Edith Moore-Gwyn (née Jepson)

Place of birth: London

Service: Commandant, VAD, 1914 - 1919

Notes: Edith Moore-Gwyn, born 1852, was President or Chair of a number of public bodies in and around Neath. Her interests were health and education, and she established the Laurels Auxiliary Red Cross Hospital at Neath. She was awarded the OBE at the end of the War.

Reference: WaW0178

Edith Moore-Gwyn

Edith Moore-Gwyn in the uniform of a senior official of the VAD

Edith Moore-Gwyn (reverse)

Reverse of photograph of Edith Moore-Gwyn listing her public roles.

Alys Bertie Perkins (née Sandbrook)

Place of birth: Swansea

Service: Commandant and committee woman, British Red Cross

Notes: Alys Bertie Perkins was Commandant and Secretary of Swansea Red Cross Society, and commandant in charge of recruitment across the whole county of Glamorgan. By early 1918 Swansea was reported to have the greatest number of Red Cross hospital beds in the whole of South Wales. She was awarded the OBE in January 1918, when she described by the Cambria Daily Leader as ‘the enthusiastic and popular Sketty Red Cross worker and organiser’.

Reference: WaW0369

Alys Bertie Perkins

Photograph of Alys Bertie Perkins OBE, part of the Women’s Work Collections of the Imperial War Museumrn

Newspaper advertisement

Advertisement for a Red Cross course of first aid and nursing. Cambria Daily Leader 22nd February 1916.

Edinburgh Gazette

Supplement to the Edinburgh Gazette, with Alys Bertie Perkins’s award of OBE January 9th 1918.

Phyllis May Hughes, Lady (née Edisbury )

Place of birth: Denbighshire ?

Service: Commandant, committee woman, Munitions, 1914 - 1918

Notes: Lady Hughes was from a North Wales family, and married to Sir Thomas Hughes, a Cardiff-based politician. During the War she was a committee member of the Women’s Emergency Corps, the Soldiers, Sailors and Families Association, the District Nursing Association and other bodies. She was also Commandant of the Grangetown, Cardiff, Munitions Canteen, for which she was awarded an OBE in 1918.

Reference: WaW0330

Newspaper report

Report of Phyllis Hughes’s achievement at the end of a report of her husband’s knighthood. Glamorgan Gazette 7th January 1916

Citation

Citation for award of OBE to Lady Hughes. The London Gazette, 7 June, 1918.

Ann Nora Jenkins

Place of birth: Aberdare ?

Service: Committee woman, councillor

Notes: Mrs Jenkins, a former teacher, was a member of the War Pensions Committee, the Merthyr Board of Guardians and many others, during the War. She was elected a district councillor in 1919, and was awarded an OBE in 1920.

Reference: WaW0235

Cllr Mrs A N Jenkins

Mrs Ann Nora Jenkins OBE

Mrs A N Jenkins (reserve)

Reverse of photograph of Mrs Jenkins

Newspaper report

Report of election meeting, Aberdare Leader 5th April 1919.

London Gazette

Citation for Mrs A N Jenkins’s OBE, London Gazette 30th March 1920

Lilias Stuart Mitchell (née Wilsone)

Place of birth: Straights Settlement

Service: Committee woman, mother.

Death: 1949, Kent, Cause not known

Notes: Lilias Mitchell was the wife of A A Mitchell, Alderman and JP in Brecon, and mother of Isabella Mitchell [qv] who drove ambulances in France. Her elder son was killed in Mesopotamia in 1917, and her younger son seriously wounded in France in 1918. She and her husband were noted local Conservatives; Lilias supported refugees and Penoyre Red Cross Hospital. She was also Secretary of the Brecon Hiring Fair Committee and was a member of the Mental Deficiency Act Committee. In June 1918 She was awarded the Medaille de la Reine Elisabeth for her work with Belgian refugees. She and her husband left the area in 1919.

Reference: WaW0396

Newspaper report

Report of Mrs Mitchell’s appointment to the Mental Deficiency Act Committee. Brecon County Times 5th August 1915.

Newspaper letter

Letter to the newspaper about provisions for girls at the Brecon Hiring Fair. Brecon County Times 26th April 1917.

Newspaper report

Report of Mrs Mitchell’s award of the Medaille de la Reine Elisabeth. Brecon & Radnor Express 27th June 1918.

Notice of auction

List of garden and stable items sold by the Mitchells before their departure from Brecon. Brecon County Times 21st August 1919.

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

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

Morfydd Owen

Morfydd Owen in 1915. Private collection.

Folk songs

Folk songs collected by Mrs Herbert Lewis and Morfydd Owen

Early songs of Morfydd Owen

Advertisement for one of the memorial volumes of Morfydd Owen’s songs. 1923.

Emma May Inker (Stevens)

Place of birth: Penarth

Service: Cook, WAAC / WRAF, 1918/03/15 – 1918/12/31

Death: 1992, Cause not known

Notes: Emma, born 2nd May 1894, worked as a seamstress and in service before joining the WAAC in March 1918. Shortly afterwards she was transferred to the WRAF on its formation on 1st April 1918. She was discharged on compassionate grounds on 31st December as her father was ill. Her daughter Rita Spinola says ‘She never talked much about her time in WW1 as a cook, but she did mention that once whilst marching in London someone shouted out to her “you’re out of step!”.’

Reference: WaW0267

RAF Brigade sports

WRAFs at the RAF Brigade sports. Emma Inker can just be seen in the second row between the 6th and 7th people sitting on the ground. Thanks to Rita Spinola.

Emma May Inker

Close-up of Emma May Inker WRAF at the RAF Brigade Sports 1918. Thanks to Rita Spinola.

WRAF Discharge Certificate

WRAF discharge paper for Emma Inker on ‘compassionate grounds’. This shows her transfer from WAAC to WRAF.

Margaret Davies

Place of birth: Pontymister ?

Service: Cook, QMAAC

Death: 1919/02/18, Not known , Not known / Anhysbys

Memorial: Rica Old Cemetary, Risca, Monmouthshire

Notes: Almost nothing is known of Madge Davies who was a cook in QMAAC.

Reference: WaW0350

War Graves Register

Entry for Margaret Davies in the War Graves Register.

Next of kin

Details of next of kin for Margaret Davies (Relationship not known).

Sarah Jenkins

Place of birth: Pwll y Glaw, Cwmavon

Service: Cook, WAAC, 1918/01/15 – 1919/11/12

Notes: Sarah was 22 when she joined the WAAC. She may at some time have worked as a tin-plate worker though her WAAC records say she was a baker. Sarah spent most of her service as Assistant Cook, later Cook, at the Shirehampton Remount Depot, Bristol. The Depot handled thousands of horses and mules. Each animal was kept for two or three weeks and tested for disease. The aim was to get the animals clean and fit, ready for training and service. Of the 339,601 horses and mules that went through the Depot, only 13,811 came back after the war. Thanks to Bev Gulley.

Sources: National Archives

Reference: WaW0405