Hilda Lorimer was Somerville’s Tutor in Classics (and subsequently Tutor in Classical Archaeology).

A Scotswoman from Dundee, she became a fellow in 1896, having taken a 1^st in Classics at Girton College, Cambridge. In 1914-15, she taught Vera Brittain, who wrote in Testament of Youth of Hilda Lorimer’s kindness and of her seeming desire to do more than just teach during the war. As the war progressed, Hilda Lorimer combined her scholarly duties with a number of practical national service roles, the most notable of which was also a statement of her commitment to women’s suffrage – the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH).

The Somerville Council minutes record that as early as May 1915, Hilda Lorimer was intending to take a sabbatical and volunteer in Serbia. Her plans were postponed due to ‘uncertainties in the Balkans’ and she instead spent the college vacations engaged in practical pursuits such as working on the land and in a munitions canteen. She also helped Belgian refugees, most memorably as a participant in the survival training camp set up at Shenberrow in August 1915, organised by the OWSSWS (the Oxford Women Students’ Society for Women’s Suffrage). In 1916 Hilda Lorimer took part-time employment in the Translations Department of the Admiralty and it was in April 1917 that she was finally able to take a 5 month leave of absence from Somerville and set out for Salonika (Thessaloniki), joining the Girton & Newnham Unit of the SWH as an orderly.

The Scottish Women’s Hospitals was one of the many voluntary organisations established at the beginning of the war but it differed crucially from most of the others, as its aims were two-fold from the outset: contributing to the war effort and promoting women’s rights. Having had their offer to assist the Army rejected by the War Office (Dr Elsie Inglis, one of the SWH’s founders, was told to ‘go home and sit still’), the SWH instead set up medical units in France, Belgium and Serbia, organised and staffed by women. Funded by the two women’s colleges in Cambridge, the Girton and Newnham Unit was based in a field hospital at Salonika. In addition to the wounded from the Serbian campaign, it treated large numbers of malaria patients. Support staff at the SWH were expected to fund themselves and the Council minutes of 30 January 1917 indicate that the college was willing to provide Hilda Lorimer with financial assistance if needed.

Hilda Lorimer returned to Somerville in September 1917 and resumed her teaching duties at the college in the Michaelmas term. In 1918, she began writing on Slovenia and Yugoslavia for the Foreign Office and she went on to contribute papers on Yugoslavia and on Serbian history to the Nations of Today series, edited by John Buchan and published in 1923-4.

The college meeting in March was held, in part, to elect junior members of Somerville to various offices, such as the O.S.D.S. (Oxford Students Debating Society) Rep., Fiction Librarian and Junior Bicycle Secretary. The Senior Student also asked for nominations for a Fritillary representative from the 2^nd year and elected to post was Miss Kennedy.

The Fritillary was the magazine of the women’s colleges at Oxford, jointly produced and open to students, who could submit literary efforts such as short stories, comic and dramatic sketches and poems as well as reports on the various societies and clubs. There was a section called Hall Notices where each college or hall recorded the key events of that term – debates and sporting matches, suffrage meetings and the achievements of notable college members (Marya Czaplicka’s expedition to Siberia and Dr Dorothea Maude’s service in a field hospital in Belgium were both recorded in the December 1914 edition).

First published in 1894, The Fritillary illuminated those elements of student life seldom found in the official college records. For some of the contributors, pieces in the magazine marked the pinnacle of their literary achievements (editorial policy was strict; editors such as Una Ellis-Fermor preferred not to publish at all rather than include sub-standard submissions). For others, The Fritillary provided an outlet for their budding talents.

The Miss Kennedy elected in March 1917 was Margaret Kennedy, a second year Modern Historian and she contributed several pieces to the next edition of the magazine, published in June 1917. Within just a few years, she had achieved great critical and popular success as a writer, with her second novel The Constant Nymph, published in 1924. She went on to write over a dozen novels, plus novellas, plays, short stories and screenplays and adapted The Constant Nymph for the stage.

Margaret Kennedy became one of the most celebrated writers of the interwar period but she was not the only literary figure emerging from Somerville at this time. In the decade from 1912 to 1922, an astonishingly varied and prolific group of authors attended the college. Named ‘The Somerville School of Novelists’ by Vera Brittain, their number included Vera Brittain herself, Dorothy L. Sayers, Doreen Wallace, Winifred Holtby, Hilda Reid and Sylvia Thompson as well as Margaret Kennedy, and contributions by many of them can be found within the pages of The Fritillary.

Throughout the Great War, the number of Somerville students officially pursuing war work remained comparatively small. However, these were students, such as Vera Brittain, who had taken a leave of absence, most intending to return after a term, a year or at the end of hostilities. Still more students chose to leave college entirely, unable to continue their studies when so many of their contemporaries had been killed or wounded. One such was Margaret Philp, who left Oxford abruptly in 1916; her local regiment, the Gordons, had been ‘wiped out’ in action and she could not stand to take her degree in such terrible circumstances.

The Principal, Emily Penrose, was concerned at the number of students willing to abandon their academic careers altogether in favour of national service. The college and its members had striven to contribute to the war effort in any way possible. For Emily Penrose, that meant in addition to – and not instead of – academic pursuits. The country would require university educated men and women in the future. In completing their courses, students would be putting the needs of the nation above those of the individual. The recently appointed President of the Board of Education, H.A.L. Fisher, shared this point of view and was willing to do so publicly.

Fisher, the historian and fellow (and future Warden) of New College, Oxford, had long been a supporter of education for women and of Somerville College in particular. He had professional and personal links with the college. He became a member of Somerville’s Council in 1900 and served as its President from 1910 to 1913. His wife, Lettice Ilbert, the historian and social worker, was a Somervillian.

In December 1916, Fisher became a Member of Parliament and the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, appointed him President of the Board of Education. In a letter to Emily Penrose, published in the Times on 8^th February, Fisher emphasised the importance of university-educated women to the war effort and to the future. He addressed students in person the following month, at the Sheldonian Theatre, and the Oxford Magazine carried further articles on the value of University women to the nation and to Oxford.

It is difficult to assess the impact, if any, of Fisher’s intervention; students continued to abandon their studies almost to the end of the war. One of the last to do this was Winifred Holtby in June 1918; having taken her first year examinations, she got permission to go to London, ostensibly to visit a relative, instead using the opportunity to enlist in the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps. For many of the ‘war generation’, their duty lay outside academia.

By January 1917, the war was taking its toll on the home front. Shortages of food, fuel and staff were resulting in higher costs, at a time when money was also in short supply. Morale was low and for Vera Brittain, stationed at this time in Malta, letters received from home depicted a country struggling but determined to carry on.

At the college meeting of January 24^th, Somerville students devised two novel ways to ‘do their bit’ – making their own beds and forgoing extravagant tea parties.

At the start of the war, Somerville’s domestic staff included 24 maids who lived in, with 10 daily women in addition; by January 1917, the number of maids had halved and the daily women numbered 7, falling to 6 half way through Hilary Term. Whilst the number of maids did not diminish at the time of the move to St Mary Hall in April 1915, their numbers plummeted six months later at the start of the following academic year and the revised living arrangements (and resulting shortage of accommodation) no doubt contributed to this. A number of (mostly) long-serving maids remained with the college but some, such as May Drew [see blog June 1915] chose to leave, wanting to undertake war work.

The minutes of the college meeting record the difficulty of replacing maids who had left; the students’ solution was to relieve the pressure on the remaining staff, and save the cost of the wage, by asking junior members to make their own beds. The motion – ‘to make our own beds for the present ‘– was carried.

Shortages and the increasing cost of living were also topics under consideration. The Senior Student voiced concern at the ‘extreme inadvisability of giving elaborate and expensive teas or parties of any sort’. The first year appeared to be particularly culpable in this and the Senior Student pointed out that this was neither wanted or expected of them.

At this time, food supplies were increasingly under threat, as merchant ships, carrying imported provisions from the USA and Canada, were subjected to a campaign of attack by German submarines. Britain was growing much more food than it had prior to the war, but by the end of 1917, food would be in such short supply that rationing would be introduced, with sugar one of the first items to be restricted. Not noted for its sophisticated cuisine, the food in Somerville was to deteriorate markedly, with a monotonous reliance on boiled beetroot (at dinner one evening, Swiss student Thilo Bugnion was heard above the hubbub, enquiring ‘What ees this bloodee stuff?’). Hot, non-alcoholic beverages and tea-time treats were not only the bedrock of student socialising but were a vital supplement to the college food provision. Such tea parties would be sorely missed.

By December 1916, the war had been underway for almost two and a half years. The cost to the countries involved was unprecedented, both in terms of the casualties and losses sustained and in terms of the money needed to finance the participants’ military machines.

Despite its huge wealth, with gold reserves and the resources of the Empire to call on, Britain’s finances were severely depleted. In an attempt to raise funds from the public, National War Savings Committees were established in April 1916 in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Their aim was to encourage small savers, not usually regarded as a source of finance, to lend their money to the government. War Savings Associations were set up locally and posters extolling the patriotism of saving encouraged people to make their money serve their country. Some of these posters were aimed specifically at women and working men.

Somerville formed its own War Savings Association, with Miss Penrose as the Secretary and Miss Lorimer as the Treasurer. At the College Meeting on 7 December Somerville’s Senior Student, Kathleen Watson, exhibited a specimen ‘War Savings Christmas Card’. Such cards were marked with a grid inside, into which the sender or recipient could stick sixpenny savings stamps. Once completed, the cards held 31 stamps worth 15 shillings & 6d (77.5 p). The card could then be exchanged for a war savings certificate (or, if incomplete, paid into the owner’s War Savings Account) and after 5 years the certificate could be redeemed for £1.

The Senior Student suggested the cards would be a convenient way for students to accumulate their subscriptions during the vacation; in that month’s edition of The Fritillary, the War Savings Association was described as flourishing, with over 80 members and having already purchased several certificates. Miss Penrose had also been invited to address the students of St Hugh’s on the aims and administration of the Association and St Hugh’s had formed its own committee.

The Oxford Letter a few months later, in the 1917 Somerville Students Association annual report, suggests that for some the initial enthusiasm might have waned:

“The Somerville War Savings Association flourishes……. The domestic staff have shown a keenness which might well be emulated by some of the slacker student members.”

Somerville’s Parliament, in its debates, endeavoured to examine the issues under consideration by the national Parliament, although limited to just two meetings per term and with far fewer members in attendance. The meeting held in November 1916 produced a fierce debate on ‘a measure for the introduction of Universal Suffrage in Great Britain’. The choice of subject was no doubt inspired by the Conference on Electoral Reform, then in session and chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons. It was reviewing changes to the franchise for male voters, the residence requirements denying the vote to many of the men away on active service, and considering the introduction of limited voting rights for women.

 

Somervillians had long supported the cause of women’s suffrage – with a few notable exceptions such as Mrs. Humphry Ward, one of the college’s founding members. Eighty per cent of the students were members of the Somerville Women’s Suffrage Society in 1910; in 1911 the women’s colleges combined to form the Oxford Women Student’s Society for Women’s Suffrage (OWSSWS) and their campaigning drew national attention. Even Emily Penrose, usually so cautious over any actions which could derail the progress towards degrees for women, permitted the Suffrage Society to hold their meetings in Somerville in the years immediately preceding the war (losing scholarship funding and  college supporters in the process).

During the war, the activities of the Suffrage Society extended beyond rolling bandages on a Sunday evening. Most notable, perhaps, was Shenberrow Camp, the survival training camp for Belgian relief workers (see August 1915 blog).  The OWSSWS also participated in the relief work and fundraising organised by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies across the country.

At the University of Oxford, the war had resulted in a greater reliance on the contribution of women, both academically and financially. Nationally, the inclusion of women in the workforce and their vital war work had a similarly positive effect, persuading people of their fitness to vote. It therefore seems somewhat ironic that, at a time when public opinion was changing to support the extension of the franchise, Somerville’s Parliament voted against universal suffrage, by a small majority!

 “Another year finds us still scattered, and Somerville’s hospital work still as urgently needed. We at present occupy Micklem Hall, Sheldonian House, three houses in King Edward Street, and one in Oriel Street, besides St Mary Hall. Our numbers, however, have not diminished at all: this Term there are 107 students in residence.” The Fritillary, December 1916

October 1916 saw the beginning of another academic year. Most of Vera Brittain’s contemporaries were entering their third and final year, preparing for Schools and occupying the various offices of the JCR. However, the report in The Fritillary is inaccurate in claiming that student numbers were undiminished; 20 per cent of 1914’s intake had swapped academe for war work and in total, one third of that year’s matriculants had already left, having completed shorter courses or abandoned their studies. There continued to be a small but steady loss of students to war service, a matter increasingly of concern to Emily Penrose and to H.A.L. Fisher, the former President of the Somerville, who was soon to become President of the Board of Education in Lloyd George’s government.

New freshers arrived, uncertain if they would ever experience college life actually in Somerville College and quickly learned to adapt to their disjointed community. Amongst their number was Enid Starkie, French scholar, pianist and free-spirited Irishwoman, who appears to have circumvented the inconvenience of living out by ignoring the rules which restricted her. Although women students were forbidden to be out alone after dinner, a fellow student would later recall how:

 “Miss Starkie told us that she had a bath every night in quad, and then walked home to Teddy Street, where she lives, lightly but elegantly attired in her nightdress and an overcoat!…. If the Pen heard, there’d be the most unholiest row that ever was. We’re not allowed even to cross Oriel Street without a hat on.”

The Boat Club and Hockey Club both benefitted from an influx of enthusiastic new members as did the debating societies, those attending Parliament showing ‘keen interest and marked ability’ and at Tub Thumpers ‘the First Year, of whom great things are hoped, particularly distinguished themselves’.

The members of Sister Susie resumed their weekly sewing meetings and were joined by the Suffrage Society producing bandages. As before, the shirts and other garments made in the college went to patients at the Somerville Section hospital.

At the October college meeting, the students also voted in favour of using some of their funds to make a grant for folk dancing: English country dancing was enjoying a revival at this time and dancing classes had been well attended the previous year. Despite separations and regulations, college life continued.

 

Unique among Somervillians who volunteered to help the war effort was Muriel Reynolds, who had come up to read modern languages in 1901. She spent the early part of the war in Bristol, teaching Belgian refugees and working for the Red Cross but she also lived in Okehampton and is the only Somervillian on record as having been a herb and moss collector.

The vast number of casualties sustained in the First World War led to advances in the diagnosis and treatment of wounds, such as the use of x-rays, systems of triage and the introduction of blood transfusions. However, natural remedies also had their place in the medical arsenal particularly against sepsis in the era before antibiotics. Wounds were extremely susceptible to infection due to the muddy conditions of the trenches. Medics therefore turned to traditional herbs with antiseptic properties, such as calendula (or marigolds), rosemary, sage and lavender. They were used in dressings and treatments for wounds and in the preparation of disinfectants for cleaning wards.

Sphagnum moss was another natural resource and an effective alternative to cotton wool, which had to be imported and was also required for the manufacture of munitions. Sphagnum moss was exceptionally absorbent and naturally antiseptic and these properties were noticed by army surgeon Charles Walker Cathcart in Edinburgh, who used it in the manufacture of dressings from 1914. In February 1916, sphagnum moss was officially approved for military medical use and surgical dressings made in Edinburgh were supplied to service hospitals at home and abroad. Such was the demand that in September 1916, moss collection was publicised and promoted across the country. Dublin became another major centre of dressings production, with a smaller site established on Dartmoor near Princetown.

Volunteers such as Muriel Reynolds would collect the moss, roughly clean it, partly dry it and pack it into sacks to be taken to the depot, before it was fully cleaned, dried and transformed into dressings. One source in the college archives describes her war service as ‘land work’; we are fortunate that the Somerville Association of Senior Members compiled a comprehensive list of its members and the national service each undertook, to reveal this fascinating aspect of the war effort.

“At the beginning of August 1916 I found myself deposited at No. 3 General Service Hospital, which was in Somerville College, Oxford.

To be lying in a little white-walled room, looking through the open window on to a College lawn, was for the first few days very much like Paradise.”

Siegfried Sassoon, Siegfried’s Journey (1945).

In August 1916 Siegfried Sassoon became a patient at the Somerville Section of the 3^rd Southern General. Transferred from the battlefields of the Somme, his transit label recording his condition as PUO (Pyrexia of Unknown Origin, a sort of gastric fever more commonly called trench fever), Sassoon was one of several hundred patients to pass through Somerville during its four years as a hospital.

Initially used for all ranks, the Somerville Section was designated as ‘officers only’ during 1916 because the buildings  offered a large number of single-occupancy rooms. As a college, the site had been able to accommodate over 100 students plus fellows; as a hospital, the dining and junior common rooms located in House and West were converted into wards. Even so, more beds were needed and tents were pitched on the lawn in the main quad, increasing the hospital’s capacity to around 260.

With the change to officers only, the hall, which had been converted into a ward in April 1915, reverted to use as a dining room and the SCR (Senior Common Room) was set aside for billiards.

The grounds provided a tranquil setting for patients recuperating from their injuries and illnesses. In the calm and quiet of the college, Sassoon began to write again and once fit enough he was able to visit the Ashmolean Museum and take a canoe out on the River Cherwell.

The irony of men residing in the ‘Ladies’ College’ was appreciated by many of the patients, including Sassoon. Others, years later, delighted in claiming they had been ‘up’ at Somerville and the College is fortunate to have a number of photographs and postcards as mementoes of the patients who were in residence.

 

In July 1916, Helen Waters, a former English student at Somerville, joined the Almeric Paget Massage Corps (APMC), having undergone training in ‘Massage and Medical Electricity’. The APMC was one of the many voluntary schemes, established at the outbreak of hostilities, which went on to be recognised officially and eventually incorporated into the country’s response to the national emergency. 1916 was a pivotal year in the APMC’s transition from voluntary scheme to official service and by that December, it had become known as the Almeric Paget Military Massage Corps.

Physiotherapy was a comparatively new form of medical treatment before 1914 but at the outbreak of war, Almeric Paget, the MP for Cambridge, and his wife, offered to establish and run a therapeutic massage service, providing 50 volunteer masseuses to help rehabilitate wounded servicemen, without any cost to the Government. The first masseuses were deployed in military hospitals in September 1914; such was the demand that over 100 had been recruited by the end of the year and the Pagets had set up an out-patients’ clinic.

The changing nature of combat in the First World War, combined with developments in military technology, were reflected in the damage inflicted on the combatants. Trench warfare, machine guns and heavy artillery bombardments produced catastrophic injuries with high levels of loss of limb and, due to the muddy conditions, such severe risks of infection that, even if not lost, it was often necessary to sacrifice a damaged limb in order to save the patient. Once repatriated, injured servicemen could convalesce in military hospitals where massage and electrical therapy (stimulating the muscles with small shocks) became widely employed to aid recuperation. The success of the Paget’s clinic attracted the attention of the Royal Army Medical Corps and in 1916, the Pagets were offered a grant to run the massage departments in the large convalescent camps and military hospitals. By the beginning of 1917, the Corps had 1200 masseuses and its Military Masseuses were being sent to serve overseas.

Other Somervillians who worked in medical massage included Emily Kemp, one of Somerville’s earliest students and an intrepid traveller: she spent the whole war in France assisting the French army by organising two hospitals, running a canteen for soldiers in Verdun and, from 1916, working for 18 months as a masseuse in the French Military Hospital in Paris. Juliet Ogilvie also worked as a masseuse in military hospitals from 1915, as did Jane Worthington, who had been a nursing sister in civilian life.

The requirements of war resulted in advances in other areas of treatment and technology, including skin grafts and artificial limbs. Among the staff photographed for the 3rd Southern General Hospital’s souvenir album at the end of the war, the masseuses can be seen in their plain white aprons, one possibly wearing the insignia of the Almeric Paget Military Massage Corps.