Maureen Laker

Maureen Laker, who died on January 22 aged 81, was the guardian of high editorial standards during some 20 years as social editor of The Daily Telegraph. 

Maureen Laker on her 80th birthday 

While other departments accepted the increasingly fluid standards of the public, Maureen Laker believed that the Court and Social column existed to defend against such trends and demanded that names and titles were “properly” described.

Together with her three assistants she was responsible for the Court Circular, the official notices, and the daily list of birthdays, as well as for checking that the marriage announcements were correctly taken down and published.

The only daughter of an optical lens-maker, Maureen Agnes Laker was born in Hammersmith on January 27 1929, and went to Gumley House convent school, Isleworth, before becoming a clerk at The Universe. In 1951 she moved to the Telegraph, first as a front-office clerk and then as a member of the Court and Social department.

Accuracy, spelling and grammar were valued, above all. Any reporter who added the definite article to Last Post was sharply reminded that this could only refer to a pub at John O’Groats or Land’s End . Close contacts were maintained with Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Armed Forces, while the office Who’s Who was regularly updated by hand throughout the year.

When the Speaker of the Commons protested that his official notices were being changed he was informed that their precedence was incorrect, and should be in order of nobility and then celebrity.

Bishops were told that they would be included in the birthdays list only when they were senior enough to sit in the House of Lords. A peer who had the temerity to complain about being left out was informed by WF Deedes, the editor: “Our birthdays are in the charge of our social editor, a lady in whose hands I am as clay to the potter’s wheel. All I can do, in return for your letter, is to approach her tactfully.”
When protests increased about the failure of “Ms” to appear in the column, a typical Laker letter declared: “We are not disputing the legality of the use of Ms. But I am afraid we have never used the prefix in our social column. This remains one of our firm editorial rules. The style of The Times might well be different. I regret I am unable to make an exception.” Deedes’s successor, Max Hastings, eventually achieved a breakthrough, but only (at least at first), a temporary one: a note attached to the file allowing Ms declared: “1987 only”.
Some who attended memorial services resented the department’s efficient politeness at the church door. When one trades union official who later became a Labour cabinet minister was less than gracious, Mr Speaker Thomas, walking immediately behind with Harold Wilson, greeted the Telegraph and Times social reporters as old friends: “Ah, the first ladies of Fleet Street”.
No lover of unnecessary change, Maureen Laker insisted on perfectly typed copy with two carbon copies for most of her 43 years service, and was only reluctantly persuaded that the manual typewriter should give way to an electric machine shortly before the introduction of computers. She retired in 1994.
A devout Roman Catholic, she seemed too busy with her job to marry. Even in her last years she had no hesitation in correcting the pronunciation of a 70-year-old cousin.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8314413/Maureen-Laker.html