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Baroness Trumpington, Former Bletchley Park Clerk, Dies Aged 96
El Reg [theregister.co.uk]:
Baroness Trumpington, a wartime Bletchley Park transcriber who was part of the push to posthumously pardon Alan Turing, has died aged 96.
As the daughter of a society family that had almost been ruined in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Jean Barker left school aged 15 "having never sat an exam but fluent in French, German and Italian," according to the BBC's obituarist [bbc.com].
When the Second World War broke out, her parents, who had retained their society connections despite the stock market crash, found her a post working on former Prime Minister David Lloyd George's farm...
A year later she joined the code-crackers of Bletchley Park [theregister.co.uk], aged 18, transcribing intercepted messages from German submarines. While the code-breakers and the rest of the team at the site did not mix, the future baroness spent her free time socialising at London's key spots for the upper crust, including the Ritz and Claridge's. She told The Daily Telegraph [telegraph.co.uk] of one "very unsuitable" incident from her time at Bletchley when her team were disciplined after being caught singing the Nazi Party's official anthem, explaining: "You had nothing to do but work so you got up to mischief."
She later entered politics in Margaret Thatcher's government.
