Dame Lilian Barker, born in 1876, graduated from Whitelands College in the 1890s. She became a schoolteacher who specialised in troubled children. She became the Principal of the London County Council’s Women’s Institute correction facility in 1913 and joined the war effort in WW1, advancing to superintendent of the Royal Arsenal, Woolrich where she oversaw 30,000 female workers. After WW1 she joined the Ministry of Labour’s training department and in 1923 she was appointed governor of the Borstal Institution for Girls at Aylesbury. She reformed women’s prisons with a focus on education and rehabilitation. She was the first British assistant female prison commissioner by becoming the assistant commissioner of prisons in 1935. She was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1944. Lilian Barker lived with her partner Florence Francis for 40 years until her death in 1955.