Joan Vickers, Baroness Vickers
Joan Helen Vickers, Baroness Vickers, DBE (3 June 1907 – 23 May 1994) was a British National Liberal and later Conservative Party politician. Early life Vickers was born in London on 3 June 1907, the eldest daughter of (Horace) Cecil Vickers (1882-1944), a stockbroker, and his wife, Lilian Munro Lambert Grose (1880-1923), a social worker, only daughter of Woodman Cole Grose, MBE, a civil servant. Her father's family came originally from Lincolnshire and her mother's from Cornwall. Her father joined Nelke, Phillips & Bendix, a London stockbroking firm who counted Edward VII as one of their clients. He was elected to the Stock Exchange on 25 March 1904 and became one of their partners at their office at 4 Moorgate Street. In 1917 he set up his own firm, Vickers, da Costa, which counted Sir Winston Churchill among their clients. Her brother, Ralph Vickers was later Senior Partner of the firm. Vickers was educated at St Monica's, Burgh Heath, Surrey, and in Paris. She was trained as a Norland Nurse, working in the Margaret Macdonald and Mary Middleton Hospital, Notting Hill and was active in politics in Battersea and Islington. She was presented at court by Mrs Winston Churchill in 1926. She hunted in Leicestershire, rode horses for the Irish Free State Army to ladies classes and competed in the Dublin Horse Show as a jumper. She served with the Red Cross in South East Asia and was area welfare officer of the Social Welfare Department in Malaya. She was later chairman of the Anglo-Indonesian Society. She served as a London County Councillor 1937–45 and was UK delegate to the Status of Women Commission of the United Nations. Politics Seeking a career in politics, she went to see Winston Churchill at Chartwell. He told her he deeply disapproved of women in politics but advised her to wear a pretty hat and join the London County Council. In 1936 she was elected a Member of the Ladies' Grand Council of the Primrose League. In 1937 she was elected to the London County Council, representing the Norwood division of Lambeth, and serving until 1945. In 1939 she was nominated by the British Red Cross to serve as Divisional Secretary, Lambeth Division, and in 1940 similarly for Southwark. However, during the war, she was often abroad, repatriating prisoners of war. Overseas Vickers worked for 14 months with the Red Cross in Indonesia, four years in British Malaya (now Malaysia) as a Social Welfare Area Officer in Negri Sembilan, Malacca and Johore. She was nominated a member of the Legislative Council in Negri Sembilan. She was a founder member of the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind, and started the work in Malaysia, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Kenya. More specifically, in August 1945, she signed up to serve as Chief Welfare Officer, S.E.A.C. with the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John. In September 1945 she arrived with six other women in Batavia, primarily to help British troops but working