Ex-mayor became beloved House of Lords institution
Baroness Trumpington, who has died aged 96, was a former Bletchley cipher clerk who later became mayor of Cambridge and a member of John Major’s Conservative government.
Forthright and formidable, Jean Trumpington made up for any lack of intellectual brilliance with a capacity for hard work combined with down-to-earth common sense and an engaging habit of telling jokes against herself. The prospect of a vintage performance in the House of Lords was usually enough to pack the chamber.
In 1987, as a minister at the Department of Health and Social Security, in answer to a question about whether Aids could be transmitted by insects, she replied: ‘‘I have replies to questions on bed bugs and monkeys, but I regret that I do not have fleas.’’
In 1994, while at the Department of National Heritage, she struck an incongruous figure as the department’s representative at the annual rock music awards, dressed in a stout woollen suit that evoked her career in naval intelligence. ‘‘I am here to collect autographs for my secretary,’’ she announced. ‘‘Is Elton John here?’’
‘‘I seem fated,’’ she protested unconvincingly. ‘‘When I’m trying very hard to be dignified, something always goes hideously wrong.’’
In 2011 she was captured on camera giving a V-sign to Lord King of Bridgwater when he referred to her as looking ‘‘pretty old’’ during a Remembrance debate. ‘‘It was entirely between him and me – I thought,’’ she told the Daily Telegraph. ‘‘I wasn’t conscious of there being television [cameras there]. I did that to his face. His family say he is famous now.’’ She repeated the twofingered salute at Ken Clarke when they both won Oldie of the Year awards in 2012.
There were few members of either house who did not have a stock of Trumpington stories, for she was a factory of jokes told against herself. Once, when asked about her wardrobe, she confessed to having three, labelled ‘‘outsize’’, ‘‘fat’’ and ‘‘obese’’.
In 1980, when she was created a life peer, she told the Garter King of Arms that she wished to become Baroness Trumpington, after the Cambridge ward she had represented. But apparently the title belonged to somebody else. ‘‘Is there not another place near Cambridge you would like?’’ he asked.
‘‘You don’t think I’m going to call myself Lady Six Mile Bottom, do you?’’ she demanded.
Nevertheless, she had a serious side. As a junior health minister, she was responsible for the public campaign against Aids, a problem she confronted with characteristic robustness: ‘‘Children must learn the facts properly,’’ she argued in 1986, ‘‘instead of getting behind the bicycle shed to pick up bits and pieces.’’
Jean Trumpington was born Jean Alys Campbell-Harris. Her father had been an aide to the Viceroy of India. Her American mother was an heiress of a Chicago paint manufacturer, and the family lived in a Georgian town house with 10 servants near Hyde Park in central London.
Her parents, she recalled, ‘‘brought me up much as they had been brought up: young children led a nursery life, with mother and father sweeping in to say goodnight, all dressed up for the evening with their friends in the Prince of Wales’s set.’’ After the family money vanished in the Wall Street crash, they moved to a smaller place in Kent.
During World War II she was recruited to work in naval intelligence at Bletchley Park. She was selected to work there because of her family ties. There was a general belief at the time that the upper classes were less likely to betray their country.
In 1952, while working for an advertising agency in New York, she met a young Cambridge don, Alan Barker. They married in 1954 and returned to England, living first at Eton, where he taught history, then at Cambridge, where he became headmaster of the Leys School in 1958.
She celebrated his retirement in 1975 by leaping fully clothed into the swimming pool in front of the entire pupil body and their astonished parents.
She tried twice to be selected as an MP, but encountered hostility to women among Tory selection panels. Instead she threw herself into local government, serving for 13 years on city and county councils in Cambridge, before becoming the city’s mayor in 1971. Later, on a visit to a Newmarket stud, a stallion began to show every sign of excitement as she approached his box. The stud director suggested it might be the scent she was wearing. ‘‘I am not only wearing scent,’’ she replied. ‘‘I am also an ex-mayor.’’ – Telegraph Group