Dame Caroline Haslett Collaboration Room

The Dame Caroline Haslett Collaboration Room is part of our Coffee House suite of spaces. It is named after distinguished Fellow Dame Caroline Haslett.

Born in 1895, Dame Caroline Haslett was an electrical engineer and an electrical industry administrator. She did much work encouraging engineering institutions to let women sit their examinations and for companies to employ women.

Caroline Haslett was elected a Fellow of the RSA in 1934, and in 1941 she became the first female member of our governing council. She gave lectures at RSA House in January 1941 on women in industry (or which she was awarded a silver medal) and in April 1947 on electricity in the home.

Haslett was the first secretary of the Women’s Engineering Society, founded in 1919, where she edited the society’s journal, ‘Woman Engineer’, from 1919 to 1932. She established the Electrical Association for Women in 1924, directing it until 1956. Appointed DBE in 1947, Caroline was the only woman to be appointed a member of the British Electricity Authority upon its inception.

Her wish upon dying was to be cremated using electricity, which was done at the City of London crematorium, where her ashes were scattered in its garden of remembrance.

A portrait of Dame Caroline by Sir Gerald Kelly, painted in 1948, is currently on loan to the National Portrait Gallery. It was featured in the gallery’s spectacular reopening on 22 June 2023 where it remains on display.