Papers of Alice Cameron

The archive consists of a typescript of autobiographical book on Germany at the end of the Second World War (1945-1949). Having worked for the Allied Control Commission in Germany from 1945 to 1949, and thereafter in various British education centres, Alice Cameron's book details her impressions of, and opinions about, Germany and its people at the end of the Second World War. The typescript is in five parts.

Alice Cameron (1892-) spent a large part of her childhood in Egypt before returning to England to be educated at Blackheath High School. She then studied at Somerville College in Oxford from 1910, graduating in Classics in 1914. She went on to be trained as a volunteer nurse at St Bartholomew's Hospital, serving in Reading and then France until illness forced her to return home in the winter of 1916. She subsequently began organising the Federation of Women Workers trades union in Woolwich Arsenal until the end of the war. After the Armistice, she began work with the Young Men's Christian Association and was sent to France to undertake educational work with the troops remaining there. In 1920-1921, she spent a year as a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bangor then spent a term doing the same at Somerville. It was then for Oxford's Extra-Mural Delegacy that she began to teach the tutorial classes of the Workers' Educational Association in Lincoln that she would continue for the next fifteen years. There, she introduced a policy of giving the products of the practical classes, such as carpentry, to individuals and organisations that were in need of them. From this developed the independent People's Service Club, the first scheme for the voluntary service of the unemployed in the country, which continued this work in the town. Cameron described this in the book, 'Civilisation and the Unemployed' in 1934. She would later be asked to sit on the Unemployment Committee of the NCS and the Archbishop of York's Committee on Unemployment. At the end of the 1930s, when unemployment was falling in Lincoln, Cameron left for London where she became active during the Blitz. She also continued her work with the YMCA's educational service. After the War, she worked for the Allied Control Commission in Germany from 1945 to 1949, first, as an adviser on the women's work and then on the question of education. When she returned, she became one of the resident tutors in the centre established to allow German visits to become familiar with the United Kingdom in the post-war period. She subsequently became a lecturer for London University's Extra-Mural Department.

This collection is available for research. Readers are advised to contact The Women's Library in advance of their first visit.

Fawcett Library Catalogue

Unknown provenance [early accession registers to be checked]