Dorothy Keeling

Dorothy Clarissa Keeling (2 December 1881 – 27 March 1967) was a British social worker who joined The Bradford Guild of Help and went on to Liverpool where she transformed voluntary efforts there and in the UK.

Life Keeling was born in Bradford in 1881. Her mother was Henrietta Frances (born Gedge) and her father was the Reverend William Hulton Keeling who transformed Northampton and Bradford Grammar School. He was well connected to key people in the city. Her younger sister was the Canadian left-wing writer Margaret Adele (later Fairley).

In 1907 she joined The Bradford Guild of Help, which had been formed two years before, and she was a key member until ', Keeling, Elizabeth Macadam, and academic Frederic D'Aeth. They saw the need for friendly visiting. The PSS initially faced opposition by other charities who saw them as offering no material help and just another competitor.

In 1935 there were 9,000 families who asked for help. A quarter of these were cases referred to the PSS by other bodies but in the remaining cases the families had sought out Keeling's organisation themselves. They were supplying reliable and unbiased advice to families and by 1939 they had 560 volunteer workers.

She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire at the end of the war in 1946 for her work with the Citizens Advice Bureau. She went back to Liverpool and continued her relationship with Ellinor Black. She moved and took a job in a mental hospital when Black began lecturing in Sheffield in 1950 Black died in 1956 and Keeling moved back to Liverpool and she still took an interest in social work and the Citizen's Advice Bureaux.

Keeling died in Hendon on 27 March 1967.