Agatha Chapman

Agatha Louisa Chapman (6 May 1907 – 17 October 1963) was a British-born economist at the Canadian Bureau of National Statistics from 1942 to 1947. She was the only woman to attend the first United Nations Sub-Committee on National Income Statistics in 1945, which led to the United Nations System of National Accounts.

Early life Agatha Chapman was born in England in 1907, and immigrated to Canada in 1918. She came from a well-connected family. Her father had been a high court judge in India, while her uncle William Johnston Tupper had been Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba. She was also the great-granddaughter of Sir Charles Tupper, a Father of Confederation, premier of Nova Scotia from 1864 to 1867 and, briefly in 1896, sixth prime minister of Canada.

Chapman received a B.A. in commerce from the University of British Columbia, and subsequently, in 1931, a master's degree.

Testifying at Commission hearings, Chapman admitted to being a member of a number of study groups discussing among other things, socialist and Marxist literature. She was formally charged on 18 September 1946, and surrendered to police the next day to be arraigned before a magistrate and released on $2,000 bail. She jumped to her death from her Bishop Street apartment. There was no mention of her death in the nation's press.

Works Agatha L. Chapman, Wages and Salaries in the United Kingdom, 1920–1938. Cambridge University Press. 1953.