02.12.1980 (44 years) (Ashford, Kent, England, UK)
Lucy Thomas, (baptised 11 March 1781 – 27 September 1847), was a Welsh businesswoman and colliery owner known as 'the mother of the Welsh steam coal trade'. Thomas, with her son, took over the running of her husband's coal mine after his death in 1833. Unusual as it was at the time that a woman ran the business, more unusually she was illiterate. Business documents held in the Glamorgan archive show she signed only with an X. Much of Thomas' subsequent success as a businesswoman were embellished by Merthyr historian Charles Wilkins, who wrote one of the few articles on her life in 1888. It is now believed that, George Insole, a Cardiff agent was the architect of her success, though this does not diminish Thomas' position as one of the few women coal owners in industrial Britain. It is recorded that Lucy once attended the coal exchange in Cardiff only to be told she could not enter. She sent a male clerk in her employ into the Insole owned Coal Exchange with a letter informing the establishment 'My coal is equal to any mans, failure to grant entry will lead to my business lining another's pockets'.