Alda Milner-Barry Explained

Alda Milner-Barry
Birth Date:5 July 1893
Death Place:Cambridgeshire, England
Occupation:Educator, codebreaker
Relatives:Stuart Milner-Barry (brother)
W. H. Besant (grandfather)

Alda Mary Milner-Barry (5 July 1893 – 26 March 1938)[1] was a British cryptoanalyst and academic. She was a fellow and vice-principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, and part of MI1b, the British military intelligence unit of the War Office in World War I.[2] [3]

Personal life

Alda Milner-Barry was born in 1893, the daughter of Edward Leopold Milner-Barry, Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Bangor, and his wife Edith Mary Milner-Barry .[4] Her grandfather was William H. Besant, a mathematical fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Her aunt Alda Marguerite Milner-Barry was an author, lecturer, and hymnwriter.[5] Her younger brother, Stuart Milner-Barry, was a renowned chess player and would become a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during World War II.[6] [7]

Career

While an undergraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge, Alda Milner-Barry covered her father's lessons at the University of Bangor while he was working as a translator in the British Admiralty.[8] She completed the Medieval and Modern Languages tripos at Cambridge in two years, instead of the usual three, in 1914.[9] In 1916, she graduated with first class honours in English and German. She immediately took up work as a translator in the Intelligence Department of the War Office. In around 1917, Milner-Barry was the interim Professor of German at University College Galway for a year. She then went to MI1b, where she was appointed deputy to codebreaker Emily Anderson.

From 1920 to 1934, she was a lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham and, from 1934 to 1938, the tutor of Sidgwick Hall, Newnham College.[10] [11] She became vice-principal of the college, remaining in that position until her death in 1938, at the age of 44, at a nursing home in Cambridgeshire.

Publications

Notes and References

  1. Birth date from Norfolk, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1922, page 174; death date from England & Wales National Probate Calendar, 1938, page 240; both via Ancestry.
  2. Book: Chionna . Jackie Ui . The Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain's Greatest Female Code Breaker . 2023 . Headline . 9781472295477 . 43–44.
  3. Web site: Research uncovers secrets of Newnham women sent to codebreak at Bletchley Park – Newnham College . newn.cam.ac.uk . 16 March 2024.
  4. Web site: In memory of the fallen of the University: 1914-1918 . Bangor University . 16 March 2024 . en.
  5. Web site: Alda Marguerite Milner-Barry . 16 March 2024 . The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology.
  6. Web site: Upham . John . Remembering Sir Stuart Milner-Barry KCVO CB OBE (20-ix-1906 25-iii-1995) . British Chess News . 16 March 2024 . 25 March 2020.
  7. News: Ferguson . Donna . Cambridge college unmasks alumnae who were Bletchley Park codebreakers . 17 March 2024 . The Guardian . 17 March 2024.
  8. News: 25 September 1914 . Personal . 16 March 2024 . The Merioneth News and Herald and Barmouth Record . 5 . Newspapers.com.
  9. News: 26 June 1914 . Bangor Students' Success . 16 March 2024 . Liverpool Daily Post . 15 . Newspapers.com.
  10. News: 5 April 1938 . Miss Alda Milner-Barry . The Times . 18 . Gale.
  11. Web site: E163 - The Women of Newnham College . Bletchley Park . 2 May 2024 . 26 April 2024.