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

Jean Arbuckle

Place of birth: Scotland

Service: Schoolgirl

Notes: 'My mother, Jean Wardlaw Arbuckle, was born in Scotland and spent her early years there in various small towns and villages in the central belt from Gourock in the west to Preston Pans in the east. She was the third of twelve children. When she was about 11 years old, the family moved to the coal-mining valleys in Wales, as her father sought promotion in the coal industry.My mother was 15 years old when World War I broke out. The memories she passed down to me were of the extreme difficulty in obtaining food, and its high cost, until rationing was brought in. She said that it was extremely unfair for poorer families, and that rationing made the situation much fairer. At the beginning of the War the family lived in Tondu, just north of Bridgend, but moved to Llanharan, eight miles from Bridgend some time during 1915. She attended Bridgend County School during those years, travelling by train from Llanharan station. The scarcity of staff seems to have caused some level of amalgamation of the boys and girls schools. It seems to have been quite a lax regime with a considerable amount of truancy. The pupils often disappeared during the day, walking to Merthyr Mawr, boys and girls together.One day she decided to leave school early, and hitched a lift with a farmer, riding in his horse-drawn trap back to Llanharan on the then narrow and twisting road. My grandfather had one of the few cars in the area at that time, and she heard it coming towards them along the road. She knew that if he saw her she would get the strap, so she jumped off the trap, over the hedge, and then walked the rest of the way home.The family were members of the Plymouth Brethren, but this does not seem to have stopped the children running a bit wild.' Janet Davies 13.11.2015.

Reference: WaW0078

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.

Agnes Irene (Renée) Macdonald (James)

Place of birth: Merthyr ?

Service: Science Student

Notes: Renée MacDonald, born 1898, entered Cardiff University to study science in 1916. She took a BSc in Biology and Botany, followed by an MSc at Swansea and a PhD in Geology and Palaeontology at Imperial College, London.

Reference: WaW0186

Entry application for Aberdare Hall, Cardiff University.

Renée McDonald’s entry application for Aberdare Hall, Cardiff University, May 1916.

Women students

Aberdare (‘Old’) Hall students 1917. Renée MacDonald is one of them.

Kathleen Edithe Carpenter (Zimmermann)

Place of birth: Lincolnshire

Service: Scientist Biologist Environmentalist., University College Aberystwyth

Death: 1970, Cheltenham, Cause not known

Notes: Born 1891 to a German father and English mother, Kathleen Carpenter (she changed her surname from Zimmermann at the outbreak of WWI) was awarded her BSc in 1910. She remained at Aberystwyth for research, and subsequently became an Assistant Lecturer in the Zoology Department. She gained her PhD there in 1925. Her seminal studies focused on the environmental impact of metal pollution on Cardiganshire streams. This gained her international renown, particularly in the United States where she worked at several leading universities. Kathleen Carpenter is regarded as ‘the mother of freshwater ecology’.

Sources: Catherine Duigan: https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-features/158-biologist/features/1968-who-was-kathleen-carpenter ++

Reference: WaW0465

Kathleen E Carpenter

Kathleen Carpenter in about 1910

Kathleen Carpenter and fellow students

Kathleen Carpenter (front, 2nd left) Aberystwyth's literature and debating society in 1910

Report

Zoology Department report listing departmental research

Kathleen Carpenter’s research

Kathleen E Carpenter: Life in Inland Waters. Macmillan 1928

Violet Gale Jackson

Service: Scientist, botanist, Rothamsted Institute, 1917 -

Notes: Violet Jackson graduated from the University College, Bangor in 1917, in the same year as Mary Sutherland [qv] and Mary Dilys Glynne [qv]. Like Mary Glynne she was employed at the Rothamsted Institute in Hertfordshire, as a botanist. Her speciality seems to have been root formation.

Reference: WaW0316

Newspaper report

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

Staff List

List of staff at Rothamsted Experimental Station 1918.

Scientific paper

Paper by Violet G Jackson published in the Annals of Botany, January 1922.

Eva Jennie Fry (Savage)

Place of birth: Southampton

Service: Scientist, botanist, University College Aberys

Notes: Eva, whose father was an elementary school teacher, was a botany student at University College Aberystwyth, with a particular interest in mosses. She joined the Moss Exchange Club in 1915. She graduated with a first class BSc in 1916, and MSc in 1919, when she published her research findings. She was an Assistant Lecturer in the Botany department until she became a lecturer in Botany at Westfield College, University of London, in 1925.

Reference: WaW0462

Newspaper report

Report of Miss R E Jones’s appointment to Swansea Hospital.

Eva Jennie Fry (Savage)

Place of birth: Southampton

Service: Scientist, botanist

Notes: Eva, whose father was an elementary school teacher, was a botany student at University College Aberystwyth, with a particular interest in mosses. She joined the Moss Exchange Club in 1915. She graduated with a first class BSc in 1916, and MSc in 1919, when she published her research findings. She was an Assistant Lecturer in the Botany department until she became a lecturer in Botany at Westfield College, University of London, in 1925.

Reference: WaW0466

Newspaper report

Report of Eva Jennie Fry’s first class degree. Cambrian News 21st July 1916

Botany Department report 1916

University Botany Department report of Eva’s degree success.

Botany Department report 1920

University Botany Department report of Eva’s post-graduate research

Gertrude Annie Walters

Place of birth: Bridgend ?

Service: Scientist, Botanist

Notes: Gertrude was one of the two scholars of Bridgend County School to win a Glamorgan County scholarship to study at a Welsh university. (There were 7 County scholarships in all). Clearly a scientist from an early age (her other higher school certificate subjects were physics and chemistry), she graduated from Aberystwyth in 1919 with a ‘brilliant’ first class degree and joined the Botany department.

Reference: WaW0463

Newspaper report

Report of Gertrude’s Higher School Certificate results. Glamorgan Gazette 24th September 1915

Newspaper report

Report of Gertrude’s County Scholarship. Glamorgan Gazette 15th September 1916

University College Aberystwyth report

Report from the Botany Department, University College Aberystwyth, 1919

Eleanor Vachell

Place of birth: Cardiff

Service: Scientist, Botanist, Volunteer, VAD

Notes: Eleanor was born in 1879, the daughter of a doctor. She became a noted botanist, and took over responsibility for the Department of Botany and the Herbarium at the National Museum of Wales in October 1914 when the Keeper joined his regiment. She also volunteered at the 3rd Western General Hospital, Cardiff. She became a VAD in 1918, dividing her time very strictly between the hospital and the museum. Eleanor Vachell died in 1948.

Sources: https://www.routledge.com/The-Biographical-Dictionary-of-Women-in-Science-Pioneering-Lives-From/Ogilvie-Harvey-Rossiter/p/book/9780415920384

Reference: WaW0200

Eleanor Vachell

Eleanor Vachell botanist and VAD

Red Cross record card

Red Cross record card showing details of Eleanor Vachell’s employment.