Helen Monica Maurice OBE (30 June 1908 – 20 September 1995) was an industrialist and Managing Director and Chairman of the Wolf Safety Lamp Company, Sheffield, and the first, and for 40 years the only, woman member of the Association of Mining Electrical Engineers.
[5] As her son William wrote in her obituary, she had a talent for languages and design and continued her studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris, and at Hamburg University; 'even as a young girl there was a steely determination to be successful'.
[4] She completed her education at Mrs. Hoster's Commercial Training College, London, where she acquired 'a first-class knowledge of office management and qualified as a shorthand writer and typist in three languages'.
[3] Her career began in February 1930, first as secretary to her father at the company, where she also studied the technique of electric mine lamp design, the manufacture of alkaline storage batteries, and maintaining installations in efficient running order, among other aspects.
'[4] In 1932 Maurice was made a director and a departmental manager of her family's company, with responsibility for the planning and operation of vast numbers of lamps at collieries in every coalfield in the UK.
In July 1935 she deputised for her father at another meeting of the same organisation, held in Berlin and Karlsruhe, Germany, and played an active role in promoting arrangements for the establishment of an international standard of lighting for mines.
[2] Monica Maurice married a Canadian doctor, Arthur Newton Jackson (1904–1985), on 18 June 1938, the Chapel of Our Lady on Rotherham Bridge in South Yorkshire; they had two sons, William and John, and one daughter, Willa.
One time I used to know when Miss Maurice was in the district, and now where never I ‘ears an aeroplane I comes over all of a sweat like and starts polishing.”[3] In December 1935, The Woman Engineer noted that she 'is now practising advanced aerobatics as weekend recreation.
[8] Miss Maurice's portrait was painted by Slade educated[10] artist Janet Patterson in the 1980s after she visited her at Wolf Lamp Company offices on Saxone Road, Sheffield.