Florence Ada Keynes


Florence Ada Keynes was an English author, historian and politician.

Career

Keynes was an early graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge. She established an early juvenile labour exchange, and was one of the founders of the Papworth Village Settlement for sufferers of tuberculosis, a forerunner of Papworth Hospital. She was secretary of the local Charity Organisation Society, which provided pensions for the elderly living in poverty, and worked with inmates of workhouses to resettle them into society.

Cambridge Borough Council

She was the first female councillor of Cambridge City Council in August 1914, and was also a town magistrate. At 70 years of age, Keynes became Mayor of Cambridge on 9 November 1932, the second woman to hold the office. She chaired the committee responsible for the building of the new Guildhall, which was completed in 1939.

Works

Retiring from public duties in 1939, she wrote a history of Cambridge, By-Ways of Cambridge History. In 1950 she published a memoir, Gathering up the threads, in which she discusses her ancestors along with the childhoods of her children John Maynard, Margaret and Geoffrey.

Family

Keynes was the daughter of Rev. John Brown of Bunyan's Chapel, Bedford, and schoolteacher Ada Haydon, née Ford. Her brother Sir Walter Langdon-Brown was the Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge.
She married the economist John Neville Keynes in 1882. They had a daughter and two sons: