KETTLESTONE WOMEN IN WW1

EMPLOYMENT OF KETTLESTONE WOMEN FROM THE 1911 CENSUS

The 1911 census shows that very few women worked and those that were in employment were all unmarried except for 2 married women who worked as housekeepers and one widow who kept the White Horse Inn

NOT IN ANY EMPLOYMENT 45

DOMESTIC SERVANT 7

DRESSMAKER 2

STUDENT GOVERNESS 2

INNKEEPER 1

The photograph shows a young woman working as a domestic servant and was taken in 1912

WOMEN WORKING ON THE LAND

· In December 1916, with four million tons of merchant shipping sunk by the Germans and food in short supply, the new Prime Minister Lloyd George launched a food production campaign. Whitehall decided to act to force farmers to grow more grain and ordered grassland to be ploughed.

In Norfolk problems facing farming were colossal. There had been decades of neglect – to land, soil fertility and buildings and there was a key shortage of labour too. At the outbreak of war, a third of the county’s agricultural workforce was over 45. In the next two years, Norfolk had the highest recruitment rate to the armed forces in the eastern counties.

One response to the labour shortage was the formation of the Women’s Land Army. Towards the end of 1917 there were around 250,000–260,000 women working as farm labourers, with 23,000 in the Land Army itself, doing chores such as milking cows and picking fruit.

KETTLESTONE

As yet no evidence of Kettlestone women enrolling in the Land Army has been traced. With a third of the labourers away at the Front it is probable though, that the wives of agricultural workers, who were used to helping out at harvest time, took on some of the work of their husbands.

A letter in The Times newspaper October 1917 praised the contribution that rural women workers were making.

Village women, the correspondent wrote, had shown themselves to be ‘good housekeepers, good citizens, and good patriots’ through their labour on the land, which saw them going ‘forth into the fields in all kinds of weather’.

He went on to highlight the amount of praise given to the WLA, often town-bred middle class women who were remunerated well, and the much larger teams of poorly paid local women workers who were largely ignored.

The photograph shows a Norfolk woman working on the land

courtesy of Norfolk Museums Service

VAD NURSES

Two Kettlestone women volunteered to serve as VAD nurses

Eleanor May Colman

Born 12^th May 1897

Baptised 20^th June 1897 @ All Saints, Kettlestone, Norfolk.

Parents: Thomas and Sarah Ann (nee Smith) Colman

1901 – Eleanor May Lived with her family, her father was the Publican of The White Horse, in Kettlestone, Norfolk

1911 – Eleanor May lived with her family at The White Horse, Kettlestone, Norfolk

1918/19 – Eleanor May Colman volunteered with the Red Cross with on 22/4/1918. She was posted to the Staincliffe Dewsbury Military Hospital where she carried out pantry work.

1939 – Eleanor May lived with her 2^nd husband, William J Smith, (who she married in 1930) and five children (George and Sarah from her first marriage to Jack Tiplady) at Wood Farm, Great Snoring

Eleanor May died December 1971

Eleanor May Colman’s Siblings:

William (1871)

Richard (1875)

Herbert (1879)

Edward (1881)

Amy Eliza (1889)

George (1893)

Adele (189

Eleanor's VAD registration cards

Kathleen Ethel Sumpter

Born 31^st October 1901 Kettlestone, Norfolk

Baptised 1901 @ All Saints, Kettlestone, Norfolk

Parents: Louis Charles and Mabel (nee Howe) Sumpter

1901 – Kathleen lived with her family, her father was a signalman, at Langor Bridge, Norfolk

1911 – Kathleen was living with her parents and siblings at Langor Bridge

1914/19 Kathleen Ethel Sumpter was a Red Cross Volunteer with the Norfolk Reserve, working as a general servant at Harefield Hospital

Kathleen served from 10/9/1918 – 31/1/1919

Kathleen married Frederick Lincoln in 1928, Walsingham, Norfolk

1939 – Kathleen lived in Kettlestone, with her husband Frederick and son

Kathleen died in 1949 in the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital

Kathleen’s siblings:

Cecil (1900)

Phyllis (1910)

Edna Mabel (1916)

The photograph is of Kathleen with her son

When the hospital at Harefield opened in Harefield Park House, it was proposed that it would accommodate 60 Australian patients in the winter, and 150 in the summer. It would provide a rest home for officers and other ranks, and be a depot for collecting disabled soldiers to be sent back to Australia. However with increasing numbers of Australian casualties returning from the front the hospital expanded rapidly and at the height of its use it accommodated over 1000 patients. Kathleen joined Harefield in 1918 and was there through the outbreak of Spanish flu. This deadly strain of the virus resulted in more deaths at the hospital than those dying from war wounds.