The title for this book, Jambusters, was the inspired suggestion of my brother, Tim. He deserves credit for a very clever pun, though I suspect he did not know at the time he suggested it just how apposite it would be. During the war the WIs bust logjams, circumvented bureaucracy and improvised in many different ways. They wrote a major report on evacuation, were involved in advising eleven ministries, including the Treasury, and as a result influenced government thinking about children’s health and education, housing and post-war reconstruction. They ran canteens for troops, baked pies for farm workers, and collected hundreds of tons of rosehips and herbs for the pharmaceutical industry. By their joint effort, members contributed millions of knitted garments to keep troops and refugees in Europe warm. They made 12,000,000 lb. (5,445,000 kilograms) of jam and preserves, helped to set up over 1,000 pig clubs and made more than 2,000 fur-lined garments for Russia. And in amongst all this major activity they sang, put on plays and organised parties to entertain their villages and keep their spirits up. The Second World War was the WI’s finest hour.
In her speech to the annual general meeting of the Women’s Institute held in the Albert Hall in 1943, Queen Elizabeth thanked the women for their enormous contribution to the war effort. As joint president of Sandringham WI with her mother-in-law, Queen Mary, where her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, became a member in 1943, and as a regular visitor to other institutes, she had first-hand experience of the WI’s work. She said:
When we have won through to peace, a great page in the history of Britain’s war effort should be devoted to the countrywomen in this dear land of ours, who, left to carry on in the villages, tackled their job quietly and with wonderful efficiency: and institutes up and down the country have given a grand demonstration of how women can work together cheerfully and lovingly for the good of all. I am so glad to have this opportunity of paying my tribute to the NFWI and to all my fellow-members.
It will take a whole book, not just one page as suggested by Queen Elizabeth, to pay tribute to and celebrate their extraordinary achievements on the Home Front during six long years of war.
Jambusters opens with a brief history of the WI and introduces a small number of the key players who ran the organisation at national level. Then we follow the course of the war, seen through the eyes of women who have all been involved in or associated with the WI in one way or another at institute level. We will look at some of the large variety of activities women undertook at the behest of the government and its national body, such as jam-making, food production and knitting. The book ends with a brief summary of the post-war lives of those women whose personal stories have featured.
All the stories in this book have been checked as far as possible for accuracy, and if there are any errors in the narrative, I take responsibility for them. No names have been changed but a small number of stories have been told anonymously so as not to cause offence to relatives who might still be alive. To every woman who has helped to bring this book to life I offer my warmest thanks.
The village of Milton in Cambridgeshire had a wartime motto which I think sums up the contribution made by the WI: ‘Say little, serve all, pass on. This is the true greatness – to serve unnoticed and work unseen.’ Women did not trumpet their achievements and many of them were unquantifiable anyway since the aim was to keep going, and make life a little easier for others.
Julie Summers
Oxford
1
LET THE SUNSHINE STREAM IN
A friend said, ‘Come along with me.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ But she kept bothering me and my husband said, ‘For goodness sake go with her and stop her worrying.’ So I went with her and that was the best day’s work I ever did.
A WI member, 1919
Not every woman in the countryside joined her WI, but for those who did it probably presented the only opportunity for them to socialise outside the home and to learn about life beyond their immediate environs. Edith Jones was one such woman. She described her village in the early part of the twentieth century:
Life in the truly rural areas could be rather humdrum before the motor transport came into its own. Some of us lived 10–12 miles from the market town and 3–5 miles from the nearest railway station depending on where our houses were situated. We were in a scattered area, mostly farmers and connected with farm work and the women had a full time job in the home for there was no electricity nor piped water or any other modern convenience and everything was ‘made at home’. We seemed to have little time or cause to visit our next village unless it was for a fresh sitting of eggs in the spring or a jar or two of honey in the autumn ready for winter colds. The menfolk generally managed the cattle auctions, touching each other for a lift in the farmers’ gigs but if the farmer’s wife went too they knew they’d have to be sober to touch a ride back.
Edith married John Cecil (Jack) Jones on 10 July 1914, less than a month before the outbreak of the First World War. They moved to Red House Farm in Smethcote as tenant farmers, with milking-cows, sheep and poultry on some sixty acres. It was not a large farm, even in those days, and they had little money. They milked morning and evening with the help of Jack Middleton, who lived in nearby Picklescote. Jack was an ex-soldier of the Great War. He never married but lived with his elderly mother and earned his living by catching rabbits and working for Mr Jones, earning five shillings for eight hours’ work, Edith noted. The cows came into the milking shippon opposite the house to be milked but that building had no water so the cows had to be driven down to the pond at the end of the farmyard to drink after milking. In addition to the cattle and sheep there were Edith’s chickens, of which she was extremely fond. She sold eggs at the farm gate as well as taking them into Shrewsbury market on Saturdays. When there were tasks on the farm, such as caring for sick animals, Edith invariably helped out. She wrote about drenching and hand-feeding a calf that was poorly. For three days she looked after it but, she wrote, ‘at a quarter to one on Saturday morning the calf died. The men buried it. It had tried hard to rally.’ Although she was clearly touched by the calf’s death Edith was unsentimental about animals. Farming was a way of life and there would always be deaths as well as births in the countryside.
Jack Jones was a quiet man committed to his farm and the community. A rural district councillor who also served as a churchwarden, he was a regular pall-bearer at funerals. He went to market weekly to buy or sell stock and he enjoyed the quiet life of the country with its seasonal rhythms. His wife was different. Edith was extraordinarily industrious and gifted at turning her hand to mending and making almost anything. She was also an avid reader, and despite her busy life as a farmer’s wife would try to set aside an amount of time each afternoon to reading or studying. She loved the wireless and used to note programmes that she had listened to in her diaries. In March 1938 she wrote: ‘Sowed antirrhinums and sweet peas in boxes. Listened to the Parliamentary discussion on the unrest in Central Europe.’ Six months later Chamberlain returned from Munich: ‘The European Peace Pact was signed! May it be a lasting pact and for our good. War has threatened and been hanging over us and the relief when peace was declared was immense.’ That year, on Armistice Day, she remained hopeful: ‘Nice morning. I gather and clear up wood under yew trees. Chop some then Len comes and finishes them. There is now a good supply in the shed and it looks tidy. We keep the two minutes silence and feel thankful for peace in the country.’
Her great-niece, Chris Downes, remembered how Edith always wanted to know more about the world she lived in.
She had a passionate belief in the value of education and she read widely on any number of topics. I remember when she was in hospital in her eighties having had a hip replacement. We visited her and she was astonished that other women in her ward were just sitting in their beds. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, Christine, they just sit there and do nothing. They’re not even interested in reading or playing Scrabble.’ As a young woman she had studied butter-making at Radbrook College in Shrewsbury. She
was very skilled and achieved top marks for her butter-making.
The Joneses were childless but in 1926 they were asked to look after Edith’s nephew, Leonard Manley. The Manley family had moved from Shropshire to Staffordshire, to a farm near the river. Leonard suffered from rheumatic fever and his parents were told that if he remained in the house by the river he would die. Leonard believed he was going to spend the summer with Aunt Edith and Uncle Jack at Smethcote but in fact he stayed with them for the rest of his childhood and became for them the son they never had. He remained close to his parents and siblings and there were regular family visits but his home was Red House Farm. When he was old enough he went to Rodbaston Agricultural College in Staffordshire and did a one-year course just before the outbreak of the war. The relationship between Leonard and his aunt was close, so that when Chris was born she called Edith ‘Gran Jones’. ‘I told my friends at school that I had three grandmothers, my mother’s mother, my father’s mother and Edith. The teachers said that was not possible but it was true. I regarded all three women as my grandmothers and I saw a great deal of Gran Jones. She and Jack retired down the road to Church Stretton in 1947 when Leonard married my mother, Gwladys Hughes.’
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.’
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