Florence Ada Keynes (née Brown)
1 portrait of Florence Ada Keynes (née Brown)
© National Portrait Gallery, London
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Florence Ada Keynes (née Brown)
by Olive Edis
sepia-toned matte print on photographer's card mount, 1920s
6in. x 5 7/8in. (152 mm x 149 mm)
Given by Olive Edis, 1948
Photographs Collection
NPG x15455
Sitterback to top
- Florence Ada Keynes (née Brown) (1861-1958), Social and political activist; wife of (John) Neville Keynes. Sitter in 1 portrait.
Artistback to top
- (Mary) Olive Edis (Mrs Galsworthy) (1876-1955), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 425 portraits, Sitter in 17 portraits.
Events of 1920back to top
Current affairs
The Government of Ireland Act (Fourth Home Rule Bill) partitions Ireland into the Irish Free State with a devolved parliament in Dublin and Northern Ireland with a devolved parliament in Belfast.The Communist Party of Great Britain is founded in London, uniting a number of independent socialist and Marxist parties into a single, united party.
Art and science
Queen Alexandra unveils a monument to Edith Cavell in St Martin's Place opposite the National Portrait Gallery. The English nurse was executed in Germany for helping hundreds of allied soldiers to cross the border from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands.George V officially opens the Imperial War Museum at the Crystal Palace.
International
The Kapp Putsch threatens the newly formed Weimar Republic. In defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, the leaders of the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt refused to disband and marched on Berlin, occupying it on the 13th March. With the general army refusing to defend the city, the government fled to Stuttgart. The rebellion, however, failed after the workers joined a general strike, disabling their plans.Comments back to top
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Antony Carpen
14 July 2017, 22:42
Cllr Florence Ada Keynes was one of the most pioneering women of the early-mid 20th Century in Cambridge. Students of economics may recognise her as the mother of John Maynard Keynes, the economist and former Treasury civil servant.
As Florence Ada Brown, she was one of the earliest students at Newnham College in the very late 1870s. It was here she met her future husband, John Neville Keynes, who would go onto become Registrar of the University of Cambridge. The couple had three children, Maynard, Margaret (who would go onto marry Nobel Prize winner A.V. Hill), and Geoffrey - later Dr Sir Geoffrey Keynes, an eminent surgeon.
In the mid-1890s, Florence joined the Cambridge Charitable Organisation Society, of which many sister societies existed in towns and cities across the country. She would go onto become the first woman councillor elected to what is now Cambridge City Council, one of five women who would become the first women magistrates in Cambridge just after the end of the First World War, the first woman elevated to the rank of Alderman, and the second woman to become Mayor of Cambridge. She was the chair of the guildhall reconstruction committee, and is responsible for ensuring that Cambridge got a new guildhall - the current one that looks over Market Square.