Joyce Waley Cohen

Joyce Constance Ina Waley-Cohen, Lady Waley-Cohen (; 20 January 1920 – 30 June 2013) was an English educationist and public servant. She was chair of the Saint Felix School's governing body, the Governing Bodies of Girls' Schools Association, the Independent Schools Joint Council, Taunton School and Wellington College, chair of the board of both the Westminster Children's Hospital and the Gordon Hospital. Waley-Cohen was married to Sir Bernard Nathaniel Waley-Cohen, 1st Baronet, the Lord Mayor of London, and they had four children. Background On 20 January 1920, Waley-Cohen was born in 15 Lansdowne Road, Kensington, London. She was the daughter of the politician and lawyer Harry Nathan, 1st Baron Nathan, who served in the British Army, and his wife Eleanor Joan Clara (Nellie), , a future late 1940s London County Council chairperson, and an important person in the Jewish community. Waley-Cohen went to school at Saint Felix School in Southwold, and graduated from Girton College, Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1941. She began her working career as an administrator in the Ministry of Fuel and Power in London. There, Waley-Cohen was led by the principal Bernard Waley-Cohen alongside Harold Wilson. The two were married on 21 December 1943 and they had four children: Rosalind, Stephen, Joanna and Robert. She took her husband's surname in 1950. Following their marriage, Waley-Cohen supported her husband in his career as she raised their children and maintaining their house in St James’s, Piccadilly and their farm estate located close to the edge of Exmoor, where they kept sheep and a herd of Devon cattle. She became Lady Mayoress of London when her husband was elected the city's Lord Mayor in 1960, and the family moved to Mansion House, London, the Lord Mayor's 18th-century official residence. Waley-Cohen planned social occasions at the house and toured Australia in 1961 in which London's Lord Mayor made his first official visit to Melbourne. Educationalist Waley-Cohen was able to find time for public service, particularly in education. She was an advocate of private and single-sex education and believed that single-sex education was better for girls than it was for boys for which they performed best in a mixed environment. From 1945 to 1983, Waley-Cohen was a member of Saint Felix School's governing body, on which she served as chair between 1970 and 1983.