By Maureen D. Lee

When Sissieretta Jones: “The Greatest Singer of Her Race,” 1868-1933, is published May 15 by the University of South Carolina Press, it will be the culmination of a nine-year effort to bring this outstanding African American soprano the historical recognition she deserves. I began this project in 2003 after seeing a photograph of Sissieretta, who grew up and lived in my home state of Rhode Island. I was fascinated by her accomplishments, particularly in light of the many obstacles she faced because of her race. I’ve heard some biographers say that their subjects chose them and this describes my experience after seeing Sissieretta and learning more about her.

Few people today know about Sissieretta Jones, yet she was one of the first African American female vocalists to sing at Carnegie Hall and she performed at Madison Square Garden, London’s Covent Garden, and the White House. The first part of her career, 1888-1896, she sang opera selections, concert ballads, and European art songs on the concert stage. She was called “Black Patti,” a comparison to the famous European opera star Adelina Patti. She toured some in the West Indies, parts of South America, and Europe, and extensively throughout the United States and Canada.

The second half of her career, 1896-1914, she was the star of an all-black musical comedy company called the Black Patti Troubadours and later the Black Patti Musical Comedy Company. This company, owned and managed by two white men, provided her the opportunity to continue singing operatic arias and serious music when there were fewer concert opportunities available to her. The troupe entertained in hundreds of American and Canadian opera houses and theaters. The company, which toured by private railcar, performed in almost every one of the lower 48 states and was particularly popular in the South and Southwest. Sissieretta’s company provided a training ground for many African Americans to break into the entertainment field and some became famous in their own right.

Matilda Sissieretta Joyner was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1868, just three years after the end of the Civil War. Both her parents were former slaves. In 1876, her family had an opportunity to move north to Providence, Rhode Island. She got her start singing in Providence churches. She received vocal training in Providence and later in Boston and New York. At the age of fifteen, she married David Richard Jones. Her first big break came in 1888 when she was hired as the star of an African American troupe that toured throughout the West Indies. Throughout her 28-year career Sissieretta lived in Providence when she was not on the road entertaining. She retired there in 1915 and lived in Providence until her death in 1933.

Sissieretta, often billed as the “greatest singer of her race,” was the pride of African Americans during her day. She was highly successful, well-paid, and greatly admired for her work. Her concert performances were well attended by both black and white audiences. Her beautiful voice, singing operatic arias rather than minstrel songs, gave white audiences a new appreciation for the talent and potential of African American vocalists. She helped to pave the way for other African American opera divas who would follow her such as Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price and Marion Anderson. She deserves to be remembered as one of the first African American entertainment superstars.

My new biography, Sissieretta Jones: “The Greatest Singer of Her Race,” 1868-1933, (ISBN 978-1-61117-072-6, $39.95) will be available May 15 from the University of South Carolina Press, (www.uscpress.com) and Amazon. I will have signed copies available for purchase through my website, www.sissierettajones.com, or you can order the book from your favorite local bookstore. Like the official Facebook page.

Helen Gwynne-Vaughan represented the flower of the New Woman–gently-bred, but very well educated–and further established herself as one of the many heroines of WWI. Before the war, Gwynne-Vaughan made her mark as a botanist and mycologist, earning her Doctor of Science in 1907 at the age of twenty-eight. She was soon given her own research school of fungal cytology at Birkbeck College in London, and in 1909, she was named head of the botany department. She married David Thomas Gwynne-Vaughan, a prominent paleobotanist and fellow colleague, in 1911, but her academic studies were cut short by the war, and her marriage ended by Dr. Gwynne-Vaughan’s premature death in 1915.

Gwynne-Vaughan threw herself into war work and public duties, and she was tapped to lead the newly-established Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in early 1917. The WAACs were created to free up even more men for fighting, and “the plan was for these women to serve as clerks, telephonists, waitresses, cooks, and as instructors in the use of gas masks.” March of that year saw 14 cooks and waitresses sent to France, but by the time of the Armistice, “there were 1058 controllers and administrators, 8529 members serving abroad and 30,155 at home” for a total of 39,742 women serving with the WAACs. Gwynne-Vaughan’s administration earned her high praise, and on April 9, 1918, as a mark of favor, Queen Mary assumed the position and title of Commander-in-Chief of the Corps, and it was renamed Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

There was a bit of a shake-up in the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) in 1918, and Gwynne-Vaughan was appointed Commandant, replacing the beleaguered Violet Douglas-Pennant, and remained at that post until 1920. For her war work Gwynne-Vaughan was named a Dame of the British Empire in late 1919. She returned to her academic studies after the war, but her efficiency and skill in steering both the WAACs and the WRAF did much to change male attitudes towards women in the military, and she continued to remain active in women’s military involvement through WWII.

Further Reading:
Women of the Air Force
Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps
Women and War: a Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present by Bernard A. Cook
A Historical Dictionary of British Women by Cathy Hartley
Monstrous Regiment: The Story of the Women of the First World War by David Mitchell

In an age where women entered the field of journalism in significant numbers, only to be largely marginalized in “women’s issues” or to force attention only through the short-lived craze of stunt reporting, Rachel Beer’s ascent to editor of not only one, but two newspapers was a marvelous feat. Beer was born a Sassoon, one of the fabulously wealthy Jewish families whose entry into Victorian high society was facilitated by the Prince of Wales’s love of splendor. However, Rachel broke with tradition, and faced near exile from her family, when in 1887 she married Frederick Beer and converted to Christianity. Granted, Frederick Beer’s family were of Jewish descent, but the act of marrying out of the faith and the family was unconscionable, and the only contact she retained was her brother Alfred (father of WWI poet Sigfried Sassoon), who also married a non-Jew.

One can only imagine Rachel’s isolation, but she found solace in her husband and in his support of her desire to be more than a pretty ornament. In the growing turmoil of late Victorian British society, Rachel’s political views verged on socialism; “[s]he wanted equality for women, she was an advocate of trade unionism, suffrage for women and a universal state pension.” The outlet–her husband’s family newspapers–she chose was not revolutionary by the 1890s, but her installment as editor of The Observer in 1891 was. The Observer was a liberal paper, and Britain’s oldest Sunday paper, and under the hand of Rachel Beer, its reputation was strengthened.

One of Rachel’s scoops was the championing of Alfred Dreyfus, whose trial and accusation of espionage was one of the great scandals of Belle Epoque France. British papers largely ignored “l’affaire Dreyfus“, so Rachel’s stance was radical and placed her support of Jewish causes and even an interest Zionism at the forefront of her paper’s agenda. She was also the editor of the Sunday Times (acquired ca 1893), and successfully ran two of Britain’s venerable Sunday papers for most the last decade of the 19th century.

However, through all of this, Rachel’s husband Frederick came down with tuberculosis, and Rachel’s desperate ideas for treatment proved futile. Frederick died in late 1901, aged 43, and Rachel returned to editing her papers, only to collapse with grief. Her family stepped in at this point, not to help her, but to have her declared insane. All of Rachel’s accomplishments and even control of her wealth, disappeared overnight, and she spent the remaining years of her life cared for by three mental-health nurses in her brother’s house in Tunbridge Wells. Her papers were purchased by Alfred Harmsworth of the Daily Mail, and when she died in 1927, her family had her buried in unconsecrated ground, denying her the plot placed beside her husband in the Beer family mausoleum in Highgate Cemetery. But the Sassoons had already erased Rachel’s story from the annals of history long before they treated her as an outcast even in death. Fortunately, her story has been revived after over eighty years, and you can read more about Rachel’s life in the new release, The First Lady of Fleet Street: The Life of Rachel Beer: Crusading Heiress and Newspaper Pioneer by Yehuda Koren & Eilat Negev

Further Sources:
Witness: Rachel Beer – First Lady of Fleet Street – BBC iPlayer
Rachel Beer: Fleet Street’s first woman editor – The Jewish Chronicle
The Real First Lady of Fleet Street – The Guardian
The life and death of Rachel Beer, a woman who broke with convention – Haaretz Daily Newspaper
The woman who smashed the glass ceiling – The Daily Mail
The First Lady of Fleet Street – Virtual Victorian
JEWISH BOOK WEEK: Story of Rachel Beer, the unlikely national newspaper editor – Camden New Journal

Perhaps due to poetic license, or historical media hearsay (i.e. inaccuracies that become “fact” due to continuous repetition in TV, movies, and literature), the second season of Downton Abbey shows a largely abbreviated and fictionalized version of life in a country estate-cum-military hospital. Sue Light, a British Military Nurse historian and blogger at This Intrepid Band, posted about the inaccuracies here and here to clear things up (and her blog does not diminish my enjoyment of the series!). Since there are many historians and genealogists with far, far greater knowledge of WWI nursing and military hospitals, my post is to give a general overview of the topic–within the context of the show–during the Great War, using the primary and secondary resources I have on hand.

In August 1914, there were “463 trained nurses of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service (QAIMNS), and of the Territorial Force Nursing Serving 2783…the British Red Cross, St. John’s Ambulance Association and Brigade, and the County Associations (men and women) numbered 2354.” Nurses were needed at once, and six parties of QAIMNS reserves were sent to France and Belgium by August 20th, the Naval Nurses (about 70 in reserve) were called up and sent to various hospitals, and the Territorial force were called out on August 5th, “and in ten days 23 Territorial General Hospitals in England, Wales and Scotland were ready to receive the wounded and the nurses were also ready.” Each of these Territorial General Hospitals had 520 beds, but this soon proved inadequate after a few months of war, and “the accommodation of practically every hospital was increased to 1,000 to 3,000 beds and many Auxiliary Hospitals had to be organized.”

Galvanized by the same calls for patriotism and bravery as their menfolk, ladies of the upper and aristocratic classes were eager to do their bit by volunteering as nurses and lending their estates to the military–all of which caused considerable chaos amongst the trained nursing corps and the Government. The young ladies like Lady Sybil Crawley, or her real life counterparts Joan Poynder (dau. of Sir John Dickson-Poynder) and Monica Grenfell (dau. of Lord Desborough), war work combined their desire for independence and to have something to do.

Joan Poynder had a “passion for independence…and I knew that I wasn’t going to get much in the pre-war days except through marriage…But luckily I got it immediately by pretending I was much older and going in for nursing.” By lying about her age, Joan was able to join the Red Cross, and “after a period of nursing in six hospitals in England, managed to get into a French hospital, even though at nineteen she was below the regulation age for such work.” Monica became a probationer at the London Hospital in August 1914, and three months later was accepted as probationer at the British Hospital at Wimereux, where she was the only one amongst a fully trained nursing staff.

THE VOLUNTARY AID DETATCHMENT (VAD) DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR © IWM (Q 2469)

The British Red Cross and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, worked together through the joint committee set up to administer the Times Fund for the Red Cross, and in time of war they were controlled by the War Office and Admiralty. The Red Cross had, since 1909, “organized Voluntary Aid Detachments to give voluntary aid to the sick and wounded in the event of war in home territory. There were 60,000 men and women trained in transport work, cooking, laundry, first aid and home nursing. St. John’s ambulance had the same system of ambulance workers and V.A.D.’s to call on.”

The services of V.A.D.’s–many of them from good backgrounds and with little nursing service, let alone experience in a professional capacity–were soon depended upon heavily, as it became quite clear within the first weeks of the war, that the number of trained nurses, both veteran and recent graduates, provided inadequate. V.A.D. Hospitals were opened, most of them in large private houses lent for the purpose, and within “nine months there were 800 of these at work in every part of England, Scotland and Wales.”

Vera Brittain, who left Somerville College to join the V.A.D. in 1915, wrote to her fiance, Roland Leighton:

I can honestly say I love nursing, even after only two days. It is surprising how things that would be horrid or dull if one had to do them at home quite cease to be so when one is in hospital. Even dusting a ward is an inspiration. It does not make me half so tired as I thought it would either…

The majority of cases are those of people who have got rheumatism resulting from wounds. Very few come straight from the trenches, it is too far, but go to another hospital first. One man in my ward had six operations before coming and is still almost helpless…

I have various things to do, all of which belong to the kind of work which is called probationers’ work. Another nurse & I have three wards to look after between us. Generally I do two & she does one, as she has other work like massage to do which does not come within my sphere. I have to take the men their breakfasts (they are nearly all in bed for breakfast), prepare the tables for the doctor, with hot water etc, tidy up & dust the wards & make the beds. These latter are not made in the ordinary way but in a particular method you have to learn how to do, & are called medical beds. Not every sick person has a medical bed, but cases of rheumatism always do.

Many V.A.D.’s wrote of their experiences with hostile Sisters, who despised them for not being properly trained, and “Matrons of ordinary hospitals, accustomed to a rigid system, found it difficult to handle voluntary workers, whom at first they distrusted. Class feeling also came in, and for a while in some hospitals the voluntary help did not work well.” No doubt the frivolous actions of V.A.D.’s like Lady Diana Manners, who while nursing at the Rutland Hospital (her mother, the Duchess of Rutland’s town home, converted to an officer’s hospital), spent much of her off-duty time partying into the early hours of the morning, contributed to this feeling, but for the most part, V.A.D.s proved themselves, and earned the grudging respect of trained nurses.

Caption of Punch’s satirical cartoon: Visitor. “And how did you know when you were wounded?” Tommy. ‘Saw it in The Daily Mail.”

Over the course of the war, numerous country estates and London mansions were converted into hospitals and convalescent homes for military casualties or as temporary lodgings for the scores of Belgian refugees who escaped their occupied country in 1914. At the Duke of Bedford’s Woburn Abbey, the riding school and indoor tennis court were converted into a 100-bed hospital, and Blackmoor, the Hampshire home of the Earl and Countess of Selborne, was converted with the countess as commandant, and the drawing room, dining room and smoking room turned into wards, the hall into the men’s living room, the library as the nurses’ sitting room, and the billiards room became a store (not until Easter 1919 was the home turned back to its pre-war appearance). Even Highclere Castle was converted to hospital use, with the Countess of Carnarvon turning to her (rumored) biological father, Alfred de Rothschild for funds with which to equip her home with the finest service.

According the present Lady Carnarvon in an article in The Telegraph:

Thirty nurses were recruited. The family’s personal physician was hired as medical director. Arundel, a bedroom on the first floor in the northwest corner of the house, became an operating theatre. All the castle’s 41 south-facing rooms had to be fitted with exterior blinds. And when the men started to arrive, “it was like moving a house party of 50 people into the castle on a permanent basis” – with the same number of staff. [Source]

Not all estate owners were as generous: Lord Wemyss declined his wife’s suggestion to turn Stanway into a hospital, and even threatened to close the house altogether! This reaction was rare, however, and both nurses and owners of great estates experienced many traumas and hardships on the Home Front, which did much to shake up Edwardian society.

Sources:
Ladies of the Manor by Pamela Horn
Women and War Work by Helen Fraser
How We Lived Then, 1914-1918 by Mrs. C. S. Peel
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
Women in the First World War by Neil Storey

Further Reading:
Country Houses in Medical Service – Jane Austen’s World
The Military Hospitals at Home
World War One: wounded soldiers and the Edmonton Military Hospital
Auxiliary Hospitals During WWI
What did the Red Cross do in WWI?
Letters home from a First World War nurse
The role of aristocratic volunteers during the First World War

Born Magdalene Stuart Robison (1865-1953) in New South Wales, and later raised in Christchurch, New Zealand, Maud’s life changed when she married William Pember Reeves, a journalist and politician who no doubt sparked his wife’s interest in socialism and women’s suffrage. After marriage and motherhood, Maud’s choice to pursue a BA in French, mathematics, and English at Canterbury College was revolutionary. Though she cut her studies short to campaign for women’s suffrage (New Zealand granted women the right to vote in 1893), the fact that she would enter college after achieving the two things many in society believed a woman was placed on earth to fulfill is testament to a unique and independent woman (and a progressive husband).

When in 1896, Reeves was transferred to London as Agent-General, the representative of New Zealand government within the British Empire, the couple became fast friends with such Fabian luminaries as the Webbs, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells. Maud was also active in England’s struggle for women’s suffrage, and in 1906 she was appointed to the executive of the NUWSS (National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies), and two years later she helped establish the Fabian Women’s Group. Through this latter group, Maud initiated a study of the daily lives of working-class families in Lambeth, a southern London borough. According to Maud’s biographer,

“The Lambeth mothers’ project, initiated by Maud, was prompted by the recognition that more infants died in the London slums than in Kensington or Hampstead… Forty-two families were selected from a lying-in hospital in Lambeth, London, to have weekly visits, medical examinations from Dr Ethel Bentham every two weeks, and 5s. to be paid to the mother for extra nourishment for three months before the birth of the baby and for one year afterwards. The money came from private donations, and the mothers wrote down their weekly expenditure. Eight families withdrew because the husbands objected to this weekly scrutiny. Eight other mothers who could not read or write dictated their sums to their husbands or children.”

This study was packaged as a Fabian tract entitled Family Life on a Pound a Week in 1912, and when it was published for the public as Round About a Pound a Week, it caused a sensation. It “argued for government reforms, including child benefit, school dinners, and free health clinics. It also noted the role of poor housing conditions in child mortality, and how prenatal nutrition could help.” Beatrice Webb, amongst others, had been involved in the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress (1905-09), and this book provided concrete evidence that social reform was necessary and needed right away, thus paving the way for the Liberal Party’s revolutionary reforms of the late Edwardian period.

Maud’s daughter, Amber Reeves (1887-1981), followed in her mother’s footsteps, choosing to attend Cambridge rather than a court presentation, and founding the Cambridge University Fabian Society (CUFS) with Ben Keeling, which “was the first society at Cambridge to enlist women from its founding. Young women met regularly with men as equals and discussed everything from religious beliefs to social evils to sex, which would have been impossible in the conventional atmospheres of their homes.” In romantic life, Amber, however, did not follow her mother, instead taking the very married H. G. Wells as a lover and bearing him a daughter. She quickly married another man, and this illicit relationship inspired Wells’novel Ann Veronica, which scandalized society just as much as Elinor Glyn’s Three Weeks had two years before. Nevertheless, the Reeves women embodied not simply the evolving role for women in Victorian and Edwardian society, but the prototypes for the “New Woman” who strode boldly into the 20th century despite societal disapproval.

Further Reading:
Maud and Amber: a New Zealand Mother and Daughter and the Women’s Cause, 1865-1981 by Ruth Fry