Edith Holt Whetham

Edith Holt Whetham (27 December 1911 – 28 January 2001) was an English lecturer and

Early life

Edith Holt Whetham was born on 27 December 1911,^[1] the daughter of William Cecil Dampier Whetham, a Cambridge-educated scientist and agricultural academic,^[2] and his wife Catherine Durning Holt, a daughter of Liverpool merchant Robert Durning Holt who had also pursued an education at Cambridge.^[3] She had one brother^{[4][citation needed]} and four sisters, including Margaret Anderson (indexer). Whetham's family owned a small manor house in Devon, and also inherited a small estate in Hilfield, Dorset where they spent family vacations.^[1]

Whetham suffered from hearing loss after a fall when she was an infant. She was educated at home and later at Downe House School near Newbury.^[1] In 1930, she enrolled in Newnham College, where her mother had studied.^[3] She took classes in economics, attending the lectures of John Maynard Keynes.^[1] Although she passed her degree examinations, it was not until 1998 that she was conferred with her full degree because she had studied at a time when Cambridge did not permit women to participate in graduation ceremonies.^[5]

Career

Whetham began work as a resident scholar at the

Following the war, Whetham returned to Cambridge..^[1] She was a Fellow of Newnham College^[6] and held the Gilbey lecturership in History and Economics of Agriculture until 1963.^[1]

In 1952, Whetham published the book, British Farming 1939–1949, a major study of the change in farming practices in England. She resigned from Cambridge in 1963 and took up a position at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, as a visiting Professor of Economics, later becoming a full professor there. Her interests had moved to the agricultural needs and economies of the developing world.^[1]

Whetham's later publications, sometimes co-authored, included London Milk Trade 1900–1930 (1960), A History of British Agriculture (1846–1914) (1964), Cooperation, Land Reform, and Land Settlement: Report on a Survey in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria and Iran (1968), The Economics of African Countries (1969), Agricultural Marketing in Africa (1972) and Beef, Cattle and Sheep 1910–1940 (1976).^{[citation needed]} She single-handedly wrote the eighth volume of the Cambridge University Press series The Agrarian History of England and Wales (1978).^[6]

In 1966, Whetham was appointed to the executive of the Agricultural Economics Society and in 1971 she was elected as its president.^[1] She also held various posts with the British Agricultural History Society and served as its president for a period until 1979.^[6]

Whetham died on 28 January 2001 in Cambridge.^[1]

References