Minnie James (née Watkins)

Place of birth: Merthyr Tydfil

Service: Mother

Death: 1954, Cause not known

Notes: Minnie was married to William James in January 1891. They had six surviving children. Her three elder sons all served during the War. David was killed in September 1915, aged 24. Thomas died from wounds Christmas day 1918, aged 21, and Jack, who had been wounded too, died of tuberculosis in June 1920 also aged 24. rnIn 1938 Minnie James, then aged 72, was selected to represent all the Welsh mothers who had lost sons during the War, and to open The Temple of Peace.rn

Sources: http://www.walesforpeace.org/wfp/theme_TempleInternationalism.html

Reference: WaW0264

Minnie James

Mrs Minnie James at the opening of the Temple of Peace, Cardiff, 10th November 1938rn

Mary Sutherland

Place of birth: London

Service: Forester, WLA, 1916 -17

Death: 1955, Wellington, New Zealand, Cause not known

Notes: Mary Sutherland was the first woman in Britain to gain a degree in Forestry. She studied at University College, Bangor from 1912 to 1916. After graduation (in the same year as Mary Dilys Glynne and Violet Gale Jackson qv) she worked in the forestry division of the Women’s Land Army, and from 1917 as an assistant experimental officer for the Forestry Commission. Following the contraction of the Forestry Commission in 1922 she moved to New Zealand where she worked for the newly formed State Forest Service.

Sources: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 1998.

Reference: WaW0314

Newspaper report

Report of Bangor graduates including Mary Sutherland, Violet Gale Jackson and Mary Glynne. North Wales Chronicle 7th July 1916.

Mary Sutherland

Mary Sutherland in the 1920s in New Zealand. Te Amorangi Trust Museum.

Dorothea Adelaide Lawry Pughe Jones

Place of birth: Surrey

Service: Suffragist, Commandant, Ethnographer, Educationalist, Public servant, Church Warden, Heiress., VAD, 1914 - 1920

Death: 1955, Cause not known

Notes: Dorothea Pughe Jones, born 1875, inherited Ynysgain, Cricieth from her father in 1897. Following his death she attended Oxford University where she studied history followed by a diploma in ethnography. She was awarded a prize at the 1901 National Eisteddfod for a Welsh history textbook. In 1902 she was part of a British Government team inspecting education in the concentration camps for Boers in South Africa. In 1910 she was one of the founders of the Bangor and District Women’s Suffrage Society. She joined the VAD in 1914, initially as Quartermaster of Caernarfon, but volunteered for service in France in 1915. She was Commandant of the Hotel des Anglaises, the hostel for the relatives of wounded officers in Le Touquet, France, for which she was awarded the MBE. Whilst in France she was appointed Churchwarden in Cricieth despite objections that she was ‘a lady’. In November 1918 she was posted to Salonika as Principal Commandant of the VAD, until May 1920. After her return she was sent by the Government to research openings for women in Australia.

Sources: GB 0210 YNYSGAIN - Pughe-Jones of Ynysgain Collection of Deeds and Papers National Library of Wales Women members and witnesses on British Government ad hoc Committees of Inquiry Elaine Harrison, London School of Economics, Doctor of Philosophy, 1998.

Reference: WaW0320

Dorothea Pughe Jones

Dorothea Pughe Jones in VAD Commandant’s uniform.

Red Cross record card

Red Cross card for Dorothea Pughe Jones. She had three cards in all.

Red Cross record card (reverse)

Reverse of card listing Dorothea’s VAD career.

Newspaper report

Report of Dorothea Pughe Jones’s Eisteddfod prize. Cambrian News 23rd August 1901.

Newspaper report

Report of Dorothea Pughe Jones’s return from South Africa. Cambrian News 8th May 1903.

Newspaper report

Report of meeting of AGM of Bangor and District Women’s Suffrage Society. North Wales Express 2nd December 1910.

Postcard

Postcard of Hotel des Anglaises, the VAD hostel in Le Touquet run by Dorothea Pughe Jones.

Newspaper report

Report of Dorothea’s appointment as churchwarden. North Wales Chronicle 20th April 1917.

Newspaper report

Australian newspaper report of Dorothea Pughe Jones’s role in the enquiry into openings in Australia for women from the UK. The Advertiser 10th January 1920 Adelaide S Australia.

Winifred Margaret Coombe Tennant (née Pearce-Serocold)

Place of birth: Stroud

Service: Committee woman, suffragist, bard, spiritualist, patron, mother.

Death: 1956, London, Cause not known

Notes: Winifred was born in 1874; her mother, née Mary Richardson, was Welsh. She married Charles Coombe Tennant in 1895 and they lived at Cadoxton Lodge, near Neath. She became a member of the NUWSS in 1911 and later served on its committee, as well as chairing the Neath committee. During the war she was chair of the Neath Pensions committee and the Glamorgan War Agricultural committee; she was also interested in rural housing and penal reform (she became a JP in 1920). In 1917 she was admitted to the Gorsedd of Bards, taking the bardic name ‘Mam o Nedd’. She chaired the Arts and Crafts committee for the 1918 Eisteddfod, and later became Mistress of the Robes. She had become interested in spiritualism following the death of her baby daughter Daphne in 1908; this revived following the death of her eldest son, killed in Flanders in September 1917, aged 19. She became a well-respected medium though her identity was known only to a few people – she used the pseudonym Mrs Willett. She stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for the Forest of Dean in the 1922 general election, and was a staunch patron of Welsh artists, particularly Evan Walters.

Sources: Winifred Tennant: a life through Art Peter Lord NLW 2007.\r\nhttp://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s2-COOM-MAR-1874.htm

Reference: WaW0268

Winifred Coombe Tennant

Winifred Coombe Tennant c 1920

Newspaper report

Report of Winifred Coombe Tennant’s election to the committee of the NUWSS, Cambria Daily Leader 8th July 1915.

Newspaper report

Winifred as organiser of the Glamorgan War Agricultural Committee, Herald of Wales 20th May 1916.

Newspaper report

Report of a meeting discussing rural reconstruction in Wales after the War. Herald of Wales 10th August 1918.rn

Newspaper report

Report of opening of the Art and Crafts Section of the National Eisteddfod, Neath 1918. Also Herald of Wales 10th August 1918.rn

Mary Elizabeth Phillips (Eppynt)

Place of birth: Merthyr Cynog, Brecon

Service: Doctor, Scottish Womens Hospitals, Royal Army Medical Corp, 1914 - 1919

Death: 1956, Cause not known

Notes: Born 1874, Mary Phillips, who took the name ‘Eppynt’ from the mountains near her birthplace, was the first women to train as a doctor at University College, Cardiff (1894 – 8), and subsequently worked in England. She was a supporter of NUWSS, and sometimes spoke at meetings. On 8th December 1914 she received a telegram from the NUWSS-supported Scottish Women’s Hospitals asking her to go to their hospital in Calais ‘at once’. She remained there until April 1915, when she joined the SWH at Valjevo, Serbia. She was invalided home with fever just before many SWH members were captured by the Austrian/Bulgarian army [see Elizabeth Clement, Gwenllian Morris]. In April 1916 she was appointed medical hospital at the Scottish Women’s Hospital in Ajaccio, Corsica, where many of the refugees from the retreat from Serbia were accommodated. She served there for 14 months before returning to tour England and Wales raising funds for the Serbian Hospitals; she was a noted speaker in Welsh and English. In 1918 she went to London to work at the Endell Street Military Hospital in London, a 573-bed hospital staffed entirely by women, most of them suffragettes. After the War she became Deputy Medical Officer of Health for Merthyr Tydfil.

Reference: WaW0362

Dr Mary Eppynt Phillips

Dr Mary Eppynt Phillips in the uniform of the Royal Army Medical Corps, photograph taken in 1920. Imperial War Museum.

Telegram

Telegram asking Dr Phillips to proceed to Calais, 8th September 1914. National Library of Wales.

Newspaper article

Report of Dr Phillips’s work during the War. Brecon County Times19th July 1917.

Newspaper report

Report of the award to Dr Phillips of the insignia of the order of St Java [sic, actually Sava] by the King of Serbia. Brecon and Radnor Express 22nd August 1918.

Curriculum vitae

Copy of Dr Phillips cv, 1920. Thanks to Peoples’ Collection Wales.

Endell Street Military Hospital

An operation in progress at Endell Street Military Hospital.

Cissie Cripps

Place of birth: Brecon

Service: Volunteer, Womens Volunteer Reserve Corps, 1915 - ?

Death: 1956, Montreal, Canada, Cause not known

Notes: Cissie was a chauffeuse before the war. She had two brothers serving in the army, and joined the Women’s Volunteer Reserve Corps in Folkestone in August 1915. In 1920 she emigrated to Montreal Canada, where she later married George Elsdon Mears and had three daughters. Thanks to Ian Sumpter.

Reference: WaW0374

Cissie Cripps

Cissie Cripps of Brecon, looking ‘very smart’ in uniform. Brecon County Times 12th August 1915.

Gladys Maud Feiling (née Norman)

Place of birth: Bleddfa, Radnorshire

Service: Official, WAAC / QMAAC, September 1917 - September 191

Death: 1958, Cause not known

Notes: Gladys Feiling, born in 1879, married Cecil Feiling, a London solicitor in 1906 but seems to have been childless and describes herself as ‘quite independent’ in her application to become a WAAC officer in 1917. The papers connected with her WAAC career survive, though damaged, in the National Archives. After a medical and training which she passed with only 69% she is described as having ‘very little experience of any kind’, but of being ‘the right type to go to France’. By 1919 she was a Deputy Controller of QMAAC, and was awarded the OBE in June 1919. She seems to have served in the ATS in WW2.

Sources: National Archives WO 398/75/6, https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/35017/supplement/7105/data.pdf

Reference: WaW0209

Gladys Maud Feiling

Photograph of Gladys Feiling collected by the Women’s Subcommittee of the Imperial War Museum.

reverse of photograph

Reverse of photograph of Gladys Feiling outlining her career In the WAAC/QMAAC. Photograph collected by the Women’s Subcommittee of the Imperial War Museum.

Letter

Letter of application to join the WAAC, 17th September 1917.

Letter (2)

Letter of application to join the WAAC 17th September 1917. (page 2)

Official letter

Letter accepting a posting to France, November 1917

Evelyn Margaret Abbott

Place of birth: Grosmont, Monmouthshire

Service: Nurse, Scottish Womens Hospitals, January - June 1916

Death: 1958, London , Cause not known

Notes: Evelyn, born 1883, was the daughter of the Grosmont school master. A professional nurse trained in London, she spent six months working at the Scottish Women’s Hospitals hospital at Royaumont Abbey north of Paris. Follow the link to see the hospital on film

Sources: http://movingimage.nls.uk/film/0035\r\nhttp://scottishwomenshospitals.co.uk/women/

Reference: WaW0248

Beatrice [B] Picton Turbervill (Picton Warlow)

Place of birth: Fownhope, Herefordshire

Service: Temperance and welfare worker, munitions hostel warden, H M Factories, before/cyn 1916 - 1918

Death: 1958, Cause not known

Memorial: Ewenny Priory, Ewenny, Vale of Glamorgan

Notes: Beatrice was the twin sister of Edith Turbervill [qv]. As a young woman she kept to her original surname of Picton-Warlow; her father changed the name when he inherited Ewenny Priory in 1891. Before the war she was a keen promoter of temperance, and was the Chair of the Cardiff branch of the British Women’s Temperance Association. In 1916 she was appointed head of one of the new munitions workers’ hostels in Woolwich. A year later she moved to Coventry as Warden of the Housing Colony for Women Munitions Workers, a large undertaking with a staff of 200, and some very unruly young workers. The ‘wild Irish-Welsh inmates … flung food and china and table furnishings at the waitresses, at each other, and through the windows’. However the Welsh Miss Picton Turbervill and her colleague the Irish Miss MacNaughton sorted the establishment out. At the end of the war she was on a lecture tour in the united states, speaking about Welfare Work in Britain. For many years after the war she was involved with Dr Barnardos.

Sources: Monthly Labor Review Volume 7 Issue 6 [US]

Reference: WaW0443

Newspaper report

Report of the AGM of the Cardiff branch of the British Women’s Temperance Association, Beatrice Picton Warlow in the chair. Evening Express 18th January 1901.

Monthly Labor Review

A report of the work of Beatrice Picton Turbervill (and her colleague Miss MacNaughton) appeared in the American journal the Monthly Labor Review.

Memorial

Memorial to Beatrice Picton Turbervill, Ewenny Priory.

Gwladys Perrie Williams (Morris)

Place of birth: Llanrwst

Service: Educationalist, administrator, WLA

Death: 1958/07/13, Cause not known

Notes: Born 1889 to Welsh speaking parents, Gwladys was the star pupil at Llanrwst County (one of only two members of the 6th Form there), and a graduate of University College Bangor. She was awarded a fellowship to study mediaeval French at the Sorbonne, Paris, and received a DLitt in 1915. Her edition of Le Bel Inconnu (1929) is still read. Back in Wales 1917 she was appointed WLA organising inspector in South Wales. Gwladys was admitted to Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in 1918. She published ‘Welsh Education in Sunlight & Shadow’ (1919), comparing Welsh and French Intermediate education based on her own experiences. It includes a large number of Central Welsh Board examination papers from Junior Certificate to degree level. She married in 1918 [Sir] Rhys Hopkins Morris, first head of BBC Wales and MP for Carmarthen West, but kept her own name professionally. They met at Bangor University.

Reference: WaW0415

Newspaper report

Report showing Gwladys Perrie Williams’s school achievements. The Weekly News 27th December 1907.

Newspaper report

Report of Gwladys’ membership of the Society of Cymmrodorion.

Book

Welsh Education in Sunlight & Shadow. Constable 1918.

Book

Gwladys’s edition of Le Bel Inconnu, 1991 printing.