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Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan, married name Fleming (8 October 1899 in Dumfriesshire – 13 June 1985 in Somerset) was a Scottish civil engineer, and the first female member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, successfully passing the institution's admission examination in 1927. [1]
Buchanan was born at Langholm, the youngest of five children of Reverend James Donaldson Buchanan and Marion Vassie. [2] She was educated at Langholm Academy in Langholm, a town where Thomas Telford had worked as a mason before going on to become an eminent civil engineer; this may have been the inspiration for Buchanan to choose to study for a degree in civil engineering from the University of Edinburgh [3] from 1918. At the University, she studied with Charles Glover Barkla, who had been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1917 [4] and her time overlapped with the first woman in Scotland to graduate with a degree in engineering, Elizabeth Georgeson. [5] Buchanan was listed on the 1921 census, taken on 19 June, as a part time engineering student and a visitor at Georgeson's home Upper Sunnyside on Lowther Street in Penrith. [6] She became a member of the Women's Engineering Society during her time at university. [7] Illness (mumps) delayed her completion of her studies, so she graduated in 1923. [5] Further illness (pneumonia) caused her to seek a change of climate by moving south to London after her graduation and in order to continue her professional training as a civil engineer. [5]
Her first success in attracting the attention of an employer was with Sir Ralph Freeman, a senior partner of Douglas, Fox & Partners. Freeman was providing consultancy advice, on steel design, to contractors Dorman Long. Having hired Buchanan, Freeman allowed her to transfer to Dorman Long where she served as part of the design staff for the Sydney Harbour Bridge but she remained under Freeman's supervision for the purposes of her training contract from April 1924. Her salary was £4 per week plus overtime, [5] the same as the “boys.” [8] She arrived at Dorman's London office at the same time that Kathleen M. Butler, the project manager and Confidential Secretary to the Sydney Harbour Bridge Chief Engineer John Bradfield arrived with three engineers to set up the offices for the Australian arm of the operation. [9]
She later worked on overseas bridges (Dessouk and Khartoum). [10] Due to the Institution of Civil Engineers training requirement that design engineers also have site experience, Buchanan left London to go to work on the Belfast water supply scheme at the Silent Valley Reservoir project in Northern Ireland. [11] In Northern Ireland, her training supervision was undertaken by Sir Ernest Moir, a director of S. Pearson and Son [12] (and husband of Margaret, Lady Moir, co-founder of the Women's Engineering Society). Buchanan is reputed to have avoided having to have a chaperone by simply and repeatedly departing for work before the chaperone arrived. [5] After six months with the reservoir project, Buchanan had sufficient experience to fulfil that part of her qualification obligations and was able to return to Dorman Long in London to continue with their bridge design team, working on the George V Bridge (now usually called the Tyne Bridge) in Newcastle and the Lambeth Bridge in London. [13] In 1929, she gave a lecture on the work required for the construction of "Some Modern Bridges". [10]
Buchanan pursued her professional qualification with the Institution of Civil Engineers and had to attend an interview at the ICE headquarters at One Great George Street, London (near Parliament Square) as part of the examination process. In an interview for the New Civil Engineer magazine in 1978, [13] she recounted being surprised to find another woman in the waiting room, because she was aware that she would be the first female engineer to be recognised by the ICE if she were to be successful in the interview. The other woman in the waiting room transpired to be a chaperone brought in for the sake of decency. She was granted membership of the ICE in December 1927, as the only female amongst 9,979 men in the Institution. [1] [5] [10] She later remarked, ‘I felt that I represented all the women in the world. It was my hope that I would be followed by many others’ (New Civil Engineer, 6 July 1978, 15–16). [14]
Upon marriage in 1930 to William H. Dalrymple Fleming, an electrical engineer, she retired from engineering. [1] As Dorothy Fleming, she pursued interests in rock climbing and painting. She died in 1985, at age 85. [3] In February 2019, to celebrate their first female member of the institution, the ICE named a room after her, at their headquarters (in the same building where she had not been allowed to be interviewed without the presence of a chaperone). [13]
The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is an independent professional association for civil engineers and a charitable body in the United Kingdom. Based in London, ICE has over 92,000 members, of whom three-quarters are located in the UK, while the rest are located in more than 150 other countries. The ICE aims to support the civil engineering profession by offering professional qualification, promoting education, maintaining professional ethics, and liaising with industry, academia and government. Under its commercial arm, it delivers training, recruitment, publishing and contract services. As a professional body, ICE aims to support and promote professional learning, managing professional ethics and safeguarding the status of engineers, and representing the interests of the profession in dealings with government, etc. It sets standards for membership of the body; works with industry and academia to progress engineering standards and advises on education and training curricula.
Pauline Mary de Peauly Gower Fahie was a British pilot and writer who established the women's branch of the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War.
The Women's Engineering Society is a United Kingdom professional learned society and networking body for women engineers, scientists and technologists. It was the first professional body set up for women working in all areas of engineering, predating the Society of Women Engineers by around 30 years.
Letitia Chitty was an English engineer who became a respected structural analytical engineer, achieving several firsts for women engineers, including becoming the first female fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the first female recipient of the Telford Medal.
Frances Beatrice Bradfield was an aeronautical engineer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE). She worked at RAE Farnborough, where she headed the Wind Tunnels Section. Here she mentored many of the younger male engineers who joined the RAE.
Sir Ernest William Moir was a British civil engineer and the first Moir baronet. He is credited with inventing the first medical airlock while working on the Hudson River Tunnel in New York in 1889.
Margaret, Lady Moir, OBE was a Scottish lathe operator, engineer, a workers' relief organiser, an employment campaigner, and a founder member of the Women's Engineering Society (WES). She went on to become vice-president and president of WES, and in 1931 president of the Electrical Association for Women (EAW), in which role she gave full expression to her belief that 'the dawn of the all-electric era' was at hand. She had no doubt about the importance of this development in freeing women to pursue careers outside the home:
'It is essential that women become electrically minded. By this I mean that they must not only familiarize themselves with electric washing machines, fires and cookers, but possess sufficient technical knowledge to enable them to repair fuses and make other minor adjustments. Only by doing so will women learn to value electricity's cheapness and utility, and regard it as a power to rescue them from all unnecessary household labours.'
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Margaret Dorothea Rowbotham was an engineer, a campaigner for women's employment rights and a founder member of the Women's Engineering Society.
Margaret Mary Partridge was an electrical engineer, contractor and founder member of the Women's Engineering Society (WES) and the Electrical Association for Women (EAW). Her business worked with WES to identify and employ female apprentices, including Beatrice Shilling. Partridge also helped campaign to change the International Labour Organisation convention on night work for women in 1934, after Shilling was found working on her own in a power station at night, thus contravening the existing regulations.
Karen Ann Hilsum Burt CPhys MInstP was a British engineer and campaigner for the recruitment and retention of women in engineering.
Elizabeth Helen MacLeod Georgeson was the first woman to graduate in engineering at a Scottish university – the University of Edinburgh.
Rosina Winslade was a British engineering manager who became President of the Women's Engineering Society and a governor of University College, Nairobi.
Helen Grimshaw OBE was a British aeronautical engineer and pioneering G-force-pressure suit designer.
Women have played a role in engineering in the United Kingdom for hundreds of years, despite the various societal barriers facing them. In the 18th and 19th century, there were few formal training opportunities for women to train as engineers and frequently women were introduced to engineering through family companies or their spouses. Some women did have more formal educations in the late 19th century and early 20th century, normally in mathematics or science subjects. There are several examples of women filing patents in the 19th century, including Sarah Guppy, Henrietta Vansittart and Hertha Ayrton.
Kathleen M. Butler was nicknamed the “Godmother of Sydney Harbour Bridge”. As the first person appointed to Chief Engineer J.J.C, Bradfield’s team, as his Confidential Secretary,, she managed the international tendering process and oversaw the development of the technical plans, travelling to London in 1924 to supervise the project in the offices of Dornan’s, the company which won the tender. At the time it was built, Sydney Harbour Bridge was the largest arch bridge in the world, with the build expected to take six years to complete. Her unusual role garnered much interest in the press in Australia and Britain.
Cicely Thompson M.B.E. was a nuclear engineer.
Dorothy Smith was an electrical engineer. She worked for the engineering firm Metropolitan-Vickers from 1916 to 1959, retiring after forty-three years at the company. She was the second woman to gain Full Membership of the Institution of Electrical Engineers since Hertha Ayrton in 1899 and was a prominent member of the Manchester branch of the Women's Engineering Society.