the British Government Statistical Service. During her time at the Home Office she expanded the department's statistical and support staff, and established a dedicated computing team. She acknowledged problems with migration figures, after an error was discovered where the number of passengers leaving the country had been overcounted. As a result, she set up an inquiry led by Claus Moser, the head of the Central Statistical Office at the time. She was a prison visitor, and promoted the use of statistics in criminal justice policy. She presented the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, with international comparisons to show that capital punishment had no effect on murder rates. After compulsory retirement from the Civil Service at the age of 60, she was later Statistical Adviser to the Committee of Enquiry into the Engineering Profession from 1978 to 1980. She was a consultant at the University of Kent with the Applied Statistics Research Unit She served as the first female President of the Royal Statistical Society from 1975 to 1977. Cunliffe stated in her Presidential address she hoped she was elected "[...] primarily as a statistician who happens to be a woman". Presidential Address to the RSS Interaction Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 139, No. 1. (1976), pp. 1–19. Honours Cunliffe was appointed MBE in 1993, for services to the Guides and the community in Surrey. Other activities Cunliffe's other activities included work with youth organisations, gardening and prison after-care. She served as a Mole Valley District Councillor from 1981 to 1999, chaired the local Community Health Council, and served as Chair of Governors for Parsons Mead School. References Chapter 25 includes an account of Cunliffe's career based on her presidential address. External links Photograph on the Portraits of Statisticians page British women mathematicians Women statisticians 1917 births 2012 deaths Members of HM Government Statistical Service Civil servants in the Home Office 20th-century English mathematicians Alumni of the London School of Economics Members of the Order of the British Empire Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society People educated at Parsons Mead School 20th-century women mathematicians British statisticians