Evelyn Sharp, Baroness Sharp
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The Right Honourable The Baroness Sharp GBE |
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| Born |
Evelyn Adelaide Sharp 25 May 1903 Hornsey, Middlesex, England, UK |
| Died | 1 September 1985 (aged 82) Lavenham, Suffolk, England, UK |
| Occupation | Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government |
Evelyn Adelaide Sharp, Baroness Sharp, GBE (25 May 1903 – 1 September 1985) was a British civil servant. She was first woman to hold the position of Permanent Secretary, the most senior civil servant in a Ministry, at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government from 1955 to her retirement in 1966.
Sharp was born in Hornsey, Middlesex (now part of Haringey in north London). She was third of five children, with three sisters and a younger brother. Her parents were the Reverend Charles James Sharp, the Vicar of Ealing, and his wife, Mary Frances Musgrave Harvey.
She was educated at Dana House in Crouch Hill, and the North London Collegiate School. At St Paul's Girls' School, she captained the school at both cricket and netball. In 1922 she moved to Somerville College, Oxford, where she graduated with a second in Modern History in 1925.
In 1926 she joined the Civil Service as an administrator, at first in the Board of Trade then after 18 months the Ministry of Health. Although the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act had been enacted in 1919, the examinations to enter the administrative grades at the civil service had only been opened to women in 1925. The first three in 1925 were Alix Kilroy (a college friend), Enid Russell-Smith and Mary Smeiton); all three would later be named Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
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