Women and War: Preston During the First World War
By Katy Jamison
Preston at the outbreak of war in 1914 was an industrial town located in the North West of England with a large working-class population, poor housing conditions, and one of the highest Infant Mortality Rates in its county of Lancashire. Preston was perhaps not the most significant place on a national scale, and yet, through the Preston Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Free Buffet, the women in Preston were able to make a notable impact on thousands of servicemen passing through the city during the First World War.
Women in Preston gave their time to various volunteering and fundraising opportunities during the First World War, with a desire to aid servicemen, Prestonian or otherwise. They dominated Preston’s Needle Work Guild, producing 30,000 bandages and dressings for wounded servicemen, and sent food parcels to local Prisoners of War. Closer to home, the resettling of Belgian refugees who had arrived in Preston was a concern of the town’s Mayoress, Anna Marie Cartmell; and women such as Beatrice Blackhurst continued to work towards improving the living conditions of working-class people in Preston, in particular mothers and their children. A significant contribution of women in Preston during the First World War came in the form of the Preston Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Free Buffet, which served approximately 3,116,597 servicemen between its inception in August 1915 and closure in May 1919.
Beatrice Blackhurst was one of the founding members of the Preston Buffet. Having been raised in a working-class household, Blackhurst was aware of the social issues that working-class people in Preston faced on a regular basis. Blackhurst married a well-respected solicitor in 1895, and, in her new position as a middle-class housewife, involved herself in several volunteering opportunities prior to 1914, concerned mainly with social issues, from maternity support to women’s suffrage. When war was declared, the Preston Branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), for which Blackhurst was secretary, followed the government’s recommendation to halt the campaign for the vote, and focused instead on tackling maternity issues, unemployment in women, and fundraising for Belgian refugees.
Members of Preston’s more militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) branch had a mixed reaction to this recommendation. Many, like Eleanor Higginson, halted their campaign for the vote. When war was declared, Higginson was released from prison in the resulting amnesty, having served approximately two weeks for throwing stones in protest, with a three-week break in-between to recuperate from a hunger strike. Edith Rigby, on the other hand, became secretary of Preston’s new, independent WSPU branch, a division formed in 1914 for those who wanted to continue the campaign during wartime.
Rigby formed Preston’s WSPU branch in 1907 and was a devout supporter of the cause, arrested several times for obstruction and damage to public property. Sentenced to nine months imprisonment in July 1913 for “arson and incendiarism,” she eventually escaped to Ireland in October 1913 after being released for the fifth time to recuperate following numerous hunger strikes and force-feedings whilst in Holloway prison. Rigby returned to Preston in 1914 but was not rearrested, and with the outbreak of war came the amnesty for Suffragettes arrested between 1906 and 1914. The independent faction of the WSPU continued the campaign for the vote during the war, and Suffragettes like Rigby threatened to continue with violent tactics, but these appear to have been just threats. Involvement in an active fight for women’s suffrage, however, did not affect involvement in the war effort. Rigby joined the Women’s Land Army, and Rigby and Higginson together organized a jam-making business in response to food shortages caused by the war.
Preston’s NUWSS members formed the Preston Ladies Distress Committee in response to the war, which, according to the pamphlet from their general meeting in January 1915, “drew up a modest scheme of maternity and infant welfare” between late 1914 and January 1915. Preston directly before the First World War had a considerably high average Infant Mortality Rates, with an average of 158 deaths of babies under the age of one per 1,000 births between 1901 and 1910. This was all the more concerning with the scale of death and injury resulting from the war, even as early as January 1915, as noted in the NUWSS’s general meeting: “the organized murder of a long war makes [the waste of infant life] more than ever deplorable.” The Infant Mortality Rate was to decrease after the war, falling to an average of 107 deaths per 1,000 births between 1921 and 1925, and to 94 deaths between 1926 and 1930.
In 1915, Blackhurst was a founding member of the Infant Welfare Society in Preston, which set up regular mother and baby clinics, providing free meals for mothers, massage therapy for pregnant women, and dental clinics for both mothers and children. Perhaps these clinics, which provided care and education for mothers, contributed to the declining rate of infant deaths in Preston. Alternatively, increased employment opportunities due to the war meant that women in Preston were finding work outside of factories and mills. High Infant Mortality Rates and a high percentage of women in “outside work” such as in factories were often seen as mutually exclusive, although Elizabeth Roberts has suggested that the cause of this may have been either “a difficult birth” or women working as close to their due date as was possible. Greater employment opportunities for women created the possibility of less labor-intensive work. Alternative professions such as nursing would also provide valuable education, especially regarding hygiene, which would assist in the caring of babies and young children.
Blackhurst was amongst a group of women who founded the Preston Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Free Buffet Association to feed servicemen passing through Preston Railway Station during the war. The Buffet was organized by several notable women in Preston, including Mayoress Cartmell as President. Since Preston Railway Station was at a meeting point between several cities across England and Scotland, as well as being in close proximity to Fulwood Barracks, the station saw a number of soldiers passing through. According to Sir Harry Cartmell, Preston’s Mayor between 1913 and 1919, Preston Railway Station was “One of the busiest wayside stations in England, on the main line midway between London and Scotland, the junction for many important Lancashire towns.” Servicemen would have to wait at the station to catch their connecting trains, often for hours at a time.
The Preston Buffet was run solely by volunteers, and at its peak required three to four hundred volunteers at one time. The volunteers would work shifts of up to 12 hours, keeping the buffet open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Hot drinks and food were given to servicemen, and they were provided with magazines, writing materials, and a place to rest or sleep. If they did sleep, a label would be placed on them so that the volunteers could wake them in time for their train. The Buffet saw soldiers and sailors from across Britain, and at its height in January 1917, served 3,250 men on average every 24 hours. By the end of the war, over three million troops had visited the Buffet, with “Preston Station Soldiers & Sailors Free Buffet” mugs found across England and in trenches in France.
Many women in Preston who saw the war as an opportunity to enter employment for the first time subsequently returned to their more traditional occupations as mothers and housewives during peacetime. The Preston Buffet suffered a similar consequence at the end of the First World War: the numerous resignations of volunteers after November 1918 meant that the Buffet could not continue to function past May 1919, although The Lancashire Daily Post reported that “it was hoped to keep the buffet open until the signing of the peace.” The idea of a soldiers’ free buffet was not a unique one, as there were similar canteens set up in London train stations, which, in total, served eight million servicemen during the war. However, no individual London station served as many troops as Preston. Victoria saw the highest number for a London station, serving 2,968,362 servicemen between February 1915 and June 1919: almost 150,000 less than Preston’s Buffet.
The Preston Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Free Buffet is recognized with a plaque in what is now a waiting room on Preston Railway Station, a room once used to care for servicemen from across Britain. In an unprecedented war that saw devastation on both the front line and the home front, women in Preston came together to care for more than just their own people. The Buffet would return during the Second World War and serve a further twelve million servicemen.
Sources: Heloise Brown, “Rigby [née Rayner], Edith (1872–1950), suffragette” and “Higginson [née Ellis], Eleanor Blackhurst (1881–1969), suffragette”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004); David Hunt, A History of Preston, (2009); David Huggonson, Preston in the First World War, (2014); Lancashire Archives, DDX 2182, “STATION BUFFET CLOSED” (1919), “National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies: General Meeting 16th January 1915” (1915) in Beatrice Blackhurst Scrapbook, (c.1858-1948) “‘Soldiers' and Sailors' Free Buffet’ at Victoria Station”, Imperial War Museum, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30019570; Elizabeth Roberts, A Woman’s Place, (1984).