FROM OUR MEMBERSHIP: KATHLEEN COOK (1910-1971)

Welcome to our series of blogs where we delve into our historical membership proposal forms to learn more about some of our past members.

Our historical membership proposal forms consist of the application forms completed by individuals when they applied to a class of IMechE membership. We often hold more than one form for each individual as they moved between membership grades at different points of their careers.

They include details of an individual’s general and technical education, apprenticeship and employment history up to the date that the application was made. They provide a snippet into an engineer’s career and professional connections and indicate how engineering companies worked and were connected.

This series will be using information from these forms to discover and highlight stories of engineers.

Our historic membership records for individuals who joined the Institution between 1847 and 1938 can be accessed via the family history website Ancestry. More information about access to Ancestry for IMechE members and non-members can be found here: https://www.imeche.org/library-archive/archive-and-artefacts/archive-overview

Discover more about the information available about our historic members in our blog post about the history of the Institution’s membership forms: https://imechearchive.wordpress.com/2020/10/26/a-history-of-the-institutions-membership-forms/

Kathleen Goodwin (nee Cook)

Extract from Kathleen Cook’s 1955 application to become an Associate Member showing biographical information

Kathleen Cook was born in north London in 1910.

In 1955, aged 45 and after almost 30 years in engineering, Kathleen applied to become an Associate Member of the Institution.

At the time of her application, Kathleen was the Managing Director of Wilman Engineering Ltd – a firm who manufactured spares for Cromwell, Churchill and Centurion tanks.

Women in Engineering

Kathleen’s proposer for her Associate Member application was Verena Holmes (the Institution’s first woman Associate Member). Dame Caroline Haslett, co-founder of the Electrical Association for Women, acted as one of the application referees.

Section from Kathleen Cook’s 1955 Associate Member application showing the proposer of her membership to be Verena Holmes

Apprenticeship and early career

Upon leaving school at the age of 16 Kathleen started an apprenticeship at her father’s engineering firm Hercules Engineering Company – a general engineering firm working within the railway and marine trades.

The apprenticeship which included full-time workshop training was completed in 1933.

Of her career Kathleen stated:

“I came into this profession through the hardship caused to my father’s firm through the trade slump in the late ‘twenties, after a very fine Ladies education, and worked in the shops for 7 years assisting in bringing the firm Hercules Engineering Company from a state of bankruptcy to a very fine prosperity and 180 employed.”

Section from Kathleen Cook’s 1955 Associate Member application providing detail about how she came to a career in engineering

By 1936 Kathleen was employed at the Hercules works in various roles relating to planning and production. In 1939 Kathleen completed a course in Works Management at the South East London Technical Institute and by 1941 she was working as the Assistant to the General Manager at Hercules Engineering Company.

Second World War

In 1943 Kathleen was directed by the Ministry of Production as one of a team of four to reorganise a factory in Northolt which manufactured aircraft engine spares. As a result of this reorganisation production increased tenfold in four months. Kathleen remained in this role until the cessation of hostilities in 1945.

Later career

After the Second World War Kathleen founded several engineering companies including Kainder Limited where she was the patentee for a hospital bed.

In 1962 Kathleen was elected a Member of the Institution, at that time the highest class of membership available. She was the second woman to be elected to the class of Member after Verena Holmes.

Her application form revealed that she had continued in her role at Wilman Engineering Ltd who had become direct contractors to the Admiralty, War Office and Ministry of Aviation.

Women’s Engineering Society

Kathleen’s Associate Member application came with support from colleagues at the Women’s Engineering Society and she was later a President of the Women’s Engineering Society.

Digital copies of The Woman Engineer, the journal of the Women’s Engineering Society, have been made available by The IET and may be accessed via: https://www.theiet.org/membership/library-archives/the-iet-archives/online-exhibitions/women-and-engineering/the-woman-engineer-journal/

Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Archive, Virtual Archive, Archive Catalogue