During the First World War, Maud worked for the Ministry of Food, helping to keep the nation healty and well nourished in spite of food shortages.
Educated at Hockerill College, Bishop’s Stortford, Maud became a teacher. In 1893, she was the first headmistress of St. Andrew’s Girls’ School in Willesden. After two other teaching posts, Maud joined the staff of Homerton Training College, Cambridge as Bursar. There, she married Charles Horobin, who was Principal of the College, and they had a daughter and two sons. Charles died suddenly in 1902 and Maud then became Acting Principal of the College.
On 12th November 1904, Maud married Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton. They had two sons and a daughter. Cloudesley was a graduate of Cambridge, Paris and Lille, an inspector of schools, an author and a lecturer at home and overseas. Maud and he had two sons.
In 1911, a group of British gas managers made advertising history by establishing a collective organization dedicated to the promotion of a single industry. The British Commercial Gas Association directed its campaigns at various consumer groups, including builders, architects, and tenants. To present the "woman’s point of view" to their female customers, the B.C.G.A. executive hired Maud as editor-in-chief of thei monthly publicity magazines.
Maud anticipated that gas technology, in the form of cookers, water boilers, and gas fires, had the potential to raise housing and nutrition standards for all classes. She felt that gas appliances had the potention to help the middle classes in their struggle to keep up appearances and reduce the need for live-in staff. She also promoted modern technology to improve the health of the population. Maud maintained that technology made possible a "domestic revolution," by significantly reducing the time and effort that women, as both servants and housewives, expended on housework. Time saved on housekeeping might be directed to more profitable and gratifying pursuits, including paid employment or voluntary service, extending women’s influence beyond the private sphere.
Maud, who was a close friend of Marie Stopes and supported Marie’s birth control ideas, became a journalist and edited “Mothers’ Magazine”, as well as “Gas Journal”. She became an expert in child welfare and worked as a consultant. During the First World War, Maud worked for the Ministry of Food, helping to keep the nation healty and well nourished in spite of food shortages.
After the War, Maud wrote “The Future of our Disabled Sailors and Soldiers: A Description of the Training and Instruction Classes at Queen Mary’s Convalescent Hospitals, Roehampton and at Queen Mary’s Workshops, Pavilion Militayry Hospital, Brighton, for Sailors and Soldiers who have lost their Limbs in the War”.
The only female Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Sanitary Engineers, Maud was also a member of the Royal Institute of Public Health, and Chair of the Association for Education in Industry and Commerce. She was decorated Officier d’Académie by the French Government for international services to public health.
Maud wrote several books, among them “The Mother’s Companion”, “Clean Kitchen Management: The Preservation of Food” and “Cooking by Gas”.
Maud died on 16th April 1946 in Norfolk.
Her daughter, Norah Maud Horobin, followed her mother’s early calling as headmistress of two girls’ High Schools before ending her career as headmistress of Roedean School in Brighton from 1947-61.
https://homerton250.org/people/maud-brereton/
