- Barbara Wootton, Baroness Wootton of Abinger
Barbara Wootton, Baroness Wootton of Abinger CH (1897 –
July 11 1988 ) was a Britishsociologist andcriminologist . She was one of the first fourlife peer s appointed under theLife Peerages Act 1958 .Born Barbara Adam, she was educated at the
Perse School for Girls . She studied Classics and Economics atGirton College, Cambridge from 1915 to 1919. In 1917, she married John (Jack) Wootton. He was wounded duringWorld War I and died weeks after their marriage. She married George Wright in 1934. He died in 1964.In the 1930s Wootton was a member of the
Federal Union and represented the Union in a historic debate againstEdgar Hardcastle of theSocialist Party of Great Britain , which was later published as a pamphlet.In 1948 she became a Professor at Bedford College of the
University of London . In 1952 she received aNuffield Foundation Research Fellowship.She wrote several books on economic and sociological subjects, including "Lament for Economics" (1938), "End Social Inequality" (1941), "Freedom Under Planning" (1945), "Social Science and Social Pathology" (1959), "Crime and the Criminal Law" (1964) and "Incomes Policy" (1974).
In 1969 she was made an Honorary Fellow of Girton College. In 1977 she was made a member of the
Order of the Companions of Honour . In 1985 she was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of Cambridge. In 1984 she was chosen as one of six women for theBBC 2 series 'Women of Our Century'.She was created Baroness Wootton of Abinger, of Abinger Common in the County of Surrey on the advice of
Harold Macmillan on July 11, 1958 and was the first woman to sit on theWoolsack as a Deputy Speaker. She was the chairperson of theWootton Report .She died in a nursing home in
Surrey in 1988.References
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*"Edgar Richard Hardcastle ("Hardy"): Obituary". "Socialist Studies" № 17, pp. 17–20.
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