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Oliver Annie Wheeler

Place of birth: Brecon

Service: Educationalist and pscychologist

Death: 1963, Cause not known

Notes: Olive Wheeler was born in Brecon in 1885 and attended the County Girls School there. Obviously a prized old girl of the school, she gave a speech at the 21st anniversary celebrations of the headmistress, Miss Davies, in 1917. Olive was a student at University College, Aberystwyth gaining her BSc in 1907 and MSc in 1911, and serving as President of the Student Representative Council. She then left for Bedford College London where she gained her doctorate. She did not return to Wales until the early ‘20s. She succeeded Millicent MacKenzie [qv] as Labour Candidate for the Welsh Universities in the 1922 election, and became Professor of Education at Cardiff in 1925. In 1949 Olive was made a Dame for Services to education in Wales.

Sources: https://biography.wales/article/s2-WHEE-ANN-1886\\r\\nhttps://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/cuarm/inspirational-people-1-dame-olive-wheeler

Reference: WaW0452

Olive Wheeler

Photograph of Olive Wheeler, probably taken when she was an MSc student at Aberystwyth.

Newspaper report

Report of Olive Wheeler’s attendance at Brecon County School celebrations. Brecon and Radnor Express 2nd August 1917.

Dame Olive Wheeler

Photograph of Dame Olive Wheeler, 1950.

Sarah Ann Harry (née Rees)

Place of birth: Clydach, Cwmtawe

Service: Signals Clerk, 1917-Tachwedd 1918 / 1917 - No

Death: 1964, Cause not known

Notes: Born in 1890, Sarah Rees had worked as a telegraphist in Swansea before joining the WAAC in 1917. She served in signals in France. While there she married her fiancé, Evan John Harry, who was serving in the Field Ambulance Corps. Before the war he was Headmaster of Ynystawe Council School. He walked into a café where she was with friends, and asked her to marry him on the spot. The wedding took place in a small church in Étaples. As a married women Sarah Harry then had to resign from the WAAC. Many thanks to Nia Richards.

Reference: WaW0376

Sarah Ann Harry

Sarah Ann Harry, WAAC signaller

Sarah Ann Harry

Sarah Ann Harry in full outdoor uniform.

WAAC signallers

WAAC signallers. Sarah Ann Harry is seated middle row, second from right.

Newspaper report

Report of Sarah Ann Harry’s marriage and return from France. Llais Llafur 23 November 1918.

Mary Edith (Minnie) Jones

Place of birth: Llanfrothen

Service: Lady Superintendent, HM Factory Penrhyndeudraeth, 1916? - 1918

Death: 1964, Cause not known

Notes: Minnie Jones was the sister of Bessie Jones [qv]. She was appointed Lady Superintendent of the Munitions factory at Penrhyndeudraeth, probably in 1916 when it reopened after an explosion and nationalisation. In September 1918 she showed Mrs Lloyd George around the works when she came to open the new Y W C A attached to the factory. When production ceased in December 1918, Minnie was presented with a silver bowl ‘by the Women Workers of H M Factory as a mark of esteem and appreciation of many kindnesses’. Minnie was the recipient of Bessie Jones’s letters from France. She later became a JP.

Reference: WaW0441

Newspaper report

Report of Mrs Lloyd George’s visit to H M Factory Penrhyndeudraeth. North Wales Chronicle13th September 1918.

Newspaper report

Report of the presentation of a silver bowl to ‘Miss M E Jones, Supervisor’. North Wales Chronicle 13th December 1918.

Cecelia Mildred (Cissie) Owens (née Smith)

Place of birth: Swansea

Service: Mother

Death: 1966, Swansea, Cause not known

Notes: Cecelia and her husband Hubert Owens moved to the United States in 1909, together with their two sons Ronald and Reginald. She and the boys were returning to Wales on the Lusitania, together with her brother Alfred Smith, his wife Elizabeth and their children Helen [qv] and baby Hubert. Both sets of parents and children were separated after the explosion, and Cecelia and her niece Helen were the only survivors. Helen was rescued by a Canadian journalist, while Cecelia, who could swim, stayed afloat with the aid of a lifebelt and was rescued by a fishing boat after some hours in the water. She was recognised by Helen at the hotel in Queenstown, Ireland, where the survivors were taken. Cecelia returned to the United States with her husband, but they came back to Swansea during the 1930s.

Sources: https://www.garemaritime.com/lusitania-part-4-families/http://www.rmslusitania.info/people/second-cabin/cecelia-owens/

Reference: WaW0294

Cecelia and Hubert Owens

Cecelia and Hubert Owens photographed in Pennsylvania. Gare Maritime, Courtesy of Carol Keeler.

Ronald and Reginald Owens, Helen Smith

Photograph of Ronald and Reginald Owens, and their cousin Helen Smith. Gare Maritime, Courtesy of Carol Keeler.

Newspaper report

Part of a report of Cecelia Owens’s experiences on the Lusitania. Cambrian Daily Leader 11th May 1915.

Megan Arfon Lloyd George

Place of birth: Criccieth

Service: School girl, later politician

Death: 1966/05/14, Cause not known

Notes: For the first few years of her life Megan lived in the family’s Welsh-speaking home in Criccieth. When she was 4 her father Lloyd George became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the family from then on split their time between 11 (later 10) Downing Street and North Wales. From an early age she appeared with her father at public events. In February 1919, when she was 17, she accompanied him to the Paris Peace Conference. Her presence created something of a stir, though she was in fact at school in Paris too. Later she wrote ‘I’ve had politics for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner all my life.’ In 1928 she became Wales’s first woman Member of Parliament, for Anglesey.

Sources: A Radical Life: Biography of Megan Lloyd George, 1902-66. Mervyn Jones

Reference: WaW0434

Newspaper photograph

Megan Lloyd George aged 7 electioneering in 1910.

Newspaper report

Report of Megan opening the crèche extension at Claremont Central Mission. Evening Express 25th August 1910.

Newspaper report

Report of Megan’s social whirl in Paris. Llangollen Advertiser 7th February 1919.

Photograph

Megan Lloyd George campaigning, 1920s

Ann (Annie) Louisa Handley

Place of birth: Llandovery

Service: Nurse, VAD, 1914/12 - 1919/03

Death: 1969, Cause not known

Notes: Annie Handley was one of three Welsh nurses serving on the hospital ship Britannic (sister ship to the Titanic). The others were M A Harries and Nurse Edwards. All survived when the ship struck a mine in the Aegean sea on 21st November 1916 and sank, with the loss of 30 lives out of 1065 on board. She spent the remainder of the war nursing in France.

Sources: https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/4956464

Reference: WaW0254

Red Cross record card

Cross card for Annie Handley

Newspaper report

Report of the survival of Ann Hardley

Red Cross record card (reverse)

Red Cross card for Annie Handley (reverse)

Newspaper report

Report of presentation to Annie Handley at the Williams Pantycelyn Memorial Vestry. Cambria Daily Leader 8th January 1917.

Annie Handley

Annie Handley VAD. Courtesy Alathea Anderssohn.

Annie Handley

Annie Handley in outdoor uniform.Courtesy Alathea Anderssohn.

Catherine Jane (Kit) Evans (Grainger)

Place of birth: Llanasa, Flintshire

Service: Agricultural worker, Womens Land Army

Death: 1969, Cause not known

Notes: Catherine, born 1896, was one of 10 children – 6 sisters and 3 brothers. At 15, in 1911, she was working at the Afon Goch Inn, Trelogan. In 1917 she joined the WLA, and seems to have been posted to the Machynlleth area. There she met and married Pte G V Grainger of the South Lancashire Regiment in 1918. Thanks to Sue Hickman.

Reference: WaW0448

Photograph

Photograph of Catherine Evans in WLA uniform with four of her sisters, left to right Harriet, Rebecca, Sarah and Miriam

Photograph

Photograph of Catherine and her future husband George Grainger.

Isabella Lilian Mitchell

Place of birth: Cattistock, Dorset

Service: Canteen worker, ambulance driver, French Red Cross, 1915 - 1918 ?

Death: 1970, Kent, Cause not known

Notes: Isabella was the only daughter of a Scottish family settled in Brecon. Her father A A Mitchell was an Alderman and JP, and both her brothers volunteered as army officers. In September 1915 she was working in the French Red Cross Canteen at Creil Station north of Paris. She is said to have received the Croix de Guerre in the summer of 1918 ‘for three years motor ambulance service with the French Army, and especially for good work at Creil’. Thanks to Marianne Last.

Reference: WaW0395

Newspaper report

Report of Isabella’s canteen work in Creil, France. Brecon County Times 2nd September 1915.

Newspaper report

Report of Isabella’s award of the Croix de Guerre. Brecon County Times 1st August 1918.

Ambulance drivers

Photograph of British motor ambulance drivers, France 1917.

Emily Charlotte Hill (Panichelli)

Place of birth: Hawarden, Flintshire

Service: Nurse, SWH, April – December 1915

Death: 1970, Cause not known

Notes: Emily was a trained nurse, probably trained at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London. At the outbreak of war she may have nursed in France. She joined Mrs Stobart’s Unit of the Serbian Relief Fund, and nursed in the tented hospital at Kragujevac. Mrs Stobart’s Unit was caught up in the Serbian Retreat with the Serbian army and refugees. They fled over the mountains of Montenegro and Albania in the depths of winter to the coast where a boat took them to Brindisi in Italy. She was awarded the Serbian War Medal and the Order of Charity of Serbia. Later in the war she became a midwife, and during the 1930s seems to have trained as a doctor. Many thanks to Carol Coles.

Reference: WaW0425

Red Cross record card

Emily Hill’s Red Cross record.

Newspaper report

Report of Emily Hill’s service and award of the Serbian medal of the Order of Charity. Flintshire Observer 21st October 1915.

Stobart Hospital Staff List

Staff List for the Stobart Hospital in Kragujevac. Emily is listed under ‘Nursing Sisters’. Note Mabel Dearmer’s name [qv]. Thanks to Carol Coles.

Kathleen Edithe Carpenter (Zimmermann)

Place of birth: Lincolnshire

Service: Scientist Biologist Environmentalist., University College Aberystwyth

Death: 1970, Cheltenham, Cause not known

Notes: Born 1891 to a German father and English mother, Kathleen Carpenter (she changed her surname from Zimmermann at the outbreak of WWI) was awarded her BSc in 1910. She remained at Aberystwyth for research, and subsequently became an Assistant Lecturer in the Zoology Department. She gained her PhD there in 1925. Her seminal studies focused on the environmental impact of metal pollution on Cardiganshire streams. This gained her international renown, particularly in the United States where she worked at several leading universities. Kathleen Carpenter is regarded as ‘the mother of freshwater ecology’.

Sources: Catherine Duigan: https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-features/158-biologist/features/1968-who-was-kathleen-carpenter ++

Reference: WaW0465