DAME RACHEL CROWDY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 49, 27 February 1935, Page 12

DAME RACHEL CROWDY.

SOCIAL SERVICE CAREER. Women social workers throughout the world will welcome the announcement from London that Dame Rachel Crowdy has been appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the Traffic in Arms. This commission will consider and report upon the practicability and desirability, both from a national and an international point of view, of the prohibition of private manufacture or trade in arms and munitions of war. The inclusion of Dame Rachel Crowdy in such a commission is especially fitting by reason of her long and conspicuous service of 111 years on the League of Nations Secretariat, for most of that time, as chief of the opium traffic control and social questions section. Dame Rachel Crowdy was the only woman chief of a section, and genuine regret was felt by many when in 1931, under the seven-years rule whlcTi wae passed to prevent a monopoly of offices from being held by any nation or nations, her appointment came to an end. This distinguished and eminently able woman is personally known to many New Zealandcrs who have been privileged to meet her, particularly when she represented the League of Nations at the second Pan-Pacific Women's Conference at Honolulu in 1930. Dame Rachel Crowdy's early career of social service proved a valuable training ground for l.er later work. She spent a year at Guy's Hospital, London, then, after studying dispensing, she qualified for the diploma of the Apothecaries Hall, after which she took charge of a Government provident dispensary in a London slum area. When war broke out she crossed to Boulogne with the first branch of trained V.A.D.'e, and served with the expeditionary force from 1914 to 191!) as the principal commandant of thousands of V.A.D.'s in Fiance and Belgium. She was awarded the Mons Star and the Royal Red Cross, was made a Dame of the British Empire and a Lady of Grace of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and was also mentioned in dispatches.