Hilda Keet, the first female administrator employed at Birkbeck, fulfilled her role as secretary with dedication, skill and sensitivity. For four years during the First World War, it was said to be “natural and even inevitable” that Miss Keet would take over the duties of the College Secretary when he left for war-work.

Near the end of the war, when the Principal lost most of his sight, it became “one of Miss Keet’s self-imposed duties and, no doubt, incidentally, pleasures” to walk him home after work. However, once the war was over, Miss Keet was unceremoniously stripped of her duties as the unofficial College Secretary and reverted to the usual chores of the “typewriter”.

Her career as ‘typewriter’ started in 1906 and she retired in 1949, when a rather patronising article in her honour was published in The Lodestone: Miss Keet’s job was “normal office routine work”, the “meticulous care” she “lavished” upon the academic staff meant that “they began to think of more and more things that they wanted to have done”.

Keet also worked for the Students’ Union and took an evening degree at Birkbeck.