Jane Hughes Fawcett
| Jane Fawcett | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Janet Carolin (or Caroline) Hughes 4 March 1921 |
| Died | 21 May 2016 (aged 95) Oxford, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Other names | Jane Hughes |
| Occupation | Preservationist, author, codebreaker, singer |
| Known for | Decoding a message, which enabled the Royal Navy to sink the Bismarck |
Jane Fawcett (née Hughes; 4 March 1921 – 21 May 2016) was a British codebreaker, singer, and heritage preservationist. She recently became known for her role in decoding a message, which led to the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck. From 1963 to 1976 she served as the secretary of the Victorian Society. She wrote and edited works including The Future of the Past; Seven Victorian Architects; The Village in History and Save the City.
Janet Carolin (or Caroline) Hughes was born on 4 March 1921. She was raised in London, attended Miss Ironside's School for Girls in Kensington, trained as a ballet dancer, and was admitted to the Royal Ballet School. As a young woman of 17, she was told she was "too tall" to be a professional dancer, and her promising ballet career ended. She was then sent to Zürich to learn German, shortly thereafter moving to the St. Moritz ski resort.
After six months, she was told by her parents to return home to "come out" as a debutante. She found that lifestyle boring, "a complete waste of time" and was relieved when invited by a friend to apply to the Bletchley Park project.
In 1940, at the age of 18, she was interviewed by senior codebreaker Stuart Milner-Barry, and joined the secret codebreaking project at Bletchley Park. She joined a group of women known as the "Debs of Bletchley Park", so called because they were women recruited from upper classes, debutantes, to work in secret as part of the Enigma project. Hughes was assigned to Hut 6, a "Decoding Room" of women only. The conditions were poor—dimly lit, poorly heated, and poorly ventilated—and the women worked long hours under extreme pressure. In Hut 6, Jane and other women like her would receive the daily Enigma keys and type them into their own Typex machines. They would then determine if the messages were recognizable German.
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