Claudia Parsons

Claudia Sydney Maia Parsons (15 August 1900 – 5 June 1998) was a British engineer, writer and traveller. One of the first three women to graduate as engineers in England, Her father was in the Indian Army and her mother came from a family with generations of employment in the East India Company. At the age of two Claudia and her older sister Betty were taken to Britain to be cared for by their grandmother and aunt in Guildford. Their mother returned to India and had a third daughter, Avis. During World War I, Loughborough had served as an instructional factory for the Ministry of Munitions.

In 1919 Parsons enrolled on an automobile engineering course at Loughborough University. who were studying engineering out of three hundred students, and graduated in 1922.

Career Parsons became a chauffeur-companion and drove clients across Europe, the Far East, India and America.

In 1938 Parsons bought a Studebaker car in Delhi, nicknamed it Baker and drove with American anthropologist Kilton Stewart through Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Tunisia.

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.

An autobiography, Vagabondage followed in 1941.

This was followed by China Mending and Restoration (1963) based on her later career in china restoration. Her final autobiography, Century Story, was published in 1995.

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 Loughborough University 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 - Suzanne Imber

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