Jenifer Hart (1914–2005)

Jenifer Hart, née Fischer Williams, was born in London, England. She received her early education in France, where her father was practicing as an international barrister, and then attended Downe House School. In 1932, she won a place at Oxford University, where she was part of a "radical set" that included Goronwy Rees, Bernard Floud, Phoebe Pool, Douglas Jay, and Iris Murdoch, and joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1935, she graduated with a first-class honors degree. The following year, she began a successful Civil Service career in the British Home Office, a rare position for a woman, where she worked on youth justice. Later she served as private secretary to Sir Alexander Maxwell, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State. In 1941, she married H.L.A. (Herbert) Hart, a legal philosopher. When her husband went to Oxford University in 1947 as a professor, Jenifer left government and took a job as a research fellow at the university. Eventually she joined the faculty of St. Anne's College as a history teacher, a post she held until her retirement in 1981. During these years, she wrote an acclaimed history, The British Police, published in 1951 and still considered a standard reference work. She also wrote Proportional Representation: Critics of the British Electoral System, 1820–1945 (1992). In 1998, she published her autobiography, Ask Me No More.