Olwen Elizabeth Lloyd George (Carey Evans)

Place of birth: Criccieth

Service: Volunteer, assistant cook, 1914 - 1916

Death: 1990, Cause not known

Notes: Olwen, second daughter of David Lloyd George, began volunteering in the Red Cross hospital near Criccieth in 1914 when she was 22. She then moved to London (where Lloyd George was Chancellor of the Exchequer, living at 11 Downing Street), and assisted her mother with the Welsh Troops Comfort Fund. In May 1915 she volunteered as an orderly at Rest Stations in Boulogne and later Hesdigneul. She later wrote ‘I was what they called a cooklet and I also used to scrub the platform. I used to say to my friends: “If you see a patch which is cleaner than all the rest, that’s my bit.” I worked so hard on it that I really believe you could have eaten off the floor!’ After her return to London and her marriage to Captain Tom Carey Evans, as her Red Cross Card says, she was not able to work! There is a short Pathé news film of her wedding at the Welsh Baptist Chapel in Westminster, with crowds of onlookers.

Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lze8jeBJKOo

Reference: WaW0430

Photograph

Olwen Lloyd George in a very new VAD uniform, summer 1915.

Red Cross record card

Red Cross card for Olwen Lloyd George. The dates of her service have been altered in pencil.

Red Cross record card [reverse]

Reverse of Olwen Lloyd George’s record card giving details of her service.

Newspaper report

Report of Olwen’s departure for France. Llais Llafur 4th September 1915.

Newspaper report

Report of Olwen Lloyd George’s marriage to Capt Tom Carey Edwards. Herald of Wales 23rd June 1917.

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.

Hannah Jane Davies

Place of birth: Mountain Ash

Service: Nurse, TFNS, 1918/06/13 – 1919/03/26

Notes: Hannah Davies was a probationer nurse at Milton Infirmary, Portsmouth when she was called up for Home Service at the 3rd Western General Hospital, Cardiff, where she was promoted to Staff Nurse. She seems to have contacted Influenza during February 1919, when she is described as being ‘pale’ and anaemic. It may be for this reason that she was discharged on March 1919. She continued to be attached to the renamed Territorial Army Nursing Service until she retired from this in 1936.

Sources: WO-399-10779

Reference: WaW0431

Summary record

Record of Hannah Davies’s work with TFNS.

Disability record [part]

Members of the forces were encouraged to fill in a disability statement on demobilisation so that they could use it as evidence in a future insurance claim.

Helene Geens (Smart)

Place of birth: Malines/Mechelen, Belgium

Service: schoolgirl

Death: 1994, Cause not known

Notes: Helene Geens was one of the first Belgian refugees to arrive Prestatyn in October 1914, with her parents, younger brother and two maiden aunts. Her parents and brother returned to Belgium in 1915, but she remained with the two aunts. She settled rapidly into life there, attending Pendre, a private girls’ school, where she seems to have excelled, and joined the Girl Guides. She returned to Belgium after the war. She met and married her English husband in Belgium in 1928; they settled in Leicestershire. Their daughter Diane provided much information and these photographs to The Belgian Refugees in Rhyl website.

Sources: https://refugeesinrhyl.wordpress.com/geens/

Reference: WaW0437

Photograph

Helene aged 18, back at home in Malines/Mechelen.

Photograph

rnrnThe Geen family in Prestatyn Helene and her brother Ivon are sitting between their two aunts.

Photograph

Photograph of Helene in Girl Guides uniform.

School Report

Helene’s school report Christmas 1915.

Katherine Rosebery Drinkwater (née Jay)

Place of birth: Chippenham

Service: August/Awst 1916 - August/Awst

Death: 1939/12/29, Wrexham, Cause not known

Notes: Katherine Drinkwater, born 1872, was a doctor’s daughter, and had her medical education in London and Liverpool (where she was one of the first women to receive the University’s Diploma of Public Heath). In 1903 she married a GP, widower Dr Harry Drinkwater, and moved to Wrexham. There she became an assistant school medical officer, and also held a position as Assistant Gynaecologist at the Women’s Hospital, Liverpool. In 1916 the Royal Army Medical Corps called for women doctors to volunteer for service in Malta, and Katherine was one of the first group of 22 to go. Life as a woman doctor with the RAMC was not easy. In a letter to the Times in 1918, Dr Jane Walker, President of the Women’s Medical Federation wrote “Although many of the medical women serving in the army not only have a high professional standing in civil practice, but now have a large experience in military hospitals, they rank below the latest joined R.A.M.C. subaltern, and are obliged to take orders from him. When they travel, they travel not as officers, but as ‘soldiers’ wives’”. Katherine had charge of the Military Families Hospital in the Auberge d’Aragon in Valletta, and remained there a year. In 1918 she was awarded the OBE for her work. After her return she continued to work in public health, became a JP, and continued with her husband to win prizes for their West Highland terriers in North Wales shows.

Sources: https://www.maltaramc.com/ladydoc/d/drinkwaterkr.html http://owen.cholerton.org/ref_drs_harry_and_katharine_drinkwater.php

Reference: WaW0435

Photograph

Katherine had charge of this Military Families Hospital in the former Auberge d’Aragon, in Valletta, Malta.

Newspaper report

Report of Dr Drinkwater’s imminent return from Malta. Llangollen Advertiser 3rd August 1917

London Gazette

Katherine Drinkwater’s award of the OBE (right hand column, fifth from the bottom). London Gazette June 7th 1918.

Megan Arfon Lloyd George

Place of birth: Criccieth

Service: School girl, later politician

Death: 1966/05/14, Cause not known

Notes: For the first few years of her life Megan lived in the family’s Welsh-speaking home in Criccieth. When she was 4 her father Lloyd George became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the family from then on split their time between 11 (later 10) Downing Street and North Wales. From an early age she appeared with her father at public events. In February 1919, when she was 17, she accompanied him to the Paris Peace Conference. Her presence created something of a stir, though she was in fact at school in Paris too. Later she wrote ‘I’ve had politics for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner all my life.’ In 1928 she became Wales’s first woman Member of Parliament, for Anglesey.

Sources: A Radical Life: Biography of Megan Lloyd George, 1902-66. Mervyn Jones

Reference: WaW0434

Newspaper photograph

Megan Lloyd George aged 7 electioneering in 1910.

Newspaper report

Report of Megan opening the crèche extension at Claremont Central Mission. Evening Express 25th August 1910.

Newspaper report

Report of Megan’s social whirl in Paris. Llangollen Advertiser 7th February 1919.

Photograph

Megan Lloyd George campaigning, 1920s

Zillah Mary Jones

Place of birth: Llanpumsaint

Service: Nurse, TFNS, 1914 - 1919

Notes: Born in Carmarthenshire in the 1870s, Zillah trained at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London. She seems to have worked as a private nurse for many years, a job that included accompanying patients to Egypt and the West Indies, she was called up in 1914 to serve on the hospital ship Carisbrooke Castle. Some of the Welsh soldiers she cared for were delighted to find someone in authority who could speak Welsh. Whilst there she was promoted from Staff Nurse to Sister. According to her memoir, she had hoped to join the RN Nursing Service, having forgotten that she had already signed up to the TFNS. In October 1915 she was posted to the 4th Northern General Hospital, Lincoln, despite hoping for another Hospital Ship appointment. She records that her replacement on Carisbrooke Castle suffered from appalling sea-sickness. Whilst at Lincoln (where she remained for the rest of the War) she had a bicycle accident and broke her ankle badly; there is much correspondence about this on her War Office file. After demobilisation she went back to private nursing. Her memoir was published in 1964.

Sources: A Sister’s Log: A Nurse\\\'s Reminiscences. Gomerian Press, 1964

Reference: WaW0432

Zillah Jones

Sister Zillah Jones, frontispiece to her memoir ‘A Sister’s Log’

HMHS Carisbrooke Castle

Zillah Jones served on this ship 1914 - 1915.

Newspaper report

Report of Zillah Jones’s experiences on board ship.

Newspaper report [2]

Report of Zillah Jones’s experience on board ship [continued].

Medical board Title

One of the proceedings of the medical board when Zillah Jones broke her ankle.

Lydia Elizabeth (Bessie) Jones

Place of birth: Llanfrothen

Service: Nurse, 1914/5 - 1919

Death: 1942, Cause not known

Notes: Bessie Jones (born 1872) was her forties when the War broke out. She came from a large middleclass family, was involved in the community (she was a Lady Visitor at Penrhyndeudraeth Workhouse) and followed her father’s pack of otter hounds. Early in the War she joined the French Red Cross, and served with them until 1919. In the latter stages of the War she worked as an anaesthetist working long hours under bombardment and her hospital was damaged by shrapnel. She also witnessed an early blood transfusion. She wrote long letters to her sister Minnie Jones [qv], some of which were published in the local press. She also wrote some articles that were published in Welsh Outlook including Dawn in a French Hospital (October 1916) using the pseudonym Merch o’r Ynys. Her final posting was in Strasbourg; she returned home in August 1919. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre for her work in the Champagne region of France, and also the Military Medal. Bessie seems to have been fluent in English, Welsh and French, as well as being an accomplished pianist.

Reference: WaW0440

Newspaper letter

Letter to Bessie’s sister Minnie Jones describing a blood transfusion. Yr Herald Cymraeg 2nd April 1918.

Newspaper letter

Letter to Bessie’s sister Minnie Jones describing life in a field hospital under bombardment, and being suspected of being a spy, Cambrian News 16th August 1918 1.

Newspaper letter

Letter to Bessie’s sister Minnie Jones describing life in a field hospital under bombardment, and being suspected of being a spy, Cambrian News 16th August 1918.

Welsh Outlook

Beginning of Bessie Jones’s (Merch o’r Ynys) essay ‘Dawn in a French Hospital’. Welsh Outlook Vol 3 No 10 October 1916.

Newspaper report

Report of Bessie Jones’s return from France, and her performance in a concert. North Wales Chronicle 29th August 1919.

Elizabeth Phillips Hughes

Place of birth: Carmarthen

Service: Educationalist, traveller, commandant, VAD, 1814 - 1919

Death: 1925/12/19, Barry, Cause not known

Notes: Elizabeth Phillips Hughes was 63 when WWI broke out. She had a distinguished record of work. An early student at Newnham College Cambridge, she set up the first teacher training college in Cambridge in1885. In later years. She travelled across the US to study prison reform, and then to Japan as a visiting lecturer in English at the University of Tokyo (1901 -02). She was a keen mountaineer, climbing the Matterhorn at the age of 48. On her return to Wales, she was the only women on the committee drafting the university of Wales’s first charter. She was a member and organiser of the British Red Cross before the War, and became Commandant of the Dock View Red Cross Hospital in Barry. In 1917 Elizabeth Hughes was the first ‘lady recipient’ of the new MBE in Wales. Hughes Hall Cambridge is named after her.

Reference: WaW0439

Elizabeth Phillips Hughes

Photograph of Elizabeth Hughes taken in the 1890s.

Red Cross record card

Red Cross record for Elizabeth Phillips Hughes.

Red Cross record card [reverse]

Red Cross record for Elizabeth Hughes Phillips, with typed details of her Red Cross service.

London Gazette

Elizabeth Phillips Hughes’s award of MBE in the London Gazette, 24th August 1917.

Newspaper report

First part of a long report recording Elizabeth Phillips Hughes’s award of the MBE, with a long account of her achievements. Barry Dock News 31st August 1917 [1]

Newspaper report

Part of a long report recording Elizabeth Phillips Hughes’s award of the MBE, with a long account of her achievements. Barry Dock News 31st August 1917 [2]

Newspaper report

Part of a long report recording Elizabeth Phillips Hughes’s award of the MBE, with a long account of her achievements. Barry Dock News 31st August 1917 [3]

Newspaper report

Part of a long report recording Elizabeth Phillips Hughes’s award of the MBE, with a long account of her achievements. Barry Dock News 31st August 1917 [4]

Newspaper report

Final part of a long report recording Elizabeth Phillips Hughes’s award of the MBE, with a long account of her achievements. Barry Dock News 31st August 1917 [5]

Hannah Davies (Hughes)

Place of birth: Brymbo

Service: Nurse, Not known / anhysbys

Notes: Hannah was a trained nurse who may have served in one of the Liverpool military hospitals, or in Chester. Whilst there she met and later married Pte Joseph Hughes, who also came from the Brymbo area. Many thanks to Nikki Dutton.

Reference: WaW0427

Photograph

Photograph of Hannah (left) and a friend playing tennis. Thanks to Nikki Dutton.

Photograph

Photograph of Hannah (seated) and a friend. Thanks to Nikki Dutton.