Sarah Butler

In November 1915, Ethel Kerr began her training at Armstrong-Whitworth’s in Newcastle to become a munitions worker or ‘munitionette’. She was one of a number of Somervillians, and hundreds of thousands of women, employed in munitions factories as a result of the Shell Crisis of 1915. The inability of manufacturers to supply enough artillery ammunition led to Government intervention in… Read More »November 1915: The ‘Munitionettes’: Women in the Munitions Industry

Members of Somerville, concerned that the migration to Oriel would undermine the coherence and traditions of the college (see blog Oct 1915), had their fears realised when some of the students abandoned procedure (and potentially propriety) via a petition seeking a relaxation of the college’s chaperone rules. The chaperone rules had evolved gradually during the first three decades of Somerville’s existence. As… Read More »December 1915: The ‘Chap. Rules’ Petition

By January 1916, Vera Brittain had been nursing for six months. After her initial Red Cross training at home in Buxton, she had been posted to the 1st London General Hospital in Camberwell as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse (VAD). The death of her fiancé, Roland Leighton, in December 1915, brought about a profound alteration in her attitude; having previously sought… Read More »January 1916: “No ‘Flaire’ for Nursing”; roles for women in the Voluntary Aid Detachments

Among the many varieties of war work undertaken by Somervillians, a small number of former students chose to join the Women Patrols organised by the NUWW (National Union of Women Workers). Janet Gulliver was one; she had come up to Somerville in 1907, at the age of 20, to read mathematics and had started her career as a teacher in… Read More »February 1916: ‘Women Patrols’: moral guardians and prototype police

During the academic year, students had comparatively few opportunities to do war work as scholarly and college pursuits took up most of their time. The college meetings, held by the JCR, did provide a chance to muster volunteers for war work during the long vacation, such as the Board of Agriculture scheme to supply farm labourers, discussed at the meeting in March. The minutes also recorded the war work… Read More »March 1916: Somervillians Sewing Shirts for Soldiers

“I can’t tell you how glad I am about the fine spirit of the imprisoned COs. I never feared that many of them would give way, but I hadn’t expected that they would actually have an effect like this on the outside world. I thought that was past influencing, for the time.” Leila Davies to Joseph Dalby In 1916, Leila Davies… Read More »April 1916: The Court-Martial of a Conscientious Objector

In May 1916, a second Military Service Act extended conscription to married men. Inspired by this, on 31st May 1916, Somerville’s Parliament considered a bill to conscript women, so that more men could be released to the armed forces and women more efficiently organised to replace them. It was proposed that women between the ages of 18 and 38 should be… Read More »May 1916: Somerville’s Parliament Debates Conscription for Women

By June 1916, almost two years of wartime had altered the relationship between the women’s colleges and the University more profoundly than the years of pre-war lobbying and gentle persuasion. ‘A Mess of Pottage’, the Going Down Play performed that June in the quad at St Mary Hall, was based upon the university’s war-time poverty and the consequent advantages of giving… Read More »June 1916: Fees and degrees; advances for women at Oxford

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… Read More »July 1916: Emerging Medical Therapies: the Almeric Paget Massage Corps

“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… Read More »August 1916: Siegfried Sassoon at the 3rd Southern General