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Not known / Anhysbys
Place of birth: South Wales
Service: Brickmaker
Notes: This woman moulding silica bricks was photographed for the Employment of Women collection at the newly established Imperial War Museum, c.1917.
Reference: WaW0189
Esther Novinski/y
Place of birth: Tonypandy
Service: Doctor
Notes: Esther was the daughter of jeweller in Tonypandy, part of the Jewish community of the Valleys. She attended Porth County School before scholarships took her to University College Cardiff. After graduating in 1915 Esther completed her medical training at the Royal Free Hospital, London. She was appointed senior house surgeon there in May 1918 when ‘not yet 27 years of age’!
Reference: WaW0436
Newspaper report
Report of Esther Novinski’s appoinment at the Royal Free Hospital. Rhondda Leader 18th May 1918.
Hetty Onions
Place of birth: Tredegar ?
Service: QMAAC
Memorial: Wesley Church, Tredegar, Monmouthshire
Notes: The name of Hetty Onions appears on the Roll of Honour (under QM WAACS) formerly in Wesley Church, Harcourt Terrace, Tredegar
Reference: WaW0163
Hannah Owen
Place of birth: Holyhead
Service: Stewardess, c.1905 - 1918
Death: 1918-10-10, RMS Leinster, Drowning / Boddi
Memorial: War memorial; Memorial Hyfrydle Chapel, Holyhead, Anglesey
Notes: aged 36. RMS Leinster was torpedoed in the Irish Sea. HO died together with Louise Parry
Sources: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=107830381
Reference: WaW0040
Kate Owen
Place of birth: Aberystwyth
Service: Cook, then tailoress, WAAC/QMAAC, 1917 - 1918
Notes: Kate Owen joined the WAAC in Autumn 1917, aged 45. She was a trained seamstress, and was rapidly moved into the Tailoring department. She served at several of the main camps, including Halton Camp Buckinghamshire and Kinmel Camp, north Wales (twice). She was discharged in September 1918.
Sources: National Archives WO-398-170-4
Reference: WaW0319
M Jane Owen
Service: Munitions Worker
Memorial: Cenotaph, Swansea, Glamorgan
Reference: WaW0041
Mildred Owen
Service: Munitions Worker
Death: 1917:07:31 , NEF Pembrey, Explosion / Ffyrwydriad
Memorial: Cenotaph, Swansea, Glamorgan
Notes: aged 18. Died at the same time as Dorothy Mary Watson.
Sources: Funeral / angladd South Wales Daily Post 11 August / Awst 1917; Inquest / Cwest The Carmarthen Journal and South Wales Weekly Advertiser 24th August / Awst1917
Reference: WaW0039
Morfydd Owen
Place of birth: Treforest
Service: Composer, singer
Death: 1918/09/07, Mumbles, Appendicitis/reaction to chloroform / Pendics/adwaith i glorofform
Notes: Morfydd Owen was born in 1891 to an ordinary, though musical, chapel-going family. Very early she showed great musical promise – she is said to have started composing aged 6 - and she entered University College, Cardiff, on a scholarship in 1909. In 1912 her parents were persuaded to let Morfydd study composition at the Royal Academy of Music, where she won every available prize during her first year. In London she began to move in influential Welsh circles, in 1914 assisting in the collecting and arranging of traditional Welsh songs from Flintshire and the Vale of Clwyd. She was a prolific composer, and a singer with an outstanding mezzo-soprano voice. She was also prominent in more Bohemian circles; among her friends were Ezra Pound and D H Lawrence. In 1917 she married, unexpectedly, Ernest Jones, the psycho-therapist and biographer of Freud. This seriously limited her professional career, particularly as Jones did not approve of his wife performing in public. In July 1918 she wrote to a friend ‘married life doesn’t seem to me to be quite the easiest thing to adapt oneself to, and has taken up all my time’. In September of that year, staying with her parents-in-law at Mumbles, Morfydd developed appendicitis, and died, perhaps as a result of the botched operation. Her Cardiff University professor David Evans wrote: “I regard her early death as an incalculable loss to Welsh music indeed, I know of no young British composer who showed such promise.” Although only 26 when she died, Morfydd left over 250 surviving compositions.
Sources: http://discoverwelshmusic.com/composers/morfydd-owen. www.illuminatewomensmusic.co.uk/illuminate-blog/rhian-davies-an-incalculable-loss-morfydd-owen-1891-1918
Reference: WaW0335
Early songs of Morfydd Owen
Advertisement for one of the memorial volumes of Morfydd Owen’s songs. 1923.
Rose Owen
Place of birth: not known
Service: Abortionist
Notes: Rose Owen was brought before the magistrates in Bridgend in August 1919 charged with performing an illegal operation on Elizabeth Williams, a widow. The case was drawn out, because Elizabeth Williams was seriously ill. However she recovered, and the case went to Cardiff Crown Court where Mrs Owen was sentenced to 18 months hard labour. She seems to have been a professional abortionist, as ‘women from the valleys and from Cardiff’ had been seen entering her house, as well as single girls who stayed there.
Reference: WaW0461
Newspaper report
Part of the report of Rose Owen’s appearance before the Bridgend magistrates. Glamorgan Gazette 8th August 1919
Newspaper report
Part of the report of Rose Owen’s trial and conviction at Cardiff Crown Court. Glamorgan Gazette 21st November 1919
Winifred Owen
Place of birth: Montgomeryshire
Service: Nurse, VAD
Notes: Winifred (born 1888) was a doctor’s daughter. She served in a Cambridge Hospital throughout the war, once sitting next to a hydrotherapy boiler that threatened to explode, to calm the patients. She married a doctor after the war, and never worked again
Reference: WaW0126