Ellen Pinsent

Dame Ellen Frances Pinsent DBE (26 March 1866 – 1949), née Parker, was a British mental health worker.
She was the daughter of the Rev. Richard Parker and his second wife, Elizabeth Coffin. She married Hume Chancellor Pinsent (b. 1857), a relative of the philosopher David Hume, and they had three children. Their two sons, David Hume Pinsent and Richard Parker Pinsent, were killed in the First World War, and their daughter, Hester, married the Nobel-prize winner Edgar Douglas Adrian, a peer.

Pinsent was the first woman elected, on 1 November 1911, to serve on Birmingham City Council. She represented the Edgbaston Ward as a Liberal Unionist. She had earlier been co-opted as a member of the council's Education Committee and served as Chairman of the Special School Sub-Committee. She stood down from the council in October 1913 upon appointment as Commissioner for the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency.

The Dame Ellen Pinsent Special Primary School (for children with learning disabilities) in Birmingham is named for her. Her life and work was chronicled in the book Ellen Pinsent: including the ‘feebleminded’ in Birmingham, 1900–1913.

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