Joanna Kelley

Joanna Elizabeth Kelley OBE (née Beaden; 1910 – 2003) was a British prison governor and civil servant. She led prisons in Britain, including Holloway Prison, where she changed the way prisoners were treated during and after their sentence. She was promoted from Governor to a position where she oversaw the rebuilding of Holloway Prison to allow better conditions, but those ideas were never realised.

Life Kelley was born at a hill station named Murree in what is now Pakistan where her father, Lieutenant-Colonel William Beadon, (1867–1916) commanded the 51st Sikhs. Her mother, Joanna Elizabeth Kelley (née Ballard, 1870–1958) was an artist. Her father was killed in Iraq when she was a child. She was educated in Kent at Hayes Court boarding school and Girton College, Cambridge where she read Economics.

In 1934, she married the archaeologist Harper Kelly. During the Second World War, the couple found themselves working at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris with the Germans ready to take the city. Her husband returned to the USA and she came back to Britain. At the end of the war, she was surprised to find that her husband had a new partner. She considered her marriage vows sacrosanct and she decided that she would not re-marry.

Career After her return to England, Kelley's interest turned to social work during the war. She became a YWCA youth club leader in 1939. Although she kept an academic interest in prehistory she went to work as an Admiralty welfare officer in Bath in 1942. This had previously been tackled by a group of different societies and with Kelley's encouragement,

Kelley became Assistant Director of Prisons (Women) in 1966 The same year they began to rebuild Holloway Prison. The previous design had been a "star" design where a single warder could oversee many potentially troublesome prisoners and then act promptly to alert colleagues. Kelley felt this was wrong as at the time most women prisoners were not violent. It was her ideas that inspired the redesigned prison based on her experience as governor. It was completed in 1977. During that time she had become an OBE in 1973. The new design allowed for groups of sixteen prisoners. Her ideas were in the design of the buildings but her ideas were never enacted. This was a source of disappointment but she was able to recover and adapt. Her papers are at the LSE Library. They contain the prison diary of suffragette Annie Cobden Sanderson.