Betty Lindsay

Engineers Frederick W. Knipe, Betty Lindsay and ecologist, Dr Lewis W. Hackett in Albania Betty Lindsay (Minnie Elizabeth Barclay Lindsay) (9 October 1897 – 11 January 1953) was an early professional civil engineer working in Albania and, in 1921, may have been only the second female engineering graduate (after Elizabeth Georgeson in 1919) of the University of Edinburgh. In her career, however, she worked mainly as a civil engineer. From 1922 to 1925 she worked for William Tawse Ltd as an engineering assistant. and in 1926 its journal, The Woman Engineer, reported that she had volunteered for an anti-malarial mission to Albania, which also included female doctors, a nurse and a driver. The mission had been organised by Lady Carnarvon; she had established schools, hospitals and clinics in Albania after the death in 1923 of her son, Aubrey Herbert, who had been a leading advocate of Albanian independence. The article noted that having arrived at the State Hospital, Valona (Vlorë), on 21 March that year, she undertook duties which ‘at present consist of organising and supervising the work of draining, ditching and filling in pits, etc., and in clipping for and examining mosquito larvae’.

Lindsay remained in Albania until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, working on anti-malarial civil engineering projects throughout the country, and with the Rockefeller Foundation Malarial control engineer, Frederick W. Knipe, and International Health Board ecologist Dr Lewis W. Hackett.

Later life She then returned to the UK and became a technical translator for the Air Ministry, where she remained working, latterly as Chief Translator, until her death in 1953. She was buried in the family grave in Edinkillie, Morayshire.