Lucy Deane Streatfeild

Lucy Anne Evelyn (Deane) Streatfeild, CBE (31 July 1865 – 3 July 1950) was a civil servant, a social worker, and one of the first female factory inspectors in the United Kingdom; she was one of the first to raise concerns about the health risks arising from exposure to asbestos.

Biography Lucy Deane was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Bonar Millett Deane and the Hon. Lucy Boscawen (the sister of Evelyn Boscawen, 6th Viscount Falmouth), and was born in Madras, India, on 31 July 1865.

She married architect Granville Edward Stewart Streatfeild (1869-1947) DSO, OBE on 16 March 1911.

Deane was a supporter of the suffrage movement, being both a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and, in 1913, helping to organise a suffrage pilgrimage from Westerham and district, to the union's rally of 50,000 women in Hyde Park. From 1894 until 1906 she worked for the Home Office as a factory inspector.

In 1901, Deane was appointed to the Fawcett Commission, the committee of inquiry into the concentration camps created following the Second Boer War, where she ensured that the committee's report included criticism of the camps system.

In 1918, Deane chaired a committee of inquiry into allegations of immoral conduct by members of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in France. The report of this committee dismissed as "slanderous and untrue" certain rumours about the misbehaviour of the WAAC in France and went on to explain, and make recommendations designed to alleviate, the problems then faced by women in active service abroad.

In 1920 Deane Streatfeild was among the first women appointed as a Justice of the Peace. She served on the Kent County Council.

Deane further wrote that "the evil effects of asbestos dust have also instigated a microscopic examination of the mineral dust by HM Medical Inspector. Clearly revealed was the sharp glass-like jagged nature of the particles, and where they are allowed to rise and to remain suspended in the air of the room in any quantity, the effects have been found to be injurious as might have been expected."

Lucy Deane's warnings about the health risks, published as Report on the health of workers in asbestos and other dusty trades (1898), and the later reports made by other Women Inspectors of Factories appeared in the annual reports of HM Chief Inspector of Factories, but were ignored. It was not until 1911 that clinical evidence was gathered to indicate a connection to asbestos exposure.