Born: 1920, United Kingdom (assumed)
Died: 1980
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Mrs. Derrick
The following was written by Nina Baker and is excerpted from the book From Alchemy to Transport Phenomena: A Global History of Women in Chemical Engineering.
Nearly 900 women graduated in chemistry between 1880 and 1949 but it is not until Hilda Mary Stroud (Mrs Derrick) AMIChemE (1920-80) joined the Institution of Chemical Engineers as a student member in 1942 that it is possible to definitively identify a British woman chemical engineer, although it is apparent that women were doing work that would count as chemical engineering long before that. She was from a modest background, her father being a clerk in government service following some years as a gunner with the Royal Artillery.
She went to Dartford County School for Girls, one of the best girls’ schools in the area, but seems not to have gone to university. By 1939 she was working at the Fuel Research Station, in east Greenwich, as a laboratory technician. During the war years she took some part time courses in chemical engineering, enabling her to join the Institution of Chemical Engineers as their first female member, in 1942. In 1944 she was briefly in the Air Transport Auxiliary where her attempts to become a qualified pilot seem to have come to stop when she damaged a plane. In the same year she married Jack Derrick, also a member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and went to work for TH & J Daniels at the Lightpill Iron Works, Stroud, Gloucestershire. The company made machinery for the plastics industries, such as resin moulding presses, preforming machines, and preheating ovens. In the 1950s she was a member of the Women’s Engineering Society and contributed a description of the opening lecture at the society’s 1952 conference on the theme of chemical engineering, for the society’s Woman Engineer (vol7, no.6). The note about her becoming a member records her work as being at “TH&J Daniels on technical sales and development and became assistant sales manager, dealing mainly with hydraulic plant for the plastics and die-casting industries. She has written various articles for the technical press and has given papers for the Institution of Chemical Engineers and the Plastics Institute on plastics and chemical plant.” Unfortunately it has not proved possibly to track such articles. She had her son in 1957 and it is likely that she ‘retired’ from engineering as was the custom then. She retained her interest in technical matters and was involved in campaigns for better public transport and against the problems of nuclear power. She died in 1980.