War's Forgotten Women E-Book

Helen D Millgate

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 252

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The Second World War widows were the 'forgotten women', largely ignored by the government and the majority of the population. The men who died in the service of their country were rightly honoured, but the widows and orphans they left behind were soon forgotten. During the war and afterwards in post-war austerity Britain their lives were particularly bleak. The meagre pensions they were given were taxed at the highest rate and gave them barely enough to keep body and soul together, let alone look after their children. Through their diaries, letters and personal interviews we are given an insight into post-war Britain that is a moving testament to the will to survive of a generation of women. The treatment of these war widows was shameful and continued right up to 1989. This is their story.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Chronology

Introduction

One Pensions – the Early Years

Two Pensions – the Years of Struggle

Three Pensions Parity

Four The Role of the Benevolent Societies

Five A Different Life – Coping with Widowhood

Six War Orphans

Seven The Women Who Made a Difference

Conclusion

Appendix OneCurrency Conversion Table

Select Bibliography

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are greatly indebted to the following who answered our request for information:

Anne Anslow, Mrs Barbara Arnold, Michael B. Bishop, Chris Beatty, Mrs E. Ball, Catharine Barnett, David Blackburn, Phyliss Bliss, Bill Bombroff, Mrs Jane Burge, Sheila Cameron, Mrs M.H. Capon, Mrs Vera Capon, Clive Carter, M.R. Coleman, Mrs Mary Cook, Mrs O.L. Cooke, Kay Davey, Ann Doward, Pauline Dumbrill, Mrs A. Eastland, David Emery, Bob Grainger, Mrs Daphne Hackling, Mrs Hilary Hare, Rosemary Hockney, Margaret Hothi, Mrs S. Hennessy, Mrs Joyce Hickling, Barry Ison, Mrs Betty Jennings, Peter J. Jewell, Roma Ogilvie-Watson, P. O’Keefe, Barbara Lane, Sally Lawson, Ann Linford, Mrs N. Lestrange, Miss Mawson, Mrs E.M. Martin, Mary Monk, Ann Muller, Colin Newman, James Paice MP, Wilf Pearson, Vivienne Parslow, Roy Pickard, Mrs D.M. Pullen, Maureen Renfrew, Mrs M. Richardson, Reina Richardson, Mrs Elizabeth Roberts, Kathleen Shore, Helen Smith, Mrs Josephine Smith, Mrs M. Sonday, Michaela Spooner, Mrs Janet Stubbins, Elizabeth Tebbs, Bill Thompson, Foster Watson, Valerie Watson, Mrs R. West, Mrs B. Willis, Irene Willis, Pauline Williams, Bill Wilkinson, Carol Woodward, Mrs Olive Worton.

We are also especially grateful to Debbie Roberts at the Thompson Library, Staffordshire University, for access to the Iris Strange Collection and to Dr Janis Lomas who has allowed us the use of her work on war widows. Thanks also to Gordon Graham for the KET article based on Jim Gibson’s account, David Blackburn for his poem and David Woodcock for his generosity with the GAFLAC material. It has been a great pleasure to make the acquaintance of Elizabeth (Betty) Tebbs whose life story has been quite inspirational. Gillian Farrar and Peter Francis shared their knowledge of the Royal British Legion and Ted Holmes was able to clarify the Australian pension structure. Gillian Grigg MBE, chairman of the War Widows’ Association from 2008–11 has been most helpful. Finally we must thank our husbands for their patience and understanding while we worked on this project. They have given us their total support and encouragement at all times.

CHRONOLOGY

1708...............................War widows’ pensions awarded to officers’ widows.

1854...............................The Crimean War. Establishment of the Patriotic Fund, the first charity to help only the ‘on-the-strength’ war widows of other ranks.

1885...............................Public concern leads to the founding of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (SSFA), a voluntary charity formed to assist both ‘on-the-strength’ and ‘off-the-strength’ war widows of other ranks.

1889–1902....................The Boer War.

1901...............................State pensions introduced for ‘on-the-strength’ war widows of other ranks.

1914–18.........................First World War. The government awards war widows’ pension to all widows (‘on-the-strength’ and ‘off-the-strength’ and volunteers).

11 November 1918.....Armistice Day.

1939–45........................The Second World War. The war widows’ pension is regarded as unearned income and taxed at the highest rate.

1946...............................Jessie Vasey, widow of General George Vasey, establishes a war widows’ guild in Melbourne, Victoria.

1948...............................War Widows’ Guild of Australia founded.

1971...............................Laura Connolly’s case is published in the Sunday Express. She calls on all British war widows to band together.

1972...............................Jill Gee constitutes the War Widows’ Association (WWA) and is elected its first chairman. The initial aim was to have the war widows’ pension declared non-taxable income. The WWA presents their first petition to 10 Downing Street and Mrs Gee unofficially lays a small wreath at the Cenotaph on behalf of the WWA.

1970s.............................Mrs Iris Strange joins the WWA and becomes Secretary.

1975...............................First official War Widows’ service at the Cenotaph, the day before the national Remembrance Day service.

........................................Armed Forces Pension Scheme introduced. All service personnel serving for more than two years were henceforth entitled to a pension. The widows of those who have died either in service or in retirement where death is attributable to time in the service will receive a Forces Family Pension in addition to the War Widows’ Pension.

1976...............................Removal of 50 per cent of the tax on war widows’ pensions.

1977...............................Jill Gee resigns as chairman of the WWA.

1979...............................The remaining 50 per cent tax is removed, and war widows’ pensions become entirely free from tax. WWA begin fight for parity of pensions for all war widows.

1982...............................The Falklands Conflict.

........................................Representatives from the WWA invited to take part in the official muster and march past the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.

........................................Iris Strange forms the breakaway British War Widows and Associates (BWWA).

1986...............................For the first time a plot is reserved for the WWA at the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey.

1989...............................The first ever parade of war widows at the Remembrance Service at the Royal Albert Hall.

........................................Nicholas Winterton MP spearheads the cross-party campaign for parity for all war widows in the House of Commons.

1990...............................The government finally agrees to pay all pre-1973 war widows an MOD supplementary pension of £40 weekly tax-free to compensate for the lack of a Forces Family Pension.

1991...............................The WWA becomes a registered charity.

INTRODUCTION

THE RECENT activities of the British armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have currently stimulated an interest in the circumstances of the widows of men who die on active service. But what has happened to the women left bereft after the 1939–45 war? Some of them are still alive; certainly many of their children are. What kind of a life have they had since the untimely death of their husbands and fathers? Maureen Shaw was herself the only child of a soldier who died on active service in Burma and who vividly recalls her own childhood, with no father figure, no siblings and always short of money. She pondered the subject for many years then one day asked me if I would be interested in enquiring into the matter with her since I had previously published works on the war period. Together we decided to trawl the library catalogues to see what turned up; nothing did, though there may have been a few references tucked away that we missed. Look in the index of any of the myriad histories of both world wars and the word ‘widow’ almost never appears. However what did turn up was a plethora of publications concerning the women widowed by the American Civil War, the Indian Mutiny, colonial strife and even a few about the First World War, but nothing at all of the Second. There are indeed the occasional references, in books on single-parent families, social service reports, and in the minutes of charitable organisations, but no more.

We hope to fill the gap. There has been an excellent response to our request for information, which appeared in many regional newspapers, and some of the replies are heartbreaking. The one quoted below from Mrs B. Willis of Plymouth was reason enough for us to persevere:

My Father died on the Russian Convoys (7.1.1943) and my mother was left with three young children, aged 10 years (me) 8 years (brother) and sister 5 years. My Father died of his wounds and had a naval burial in Murmansk, Russia, so we have never been able to visit a grave. Mum also lost a baby son ten months before we lost Dad. As regards to the financial straits we were left in, Yes, we became poor, as for the first week after losing my father as he died on a Friday and didn’t live a full ‘pay week’ my mother received just 19 shillings. My father when he died was an Acting Petty Officer (aged 32) and my mother’s pension became £2.12/ – a week to keep four of us. I do not know what her Naval Allowance was before that but I do know that our lives did change and Mum used to feel very bitter about the things we had to do without (basic things we needed, not luxuries). She sold our cheese and sweet [ration] and part of our clothing coupons to neighbours for money to buy coal and pay the gas and electric bills, we had no radio until a kind neighbour lent us an old one. To this day I can’t eat cheese …

There is so much more I could say; Mum died in December 2002, just three weeks before the 60th anniversary of losing my father and she never, ever forgot the struggle and the feeling of abandonment she got when she needed help for herself and her children. When Mum became frail she was given a small sheltered accommodation, a bungalow, eighteen months before she died. I rang the Naval Association for help with removal costs of £100. I was told it was our responsibility to pay for it, even though we are now pensioners. So you see why Mum never got over the feeling of being of no importance.

I do hope this missive will be of some help to you with your research as being a War Orphan I am glad that at last someone is showing an interest in our lives and the sadness we had to bear without any support from any outside authority. Thank you for your interest.

That many war widows ‘never got over the feeling of being of no importance’ is reiterated by Janis Lomas in her brief to a 2010 conference on Women, War and Remembrance:

The anguish and loss they felt was exacerbated by the neglect and indifference they felt surrounded them. Their pension provision was minimal and subject to income tax. Remembrance for them was personal not collective as they were excluded from Remembrance Day ceremonies and had little opportunity for their grief and loss to be acknowledged within the public arena.

Before we examine the hardships undoubtedly suffered by the widows of servicemen, and indeed all widows, we must take into account the entire wartime scenario and the decade of austerity which followed for it wasn’t until the mid-1950s that normality – if there ever is such a thing – returned. Rationing for example did not entirely disappear until 1954 and the winter of 1946–47 was truly appalling. A dire shortage of coal (the sole source of heating in most homes) exacerbated the sheer misery of that winter. For years after the war ended there was a critical shortage of building materials, therefore housing, and everything necessary to make life comfortable, such as transport, clothing, household furnishings etc. were also in short supply. It took months, even years, to convert factories back from arms production to their former usage. Particularly during the war every woman running a household was constrained by rationing and shortages of unrationed goods which usually entailed queuing for just about everything. She had to ‘make do and mend’ as was constantly exhorted by the Ministry of Information posters, turning old garments into schoolboy shorts, re-knitting used wool for jumpers and turning old curtains into dresses. With all scrap metal going to the war effort it became almost impossible to buy a saucepan or a kettle. Every day presented a challenge and the majority of working-class families lived from week to week; there was no fallback. The stigma of the Poor Law remained, as Eleanor Rathbone writes in the 1920s: ‘It has made the “stigma of pauperism” a very real thing; so real that many widows, the best of their kind, those in whom the tradition of self-help is strongest and who are more sensitive to slights, are indeed “deterred” from seeking the help so grudgingly offered.’ The stigma and horror of degradation for resorting to the Poor Law for assistance was still very much in evidence until the National Insurance Act came into force. People would almost rather starve than beg for handouts.

At the beginning of the Second World War, one of the Mass Observation diarists, a door-to-door salesman, agonises because he must borrow £5 in order to make ends meet and then can only pay it back in £1 installments over a period of months. Still living in the family home at the age of twenty-eight, he writes that they can only afford two meals daily, breakfast and high tea. He complains that prices are constantly rising while his total income for a family of three adults remains at an average £2 10s. This level of poverty was not unique: anyone not from the wealthier classes who lived through the period can remember the day-to-day struggle to make ends meet.

The Blitz exacerbated the already chronic housing shortage (even by 1951 it was estimated that there was a shortfall of 1.5 million houses). Apart from the more obvious problems raised by re-housing the victims of bombing and putting up with evacuees, there was the constant movement of servicemen and their families, war workers et al. The some 12,000 people working at Bletchley Park for example all had to be billeted in the surrounding area. Servicemen’s wives frequently moved in with relatives, particularly when their husbands were sent overseas. It was cheaper and perhaps offered some back-up and emotional support but it could also make life harder. One case quoted in a BBC programme was that of a young mother of three who moved back into her parents’ home when her husband went overseas. She and the three small children occupied a single room shared with a widowed sister and her child. Quite often the wife then took the opportunity to do war work, make money and get out of the house. Most people lived in rented accommodation, and a lower income often meant eviction.

It should also be remembered that following the French surrender in June 1940 there was a very real fear of invasion, though probably few civilians were truly aware of the United Kingdom’s extreme vulnerability at that time. It was not until the middle of 1943 that they could breathe a collective sigh of relief. Vast numbers of women were to spend these and subsequent months or years without the support (physical, emotional and sexual) of their husbands. Many wives perforce had to take on the role of head of the family, and they became used to making the decisions. In the worst cases – if they became prisoners of war for example – a man could be away for five years. (When Daddy Came Home by Barry Turner and Tony Rennell illustrates much of this.) One of our correspondents Elizabeth Tebbs, a soldier’s wife with one child, says that when her husband was killed there was no noticeable immediate difference in her life because she had not seen him for a year.

All this must be taken into consideration when examining the situation of war widows during the war itself. Post-war, the introduction of the National Health and Insurance Service which came into force on 5 July 1948 at least relieved the low income groups from the burden of medical fees – sometimes 7s 6d for a doctor’s housecall – and introduced a minimum widow’s pension. The earnings rule was dropped in the 1960s but widows’ pensions were not deemed to be tax-free until 1979. After 1979 widows were certainly better off financially, and were even more so from 1989 when, after an intensive campaign by the War Widows’ Association (WWA) supported by the press and in Parliament, the widows from the Second World War were given parity with those widowed after 1973.

For most women no financial benefit could compensate for the loss of a husband. In a war when men die young it is even more tragic. What is surprising is the proportion of young widows in our small survey who never considered remarriage. Perhaps no other man could live up to the memory of the lost love, and so these women were, for the rest of their (often long) lives, bereft.

Using various sources – including Hansard (the record of parliamentary debates), BBC archives, the Iris Strange Collection held at Staffordshire University, the records of charitable organisations etc – but principally the personal experiences of the widows and children left behind after the havoc of the Second World War, we have hopefully gathered sufficient material to speak for them.

One

PENSIONS – THE EARLY YEARS

MOST DEVELOPED countries in the world today have some form of state pension for the sick, aged and widowed. For war widows the system everywhere is far more complicated, a ‘minefield’ according to one official who has made a particular study of the subject. Another official described it succinctly as a ‘headbanger’. In our investigation of the procedure in this country we have grappled with war widows’ pensions, war disablement pensions, the Armed Forces Pension Scheme, the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme and the Veterans’ Agency. We have looked at the workings of the inter-service charitable organisations and the labyrinthine National Assistance and Housing Benefit programmes to name but a few. The War Widow’s Pension was intended to support her in compensation for the untimely death of her husband in the service of his country. Simply that. In 1988 an elderly war widow interviewed by the Liverpool Post said: ‘I never had the chance to bear my husband’s children. We were only married for two years and he was away a lot of that time anyway.’ She described her War Widow’s Pension as being an award for her loss and her husband’s sacrifice: ‘It is compensation for something very special and is not like any other form of income.’

All governments of course have a duty to the wider electorate not to favour one group above another. They must investigate the facts and review their resources. Sometimes even the best-laid schemes have unforeseen consequences. Edward Conway, economics editor of the Daily Telegraph, cited the case of one Getrude Janeway to illustrate the point that no government should make a promise that it could not afford to keep. In 2003 Mrs Janeway died at the age of ninety-three. She had spent her last few years bed-ridden, deploring the activities of the young and intoning the odd prayer or two. There was nothing particularly unusual about that, except that Mrs Janeway was the very last of the American Civil War widows, widows of a war that ended in 1865. Looking at the dates, this would seem to be impossible but Gertrude appears to have been both shrewd and far seeing. At the age of eighteen she had escaped poverty by marrying a Civil War veteran of eighty-one who had joined up in 1864 when he himself was eighteen years old. When she died, Getrude was in receipt of an annual pension of $420 relating to a war fought 140 years earlier. This was something of an aberration and one not foreseen by the politicians of the day who had devised the pension scheme. It is a salutary tale and an anomaly even in the often more generous American pensions structure.

On a lighter note, illustrating the undoubted fact that there were some scheming women around, Alistair Cooke in his book American Journey relates the tale of skulduggery at the vast USAAF base at San Antonio in Texas during the Second World War. There was apparently a group of ‘determined’ young ladies who made a career and a good living by marrying newly fledged Air Force officers just before they were posted overseas: ‘Once the recent husband has gone to glory they register under another name, receive another Post Office box number and proceed to seek another mate’ also destined to be shortly sent into a war zone and whose future was ‘promisingly hazardous’.

At the end of the American War of Independence in 1781 the fledging government of that new state undertook to pay a pension of a half salary to officers’ widows for a period of seven years. This was extremely generous for a country whose very existence was still shaky. Nevertheless it set a precedent for a generous pension scheme for the widows of American servicemen, which still exists today. During the 1992 Iraq War it was noted that the pensions for British war widows compared very unfavourably with the American equivalent. In the USA Dependency and Indemnity (DIC) has been paid in some form or other to survivors of servicemen since the 1774–78 American War of Independence (or the Revolutionary War as it is known in the USA). After the First World War the system was changed to a form of life insurance, which did away with the discrepancies between officers and other ranks, and this was the system in place during the Second World War. In 1951 Congress replaced this with a new scheme by which servicemen were not required to pay any premiums but the government would provide monthly payments to the surviving spouse and any children tax-free. A proviso was that widows would lose their pensions if they remarried. In 2003 a further amendment stated that a surviving spouse of fifty-seven years or older would be allowed to remarry and retain DIC benefits. One wonders why fifty-seven?

In Britain the official process took much longer. By 1708 British governments were paying pensions to the widows of officers killed in action but army and navy support for the common soldier’s widow was practically non-existent. In her article ‘Delicate Duties’ Janis Lomas gives a comprehensive account of the evolution of financial support for war widows from charity handout to fully state-funded pension. She emphasises the extent to which issues and morality played a large part. During the nineteenth century only single men were allowed to enlist in the British Army and a soldier required his commanding officer’s permission if he wished to marry, a rule which was in place until well into the twentieth century. If permission was granted, his wife was henceforth regarded as being ‘on-the-strength’ of the regiment and eligible for such meagre benefits as the regiment might provide. A mere 4–6 per cent of the rank and file were actually allowed to marry, a percentage that the hierarchy thought sufficient to supply the number of women required to wash, sew and mend for the regiment. The wife of a soldier who married without official permission was regarded as being ‘off-the-strength’. Thus officially she did not exist, was not entitled to any category of welfare and would not, should her husband die, be recognised as an army widow. The Admiralty went even further, refusing to acknowledge the existence of the wife of any sailor below the rank of admiral. As one naval officer declared: ‘In the Navy they knew of no such appendage or encumbrance as a sailor’s wife.’

Before the Crimean War, which began in 1854, the only source of help for off-the-strength war widows was the much-loathed Poor Law. But such were the stringent conditions imposed by the Poor Law administrators – for example that the children be taken into the workhouse – that many women preferred to resort to prostitution or work at menial jobs for starvation wages. The Crimean War proved to be the catalyst. For the first time the public was fully informed of the progress of a war by newspaper reporters, the electric telegraph and official correspondents and much publicity was given to the plight of war widows and their orphaned children and the lack of provision for them. A Patriotic Fund was established with voluntary contributions and a token sum from the War Office. This combination of voluntary effort plus official backing was thought to be the best solution to the problem for many years, even with the advent of state-funded pensions and allowances from December 1916.

The Patriotic Fund raised the considerable sum of £1.5 million. Fund administrators were to be accused of excessive frugality, giving only 4s a week to the widows of the lower ranks and even then with the proviso that the widow should be ‘deserving of help’. The Royal Commissioners of the fund refused assistance to any widow who ‘by profligate behaviour dishonours the memory of her husband or if, when capable of service, she remains idle and will not go into service’. The names of those who did receive help were published with the Patriotic Fund’s Annual Report as parliamentary papers.

In the decades that followed the Crimean War, the War Office was still denying any responsibility for off-the-strength widows and orphans and the Poor Law Board was doing its best to reduce the number of claimants. Public concern for these widows and their children eventually led to the founding in 1885 of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (SSFA) which, unlike the Patriotic Fund, assisted the off-the-strength wives and widows as well as those officially recognised. Again both bodies were in agreement that only those judged worthy of help were to receive it. The Victorians believed firmly in Samuel Smiles’ philosophy of hard work, frugality, self-denial and thrift. It was therefore the lack of these virtues that caused poverty and hardship among the lower classes.

They say that war is the engine of change, and this time it was the Boer War (1899–1902) which was eventually to trigger the next step: state pensions for the widows of other ranks. During the Boer War, the Patriotic Fund and SSFA increasingly worked together and with the other charities that sprang up at the time in support of the troops in South Africa. Newspapers, both national and provincial, were prominent in raising funds but way out in front was the Daily Mail, first published in 1897 by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) and the first newspaper in Britain to target the wider public. It ran an eye-catching banner headline, sport and human interest stories and even had a women’s section. Harmsworth promoted his newspaper’s War Fund campaign by the inclusion of hugely sentimental and patriotic features but, above all, by commissioning a poem from one of the most famous poets of the day – Rudyard Kipling. All the proceeds from this poem were to be paid into a fund for soldiers and their dependants. On 16 October 1899 Kipling duly obliged with ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’, which proved an instant success in Britain and indeed all around the world. Sir Arthur Sullivan set the poem to music that Kipling described as ‘guaranteed to pull teeth out of barrel organs’ and within weeks the country was obsessed with it. One can see from the following extract why it had the desired effect:

That, while he saved the Empire, his employer saved his place

And his mates, that’s you and me, looked out for her.

He’s an absent-minded beggar and he may forget it all,

But we do not want his kiddies to remind him

That we sent them to the workhouse

While their daddy hammered Paul.

It was a constant item in the theatres and music halls. The Times reported on 30 November 1899 that: ‘… in order to help swell the funds now being raised for the widows and orphans of those taking part in the war in South Africa, Mrs Beerbohn Tree had consented nightly to recite Mr R. Kipling’s poem “The Absent Minded Beggar”. Mrs Tree’s fee for doing so, £100 per week, the whole of this without deductions, she will hand over to the Fund.’ Mrs Tree was probably England’s best-known actress. Kipling became somewhat weary of the fervour aroused by his poem but at the same time proud of his ability to raise money to help the ‘third class carriages’ as he called the soldiery.

Kipling’s poem did tend to eclipse the efforts of other charities. The Daily Mail went on to set up the Absent Minded Beggar Relief Corps which operated throughout the war aiding servicemen’s families along with other charities. The activities and reporting of the corps’ charitable works helped give maximum publicity to the war in South Africa.

By such measures the conscience of the nation was aroused and public clamour increased in favour of state pensions for the widows of non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and other ranks. Lord Salisbury’s Conservative government bowed to public pressure and pensions for the widows of soldiers of other ranks were subsequently introduced in 1901, with certain provisos. Only widows who were on-the-strength would receive a weekly pension of 5s per week plus 1s 6d for each child. Off-the-strength widows would receive nothing at all, nor would the widows of black soldiers, though ‘discretionary’ payments might be made. The pension would be forfeit should a widow remarry or commit misconduct. One such case in the National Archives is of a widow granted the 5s pension in 1901 only to have it withdrawn in 1902 on the birth of an illegitimate child. It was not restored until twenty years later. Another case quoted was that of a Mrs Josephine Downey who had been left a widow with two small children when her husband, Pte James Downey of the 2nd Battalion Royal Lancs., was killed in South Africa in August 1900. In June 1901 she wrote to the War Office enquiring whether she was entitled to a pension under the new regulations. The application was turned down on the grounds that Pte Downey had not been killed in action, or died of wounds, but had instead died in a tram accident at Paardekop. Although the regulations were subsequently amended to include such situations, in practice it was never to be easy for widows to obtain a pension in those circumstances.