Somerset Stories:
Women, Somerset and the First World War
Education Pack for Schools
Your average young woman’s world today might revolve around a variety of technological
gadgets and they undoubtedly enjoy the independence and lifestyle that being a woman in
2014 brings….but go back a hundred years and things were quite different . Women didn’t
vote, they still had another four years to go before women over the age of thirty would
become voters in their own right, and meaningful employment opportunities were limited.
Middle class women on the whole stayed at home and women of any class were certainly
not encouraged to have their own opinions. If you were married then you took not only
your husbands’ surname but his first name as well. Wives did what their husbands decreed
and daughters asked permission for most things they wanted to do from their fathers and
even brothers. Ankles were a no-go and for many women their wedding night was the first
time they had any idea what was expected of them in the marital bed. There were of course
exceptions, and some women fought hard to live more independent lives but in a world
where most women were financially dependent first on their father, and then on their
husband, the world was definitely not their oyster. A lot of that all changed over the course
of the First World War. Women found themselves doing things they had never imagined or
been allowed to do before. Life would never be the same again.
By the armistice, 900,000 women had served in munitions factories, 117,000 in transport
jobs and 113,000 on farms. More than 80,000 women had volunteered for war service, with
another 100,000 serving as nurses. Women in Somerset were a part of that revolution.
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Nursing
During the First World War there simply weren’t enough hospitals or nurses to cope with
the increased number of patients from the war needing medical care. Large buildings were
acquisitioned to create temporary hospitals including many large country houses. In
Somerset, Ashcombe House first opened in 1914 as a hospital. Minor operations were
carried out there, where also many severe cases of pneumonia, pleurisy, nephritis etc. were
successfully treated. During 1917, 616 patients were treated whilst 26 officers and men
were received as outpatients. Owing to repeated requests for more beds an Annexe was
erected in the grounds adjoining Ashcombe House. One ward was opened in the beginning
of October and the other in November. The building contained two spacious wards and
offices, with wide verandas facing south for open-air cases – accommodating 84 beds in all.
Apart from a grant of £350 from the Joint War Finance Committee, the whole cost of the
building has been raised locally.
A particularly successful fund for the equipment of the Annexe was initiated by Mrs.
Wallace, among women workers, which resulted in the collection of over £500.
Many of the nurses were made up of women who had volunteered to ‘do their bit’ and
were part of the VAD’s – the Voluntary Aid Detachment – who had been trained by the Red
Cross and St John Ambulance. These women were usually from the middle and upper class
families of the local area who could afford to give the time and buy their uniforms and who
fitted into the age ranges of 23 to 38 years old. Part-time VAD’s were unpaid although
matrons, sisters in charge and ward sisters were paid a guinea a year.
Red Cross Hospitals appeared in Wincanton, Yeovil, Minehead, Wells, Weston Super Mare,
Shepton Mallet, Midsomer Norton, Frome, Portishead, Long Ashton, Burnham on Sea,
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Hinton House, Bath and Chard. At Weston Super Mare, the Commandant and Medical
Officers were all male but the Lady Superintendents were Miss Pethick and Mrs F.W. Bere.
There were four trained female nurses and the rest were VAD’s. During the life of the
hospital, a Sister Batstone received the Royal Red Cross and a Sister White was “mentioned
in despatches,” whilst two of the V.A.D.’s (Nurse James and Nurse D. Crowe) also received a
“mention.”
In November 1914 the Very Rev Father Prior and Brothers of the Carmelite Priory
Wincanton gave up the main part of the Priory to form a hospital with 30 beds, with an
operating theatre and a garden. It was first used for the Territorial artillery then on March
18th 1915, it was re-opened to take in wounded and by the end of 1916 319 cases were
admitted. In October 1916 Mrs. Grant Dalton kindly offered to lend her house, Churchfield,
Wincanton, to form an addition to the hospital. This was equipped and opened on
November 27th with 12 beds. During 1917 250 patients were treated.
Before the outbreak of war there were only 533 qualified women doctors in Britain. The
medical profession was still very much a male bastion and any women brave enough to train
as a doctor had to face much prejudice. The War Office itself, when approached by Dr Elsie
Inglis, a Scottish doctor who offered to supply qualified doctors and nurses for the war
effort, was sent away with the remark ‘My good lady, go home and sit still’. Luckily she did
no such thing and ended up setting up her own hospitals staffed entirely by women.
The Spanish flu was also a force to be reckoned with. By 1918 it had turned into a fearful
pandemic and it is thought to have taken the lives of between 21 and 40 million people
worldwide, killing some 150,000 in England and Wales. Thousands of survivors of the
trenches and battlefields were subsequently struck down and killed by the Spanish flu
during the first few months of peace. In early July 1918, the first mild cases were diagnosed
in the Pen Mill area and several schools were closed but were opened again by August.
Unfortunately, the flu erupted for a second time in October and spread across the Yeovil
area, thought to have been brought in by railway workers. Schools, factories and shops were
short staffed and the Picture Palace was closed and dances cancelled. Both of the town’s
district nurses were ill with the virus and twenty six year old Nurse Gary died on November
4th as did a VAD worker at the Red Cross Hospital in the town. Several physicians also went
down with the virus. By the end of November things started to abate and public places
started to reopen. The total number of deaths during this short period was put at 81, 40
males and 41 females succumbing to the dreadful virus. One was a baby of just a year old
and one was a century old. The manager of the Picture Palace also died during the epidemic.
Sixty three of these passed away during a three week period and the number who died
altogether outnumbered the number who died during the bombing of the town during the
Second World War.
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The Women’s Land Army
Somerset was quite unique during the First World War in that many of its agricultural
workers were able to stay on the land rather than sign up to fight. Their work growing crops
and keeping animals and producing food was deemed vital to the war effort. However,
there was an increased need for certain products, including flax, which was used in the
aeroplane construction industry and so more land workers were needed. The Women’s
Land Army was created and whilst the work they were doing was considered important but
there were still concerns about the effect on women of wearing breeches and generally
doing all the things that men usually did. In the Land Army Handbook it was noted, “you are
doing a man’s work and so you’re dressed like a man, but remember, just because you wear
a smock and breeches you should take care to behave like a British girl who expects chivalry
and respect from everyone she meets”. Despite initial scepticism, the land army proved they
were hard workers and the wheat harvest of 1917 was the highest on record. When the
Women’s Land Army was disbanded in 1919, Meriel Talbot, its Director, was made a Dame
in 1920 for her services to the Board of Agriculture. There had been 5,734 milkers, 3,791
field workers, 635 carters, 260 ploughers, 84 thatchers and 21 shepherds.
It was in May 1915 that a meeting was first held in Somerset to encourage the women of
the county to undertake agricultural work. A Lady Hylton was appointed President of the
Somerset Women’s Agricultural Committee and in 1915 and 1916 meetings were held all
across Somerset and it was during 1916 that a number of farmers started to employed fulltime women workers and in 1917 the Women’s Agricultural Committee were given six free
training sessions at Seale Hayne College which were used until National Service commenced
on March 14th under the Board of Agriculture in connection with the Somerset branch.
Notes from the first report by the country organiser show how it was very much a learning
curve. “We were all very much puzzled” she wrote. “New orders arrive daily and they need
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to be digested and understood. All kinds of ideas regarding National Service were afloat and
these had to be contradicted or explained. I was given an empty room. We had neither
books, nor files, nor paper and not a single address of the Committee, a District
Representative or a Registrar. However the building up began. The first meeting of the
Selection Committee we shall always remember. We did not know what was before us and
we did not want to quench the enthusiasm of the volunteers and so we refused no one.
Time has gone on and we have many selection committees and we have all learnt lessons.
We refuse candidates if not satisfactory in every way. The first training centre to be opened
was at Dulverton where ten girls were admitted under a superintendent. Four others were
opened at Brislington, Webbington, Rumwell and North Perrott”.
On April 30th 1917, 98 candidates had been accepted for National Service and 37 farmers
had applied for National Service workers. In a report given to the Men’s Agricultural
Committee in March 1918, it stated that since of the starting of the Government scheme,
over 400 women had been accepted for land service in Somerset with 230 working on farms
and a few engaged in forestry. In addition, approximately 900 village women were working
fulltime and nearly 2,000 were doing part-time work. The National Service volunteers were
primarily engaged in milking and general farm work but a few were carters, ploughers and
shepherds and demand for women’s labour was far in excess of supply. 274 farmers applied
for volunteers during 1917 and 1918 while there were only 20 women were in training
centres.
One woman who spent a few weeks during the summer of 1918 working in the fields in
Somerset was Winifred Sandford. Winifred was born in 1898 and in 1918 she joined the
Women’s Land Army after the government sent a request through to the Teacher Training
College she was at in London asking for female recruits. Winifred found herself in Barwick,
near Yeovil along with six hundred other women, where they slept eight to a tent. Their job
was to pull flax for use in the aeroplane construction industry who used it for, amongst
other things, to make linen fabric to cover airframes. South Somerset was viewed as the
producer of remarkably good fibre and by 1917, 420 acres had been planted with flax
processing factories at Preston Plunkett and depots at South Petherton and Lopen.
These are some of her memories given in an interview in 1984.
“Flax must be pulled by hand, not by machines, we were told. We had 10 weeks’ vacation
ahead of us, one of which must be spent on teaching practice and as I did not want to be a
burden on my parents all that time, I took my chance to earn a shilling a day and my food.
We were sent to Barwick near Yeovil where the house and grounds were turned over to us
with six hundred girls settled there as a Women’s Army for the war effort. The officers,
commandant and so on, were women. We slept in bell tents, eight to a tent, and one girl
from each gang was kept back from the fields each day to be an orderly. The orderlies had
to help prepare food, clean the mess tents, and the canvas lavatories, run the Post Office in
Barwick House, stand guard over the numerous gates in the grounds to keep out sheep and
cattle, see that pedestrians shut the gates on the footpaths, and all the other jobs that had
to be done around the camp.
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In the first days only about six girls were sent home as potential flu victims although at night
many of us made up our beds outside the tents as they seemed very crowded. We had no
proper camp equipment. We carried out luggage in pilgrim baskets. I don’t know how, but
at night cows would get into the field where we slept and we could hear them munching. In
those days we had not yet cut our hair and many of the girls with abundant long hair
thought that the cows would mistake our hair for grass and eat it while we slept, so we
wrapped up our heads in scarves before we lay down.
The method of work was this. We lined up at the edge of the field about a yard apart, pulled
the width of our arms without moving sideways, and then turned around and laid the punch
of flax neatly behind us. If you picked faster than the girl on your left, you changed places
with her and so moved over to the first row where you tried to keep ahead. We worked like
maniacs to be the first. The farmer who owned the filed brought us tea in a sort of tank on a
barrow and we left off for a welcome drink in the enamel mugs that we carried with us at all
times. Our rations for lunch were two of the hardest biscuits I have ever seen. You needed
to dip them into water or tea to make any impression on them. We had cheese some days
and a sort of fish paste sometimes, and I think an apple.
We wore breeches but I cannot remember how we got hold of them. Were they donated by
male cousins who found them for us? Girls had never worn trousers before. We made
ample overalls and smocks and we wore any stockings that we could beg, borrow or steal. I
remember one pair I had was brown lace. We never thought of going in bare legs. When the
overalls got dirty I sent mine home for Mother to wash, and inside the parcel I put an ample
portion of cheese, sometimes dry and grubby, but cheese which they had not seen at home
for many a day.
We were taken to and from the fields in lorries, a jolly ride bumping over the country roads,
standing up and holding on. We were a welcome amusement for the folk who lived around
and in Yeovil, and on Sunday evenings they came out for a walk across the footpaths that
bordered or crossed the park. They came in hundreds to see girls in breeches, living in tents,
girls who were helping to make those aeroplanes that zoomed low over the fields of
Somerset. I had my bike with me and I liked to get on gate duty on my orderly day. I would
ride across the fields and sit on my bike and read while minding the gate. After six weeks the
camp packed up. I took myself on my bike to Butleigh to visit my relatives. Since mother
came from a Butleigh family, my childhood had been well filled with postcards of
Glastonbury, the Tor and places like Frome and Castle Cary. A few years later I again visited
my relatives in Butleigh and so began a real love of the country of my ancestors and it was
flax that brought me so much happiness.”
Interview by Ann Heeley in October 1984 courtesy of Somerset Records Office.
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Other war work for women
On October 15th 1914, Countess Waldegrave of Bath wrote a letter to a Captain Metcalfe in
the Police Force. This is what she said:
“Has anything been done in Somerset about having women patrols to work in the camps
and recruiting stations? It seems to me a most important matter and if it could be done
might stop much very serious evil. Perhaps you could send me a list of the places where
there are camp and recruiting stations in the county and also advise me as to the right
person to approach on the subject. Overmore, if you could send some official letter on the
subject requesting that a patrol committee should be appointed and steps taken at once to
establish these women patrols it would ensure the matter being taken in hand at once.
I happen to know a great deal about about this society NUWW and it is composed of very
able women and practical workers. The Home Office has now asked them to undertake this
job and I am most anxious for the sake of our army and of the women at home that this
most wise work shall be taken up at once”.
Captain Metcalfe replied: “I think I told you that I had seen the Mayor of Taunton – the only
place we have troops at present – concerning the matter referred to. It is of my opinion that
there is no necessity for appointing ‘women patrols’ in the borough. I have before me, as I
write, a report from my deputy constable and his three sargeants. They have observed very
carefully the behaviour in the town at night of the soldiers stationed in the town and the
young women also. They all report that since ware was declared, there has been nothing to
complain about at all. I took my quarters in Taunton for three weeks in August and I was
personally about the streets very often in the evenings and I never saw anything improper
and considered that behaviour in the town was quite good. In the circumstances I consider
that the appointment of ‘women patrols’ would be superfluous. In large garrison towns I
can quite understand their utility”.
Captain Metcalfe then received the following letter from the Home Office: “The Secretary of
State believes that the work of the National Union of Women Workers who organised a
body of trained women…will meet a great public need. He hopes the police under your
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control will do all in their power to assist the efforts of these women workers. It has been
arranged to supply them with a badge and a card”.
With a little help from the Home Office the Countess of Bath got her women patrols and got
the much needed support from Captain Metcalfe as well.
Waiting for news back home
During the war, much of what was understood to be happening came from the press.
People found out about the lives of those around them by reading newspaper reports of all
kinds and these could be very telling about the experiences of individuals, especially women
and what they were dealing with. While the men were away fighting, the women had to
wait in fear and trepidation about hearing the fate of their loved ones. Some lost them,
some got them back. No-one was unaffected and the lives that the women had to pick up
and carry on with are not often reported. It is from small pieces in newspaper reports that
we can begin to imagine what life was really like for them.
In November 1916, the Western Gazette reported that a Mrs L.A. Barrett of Sherborne,
whose first husband had been killed at Gallipoli on August 21 st 1915, had remarried a Mr J.
Jackson on November 17th. Mrs Barret’s new husband had himself been called up as a
reservist and had also fought at Gallipoli where he was mentioned three times in
despatches for good all-round work, sniping and for bringing in two wounded men. Mr
Jackson, whilst surviving his time at the front (unlike his new wife’s first husband), did not
come away physically unscathed. He had been wounded on August 16th 1915 (5 days before
his predecessor was killed) and was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the Croix
de Guerre. Mr Jackson still had a bullet lodged in his head at the time of his wedding to Mrs
Barrett.
Telegrams were a much dreaded source of information for many people waiting at home. To
see the postman walking up to your door often spelled doom even before the missive was
opened. Mrs Sugg of 15 Market Street received her doom laden telegram telling her that
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her husband William had died of a ‘gas shell wound’. He was thirty seven and his wife was
left with 5 young children to bring up on her own.
Second Lieutenant Wilfred Matthews from Yeovil was killed leading an attack on a German
position. He left a young widow. He was the third of four sons to be lost by his mother, Mrs
Matthews, during the First World War.
Mrs Bell of Everton Road in Yeovil received a postcard from her husband George who was a
prisoner of war in Germany. George told his wife that although he was in the best of health,
being a prisoner was ‘not very nice’ and that he was in short supply of tobacco and it was
‘not like home’.
Mrs Chudleigh of Grove Avenue, Yeovil, lost her son Jack, aged only 19 years, in 1916. She
received a letter from Jack’s Commanding Officer and this is what he told her about the
death of her son on the battlefields:
“Your son was acting as a runner to me and was wounded soon after we started. As I was by
him I know the wound was not serious for he left me to find his way to the aid post and I
naturally reported him wounded. At the beginning of this month your son’s platoon
sergeant handed me the pay book and pocket book belonging to your son. This was given to
him by a stretcher bearer who had had them handed to him by a perfect stranger telling him
they had been taken from your son’s body. No other information was given other than that
your son was certainly dead...it is feared that on his way to the medical aid post he must
have been hit again causing his death.”
A young man called Thomas lived in the village of High Ham in Somerset with his brother
James and his parents, Robert and Rose. Both of Rose’s sons went off to war. Thomas and
James joined up together. Thomas served with the Somerset Light Infantry before being
medically discharged but still wanted to do his bit for his country. After nine months of
making machine guns at the Vickers factory in Kent, Thomas enlisted in the Royal Horse
Artillery. He went to France in May 1917. Rose lost her youngest son three months later
when he was killed in action by a shell on 29th July. Seven days later, reportedly whilst
attending a memorial service for Thomas in the village, Rose received a second telegram
bringing her the news that her eldest son James had also been killed. The utter grief caused
by losing both her children cannot be imagined.
Martha Legg of Bridgwater lost three sons in the conflict. In 1917 she wrote a letter to one
of them, Ernest, telling him of her concern for her youngest son, 17 year-old Frederick who
she had not heard from for three weeks. “I don’t know where he is” she wrote to Ernest. “I
hope he is alright. I told you I was trying to get him out but I did not succeed. They said it
was impossible to give him discharge under the Rheim Act”. Ernest never received the letter
because he was killed the day after it was written at the Battle of the Somme. Frederick
took his own life shortly afterwards. Martha’s eldest son William had already been killed in
Mesopotamia (Iraq) in April 1916.
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Others were luckier. Private Quick of Taunton wrote to his wife about his near miss with
death on the battlefields. “I expect you have heard before now that I have been wounded”
he wrote to Gertie. “I shall never forget April 9th as long as I live. There were shells and
bullets pitching all around us and I thank God that I got out as light as I did. A bullet went
right through my pack and through a tin of tobacco and it never touched me. I was keeping
the tin as there is a hole where it went in and came out. That saved my life. I see there is a
terrible battle in France. I do hope that it is over this summer as I am longing to come home
and see you all. I am glad my dear Gertie and baby are well”.
Kathleen Tacchi-Morris
The namesake of the Tacchi-Morris Arts Centre, Kathleen Tacchi-Morris lived for part of her
adult life, from 1938 until her death in 1993, in North Curry in Somerset. Born in 1899, she
was 15 when war broke out. According to her memoirs, the War Office approached her
father George about an engine he had invented that they wanted to use in aeroplanes but
he refused to cooperate on the grounds of his opposition to war. Eventually he agreed to go
and work on the engine as a civilian in Scotland. Kathleen stayed with her grandmother in
London and worked as a typist. She wrote of this time “There were horrifying scenes at
Liverpool Street Station after the big offences started. Men were coming back from the
frontline with arms blown off, blinded and terribly mutilated. There were similar scenes
when I went up to Scotland to see my parents. I just couldn’t stand working for a military
organisation and I walked out. I was haunted by those torn bodies arriving at the London
stations and the thought that hundreds of thousands were dying in the mud of France and
Flanders.”
Parents with pacifist tendencies and her own personal experiences of the reality of war lead
to Kathleen becoming a lifelong peace campaigner. She founded Women for World
Disarmament which sought to build up relationships between women in Britain and in other
countries to raise general awareness of the dangers of nuclear warfare.
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