Cleone Benest

Cleone Benest (13 June 1880 – 23 December 1963), also known by the pseudonym C. Griff, was a pioneering motorist, as well as an engineer, and metallurgist. She was one of the first women engineers to pass mechanical examinations of the City and Guilds of London Institute, Royal Automobile Club, and Portsmouth Municipal College. She published articles on engineering and established her own firm which was both managed and run by women. She served as the chair of the Women's Engineering Society from 1922 to 1926.

Early life Cleone de Heveningham Benest was born on 13 June 1880, Forest Gate, London, to Edith Maria (née Powell) and George Philip Benest. In her youth, her parents separated and Benest was taken to St. Aubin, on the Isle of Jersey, to live with her mother and maternal grandparents, Eliza and Thomas Powell. In the early 1890s the family moved to Ryde, on the Isle of Wight.

Career By the early 1900s, Benest had earned a reputation as pioneering motorist and owned a 1906 Lanchester Motor Company 12-hp tonneau and a 12-hp Fiat, which she maintained in her own workshop. By 1908, she had passed the City and Guilds of London Institute's motor-engineering examination, the Royal Automobile Club's mechanical test, and was a certified driver. She was noted as the first woman to have taken the motor engineering examination and first to drive a motor omnibus, Publishing an article in 1915 in Englishwoman's Year Book, Benest argued that with increasing use of machinery, there was growing need for training women as engineers. She wrote articles for The Women Engineer journal and gave several talks on radio about engineering. Around the same time, she began attending meetings of the Institute of Automobile Engineers, as an invited guest, since their official bylaws banned women as members. In 1922, she founded a company, The Stainless Steel and Non-Corrosive Metals Company Limited, in Birmingham. Her directors included other women, like Gabrielle Borthwick, Gertrude Crawford, and C. Davis, a former foundry manager. The firm received wide press coverage for being managed by and employing women. Using Benest's colouring method, the company manufactured lamp reflectors, ornaments, railway fittings and other items, before it folded in 1925. As a regular writer for the Woman Engineer, she wrote on aviation and driving through 1927 and broadcast talks on the programme Afternoon Topics, sponsored by BBC Radio about engineering and electrical applications for housewives. She remained in Birmingham until 1928, when she abruptly ended her membership in the Women's Engineering Society and stopped using the name of Griff. She may have returned to Ryde to care for her ailing mother, who died in 1930.

By the beginning of World War II, Benest was again living in England, with an engineer, Frederick J. Crinage in Olney, Buckinghamshire. She registered with the Women's Land Army and advertised services not only as a mechanical engineer and metallurgist, but as a "Gyrotillage executive". Gyrotillers were a massive, industrial-grade agricultural ploughing machine used to prepare earth for food production; it is unknown whether Benest operated the machinery or maintained it. She remained in Olney until 1953 and subsequently lived in Dorset.

Death and legacy Benest died on 23 December 1963 in Poole. She is remembered as one of England's pioneering women engineers.