First ICAEW female member admitted by exam - Ethel Watts

Ethel Watts was born in Mile End in the East-End of London in 1895, to John Watts, a police constable originally from Carmarthenshire and Caroline Poole, an East-end native. The family lived at 44 Carlton Road, Mile End. John later worked for the Gas Board after retirement from the Metropolitan Police.

Watts attended Coburn School for Girls in Bow, before studying at Bedford College. She then read history at Royal Holloway College, and was awarded a 2nd class B.A, (Hons.) in 1916. During World War 1, Watts was employed as an administrative assistant in the Ministry of Food and at one point was private secretary to the Director of Oils and Fats.  It was while working at the Ministry that she met Sir Harry Peat, who advised her to take up accountancy as a career, rather than her original plan of the Law.

After choosing accountancy, she was articled to Sidney Williams FCA in Manchester and joined Harry's father's firm W.B Peat & Co., in Ironmonger's Row, after qualifying. In 1925, after obtaining her practicing certificate, she went into practice in the firm Homersham & Watts of Clements Lane, London. Her partner at Homersham & Watts was Miriam Homersham, a member of the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors since 1922 and a co-founder of Britain's first housing association, Women's Pioneer Housing. Watts then went into practice on her own as E. Watts & Co in Chandos House, Palmer Street, W1. Later premises were located at 77 Dartmouth Street, 7 Victoria Street and 35 Victoria Street, all in SW1.

Watts married a doctor, Oscar Tobin, in 1929, but always practiced under her maiden name, officially the couple were known as Watts-Tobin. She continued as a sole practitioner until retiring in 1961.

Watts was rare in early woman chartered accountants as she did not seem to have any family connections to accountancy firms unlike contemporaries such as Ethel Lovelock and Mildred Pearce. She was also the second woman (after Mary Harris Smith) to have other women as articled clerks, for both the ICAEW and the SIAA .

Although support from men in the profession was essential, since women could not qualify without male accountants taking them on as articled clerks, there were still other obstacles to overcome. Many ICAEW members felt that women should be treated differently to women and in some instances they were. For example, women had to sit separately from men in the examination hall rather than in alphabetical order among the male candidates. Watts raised this issue in a letter to the ICAEW president in 1935. She objected to this as it compromised the anonymity of the examination scripts. The response from the Institute was that the ‘fairer sex’ would distract the male candidates. In a 1945 article in The Accountant advising women should insist on going out on audit rather than staying back in the office. Like Mary Harris Smith, Watts was adamant that women should be treated no differently from men: equality was the aim, not a preference.

Watts mainly provided tax advice, with her husband remarking in The Accountant (in an article entitled ‘I married an accountant – by a husband’), that she was always glued to the wireless when the Budget was broadcast. She did have audit clients, including a firm of hatters who felt a female auditor might be more understanding of their problems than a man. Like Mary Harris Smith, Watts was also the treasurer for, and provided tax advice to, a number of women’s groups. Watts admitted that this was her deliberate policy as it was a useful way to gain clients. In her own records there is a letter from Smith passing on the audit of the Soroptimist Club to Watts.

Watts was actively involved with ICAEW and an official delegate at Eight International Congress of Accountanst in New york. She was also the first woman to be elected to the committee of the London and District Society of Chartered Accountants (1950-1960). She recounted that the first dinner she was entitled to attend, as a committee member,  was held at the Junior Carlton Club, which did not allow women to be admitted. She wryly pointed out that she would have been allowed in if she was a waitress! She also told of the time that she received an invitation to a student dinner as E. Watts Esq. With the request that she wear a dinner jacket.

She was a member of the executive committee of the Chartered Accountants’ Benevolent Fund from 1953 until her death. In 1945, when the number of women joining ICAEW was increasing, she founded the Women Chartered Accountants’ Dining Society to provide an opportunity for women in the profession to meet. The Watts prize was established by the Society in her memory. In her final years she was a major contributor to The History of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales 1880 - 1965 (Heinemann, 1965), although she did not live to see it published.

As well as the accountancy profession, Watts was active in the movement to secure equality for women from the 1920s to the 1960s. She was involved with the London and National Society for Women’s Service and continued this work when it became the Fawcett Society, offering her services as an accountant, she also was a trustee of the society's library. She was a member of Chiswick Borough Council for several years (her husband had been president of the Mile End Labour Party, the first Jewish Mayor of Stepney and a founder of the Socialist Medical Association) and had worked to improve library services in the East End of London in her earlier years.

She died suddenly in 1963. The many letters of condolence sent to the Fawcett Society spoke of her ‘clear brain’ and ‘ability’, but also that she was charming, delightful, kind and elegant, as well as an avid reader and music lover with catholic tastes in both.

Further reading

• Ethel Watts: Paving the way for women in Chartered Accountancy - article on the East End Women's Museum website, September 2020
• Ethel Watts - KPMG film telling Ethel Watts' story
• Obituary. The Accountant, 30 November 1963. p703
• Obituary. Accountancy, December 1963. p1066.
• Woman Accountants (Ethel Watts, The Accountant.11 September 1948 p211
• I married an accountant – by a husband (The Accountant. Ref TBC)
• Unnamed article (The Accountant, 1945)