of Dame Mary Donaldson, a fitting tribute to an inspirational Hampshire woman. Lord Donaldson of Lymington - Telegraph Lord Donaldson of Lymington 12:02AM BST 02 Sep 2005 Lord Donaldson of Lymington, who died on Wednesday aged 84, was Master of the Rolls from 1982 to 1992 and the most open and approachable senior judge of his day. Before his appointment as head of the civil judiciary, Donaldson had gained extensive experience on the ill-defined borderline between the law and politics. In the early 1970s he was in the spotlight as president of the controversial Industrial Relations Tribunal, when he coolly parried criticisms from trades unionists and Labour MPs.

In 1976 he presided over the trial of the Maguires, whose convictions were quashed years later, leading to criticism of Donaldson in an inquiry. The popular myth grew that Donaldson was biased in favour of the establishment. Yet many Conservative lawyers found him too brash, and his approach to civil liberties led one radical lawyer to observe in 1982 that "he has a passion for justice". His brisk and confident courtroom manner annoyed some barristers who thought him too quick on the uptake, but his demeanour stemmed from a deeply-felt commitment to sweep away delays in the justice system. He would deal directly with the press, which he skilfully used in his campaign for more judges. His attitude towards politics was, he said, "much the same as a monk towards sex; nostalgic memories of youthful indiscretion, a frank acknowledgement of its attractions, an unshakeable conviction that I could do better than those currently engaged in it, but an acceptance that it will never be for me until I go to a far better world". The son of a Hampshire gynaecologist, John Francis Donaldson was born on October 6 1920.

He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity, Cambridge, where he immersed himself in student union politics. Related Articles Gerry Conlon 22 Jun 2014 He was chairman of the Federation of University Conservative and Unionist Associations, and Secretary of the Cambridge Union two years after Ted Heath. "If I had been asked at that stage about my future career," Donaldson later admitted, "I would have said I wanted to become a Conservative politician and then Prime Minister." It was partly with that aim in mind that he became a nominally Independent, though in fact Conservative, member of Croydon Borough Council, a role highlighted by opponents during the NIRC era to portray him as a Tory party hack. Donaldson's 2.2 may have reflected his extra-mural activities, but he was never thought of as a brilliant legal thinker. He was acute rather than profound, given to efficiency rather than contemplation, and his judgments were more down-to-earth than elegant. After Cambridge in 1941 he was commissioned into the Guards Armoured Divisional Signals, serving with them after D-Day and then with the military government of Schleswig-Holstein before leaving the Army as a 25-year-old lieutenant-colonel.

He met his wife-to-be, Mary Warwick, at the Middlesex Hospital where he was visiting a relative and she was working as a nurse, and they married soon after the war. After thinking of accountancy, he read for the Bar and was called by the Middle Temple as a Harmsworth scholar in 1946. Cases arising from accidents in the London Docks kept Donaldson busy during his early years in practice, and from there he moved into the more esoteric field of commercial law, quickly acquiring all the attributes of a high-flier. As junior counsel to the Registrar of Restrictive Trading, he edited the eighth edition of Lowndes and Rudolf on General Average and the York-Antwerp Rules - a key text for practitioners, if not a page-turner.

During the tribunal on the Admiralty spy John Vassall, at which he assisted the Attorney General, he uttered the arresting remark: "It is a very different piece of information that a man was wearing women's clothes in the West End." He served on the General Council of the Bar in his thirties (a reliable barometer for future success), took Silk in 1961 and became the youngest High Court judge in 1966 while still in his mid-forties. Yet he was still largely unknown outside the legal profession until he was hoisted aboard the Heath government's controversial and ill-fated Industrial Relations Tribunal (NIRC) in 1971. As its first and last president, Donaldson became the most written-about judge in the country, but he proved remarkably comfortable in the public eye and calm under fire. To trades unionists, he was Heath's judicial union-bashing stick. They nicknamed him "Black Jack" and said he had "the fastest gun in the west". Michael Foot, who, as employment secretary, shut the court when Labour returned to power in 1974, spoke of Donaldson's "trigger-happy judicial finger".

Lawyers, however, found him a fair-minded judge trying to apply the law laid down by parliament. Donaldson wanted recognition for this impartiality. He often went out of his way to give unions a fair crack of the whip, and tried to be as informal as possible, wearing plain clothes instead of a wig and robes. But the legislation was fatally flawed, and the unions not ripe for reform. One hundred and eighty-one Labour MPs signed a motion for his dismissal after he ordered the sequestration of £75,000 from the engineering workers' union funds to pay a fine for contempt of court. Donaldson took the unusual step of publicly defending himself against their accusations of political bias. "It may or may not be a good thing to inject the law into industrial relations," he said. "That is a political matter and not for us." When the court was abolished in 1974, Donaldson remarked that it was "the fate of neutrals to be abused and wounded - sometimes mortally - by both parties to the hostilities".

On his return to the Bench Donaldson sat in the commercial court, from where he watched less able colleagues gaining promotion to the Court of Appeal - knowing all along that elevation for him was unlikely so long as Labour remained in power. Lord Elwyn Jones, the Lord Chancellor, admitted in private that Donaldson deserved promotion, but that it would be more trouble than it was worth. During his time in judicial Siberia, Donaldson did a lot of sailing and built a lot of cupboards and shelves. Two months after winning the 1979 election, Margaret Thatcher sent Donaldson to the Court of Appeal. In various cases, he ruled that police had no automatic right to remove bras, braces, belts and shoelaces when searching prisoners; warned them not to bend the rules concerning custody time limits; and upheld the principle that "an Englishman's home is his castle" by denying police the right to enter a house to seize evidence without first obtaining a warrant. In 1982 several of the judges whom Lord Hailsham sounded out were strongly opposed to Donaldson's appointment as Master of the Rolls, particularly in the Chancery Division, where they wanted an intellectual heavyweight.

Mrs Thatcher was reputed to have said: "Fortunately, Lord Chancellor, your judges do not appoint the Master of the Rolls. I do." As head of the civil division of the Court of Appeal, Donaldson became the country's most politically important judge. He could, in theory, choose which cases he heard and who sat with him. Lord Denning was a hard act to follow, and Donaldson aspired to a lower profile, reflected in his desire to keep wigs and gowns, so that a juror who saw him "shopping in Woolworths in plain clothes had not the slightest idea". Donaldson's efficiency drive was perhaps his major achievement, as he set to implementing the findings of the Scarman Committee, although his zeal raised a few eyebrows in the dustier recesses of the appeal court. His innovations, which stopped short of tampering with the procedure of unlimited oral advocacy, included skeleton arguments in appeal cases; "handed down" judgments given to litigants and press; employing a barrister in the civil appeals office to assist with case management and listing; and an annual review of the Court of Appeal's performance.

Within six months he had all but eliminated the backlog of more than 600 cases, although in later years they mounted up again due to a shortage of judges. Donaldson's tendency to interrupt barristers if he detected waffle was not always to the liking of counsel. But he reasoned that "to allow the unarguable to be argued is unfair to others waiting to have their cases heard". One of his earliest decisions as Master of the Rolls was that the barrister Ann (now Baroness) Mallalieu was entitled to tax relief on her "dull and dowdy" working clothes, though he was later overruled by the House of Lords. In 1988 he declined to grant a permanent injunction against three newspapers to prevent them publishing material from Spycatcher, the memoirs of the former MI5 officer Peter Wright, saying that the public interest in a free press outweighed national security considerations. In a landmark case in 1991, Donaldson ruled that the Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker, was in contempt of court - the first serving minister to be found guilty of contempt - for defying a court order and deporting a man from Zaire while proceedings were pending.

"It would be a black day for the rule of law and the liberty of the subject," he said, "if ministers were not accountable to the courts for their personal actions." The following year he ruled that a 16-year-old anorexic girl who was starving to death could be fed against her wishes. The unearthing of a miscarriage of justice cast a shadow over Donaldson's career. Sir John May's report in 1990, with its conclusion that Donaldson had misunderstood and mishandled critical evidence at the original Maguire trial in 1976, came as a severe blow. As a public relations disaster, it was worsened by the fact that the Master of the Rolls - who had sentenced the Guildford Four a year before the Maguires - had declined to give evidence at May's inquiry. Like his friend and colleague Lord Lane, Donaldson held to the maxim that judges should "never answer back, never complain, never explain". Donaldson's old enemies on the Left renewed their assault. To them he had always been a blinkered reactionary, determined to do down honest working men and Irish patriots. In fact, Donaldson was relatively progressive for his time.

He took the side of Private Eye in its battle with Sir James Goldsmith, and had liberal views on, for example, the extension of Legal Aid. Nevertheless, the Maguire trial was unfair, and Donaldson was partially responsible for that. In common with other judges trying terrorism cases during the 1970s, Donaldson had been less open than he ought to the possibility that police might have lied. And he was probably over-credulous of scientific evidence. The net result was what one Maguire campaigner dubbed "an unconscious prejudice in favour of the prosecution". Donaldson was in favour of allowing solicitors rights of audience in the higher courts - calling the Bar's monopoly an indefensible "sacred cow". More than 6 ft tall, bespectacled, and described by one admiring journalist as "lean, dark and sleek", Donaldson was invariably suntanned from skiing or sailing, and was seldom without his yachtsman's pipe. In court he liked sucking boiled sweets. In retirement he continued to take an active interest in public affairs.

Recently he was among a number of senior judicial figures who expressed misgivings about new anti-terrorism proposals; and, as a crossbencher in the Lords, he supported campaigners who argued that the way in which the Hunting Bill was railroaded on to the statute books was unlawful. Donaldson lived and sailed on the Solent with his wife, who in 1983 became the first woman to be elected Lord Mayor of London. His other great love was DIY. "He's a dreadful embarrassment in people's houses," said Lady Donaldson. "He fishes out his penknife and tightens loose screws." Lady Donaldson died in 2003. They had two daughters and a son. BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour Timeline - Key Events Print Version Racing driver Desire Wilson is the first woman to win a Formula One race. 1980 In June, Vigdis Finnbogadottir is the first woman to be democratically elected as head-of-state when she becomes President of Iceland. 1981 Shirley Williams is one of four rebel MPs, known as 'The Gang of Four', who announce their intention of leaving the Labour Party to set up a new party, the SDP.

Baroness Young becomes the first woman leader of the House of Lords. 1982 On 14 November more than 20,000 women surround the Greenham Common American airbase in the UK in a protest known as 'embrace the base'. They are protesting against the installation of US cruise missiles. The Women's Peace Camp on the site ran for nineteen years from 1981-2000. Margaret Pereira is appointed the first woman controller of the Home Office Forensic Science Service. 1982 The Committee of Enquiry into Human Fertilization is established under the chairmanship of Mary Warnock (born 1924). 1982 Caryl Churchill's feminist play Top Girls is first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London. American zoologist Diane Fossey (1932-1985) publishes Gorillas in the Mist about her work in Rwanda. The Format Photography Agency is set up to act on behalf of women photographers. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge admits women for the first time in its 630 year history. 1983 Dr Sally Ride becomes the first American woman astronaut in space on board the space shuttle Challenger.

The Women's Rugby Football Union is set up. Lady Mary Donaldson becomes the first woman Lord Mayor of London. 1983 Alison Halford becomes the police force's highest ranking female officer when she is appointed Assistant Chief Constable for Merseyside. Liechtenstein give votes to women , the last country in Europe to do so. The Equal Pay Act (Equal Value Amendment) introduces equal pay for work of equal value. 1984 Brenda Dean becomes General Secretary of SOGAT (Society of Graphical and Allied Trades), the first woman to head a major union. 1984 The designer Katherine Hamnett makes headlines when she arrives to meet Margaret Thatcher wearing an anti-nuclear T-shirt. At the age of seventeen, Alison Fisher is the first woman World Snooker Champion. 1985 Julie Tullis becomes the first woman to be selected for an Everest expedition, but dies on K2 in 1986. Kim Cotton became Britain 's first surrogate mother. 1986 The Sex Discrimination Act (Amendment) enables women to retire at the same age as men . It also lifts the legal restrictions which prevent women from working night shifts in factories.

Theatre director Yvonne Brewster sets up Talawa Theatre Company, Britain's first black theatre company. Diane Abbot is Britain's first black woman MP. Artist Helen Chadwick is the first woman to be short listed for the Turner Prize. 1988 Julie Hayward, a canteen cook at a shipyard in Liverpool, is the first woman to win a case under the amended Equal Pay Act. Benazir Bhutto (born 1953) becomes the first woman Prime Minister of Pakistan. 1988 Elizabeth Butler-Sloss becomes the first woman Law Lord when she is appointed an Appeal Court Judge. Sian Edwards is appointed the first woman conductor at Covent Garden.

Dame Mary Donaldson, 82; Woman of Many Firsts in City of London Politics - latimes YOU ARE HERE: LAT Home → Collections Dame Mary Donaldson, 82; Woman of Many Firsts in City of London Politics October 10, 2003 |Mary Rourke | Times Staff Writer Dame Mary Donaldson, the first woman to serve as lord mayor of the City of London, the area within London proper that includes the financial district, died Saturday at a hospice in Lymington, her family home in southern England. The cause of death was not reported. Donaldson was 82. She was elected lord mayor in 1983 in a unanimous vote by city officials. The figurehead position does not include a salary but carries considerable prestige and historic significance. The City of London is the oldest local government in England, instated by King Richard the Lionhearted in 1192. Inside the square-mile city district, the lord mayor is second in power only to the queen of England, should the queen visit. The main responsibility of the lord mayor is to host official occasions and travel to promote tourism and trade.

Donaldson insisted on being addressed as "Lord" rather than "Lady" Mayor and charged a fine of one pound to anyone who made the mistake. "I'm not a great banner-waver for the feminist movement," she told the Los Angeles Times in a 1984 interview. However, she added, "I will stand on a soapbox for equal opportunity." Despite her efforts to downplay her feminine gender, a marching band at Donaldson's inaugural parade opened with "There Is Nothing Like a Dame." News features about her paid close attention to her dress style. While her predecessors in the job of lord mayor wore medieval costumes with knee breeches and silk hose under their black robes, Donaldson said in interviews that she wore only a slip and bra. She might have considered the traditional costume, she explained, "If I were 20 years younger and considerably slimmer." Her position as mayor capped a political career of firsts. She was the first woman to serve as the City of London's sheriff, from 1981 to 1982; the first to serve as city alderman in 1975, and the first female on the city's Common Council, having been elected in 1966.

Known for her simple, direct manner, she once said she found it a challenge getting used to the many formalities of public office. "After all my years in the city, it no longer strikes me as extraordinary that when you see something move, you bow to it," she told the New York Times in 1982. Born Dorothy Mary Warwick in Hampshire, England, on Aug. 29,1921, her father was an ironmonger and her mother taught school. After high school, she spent a year in Paris, teaching English, then trained to be a nurse at Oxford University in England. She worked at a London hospital during World War II and met her husband, then Army Lt. Col. John Donaldson, when his mother, a patient at the hospital, introduced them. John Donaldson later became a lawyer and judge who was appointed Master of the Rolls, one of the highest ranking positions in the judiciary. The couple married in 1945 and had three children. Donaldson, who is survived by her husband, children and six grandchildren, entered public life after she became a grandmother.

"You come in from being a grandmother and suddenly you are lord mayor," she said in 1984, looking back on her career. MORE:

Question: In 1983, Lady Donaldson was the first woman to be elected as what?
Answer: LORD MAYOR OF LONDON