Sheila Leather

Sheila Leather (17 January 1898 - 27 January 1983) was an engineer, business owner and president of the Women's Engineering Society in 1950–51.

Early life Sheila Leather was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire on 17 January 1898 to Annie (née Lyon) and John Walter Leather, an analytical chemist.

Leather was a boarder at Liverpool High School for Girls in 1911, and it is assumed both her older sisters were in India with their father, as Alice Muriel married Claud Mews Mackenzie Hutchinson in 1914. Her other sister Wenonah Hardwick married Eric Cecil Ansorge in 1915. Both weddings took place in Pusa.

Career Before the Second World War Leather was a Physical Training Lecturer at Hockerill Teacher Training College, Bishop Stortford Hertfordshire, having trained in the revolutionary Bergman-Österberg method of exercise for women, probably at Madame Bergman-Osterberg's Dartford College. to prepare women for engineering war work. She showed such aptitude at the Hawker aircraft factory where she was sent (working on Typhoons and Hawker Tempests) that she was promoted from the shopfloor to more responsible posts in production planning. In March 1943 she was recruited by the UK government's Ministry of Labour to be one of its Women Technical Officers advising on the employment of women in heavy industry, and was posted for some time to Newcastle upon Tyne. She went on to train others in people management and supervision skills, being appointed a TWI (Training Within Industry) Trainer in 1944. in Gillingham, Kent in 1946 employing only women to make small paper-cutting guillotines that could be used safely in schools.

Women's Engineering Society She joined the Women's Engineering Society (WES) in 1941 and became a regular contributor to The Woman Engineer magazine, and taking part in a broadcast to America about her work in 1942. She was elected to the WES Council in September 1942 succeeding Frances Heywood in the role. Leather was succeeded as WES President by Ella Mary Collin.