Dates

• Existence: 1861 - 1958

Biography

Florence Ada Keynes was born on 10 March 1861 in Cheetham, Manchester, the eldest of the three daughters and three sons of Dr John Brown (1830–1922), Congregationalist minister, and his wife, Ada Haydon, née Ford (1837–1929), schoolteacher. Educated at home, she was offered a scholarship at Newnham Hall, Cambridge, when she was seventeen, on the strength of her results in the Cambridge senior local examinations. She began her studies there in 1878 by following the syllabuses originally designed to test the educational standards of schoolteachers. Through mutual family acquaintances in the Congregationalist church, she met (John) Neville Keynes (1852–1949), logician and economist, and they became engaged in 1880. Having passed several examinations at Newnham, she went home to assist in teaching at her mother's school, but returned to Cambridge on her marriage to Keynes on 15 August 1882. Three children, John Maynard Keynes, economist, Geoffrey Langdon Keynes, surgeon, and Margaret Neville were born in quick succession. With her own financial position secured, Florence Keynes turned her attention to voluntary work and became involved in a number of projects associated with the health care and education of girls and mothers, and in 1895 became secretary of the Cambridge branch of the Charity Organization Society. Her public career began in 1907 when she was elected a local poor-law guardian; she became chairman of the board in 1922. When in 1914 married women became eligible to serve as town and county councillors, Florence Keynes became the first woman councillor in Cambridge. She served on the borough council for many years, as alderman from 1930 and as mayor in 1932, and set in motion the scheme to rebuild Cambridge's Guildhall. In 1920 she was among the first group of women to be made magistrates. During her years on the council she took a particular interest in issues of public and mental health, manifested in the founding of the Papworth colony for tuberculosis victims, and in her work for Fulbourn Mental Hospital. On the national stage she campaigned for the establishment of juvenile courts and urged women to act as jurors and magistrates. She was instrumental in the introduction of women police in 1931 after a campaign lasting seventeen years. Florence Keynes died on 13 February 1958 at her home in Cambridge, 6 Harvey Road.

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