Background
She was born in Biddenham, Bedfordshire, the daughter of a clergyman.
She was born in Biddenham, Bedfordshire, the daughter of a clergyman.
She was educated at Bedford High School and Newnham College, Cambridge (1891–1895), graduating in natural sciences.
She was particularly responsible for the illustrations. This monograph was to become a standard palaeontological reference work for many years. She published a number of other works and was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1919.
In 1906 she received her Doctor of Science from the University of Birmingham, and shortly afterwards married Gilbert Arden Shakespear, a physics lecturer at the university whom she had met in Cambridge.
They had only one child, a daughter, but she died in infancy. During the First World War she devoted herself to helping disabled servicemen.
She was honorary secretary of the Birmingham War Pensions Committee and from 1917 to 1926 sat on the Special Grants Committee of the Ministry of Pensions. She was appointed a justice of the peace for Birmingham in 1922, specialising in cases involving children and working-class girls.
She was a family visitor for foster parents and invited many poor women and girls to stay in her home at Caldwell Hall, Upton Warren, Worcestershire.
She died of cancer in 1946, aged 74.
Ethel Shakespear was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (Administration Member of the Order of the British Empire) in 1918 for her war work and promoted to Dame Commander (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1920 civilian war honours.