Lucy Sutherland

Dame Lucy Stuart Sutherland (21 June 1903 – 20 August 1980) was an Australian-born British historian and head of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

Career Sutherland was born in Geelong, Australia, but brought up in South Africa where she attended Roedean School in Johannesburg, then the University of the Witwatersrand, where she studied history under Professor William Macmillan. She graduated with first-class honours in 1924, then was elected as the Herbert Ainsworth research scholar for a year.

She then moved to read modern history at Somerville College, Oxford, where she again achieved first class honours. In 1926 she was the first woman undergraduate to speak at the Oxford Union, winning applause for her opposition to the motion 'That the women's colleges ... should be levelled to the ground'. After she graduated Somerville appointed her a tutor, and later elected her to a tutorial fellowship in Economic History and Politics (1928–45). She was principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 1945–71. She was a pro-vice-chancellor of the University 1961–69, the first woman to hold that office.

In parallel with her academic work, Sutherland also became involved in government administration. In 1941 she was offered a principalship at the Board of Trade, and by 1945 had the rank of assistant secretary. After the war she chaired a Board of Trade working party on the lace industry (1946), and was on a committee of inquiry into the film industry (1949), a royal commission on taxation of profits and income (1951), a committee on grants for students (1958), and the University Grants Committee (1964–99). She was also involved with educational administration and was chair of the Girls' Public Day School Trust. She left an art collection to LMH on her death.

Publications A London merchant, 1695–1774 : A study in economic history based on the papers of William Braund, 1933 The law merchant in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries" in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 17, 1934 The use of business records in the study of history, 1935 The East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics, 1952 The city of London and the Devonshire-Pitt administration : 1756–7, 1960 Fourteenth century studies by Maude Violet Clarke, ed. L. S. Sutherland & M. McKisack, 1967 Edmund Burke and the relations between Members of Parliament and their constituents : an examination of the eighteenth-century theory and practice in international relations, 1968

Honours Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), 1947 King's Birthday Honours Honorary LittD, Cambridge University, 1963 Honorary LLD, Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 1964 Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1965 Honorary DLitt, Glasgow University, 1966 Honorary LittD, University of Kent, 1967 Honorary DLitt, Keele University, 1968 Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), 1969 New Year Honours Honorary DLit, Belfast University, 1970 Honorary Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 1971 Honorary DCL, Oxford University, 1972