Lady Martha Bruce, who has died aged 101, was the pioneering governor of the first purpose-built prison for women in Scotland. Her innovative ideas still shape the Scottish Prison Service’s approach to supporting women in custody today and were informed by a career that began in the military during the second world war.
In 1975, Martha was appointed the first governor of HMP and YOI Cornton Vale, Stirling, Scotland’s only all-women prison. She oversaw the planning of this new model facility based on what a subsequent governor described as her idea that “women in custody and officers in the unit could build supportive relationships in small groups, eating and socialising together in somewhat homelike environments”.
After it opened, Cornton Vale prison, with its green open spaces and individual units, made headline news; it was referred to in the press as a “Spanish hacienda” and by some locals as a holiday camp. Not one to be knocked off course, Martha stuck to her vision, and both the facility and its integrative methods encapsulated her passion for progressing the rehabilitation of women who came into the prison system.
Prior to the governorship of Cornton Vale, Martha had run the women’s unit at HMP Greenock, where female inmates were incarcerated in traditional cell blocks designed for men. Her experiences there helped inform her thinking for the new women’s facility. She explained to a startled media in 1975: “It is amazing how much talent one can find and how much common sense when you just start them off in the right way.” One of her key motivations was to prepare women, many of whom were on short-term sentences, for life in the outside world.
She later said: “I am not a ‘lock ’em to the railings’ sort of feminist but I do believe that women should be given an equal chance.” That rationale helped her effect change in Scotland’s penal system, from the specific needs of women in custody to the benefits of healing and supportive relationships. She led Cornton Vale for eight years, until her retirement in 1983.
Teresa Medhurst, chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), acknowledged her influence, recognising that “Martha’s foresight and progressive approach paved the way for how Scotland supports women in custody today”, with many of her ideas built on the creation of the new community custody units and the national women’s facility (HMP and YOI Stirling) that will soon replace Cornton Vale.
The daughter of Edward Bruce, 10th Earl of Elgin (which gave her the courtesy title of “Lady”), and his wife, Katherine (nee Cochrane), Martha, the eldest of six children, was born and raised on Broomhall estate, Dunfermline, in the bosom of Scotland’s landed aristocracy. Her father was a lord lieutenant, and friends and neighbours included royalty. (Marion Crawford, governess to the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, had earlier worked in the Bruce household, and after the war Martha was lady-in-waiting to Mary, Princess Royal, sister of George VI.)
She was educated at Downham school in Essex, where she had her first taste of leadership and discipline. Eschewing the traditional route for society girls – her coming-out ball was “hell” – she found the start of the second world war and subsequent expansion of women’s military roles to be transformative.
Prior to the introduction of conscription for women in December 1941, Martha signed up for the women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), aged 19, and turned down an immediate promotion to officer: “I wanted to work on the gun sites as a radar operator.” Rising to subaltern on innovative mixed heavy anti-aircraft batteries, and undeterred by either her gender or her diminutive size, Martha drilled and trained both men and women, quietly relishing the opportunity to outperform the opposite sex while honing an ability to maximise potential and deliver results from a broad church of ATS recruits.
In 1945 she was posted to occupied Europe, returning from Italy and Austria a year later to serve with the Territorial Army in Scotland, which was establishing a mixed anti-aircraft regiment. Martha, capable of commanding both sexes, was soon “talking male gunners down from mutiny and persuading them to fire their guns”.
Subsequently she focused on the military recruitment and training of young women for the ATS’s successor organisation, the Women’s Royal Army Corps. Her successful efforts garnered headlines, and it was Martha who led the very first group of volunteer women across the Channel under the umbrella of the 51st Highland Division. By 1958 she had been appointed OBE for services to the military, and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before leaving to join the SPS in 1968, as assistant governor at Greenock.
Martha dedicated her life to public service, and specifically to breaking patterns and transforming women’s lives within rigid hierarchies and institutions known for their masculine conservatism and discipline. She conceded that “early on during the war I accepted my lot, but later I had experience, I was in a position to effect change”. That ability marked her out as exceptional both in the British military and the SPS, with a former inmate summing up her impact: Martha “saved my life from an abusive marriage. She saw the potential in people, her influence had an effect on my character and my development.”
I interviewed her several times for my book Army Girls and was struck by her firm, fair, no-nonsense approach and commitment to helping women help themselves. She remained actively engaged with both the WRAC and the SPS until the end of her life.
Martha is survived by two brothers, Andrew and David, and a sister, Jean.
• Martha Veronica Bruce, Lady Martha Bruce, prisoner officer, born 7 November 1921; died 22 January 2023
