Jambusters (3 page)

In the late 1920s a local bus service started, described by Edith as ‘a red letter day indeed’. This meant that women could take the bus to Shrewsbury market on Saturdays to sell produce and do their own shopping:

Some had baskets of eggs, butter, cheese and chickens, also rabbits and flowers for the market. On the bus they could meet with their neighbours and get to know the women from the other places of call, for [the driver] had a circular round to pay his way and fill the bus. At times overfill it! It was an entertainment just to sit and listen to the conversations, exchanging recipes and how they managed their homes. An eye-opener indeed at times. Something to keep our minds amused for several days. Then there was the next time to prepare for and look forward to.

Not long after the local bus service had brought women a degree of freedom a new rector, Mr Tuke, arrived in Smethcote. He was different from the previous incumbent and people were delighted that he and his wife seemed to take a genuine interest in the life of the parish. ‘When visiting the people they heard about the ‘local bus’ on all sides and how much difference it had made in our lives. The rector’s wife thought it would be a good idea to form a branch of the Women’s Institute movement and was warmly supported by most of the women though some still shied at any new ideas.’ Edith was an enthusiast for the new institute. She relished any opportunity to improve her knowledge of the world beyond Smethcote and at the first meeting she was elected to the committee and given the role of secretary. Mrs Tuke, who had been the first president, died at the end of 1931, which was a great sadness but the institute kept going. In May 1934 Edith wrote in her diary: ‘Have heard that Rev Tuke and Miss Hollier are engaged (shock).’ Miss Hollier, treasurer under the first Mrs Tuke, married the rector later that year. The shock wore off and she soon became accepted as part of the community. In time she was elected president of Smethcote WI and continued to have an interest in the institute until her death at the age of a hundred in 2001.

Smethcote Women’s Institute had fifty members from the
surrounding villages of Picklescote, Woolstaston, Leebotwood and Lower Wood. There were farmers’ wives, local women who had lived in the villages for years and Mrs Tuke, new to the parish. At the first meeting they had a demonstration on how to make slippers from old felt hats. The meetings were to be held on the second Wednesday of each month at Smethcote, Woolstaston and Leebotwood alternately. As the Joneses had no car, Edith had to walk or later cycle to all the meetings. Chris remembered that she walked long distances, thinking nothing of covering the two and a half miles to Leebotwood for a meeting in the winter. The first annual report of Smethcote WI recognised this as an issue, noting that ‘the average attendance is 34. The district being very scattered, many members have a long distance to come.’ This theme runs through all the annual reports, especially during the war when members had to resort to walking or cycling as petrol rationing limited car use for those who had them. The early reports are full of colour and optimism for the future and there is a real sense of the energy that the WI released in these women. For many it was the first time they had had an opportunity to be creative, to try singing in a choir or to hear lectures on diverse topics from home dyeing and boot repairing to a visit to the Stork margarine works, which seems to have been of particular interest to the members in 1934.

Edith remembered the early days when not everyone thought the WI was a good thing:

The men were not used to the women having a ‘cause of their own’ and were rather up in arms about it. The bus service had spoilt them, now the WI. What would be the next move? What indeed. Well, we started the WI meetings combining three villages in rotation to make it fair for all and soon became popular and we’d arranged to have afternoon meetings to be home again for the family meal and to attend to the fowls and dairy work.

Our local bus driver was willing to support us and took us to the group and other area meetings. That was something else we had to get used to: ‘competing with the outside world’ as it seemed to us. Standing up in public and giving our views when asked and in the competitions we well held our own for the women had been brought up to home-made crafts and some were really skilled at it and only now could it be brought to light. The men folk were sheepishly proud of their women when they returned home with prizes and gradually could admit the WI was a good idea. Well it grew and thrived until 1938. The war seemed imminent and much thought was given to what might be necessary. We had first-aid classes and came home proudly with our signed certificates. We had talks and demonstrations to be of help in time of need, and of course the war happened and many of our men folk joined the forces and often the women had to take their place on the farms as well as do their housework.

Alongside her WI minutes and annual reports for Smethcote WI Edith kept annual diaries. She wrote just a few sentences a day in the little books, which had seven days and an eighth section for memoranda per double-page spread. In January 1938, for example, she wrote: ‘I have had 6 letters for my Birthday. I appreciated the remembrance. Although I am getting older I do not feel it much because (I suppose) I keep so fit and well, for which I am always thankful. Good health helps one to enjoy and keep an interest in life. Such a blessing.’ The books were bound in soft leather and several of her wartime diaries were ‘The Electricity Supply Diary and Handbook’, which is ironic considering Red House Farm, where she lived, did not have electricity until long after the
war. The diaries provide a glorious insight into the life of a middle-aged countrywoman, emphasising the repetitive nature of her highly structured week but also offering glimpses into her personal life, such as buying blouses in Shrewsbury after she had had a good sale at the market, as well as juxtapositions of war news and home life such as ‘one day [WI] school for chutney and jam making. I go with Mrs Muckleston, held at Church Stretton. City of Rome taken by our troops.’

Over the eight years leading up to the war, Smethcote WI members concentrated their efforts on learning dress-making skills, baking cakes and learning about child welfare. Edith took part in the competitions and frequently won with her Victoria sponges. Len told Chris years later that he loved it when Edith entered the WI cookery competitions because she always practised beforehand so that he and his uncle were then treated to excellent cakes. In 1938 she won second prize for her fancy dress costume ‘Departed Spirit’ and at the annual meeting that year she noted: ‘Prizes for competitions for the year were awarded to Mrs Langley 1st with 20 marks, I was 2nd 17 marks and M Langley and G Gretton tied for 3rd with 9 marks each. My prize being a coloured tablecloth.’ In addition to the competitions the committee organised outings and sent delegates to county meetings, often with the assistance of the bus driver, who would obligingly take a group of women to Shrewsbury or further afield to attend group meetings.

In 1937 they sent three members to London to see the Coronation decorations. The following year it was Edith’s turn to go to London for the WI’s annual general meeting. It was her second visit. This time she travelled with several other women from Shropshire and they stayed at a hotel in the West End. Her diary entry for that day recorded: ‘Arrive at 2:15 after leaving luggage at Cora hotel. Three of us go over the Tower, St Pauls, (All Hallows modern church). Meet others at the Strand Corner
House for tea (Lyons) then to Coliseum for show, which we all enjoyed. Then walked down Regent St to see shops lit up and call at milk bar then turn in at 12:30! Wet afternoon. Very wet at Smethcote.’ The following day she attended the meeting. ‘Meeting in Albert Hall is crowded. Lasts all day . . . Some were interesting, others dry,’ she noted about the speakers, adding that she hoped to write an interesting report about the meeting for her institute. Len met her off the 10.15 p.m. train with the pony and trap and brought her back to the farm. ‘So pleased to see him’, she wrote. The following day she was tired. Her entry was brief: ‘Fine generally, wet later. Do not have a busy day.’

Just over a year later the war broke out. Edith’s annual report from 1939 had a quite different flavour: ‘From the beginning of the year until September the Institute seemed to be making steady progress but the outbreak of war and the extra work thrown on members by evacuees in the district has made it difficult to adhere to our programme.’ In her private diary, on 2 September 1939 she wrote: ‘Yeomanry called up for National Service. Len goes off this morning. We feel sad at this vital passing and shall pray for his safe return.’

The war changed the lives of those women. Numbers dwindled at the institute as people found they had too many other responsibilities but Edith was pleased to see that by 1940 new people had moved into the villages from the cities and were delighted to be invited to WI meetings. This gave the institute a new impetus and energy because, as she wrote, these women brought new ideas and introduced fresh blood. She believed that the WI had helped her and others ‘to appreciate people to whom otherwise we wouldn’t have given two thoughts’. When the war came and people had to work together, Smethcote, like other villages, had a ready-made organisation that could be called upon to coordinate whatever response was required.

What was unique about the WI was its extraordinary reach. From early on it existed at three levels: national, county and village. The London-based National Federation of Women’s Institutes had serious lobbying powers and a reputation as a powerful force that was well organised, passionate and clear in its aims. It had already brought about changes in a whole variety of matters from district nurses to railway lavatories, from venereal disease (it submitted a report on this to the Department of Health in 1922) to water pollution on Britain’s beaches. On the other hand the WI had the largest grass-roots membership of any women’s organisation in the country and was bigger, in its total number, than all but the largest of the men’s Trades Unions. In 1939 there were 5,546 Women’s Institutes in England alone, totalling 328,000 members. The middle level, equally active and useful, comprised the Voluntary County Organisers who looked after groups of WIs within their county and were often women who held posts in local government offices or had the ear of council officials. At the outbreak of war the fifty-eight county committees were used by the National Executive to reach the individual institutes with astonishing rapidity. One way and another, the WI reached almost every corner of the countryside.

The WI was, and remains today, independent. It runs its own affairs, finances itself and educates its members at its own college. But it is also well connected: government representatives sit on WI committees and WI representatives sit on government committees. That has been the case since the earliest days and at almost no time in its history was that more relevant than during the Second World War.

The Women’s Institutes set out to cross class barriers as well as those of religion and party. At the outset there was some resistance from the lady of the manor, or, more often, the lord of the manor, but these hurdles were overcome surprisingly quickly and
stories abounded of goodwill between women who would not otherwise have spoken to each other, much less joined forces to help one another. One early member wrote:

The institute has brought together in our very rural village women of all classes in true friendships, women who have lived in the same village for many years as total strangers to each other, not perhaps from any unkind or class feeling but from sheer want of opportunity for meeting and making friends. Women who have never ventured out to church or chapel or village entertainment . . . now come eagerly to our meetings, forget their shyness in opening up their minds to new ideas and welcome opportunities for developing their hidden talents.

The WI is democratic. Members vote for their committees in a secret ballot, which has had the result that no single person or faction has been able to manipulate the WI to a minority purpose. It is not a secret society or religious organisation. Church, chapel, atheist or agnostic, anyone can join the WI and be sure her beliefs will not be attacked. Every difference is respected. It is not political, nor it is affiliated to any party. This has been one of its greatest assets. Since party politics play no part in the WI this means the institute can comment without prejudice on government legislation. The WI is the village voice and encourages its members to speak out on decisions that affect their lives. The only qualification for setting up a women’s institute was that a village had to have a population of less than 4,000.

The first Women’s Institute in Britain was formed in the Welsh village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, on the Isle of Anglesey, on Wednesday 16 June 1915, the day that Lloyd George took the oath as Minister of Munitions. Although seen by many as a quintessentially British phenomenon,
the WI was started in Canada nearly twenty years before Mrs Stapleton-Cotton became president of the first WI in England and Wales.

So what had inspired Canadian countrywomen to come together and form women-only institutes and what were they for? The answer was education. ‘Not education for education’s sake’ . . . though ‘very beautiful in theory’, asserted Mrs Adelaide Hoodless, the founder of the WI movement in Canada, ‘but when we come down to facts, I venture to say that 90 per cent of those who attend our schools seek education for its practical benefits.’

Mrs Hoodless had married John Hoodless of a prosperous business family in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1881. She bore four children, two boys and two girls. In 1889 their youngest son died at the age of fourteen months, due to an intestinal infection as a result of drinking contaminated milk. Infant and child mortality was prevalent, with up to 20 per cent of babies and infants dying before they reached their fifth birthday, the majority as a result of bacterial infection. Mrs Hoodless appears to have blamed herself for her baby’s death and for the rest of her life she devoted herself tirelessly to promoting ideas about domestic hygiene. She believed that while girls should be educated at school in academic subjects, they also needed to learn the practical skills they would require to run a home and a family when they grew up and married. This, after all, was the future for the overwhelming majority of women of that era.