Gabrielle (Bobby) West

Place of birth: Bournemouth

Service: Cook / Policewomen, VAD, 1916 - 1917

Death: 1990, Cause not known

Notes: Gabrielle (Bobby) West was the youngest of five children of a clergyman. Initially she volunteered as a VAD cook, but could not afford to continue to work unpaid, so began paid work at a munitions canteen in London. When police women began to be recruited to work in munitions factories she and her friend Miss Buckpitt joined. After a brief posting to Queensferry NEF they were promoted to Pembrey in January 1917. Her account of her time at Pembrey paints a very full picture of what life was like for the workers there. See her account of Mary Morgan [qv] and her fits. In May 1917 she was transferred to the Royal Ordnance factory, Rotherwas Hereford. When she was 89 years old Bobby was recorded for the Imperial War Museum’s oral archives.

Sources: ed Avalon Richards Menus Munitions and Keeping the Peace: The Home Front Diaries of Gabrielle West 1914 -1917. Pen&Sword 2016https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80008574

Reference: WaW0308

Gabrielle West

Gabrielle (Bobby) West in police uniform. She is back row, second from left.

Pembrey

Gabrielle’s drawing of the danger buildings at Pembrey. ‘.. where the most dangerous work is done, the sheds are actually inside the hills.'

Hilda Campbell Vaughan (Morgan)

Place of birth: Builth Wells

Service: Cook, agricultural organiser, novelist, VAD, WLA, 1915 - 1919

Death: 1985, Cause not known

Notes: Hilda Vaughan, born 1892, was the daughter of a solicitor prominent in Brecknockshire and Radnorshire. Early in the war she joined the VAD as a cook at the Red Cross hospital in Builth but in 1917 left ‘to take up Land work with a salary’. During the time that she worked as a VAD, she took the lead in organising a free library for the town; it opened in November 1915. Hilda was already involved in encouraging women on to the land, and farmers to accept them. Her new position was organising secretary of the WLA in Breconshire and Radnorshire. After the war Hilda moved to London, married the novelist Charles Morgan, and began to write herself. Her work was much influenced by her experiences of meeting women of all backgrounds in the WLA.

Sources: https://www.southwales.ac.uk/study/subjects/history/worldwarone/jayne-bowden/

Reference: WaW0383

Hilda Vaughan

Hilda Vaughan as a young woman.

Red Cross record card

Record of service of Hilda Vaughan.

Red Cross record card [reverse]

Record of service of Hilda Vaughan [reverse]

Newspaper report

First part of a report on the new Free Library in Builth. Brecon County Times 25th November 1915

Newspaper report

Report of an open-air meeting in Brecon, publicising women and farm work. Brecon and Radnor Express 5th April 1917

Newspaper report

Report of open-air meeting in Rhayadyr, commenting on Miss Vaughan’s ‘pleasing and persuasive …manner’. Brecon and Radnor Express 31st May 1917

Novel

Dustjacket of Hilda Vaughan’s novel ‘The Soldier and the Gentlewoman’, 1932.

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

Service record

Service record for Kate Owen, showing her various postings.

Gretta Davies

Place of birth: Sully, Glamorgan

Service: Dairy worker

Notes: By the 1911 census Gretta, then aged 13, lived with her family on a farm in Llanspyddid near Brecon. Following a dairying course held in Brecon in early summer 1917, she was awarded a scholarship to the Dairy School at University College Aberystwyth. However Gretta seems to have taken a post of instructress at the new Gwynfe, Carmarthenshire, cooperative cheesemaking school in July 1919.

Reference: WaW0453

Newspaper report

Gretta and her family and neighbours perform in a comic sketch at a concert in Libanus. Brecon Radnor Express 18th April 1918.

Newspaper report

Report of Gretta’s results on the Brecon dairying school. Brecon Radnor Express 24th January 1918

Newspaper report

Report of Gretta’s scholarship to study for a diploma in Dairying. Brecon County Times 30th January 1919.

Newspaper report

Report of Gretta’s appointment as instructress in cheesemaking. Carmarthen Journal 18th July 1919.

Elzabeth Francis (Hopkin)

Place of birth: Coity, Bridgend

Service: Daughter of a farmer

Notes: Born 1898, Elizabeth was the second daughter of a butcher and farmer, with many younger siblings. She left a memoir written in 1981. '…We kept a maid always that is until I left school at the age of 14 years. My mother was glad to have me home as we had had trouble keeping maids owing to the fact that we were so isolated.’. The family moved to Coychurch in 1914, where she helped with household tasks and dairying. Her elder brother was called up in 1916. 'We used to send him parcels of food, cigs etc which we sewed in linen cloths.’ He survived the war unwounded. Elizabeth married an engine driver, Cadwaladr Ivor Hopkin in 1925.

Reference: WaW0131

Elizabeth Hopkin

Elizabeth Hopkin around the time of her marriage.

Mary Ellen Herbert

Place of birth: Llangeitho

Service: Dispenser, VAD, 1917 - 1919

Notes: Mary Ellen Herbert was appointed Chief Dispenser to the Military Hospital in Whitchurch, Shropshire, in May 1917. She was then 28. She had previously worked at the King Edward VII Hospital in Cardiff. In October of that year she transferred to the Welsh Hospital, Netley, part of the enormous complex of military hospitals in Hampshire.

Reference: WaW0297

Newspaper report

Report of Mary Herbert’s appointment to Whitchurch Military Hospital. Cambrian News 13th July 1917.

Red Cross record card

Red cross card for dispenser Mary Ellen Herbert.

Welsh Hospital, Netley

The Welsh Hospital, Netley.

Gertie Thomas

Place of birth: Carmarthen

Service: Dispenser

Notes: Gertie Thomas qualified as a dispenser certified by the Society of Apothecaries of London in August 1916. She had only just passed her 19th birthday, the minimum qualifying age.

Reference: WaW0307

Newspaper report

Report of Gertie Thomas’s success. Carmarthen Reporter 11th August 1916.

Catherine Fraser

Place of birth: Not known

Service: Doctor, NEF Pembrey / Pen-bre, June 1918 -

Notes: Dr Catherine Fraser, previously assistant medical officer for Bradford, was appointed medical officer at the National Explosives Factory, Pembrey, in June 1918.

Reference: WaW0361

Newspaper report

Article reporting Dr Fraser’s appointment to NEF Pembrey.

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.

Minna Amelia Benner (née MacFarlane)

Place of birth: Scotland

Service: Doctor, 1914 - 1934

Death: 1962, Hertfordshire, Cause not known

Notes: Minna Benner was one of the first women to qualify as a doctor at Glasgow University, in 1897. After some years in Ireland, working as an assistant MoH, she moved to Newport in 1914 as Assistant Schools Medical Officer. In 1917 she became Newport’s first medical officer for the Maternity and Child Welfare Scheme. She had a particular interest in nutrition of children (a paper she gave on the subject was published in Perspectives in Public Health in 1924), and was a feminist interested in social reform. She lived to be 99.

Sources: British Medical Journal, Who’s Who in Newport 1920

Reference: WaW0408

Title of paper

Title of a paper given by Minna Benner, April 1924.

Announcement

Announcement of Minna Benner’s appointment, 1914