“The summer vacation has been a busy time for many of us. Miss Penrose, with the co-operation of Miss Darbishire and Miss Walton, undertook to organise the National Registration in Oxford” SSA Annual Report, November 1915.

Miss Emily Penrose, Somerville’s Principal from 1907 to 1926, was as renowned for her administrative abilities as she was for her academic achievements and in the long vacation of 1915 she utilized those skills in a very particular form of war work.

In July 1915 the National Registration Act was passed, its purpose to provide the Government with accurate statistics on those available for military service, those doing essential work and those who might be able to replace enlisted men. All adults of working age (15-65), not already serving in the armed forces, were required to register on 15^th August 1915.

The task of registration was the responsibility of local authorities across the country and Miss Penrose was asked to organize it in Oxford. St Mary Hall was conveniently central and the SSA Annual Report noted “Old students will probably have seen with pride the numerous press notices which commented on the uniquely efficient manner in which the business of the Register in Oxford was conducted.”

Somerville’s Vice Principal, Miss Alice Bruce, spent the summer in London working for the Red Cross and Mildred Pope, the Tutor in Modern Languages, was in France with the Friend’s War Victims Relief Expedition.

The most unusual form of war work was probably that undertaken by Hilda Lorimer, the Tutor in Classics who, along with members of the other women’s colleges, set up and ran Shenberrow Camp in the Cotswolds from 5^th to 18^th August.

Shenberrow was the first collective undertaking of the Belgian Sub-Committee of the OWSSWS (the Oxford Women Students’ Society for Women’s Suffrage), its aim to equip applicants for relief work in Belgium with practical skills (cooking, washing and sanitation, first aid and Flemish).

The site, an ancient British fort with level ground and an excellent water supply, ‘fell into the hands of the Amazons’. Forty-four women attended, including four young Belgians who looked forward to ‘taking a share in the reconstruction of their land’ and gave instruction in Flemish. The women lived under canvas; lamb, delivered by the half-sheep on horseback, was roasted over trench fires. The daily routine included Swedish drill, tent inspection, chopping wood, collecting brushwood and digging sanitary trenches as well as lessons in first aid and how to cook economical, wholesome food. They were joined for the first couple of days by Violetta Thurstan, a Red Cross nurse, who had gone to Belgium at the start of the war, been a German prisoner and had served with a ‘Flying Column’ on the Russian front. Reactions to the camp varied, from the good humour of its occupants to the friendly assistance of the local farmer and the declaration by one baker’s delivery boy: “I wouldn’t live ‘ere, not for three pound a week!”

Amongst the six students to leave Somerville for war work in June 1915 was Helen Norah Hughes. She had entered the College in October 1914 to read English and was a friend of Vera Brittain’s, but rather than nurse, she became a Checker of Forage for the War Office, one of several Somervillians to work in agriculture.

The first harvest of the war revealed a crisis developing in farming. Over 100,000 agricultural workers had joined the armed forces during the first six months of the war and the British Army depended on farmers for a regular, reliable supply of forage (fodder) to feed the horses which were still its main means of transport. Farmers were unable to produce enough food for human consumption and haymaking was not a priority therefore, in July 1915, the first women were enrolled by the War Office to organise the collection and transportation of hay from farms to the front and, in agriculture more widely, women volunteers began to make up the shortfall in the workforce.

Food production was of paramount importance and organisations such as the Women’s Farm and Garden Union worked to train women in agriculture and overcome bias against them. At a domestic level, the Women’s Institute was founded in 1915 to promote the production and preservation of food and individuals cultivated allotments and gardens. The Somerville College report for 1915 listed two former students who took up agriculture – Mary Scott became a farm labourer and Margaret Moor an assistant ‘cowman’ – whilst helping on the land became a popular form of war work for students in the long vacations.

In March 1917, the Women’s Land Army (WLA) was formed. It encompassed agricultural workers, a forestry section and the Women’s Forage Corps (WFC). The disparate women forage workers were incorporated into the new Corps, the members placed into teams of six, travelling from farm to farm, where they would harvest and bale the hay and drive it to the local station by horse-drawn cart for transfer onto a train. Somervillians, by this stage of the war, were working in agriculture at all levels, including administration on regional committees, large scale food production such as potato  and chicken farming and small scale gardening to supply individual hospitals and refugee hostels with vegetables. Mary Scott worked on the land throughout the war, ran a small holding and became a qualified cow woman and Somerville students spent their vacations harvesting or fruit picking. Former Chemistry tutor, Margaret McKillop, went from lecturing on food economy in 1915 to working for the Ministry of Food in its Information and Statistics Section and wrote Food Values, What They Are and How to Calculate Them, published in 1916.

“Somerville and Somervillians (though the number of resident students shows no diminution) have been greatly affected by the War, and may, it seems likely, be even more affected in the future.” Somerville Report 1915

In June 1915, the first academic year of the war ended.  It had been one of great change for Somerville, particularly in terms of location and cohesion, but wider-reaching and more fundamental changes were gradually taking place throughout the country. As the war continued, women were taking on roles, in the work place or as part of the war effort, which would previously have been closed to them because of their gender, class or education.

At Oxford, although not yet admitted to degrees, the first women were invited to give lectures in Trinity Term 1915.  Helen Darbishire, the English tutor (and Somerville’s future Principal), was the second woman to give a University lecture, and Vera Brittain described her subsequent lecture on Milton as ‘magnificent’.  As the war continued, female academics were invited (by some of their male colleagues) to do more teaching, even coaching a few male undergraduates. Moreover, some courses hitherto closed to women students started to become available to them, most notably perhaps in medicine.

Many students and fellows found it possible (and preferable) to combine war work with College life. However, some Somervillians decided to postpone or forsake their educations for national service. In June 1915, Vera Brittain was one of six students who left temporarily and of these, only two actually returned to complete their studies, Hilda Broadbent after one year and Vera herself, after the war had ended.  Agnes Murray, another of the six and the daughter of renowned Classicist Professor Gilbert Murray, left to spend two years nursing before serving as an RAF dispatch rider and as an ambulance driver for the FANY. At this stage of the war, the number of students interrupting their studies was comparatively low although it was to become a matter of some concern to the Principal, Emily Penrose, as the conflict continued.

The Report also listed the occupations pursued by past students and the 1915 list included a substantial proportion of nurses, VAD probationers and medical administrators plus ward orderlies, a trainee masseuse and a couple of farm workers in addition to the more usual teachers, lecturers and librarians. For College staff, the war would offer unexpected opportunities too; the scout, May Drew, went on to nurse as a VAD at the Wingfield Hospital in Headington. After the war she attended Hillcroft, the Working Women’s College (established to offer further education to working women) thanks, she later wrote, to the influence of Miss Kempson, Somerville’s pre-war librarian.

The 3^rd Southern General Hospital opened at the beginning of the war in the University Examination Schools. It was one of twenty three Territorial Force general hospitals, housed in converted civilian buildings in key locations, selected for this purpose before hostilities commenced. The general hospitals acted as district ‘hubs’, treating the wounded who could then be moved to auxiliary hospitals nearby to complete their convalescence.  The 3^rd Southern General eventually expanded to occupy at least 10 sites in and around Oxford, including the Cowley Road workhouse, the Town Hall and the Oxford Masonic Buildings on the High.

Somerville’s proximity to the Radcliffe Infirmary made it an obvious choice when the 3^rd Southern General Hospital needed to expand; stretcher access to the Infirmary’s operating theatres was created by knocking a hole in the north wall of the College. Initially the Somerville Section took in all ranks, with the Maitland Building reserved for officers, but it was soon decided that the nature of the accommodation available in the College – small rooms in large number – was best suited to use for officers only.

As promised in Colonel Ranking’s letter to Miss Penrose (see March blog), attempts were made to protect the buildings; at first, the Hall was used as a ward, with a bathroom built into one corner and its oak floor and panelling preserved in places under deal cladding.  It later reverted to use as a dining room and Somervillian Constance Savery was to recall a notice which had been put up in the Hall:  “Officers are requested not to throw custard at the walls”.

Privileges denied to the students were allowed to the patients; “In the old days you paid a threepenny fine per court if you crossed the tennis lawns in heeled shoes, today these same lawns are given up to cricket and crutches. The garden is as great a blessing to the wounded as it was to us.” (SSA Annual Report, 1915). Students sought to assist those convalescing in Somerville by organising a ‘comforts’ table (for magazines, stamps and stationery), setting up a sewing party to make shirts for the discharged soldiers and wheeling out the wounded in their Bath chairs.

Visiting the College shortly before she left to begin nursing, Vera Brittain thought Somerville was “much better as a Hospital than a College. The Hall and the JCR make fine wards, and it is all so sweet and clean and fresh that it must be quite a joy to be convalescent here.”  (Chronicle of Youth, 15^th June 1915).

“It is impossible to allude even casually to the migration, without mentioning the almost miraculous speed and efficiency with which the move was effected, thanks to the untiring labours of Miss Penrose and Miss Walton and the splendid co-operation of the College maids.”  Oxford Letter, SSA Annual Report 1915

In April 1915, Somerville College vacated its Woodstock Road site and relocated to St. Mary Hall Quad at Oriel plus five lodging houses in neighbouring streets.

The move was hailed as a triumph of organisation. A letter was sent to all the students during the Easter holiday informing them of the situation and which rooms they would occupy on their return. Fears about unsociable neighbours were allayed when returning students discovered that rooms had been allocated with as much tact and consideration as the circumstances allowed. “Obviously harmonious pairs were found sharing the best sitting rooms, while the ‘worse-tempered’ had to pay (in space and light) for solitude.”

The romance of their medieval accommodation did not fully compensate for the loss of Somerville’s modern conveniences, such as broad staircases, lifts, pantries, gas-rings and corridors. College maid May Drew later recalled following Miss Walton around with a notebook recording what was to go where – and always felt she was blamed when the hall clock could not be found on the return to Woodstock Road! Otherwise it appears that the move was accomplished with barely a breakage or a loss and students moving into their new rooms were cheered by the sight of their own possessions.

With half the College in Skimmery, the remainder were boarded out at lodging houses. Vera Brittain, already planning to suspend her studies in order to nurse, was accommodated in Micklem Hall with six other people under Miss Darbishire. She described the society as “not exactly enlivening” but giving her the opportunity to become better acquainted with her tutor. Less appealing was the possibility of spiders and beetles hiding in the curtains and corners of her room. Each outpost had merits; Micklem Hall its panelling and garden, a waiter in the Turl, the Third Year scientists unsupervised in Merton Street and the two houses in King Edward Street, which were particularly noted for their cheerfulness (probably because of the excellent food), were nicknamed the Girls’ Friendly Society.

The first dinner of term was strange but a link to the past was provided by the appearance of the ‘familiar college soup’. After dinner, the Principal addressed the college: “She intimated that people were vaguely expecting us to do something unsuitable – she wasn’t sure quite what, but anyhow she was sure we wouldn’t do it….”

As Somerville settled into its new accommodation and the academic rigours of Trinity Term began, College members were proud and relieved that it had been possible to serve their country in this way. Vera Brittain was not alone in questioning the value of scholarly pursuits at this time and the SSA Annual Report noted “no one can deny that the buildings at least are fulfilling a really useful purpose in the war effort.”

‘.. if the War Office would welcome the use of Somerville for wounded, and if we can find some suitable place in which we could accommodate the college for a time, we ought to be patriotic.’   Miss Penrose to Mr Gillett, 20^th February 1915

On 27^th March 1915, Somerville was approached by a sanitary inspector, Mr. Best, who asked leave, under confidential instructions, to take some measurements in the college.

Such a request was not a surprise to the college authorities: Somerville’s proximity to the Radcliffe Infirmary, its size and the accommodation it offered made the college an obvious candidate for use as a military hospital. Anticipating requisition, the Principal, Emily Penrose and the Treasurer, Mr Gillett, were already considering alternative accommodation.  Mr Gillett had ‘sounded out’ the Provost of Oriel unofficially with a view to housing some, if not all, of Somerville’s students there. However, even with such foresight, the official request to requisition the college resulted in three weeks of frenetic activity and negotiations so that Somerville College could vacate the Woodstock Road site, lease it to the War Office and move premises, all within the Easter vacation.

On 28^th March, Colonel Ranking, the Administrator of the 3^rd Southern General Hospital, made a full inspection of the college, writing to Miss Penrose ‘on the spot’ to say that he would be recommending Somerville’s use, as an Auxiliary War Hospital, to the authorities. If the college agreed, it would have to give not only its consent but “at the same time state a definite inclusive sum as rent which should cover rates, taxes and insurance.”  The deadline was 7pm on March 29^th.  The Treasurer’s letter in reply on the 29th made provision for every circumstance including damage to the lawns and daytime access to the library for the librarian.

The accommodation on offer was St. Mary Hall Quadrangle, which had previously been a separate college, and was therefore easily separable from the rest of Oriel. It was largely unoccupied, as the majority of Oriel’s undergraduates had enlisted. However, it was too small, and it would be necessary to find accommodation for half of Somerville’s students elsewhere. On 30^th March, a formal agreement was reached. Somerville was to lease Skimmery (as St Mary’s was familiarly known) for the duration of the war and at least three months afterwards, paying rent plus the costs of structural alterations and damages, utilities and a fee towards the use of the furniture left in the occupied rooms.

The College then had only two weeks in which to vacate the Woodstock Road site and move to their new premises whilst doing all they could to ensure the safe keeping of the old. Huge quantities of Somervillians’ belongings had to be transported, a new kitchen had to be constructed at Oriel and, not least, the students had to be notified of this dramatic change, all before the end of the Easter Vacation.

Georgie Salzedo

Debating, and particularly the discussion of political issues, had long been popular in Somerville. A women’s debating society was founded in 1882 and became the United Halls Debating Society (later the Oxford Students’ Debating Society, see February 1914 post) with the inclusion of members from Lady Margaret Hall and St. Hugh’s.  In the pre-war years, Somervillians were active in the suffrage movement and the Oxford Women Students’ Fabian Society. The college also had its renowned Parliamentary Debating Society, known as Parliament, which adhered closely to the Westminster template in both structure and content. However, during the war, fewer Parliaments were held ‘due to the party truce and to the elimination of all controversial matters from discussion’. In Hilary Term 1915, only one Parliament was held which discussed national service and in the Trinity Term, the subject under consideration was martial law. Future debates included ‘a Bill for the Industrial Conscription of Women’, ‘a Bill to Provide for the Training of Disabled Soldiers and Sailors’ and ‘a Bill for the Prohibition of Intoxicating Liquors’, reflecting the issues of the time on the home front.

Another college club was the Tub Thumpers, a less formal society, established to enable members to practice before participating in Parliament. Three debates were held during the Hilary Term, on national service, the future of Alsace Lorraine and, on 19^th February, ‘The Results of the Employment of Indian Troops in the War’, which was open to the public.  Somerville’s connection with India had begun in 1889 when Cornelia Sorabji matriculated to read law, becoming the first Indian woman to study at a British university. (Cornelia Sorabji pictured left; by 1915 she had returned to the Himalayas and was working to establish rights and education for the Purdahnashins, informing them about the war via her vernacular War-letters and magic lantern shows). During the war, over one million Indian troops fought overseas, participating in the campaigns in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Gallipoli, East Africa and on the Western Front.  The Tub-Thumpers’ meeting had a “large attendance, and the ensuing debate was very interesting, creating, as it did, much discussion of the past and future of the British Empire” (The Fritillary, March 1915).

On occasion, discussion resulted in action. Following a lecture on the condition of the French Red Cross hospitals and their need for help and money, a College meeting was held where it was agreed that £25 should be raised in order to send the Fellow, Miss Ethel Jones, to France. The SCR provided funds so that she could undertake a month’s training at Guy’s Hospital first, after which she was to spend three months as an interpreter at the Anglo-American hospital at Yvetôt. She was joined there by the former librarian Miss Kempson, who was deployed before completing her training, so urgent was the need for help.

The Tub Thumpers continued to provide a popular forum for discussion until the latter years of the war despite, or perhaps because of, the fragmented nature of college life following the conversion of Somerville’s buildings into a military hospital during the 1915 Easter vacation.

1915 was to be a year of momentous change for Somerville College.

Unlike the men’s colleges, life in Somerville had been largely unaffected during the first five months of the war, but by Hilary Term of 1915, the War Office was starting to cast covetous eyes on Somerville’s buildings which conveniently abutted the Radcliffe Infirmary.  For the time being, however, things carried on as normal. In January, Vera Brittain returned to college, to be congratulated on her “brilliant performance” in Responsions Greek by Miss Penrose and to continue her studies in the Pass Mods. Class and the SCR welcomed Madeline Giles as the new librarian. Beyond the college, Somervillians were contributing to the war effort in increasing numbers and in a variety of roles, including Dorothea Maude, stationed at a Royal Army Medical Corps hospital in France, the only female doctor with the R.A.M.C. at that time.

Dorothea Maude had gone up to Somerville in 1898 and had taken a first in Natural Sciences (Physiology) in 1902 before going on to train at the London Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women. At the outbreak of the war, she had given up her Oxford practice and joined a British Field Hospital in Antwerp. Evacuated in the face of the German army advance, the medics had accompanied the wounded back to England; shortly thereafter, Dr. Maude left for France, joining Major Steadman’s R.A.M.C. hospital at Calais as an anaesthetist. She served in France until June 1915, latterly at Dunkirk where she and her uncle, Alwyne Maude, established the first Maude Hospital.

Dorothea Maude went on to work for the Serbian Relief Fund as an anaesthetist and surgeon and in 1916 assisted her uncle with the second Maude Hospital in Corfu, caring for sick and wounded Serb exiles. Her final posting of the war was to Salonika in 1916-1917, where she worked under the ‘Wounded Allies Relief Fund’ and opened a third hospital. Between postings, she returned to Oxford and private practice.

Despite the negative responses to their offers of help, ranging from incredulity to hostility, pioneering women medics such as Dr. Maude found ways in which they could use their skills and expertise to treat the sick and wounded during the war. Accepted more readily by the French and Belgian authorities, some female physicians inadvertently proved their worth to the War Office; for example, Drs. Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson founded the Women’s Hospital Corps in 1914, setting up two hospitals for the French Red Cross before, in 1915, establishing the Endell Street Military Hospital near Covent Garden at the request of the Director General of the Army Medical Services.

Madeline Giles was to spend only two terms as Somerville’s librarian before she, too, left the college to help “supply the pressing need for more doctors by training at the London School of Medicine” (SSA Annual Report 1915), a need which would only increase as, by 1916, the War Office was employing women doctors as part-time Civil Medical Practitioners and as civilian officers serving abroad on annual contracts.

As Michaelmas Term ended in December 1914, Somerville ‘sustained an irreparable loss’ with the departure of Miss Lucy Kempson, the College librarian and Principal’s secretary. Leaving to join the war effort, she initially nursed with the Red Cross and later went on to work in the Intelligence Department of the War Office.

Miss Kempson (pictured right) was one of many women who answered their country’s call. In the early months of the war, large numbers responded to the national crisis on a voluntary basis; perceiving a need, they acted, establishing organisations and associations which reflected the pragmatism, initiative and sometimes political beliefs of their founders.

The official response to women volunteers was not always positive; Vera Brittain recounted in Testament of Youth the group of female medics who had offered their services to the War Office in 1914 only to be told “all that was required of women was to go home and keep quiet.” (Undeterred, Dr. Elsie Maud Inglis and her fellow Scottish suffragettes went on to establish the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in Serbia and France).

The Somerville Students Association annual reports provide a detailed record of war work undertaken by Somervillians.

Lucy Kempson was the first, and one of the few, members of the SCR to leave the college altogether in order to serve.  Many women became nurses whilst some, more unusually, became ambulance drivers, such as Marie Bond (Somerville 1908-1911), who spent the winter of 1914/15 driving a Ford Motor Ambulance for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps near Calais.

Some war work was based on faith or philosophy; the Friends’ War Victims’ Relief Expedition, operating in north-eastern France from November 1914, was established as an attempt to help those who had lost everything during the German advance. Non-combatants, including women and conscientious objectors, built wooden huts and distributed furniture and clothing, agricultural tools and seed. Somervillian volunteers included former students as well as the future Principal, Margery Fry, and the Tutor in Modern Languages, Mildred Pope.

Local organisations were also called on to provide social assistance. In Liverpool, for example, a branch of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (SSFA) was established by Somervillian Eleanor Rathbone, at the request of the Lord Mayor.

Thousands of reservists had been mobilised, without time to make any provision for their families. Miss Rathbone called on other local groups to assist, including the Liverpool Women’s Suffrage Society, the Women’s Citizens Association and the Men’s and Women’s Settlements. By May 1915, the Liverpool SSFA had raised £48,000 and assisted in seventeen thousand cases. It also established an Enquiry Office, helped find employment for ex-servicemen and started clubs for soldiers’ wives.

As the war continued, voluntary schemes were superseded by official roles coordinated by government. Women were no longer required to go home and keep quiet but were expected to participate in Britain’s total war.

Portrait of Eleanor Rathbone by Reginald Lewis