Naval widows,war work and the port town civic burden: State,civic,philanthropic and self-help in the aftermath of the battle of Jutland (1916)

Abstract

The naval town of Portsmouth bore a large portion of the brunt of the casualties lost at the Battle of Jutland (1916). The article will explore the precedent of naval philanthropy in Portsmouth and its historical links with naval disasters affecting the town which will lead to an analysis of how the town viewed their civic duty and mobilised local support for war widows immediately after the Battle of Jutland. It will then turn to assess the role of the local War Pensions Statutory Committee and its intersections with charitable organisations such as the Royal Patriotic Fund and Lady Beatty’s Jutland Fund. The analysis will lastly explore some of the stories of the nearly 100-strong Jutland war widows who worked in Portsmouth Royal Dockyard during the war. It will highlight the agency of civic leaders in determining aspects of World War One relief and how war widows were able to navigate and survive their personal tragedies in a naval town.

‘In a few minutes the news was on the streets, and never have there been more distressing scenes than were witnessed in the town that night. Whilst women wept and many fell fainting to the ground, men in awed whispers asked each other what it portended … there were no sadder hearts in the world that night than those of the people of Portsmouth.’ ¹

The news of substantial losses for the Royal Navy at the Battle of Jutland (31 May - 1 June 1916) broke to the public on 2 June 1916. On the British side, 6,094 servicemen perished and 14 ships were sunk as a result of the action. The Admiralty reported that the Battle of Jutland would add 1550 widows and 1200 dependents on to the list of the nationwide veterans' charity, the Royal Patriotic Fund (RPF). ² As one of the Royal Navy’s ‘Home’ divisions and a filter for service personnel, Portsmouth was disproportionately affected. ³ The retrospective local record Portsmouth and the Great War, published in 1919, proclaimed that Portsmouth bore ‘three times the burden in death and sorrow that all England bore through her fleet at Trafalgar.’ ⁴ A report from a ‘lady district visitor in one of our Naval ports’, very likely Portsmouth, attested that in one street the action in the North Sea had produced 17 ‘newly made’ widows. ⁵ Such was the need in the town to support military families that by August 1916 a sum of £3,300 had been distributed by the RPF to 470 widows, 680 orphans, and 109 mothers. ⁶

This epic scale of loss was felt most keenly on a personal and local level where communities and families had to rally to support each other emotionally and financially. However, the burden of maintaining fatherless and husbandless households soon became a contested issue. The introduction of the War Widow’s Pension (WWP) in August 1916 alleviated some of the concerns regarding the local provision of Poor Law Relief, the cost of which would have been borne by the municipal coffers. Other philanthropic efforts such as Lady Beatty’s Jutland Fund (JBJF) provided specific aid for the Battle’s widows but many of these women were still in dire want. Unable to rely on the limited income of the WWP or handouts from philanthropic organisations, some women went out to work in order to keep themselves and their families solvent. This article examines the aftermath of the naval battle from a cultural and social historical perspective to track the ways in which the civic, philanthropic and personal spheres intervened to shape the characterisation of working-class war widows. The article will explore the naval philanthropy in Portsmouth from the late nineteenth century and how naval disasters affected the town in order to assess the extent in which the town deployed state and civic support for the Battle of Jutland’s war widows. It will then examine the leadership and composition of the War Pensions Statutory Committee and its intersections with charitable organisations such as the RPF and LBJF. ⁷ The analysis will then turn to highlight the stories of a sample of the nearly 100-strong Jutland war widows working in Portsmouth Royal Dockyard during the war which have been collated from the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard’s employment ledgers and cross referenced with First World War Pension Ledgers and other corroborating evidence such as the 1911 England and Wales Census and online birth, marriage and death records. ⁸ It will articulate how, in the immediate aftermath and confusion of their bereavement, war widows actively turned to the role of the ‘breadwinner’ in order to stabilise their financial situation.

The article will argue two points, firstly, that due to their extensive experience of disaster relief port towns such as Portsmouth were influential in shaping the response of State authorities in regards to providing for families bereaved during the First World War. Secondly, it will advance the understanding of the working-class war widow of the First World War. These bereaved women were entangled amongst the systems of the State and the civic while trying to meet their own material needs. Through local and national mechanisms and expectations on their conduct war widows became characterised by their victimhood and their behaviour limited via the societal norms of their gender and class. However, by using the case study of the naval widows of the Battle of Jutland to highlight the complexities of their state of being, and exploring ways in which they helped themselves to survive following such a life-changing event, we can begin to understand these women as more than victims of fate and circumstance. Rather than merely being the living reminder of patriotic loss, war widows were survivors and used their agency to keep going and forge new futures in a post-war world.

The state of the historiography

This article brings together historiography on maritime communities, First World War studies, and women’s history but also highlights gaps and opportunities to further consider the experiences of naval war widows, especially those who undertook war work. Recent social and cultural approaches to the concept of local patriotism and wartime communities have demonstrated that there is a rich seam of data that will enhance our understanding of the ways in which local authorities and their citizens, including their war widows, engaged with and managed their new circumstances. Pierre Purseigle highlighted how local identity and civic pride were important features of First World War communities. He asserted that although the First World War tested the fabric of communities, it also contributed to their resilience and ‘brought about the transformation of pre-existent groups which bore the burden of war suffering.’ ⁹ However, little attention has been given to how the war at sea affected the home front. The tragedy of Jutland was soon eclipsed in scale by the losses at the Somme later in 1916. As a result much of Britain’s local popular historical understanding of the First World War has centred around local regiments of the British Army, the enlisted citizen soldier ‘Pal’s’ battalions, or later conscripts who served on the Western Front. ¹⁰ Moreover, debates surrounding the Battle of Jutland have tended to hinge on the analyses of the Battle and its result, leaving little space for the aftermath and human cost of the war to military families and their communities. ¹¹

Similarly, research on the widows of the First World War has previously centred on the discourses of morality and the widow’s ‘deservedness’ via their respectability and good conduct. These studies tend to focus on the administration of WWPs on a national level through arbitration and appeals to the Ministry of Pensions with no examination of regional specificity. ¹² Indeed, there is a deficit in the official records as to the impact on local naval war widows. Only two definite records exist which evidence the arbitration of WWPs for Royal Navy widows of the Battle of Jutland, neither of whom resided in Portsmouth. ¹³ Meanwhile, women’s history approaches to women industrial workers in the First World War have overlooked the specific role of war widows in industrial war work. ¹⁴ Angela Woollacott has observed that woman munitions workers were a ‘powerful symbol of modernity’ that challenged gender norms ‘through her patriotic skilled work and control of machinery’ and subverted class differences with her new-found affluence. ¹⁵ She highlighted the rise of the ‘factory girl’, who were single and had a level of autonomy and affluence hitherto experienced by young women. Woollacott posited that employment in the factories was an active choice signalling the desire of these women to take part in the war effort and moved away from the ‘traditional binary conception of the male warrior and the passive female onlooker'. ¹⁶ However, there has been less consideration of war widows within this dynamic other than assumptions that older women were likely to have undertaken munitions work due to the loss of their breadwinners, their desire to contribute to the war effort, or because their daughters had joined. ¹⁷ Susan Pyecroft noted that young working women became more visible as a result of the war, but only disaggregated the experience of war widows from other ‘women’ when remarking on their experience of a pensions system that ‘had not been updated since the Boer War’. ¹⁸ Such studies have not addressed the complexity of domestic life for widows – childless or otherwise – who were compelled to enter the workplace upon the loss of their serviceman husband, nor have they considered the nuances of their locality as a defining contribution to their experience. Celia Clark has detailed the work of women in Portsmouth Dockyard and collected very useful oral history accounts of the dockyard’s women workers, conveying a human side to these underrepresented women. ¹⁹ However, the analysis does not take this history beyond aligning their experience within the confirmed framework of the historiography of women’s labour history.

In the context of the First and Second World Wars popular perceptions of women’s’ experiences of war work have also been dominated by the debate over whether or not their entry into new workspaces substantively changed or challenged gender roles. ²⁰ This has led to an overemphasis on the progress, or failings, of the women’s movement, rather than an appraisal of the labour and struggle undertaken by women as part of the war effort. Alison Fell’s recent study of the perception of women as veterans of the First World War highlighted the precariousness of women’s wartime service. It also has provided a way in which historians could reframe the notion of war work and reconceptualise women as holding a ‘veteran’ status. ²¹ Thus, this article aims to nuance the historiography by adding regional, service-based, status and gender-based labour history lenses. In this spirit, this research will add to the critical understanding of the role of the home front, and place widows within a framework that showcases their active agency in supporting themselves and their families, rather than being perceived as passive victims of war and recipients of relief.

Naval disasters, local philanthropy and the civic burden

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries disaster relief support was defined and galvanised through an area’s links to the local industry whereby a specialised local patriotism was forged in regard to civic duty. ²² These were characterised by municipal and public fundraising initiatives in the form of charity balls, bazaars, collections or subscriptions. ²³ In port towns and cities the dangers of seafaring and severe weather had prompted a rise in local and national voluntary and philanthropic movements to mitigate the hardships faced by maritime communities. ²⁴ The British Liberal Government’s reforms to social care such as the Old Age Pensions Act (1908) and the National Insurance Act (1911) had centralised some of the responsibilities of welfare provision under the aegis of the State, leading to debate around whether local or national bodies were ultimately responsible their citizens. ²⁵ However, the massive scale of loss and hardship created by the First World War made increased state welfare intervention necessary, and welcome, especially for the widows of servicemen. By tracking the civic response to the losses at Jutland it is notable that local agencies and actors were favoured due to hard-earned lessons from previous naval disasters. Government communication on how they were to assist cases of hardship as a result of the Battle also provoked anger from the local Evening News as it was felt that the wide-ranging burden being borne in the name of ‘local patriotism’ did not acknowledge the real scale of dependency in the town.

It will be seen that after pensions have been secured by widows, orphans and bereaved mothers, Portsmouth will still have much to do in looking after the education and training of the fatherless children and the maintenance of dependents not officially provided for. A good sum of money will be required for these purposes, and the Naval Battle Memorial Fund cannot be started too soon. ²⁶

This fund seems to have not been initiated as the loss of HMS Hampshire, which was transporting Lord Kitchener less than a week later, and the Battle of the Somme (July – November 1916) escalated the death toll. In September 1916 the Evening News invoked the history of charitable work and activism for reform of naval disaster relief that the town had undertaken by drawing attention to the day’s anniversary of the loss of HMS Captain off Cape Finisterre in 1870. Memory of the ‘disaster which stirred Portsmouth to its depths’ was deployed by the paper to remind readers of the local innovations in creating a subscription fund. The newspaper argued that local philanthropic actions ‘led to the adoption of the modern system of relief funds for the sufferers.’ ²⁷ It also cited subscription funds for the Eurydice (1878), Atalanta (1880) and Victoria (1893) disasters as the precedent to the establishment of the Patriotic Fund, and argued that the town had always complied with central recommendations to determine the responsible distribution of relief. The Editor, however, was concerned that there was too much overlap in the establishment of so many funds for the dependents of the Jutland Battle such as a recent Admiralty grant to the Statutory Committee, the Navy League Fund and, the latest, Lady Beatty’s Jutland Fund. He advocated for money to be administered by the local pensions committee ‘who will be in constant touch with the families and cognisant of the circumstances and requirements of every case.’ ²⁸

Historically, Portsmouth’s residents had shown their willingness to provide support for naval families in the event of a disaster. There is plentiful evidence in the local newspapers to attest to the public response for donations for the relief of naval families involved in disasters such as the collision between HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown in 1893. ²⁹ Mayor Alderman R. Barnes framed the local contribution to a relief fund for the dependents of HMS Victoria as a matter of local pride. ³⁰ By the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, the town’s representatives had become more vociferous in appealing for national intervention rather than taking on the whole burden of loss. Moves were made to amalgamate the Portsmouth contribution with country-wide subscriptions being collected on behalf of the Patriotic Fund by the Lord Mayor of London. ³¹ Unfortunately, the management of the balance of the funds became a hot issue when local residents realised that their distribution was subject to strict parameters set out by the administrators. The donations would not solely be used on the subscribers' intended beneficiaries but would be soaked up by the Patriotic Fund and redistributed to its other causes. ³² Portsmouth’s Reverend R. R. Dolling, an influential Anglican clergyman, requested that the Mayor withhold Portsmouth’s contribution to the Victoria Relief Fund, as he had done for his own personal donation. ³³ Dolling also delivered a public lecture entitled ‘The Victoria Fund. The real truth about the Patriotic Fund, how England’s generosity is stifled by red tape.’ ³⁴ Further correspondence in the press outlined the local outrage. A correspondent titled ‘C’ urged Portsmouth’s Victoria Fund Committee not to relinquish its remaining funds.

No greater national blunder was ever made than suffering this Fund, contributed freely and voluntarily by thousands of sympathetic donors for the exclusive benefit of the sufferers by the loss of a certain warship, given heartily to afford them prompt and adequate relief, given without any cruel or arbitrary conditions, to be engulfed by another fund, available for many other purposes, and hampered by statutes, trust deeds, red tape, officialism, delay, and parsimony, and made chargeable with salaries, pensions, retiring allowances, and other charges. ³⁵

The mismanagement of the cases of the beneficiaries of the Victoria disaster in the eyes of the public led to a re-evaluation of the administration of charitable funds, especially in the light of local hardship. When the families of townspeople were affected by the Boer War a Portsmouth Relief Fund was established and it was made very clear that the proceeds were to be managed by representatives of the town for local use in order to assuage any potential misgivings for subscribers. ³⁶

Pressure mounted on the local effort again in 1908 following two high-profile naval disasters. In April the HMS Tiger disaster elicited a great public response, both in regards to charitable donations and also to the question of who should provide for the families. ³⁷ The Hampshire Telegraph approved of the scheme to establish a permanent disaster fund. However, they suggested that it should include all naval ports. ³⁸ As a result, in April 1908 the Mayor of Portsmouth, Councillor F. G. Foster, launched a national Naval Disaster Fund ‘primarily to assist the widows, children, and other dependents of those who have lost their lives in the sad affair.’ ³⁹ This loss was compounded just weeks later when HMS Gladiator collided with an American steamer off the coast of the Isle of Wight. ⁴⁰ In a renewed plea Mayor Foster outlined the severity of the burden on Portsmouth which he explicitly stated was not the fault of the town.

The press of the country representing the public opinion, commenting on the Tiger disaster, held that it was the price of Naval efficiency. Now Naval efficiency means national safety … it would be well if the Mayor, for the time being, for such an important Naval Port such as Portsmouth, had some permanent Naval Fund for immediate use in similar cases of distress. ⁴¹

He added woefully that ‘The nation has not yet responded to my recent appeal so generously as I had anticipated, and my burden has now doubled.’ ⁴² Subsequent plans to raise money for the town’s Royal Hospital had been orchestrated so not to divert any money from the Naval Disaster Fund which the Mayor ‘rightly considered had the first claim upon the general community.’ ⁴³ The issue of a Naval Disaster Fund was raised again in 1912 following the B2 submarine disaster. ⁴⁴ A public appeal by the incumbent Mayor Sir Thomas Scott Foster outlined that there were insufficient funds to relieve the relatives of the latest tragedy. ⁴⁵ Although Portsmouth seemed to take the lead in the effort to collect subscriptions they had waited for Devonport, the home port of the submarine, to take action in galvanising philanthropic efforts, hinting to the reality that such disasters were a financial and emotional burden on all naval home ports. ⁴⁶

It was clear that by the Battle of Jutland local philanthropy was diverse, contested by civic elites and public donors, and not sufficient enough to provide for bereaved families. The call for provisions to be localised and administered by those who knew the situation in the naval town allowed a ‘mixed economy of welfare’ where charitable organisations such as the RPF and the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association (SSFA) would ‘plug the gaps in state provision’. ⁴⁷ However, this emphasis on hybrid national-local structures amplified the subjugation of working class war widows as they became increasingly scrutinised. It soon became clear that it was not a ‘right’ having lost one’s husband in action to receive relief, but subjected women to a devolved mechanism to control their actions and behaviours.

Local and National Relief Meet - War Widows’ Pensions and Lady Beatty’s Jutland Fund

The First World War heralded the introduction of the WWP in 1916 which was the first non-contributory, State-funded pension in Britain. ⁴⁸ Previously, military widows of the non-officer class were reliant on the charity of subscribers to targeted philanthropic funds and the coffers of the RPF. ⁴⁹ However, some schemes administered by the Royal Navy predated the WWP and provided provisions for the widows of non-commissioned servicemen. On 15 December 1862 an Order-in-Council granted the rights to widows of ratings lost at sea one year’s pay which were managed by the Greenwich Hospital until 1901, and then the War Office until the creation of the WWP. ⁵⁰ The unprecedented losses of the war created a patchy system of relief and support which combined public subscription and service-based initiatives with state-wide schemes aimed at alleviating some of the financial burdens of the widows. Indeed, the need for additional support was vital due to the fact that widows of servicemen killed in action were not automatically entitled to a WWP. Rather than a compensation for losing their spouse, widows were subject to stringent conditions of eligibility and were surveilled to ensure their conduct and morality adhered to concepts of the ‘deserving poor’ which dated back to the introduction of the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834). ⁵¹ Any entitlements would be revoked upon cohabitation with another man, or remarriage. ⁵² In extreme cases women who had been refused the WWP subsequently became reliant on parish relief, not only becoming a burden on the local coffers, but experiencing a deep shame at having to resort to outdoor relief which was predicated upon contemporary notions of self-sufficiency and respectability. ⁵³ As Nadine Muller has argued, widows in general posed a threat to society as women who had ‘fulfilled the role of wife’ and thus gained the status of respectability ‘with sexual experience but no male guardian and, at least potentially, control over their own financial and other affairs …’ ⁵⁴

Initially relief for war widows was administered via the National Relief Fund, delegated to the SSFA. At the helm of Portsmouth’s efforts was Miss Elizabeth Herriot Kelly. Kelly embodied many of the ideals of elite ‘feminine philanthropy’ which underpinned the social and moral imperatives of the SSFA’s charitable philosophy. ⁵⁵ She was the unmarried daughter of retired Lieutenant Colonel Henry Holdsworth Kelly ERA, and by the outbreak of war Kelly had already established herself as a tireless advocate of charitable causes serving as honorary secretary for the Portsmouth Personal Service Association (an organisation that sent out volunteer visitors to comfort families in distress) and the Portsmouth branch of the Charity Organisation Society. ⁵⁶ Kelly also sat on various sub-committees for the Portsmouth National Insurance Committee with members of the town council and other influential philanthropic figures. ⁵⁷ By June 1916 Kelly held positions as the local honorary secretary of the Prince of Wales National Relief Fund, was the local SSFA representative, and was the honorary local agent for the RPF. ⁵⁸ On the outbreak of war Kelly established SSFA’s operations within the offices of the town hall, and in October 1916 when the Government’s Statutory Funds were implemented, she administrated the town’s War Pensions Committee. ⁵⁹ She was praised in August 1916, in regards to the Battle of Jutland, for her ‘untiring energy’ in distributing a sum of around £3300 to 470 widows, 680 orphans, and 109 mothers in the local area. ⁶⁰ By the end of the war 37 staff members and a team of volunteers worked for the Portsmouth War Pensions Committee to investigate claims ‘involving much tactfulness and patience’. ⁶¹ Kelly was awarded an OBE for her work with SSFA in 1917, then a CBE for her work with the War Pensions Committee in 1919. ⁶²

As is evident from Miss Kelly’s impressive resume, many of the same organisations and personalities already charged with administering war relief and undertaking charitable work also operated the local War Pension Committees. ⁶³ This lineage from charitable to state-funded provision engendered the WWP with the same values and operational tools at its disposal. Assumptions on who deserved the grants provided by the RPF had been dominated by Christian moralistic principles. Women who were deemed to be ‘profligate’, immoral, or idle in the eyes of the commissioning board did not receive help. ⁶⁴ One of the central tenets of the SSFA was the condition that relief for the dependents of servicemen was contingent on their assessment of the recipient’s good conduct and sobriety, a hangover from the Victorian concept of the deserving and undeserving poor. As a result, the First World War Statutory Committee enshrined it as their duty to continue to decide whether recipients of separation allowances or pensions should forfeit those grants. Thus, financial support to war widows and their families was styled as a gratuity linked to the patriotic service of their husbands, and their deservingness of support. It was not viewed as an automatic right in compensation for the loss of their spouse and, most likely, family breadwinner. ⁶⁵ Women who transgressed or remarried would forfeit their entitlement to state-funded aid. However, there is evidence to suggest that Miss Kelly had sympathies for unconventional military lives. During a national conference in London on war relief in 1915 Miss Kelly defended Portsmouth which had been ‘pilloried’ for the number of illegitimate children being born as a result of liaisons between unmarried women and soldiers stationed in the town. She stated that there were far fewer cases in Portsmouth than had been presumed, mainly due to the ‘familiarity with khaki’, which bred respect for the soldier in Portsmouth. Miss Kelly argued that, regardless of legitimacy,

… the problem of the mother, whether married or not, will require very careful and sympathetic treatment. We are losing the flower of our manhood in this great struggle for liberty, and the nation’s first duty to the children will be to secure for them the very best conditions necessary to growth and study manhood, or womanhood. ⁶⁶

Few records survive from Jutland WWP awards or appeals, so we may never know the extent to which this principle bore out on the widows of Portsmouth. However, a case could be made in favour of the civic hybrid approach to relief which would certainly have appreciated the nuances and ambiguous moralities of a military town.

Another avenue of additional assistance was the LBJF, which was available only to the wives of men killed at the Battle of Jutland. In 1919, Lady Beatty described the fund as her ‘legacy from the Jutland Battle.’ ⁶⁷ She reached out to widows via the Admiralty and appealed for funds through newspapers and benefit events such as a lecture by naval expert Arthur Pollen in Edinburgh, 1916. ⁶⁸ She intended the funds to supplement the Government pension by providing from £1. to 25s. a month to the widows until their children were old enough to support themselves. The fund also provided material assistance such as clothes and blankets, and opportunities for education and training for widows and their children so that they may better support themselves. ⁶⁹ The LBJF funding structure upheld traditional family structures by expressly supporting widows and seemingly omitted aid to common law wives and illegitimate heirs. It was also criticised for not doing enough for naval families in general. Underlining the extreme pressure on Portsmouth as Britain’s premier naval town the Evening News argued ‘… let it be for all the naval orphans of the war, and not just those whose fathers died gloriously in the Jutland fight.’ ⁷⁰ Indeed, this criticism also betrayed the disregard for women as bereaved individuals, and favoured a preoccupation with the futures of the next generation, signalling the dire social and financial position of the war widow.

The only ledger of the LBJF which has survived documents the cases of the widows of men killed on HMS Queen Mary. It is a stark record which shows how the administrators kept track of payments from the WWP, the RFP, and any other source of aid. It featured reports sent from the regional representatives of the war pensions office who would assess the perceived needs of each widow. ⁷¹ Lady Beatty argued that there was to be ‘no stigma’ attached to the aid she provided to widows because ‘the money had been sent in for their use as a tribute to their husbands’ heroism.’ ⁷² However, the existing records attest to very similar standards of judgment being placed on the widows, not least because the surveillance reports they relied on were filed from the same pool of local RPF, SSFA and War Pensions representatives such as Miss Kelly and her volunteers. ⁷³ This demonstrated the entanglement of the moralistic and contingent values upon which both the State and philanthropic sources relied to administer income for the widows. The records in the Queen Mary ledger demonstrate a snapshot of consequences of the battle for naval widows across the country and also the British colony of Malta. Also revealing are the conflicting outcomes that exposed biases and inconsistencies in the awarding of aid. For example, Mrs Miller of Portsmouth was described by Kelly in her February 1917 report as ‘Not a very desirable young woman, she was remarried in December to a Naval Pensioner.’ ⁷⁴ She subsequently was not provided with any additional aid most probably on the grounds of her remarriage, but also on the bias of Miss Kelly’s impression. There were, however, cases where the LBJF granted money when the RPF did not. Mrs Mary A. Russell of Liverpool, the wife of Stoker Charles Henry Russell RNR, was refused aid by the RFP as it was reported that her ‘husband had not made a home & she knew nothing about married life.’ ⁷⁵ Affording Mrs Russell a little more leniency, lady visitor Miss Ewart had reported that the woman was ‘an extremely pretty little thing’ who had been living with her grandmother since infancy. However, she was ‘not on good terms with her husband’s people.’ Mrs Russell was also raising her son, who was two years old at the time of the visit in October 1916. The LBJF granted her £1. a month for six months. However, when the child died in March 1917 her allowance was stopped. ⁷⁶ Mrs Russell was awarded a further 10s. for Christmas 1917 but received nothing further from the fund after that date. ⁷⁷ Childless widows were less likely to be helped except if they were in very ill health. Generally, women only received aid in cases of serious want. If they had children who were working, or they were able to work themselves, they often were given ‘no recommendation’. Although, in the case of Mrs Bryson of Portsmouth who had two of her children interned to separate children’s homes, the reality of such a judgement may seem cruel to the modern-day observer. Indeed, some decisions reflected the desire to frame war widows through their duty to keep the heroic legacy of their husbands alive while being responsible for the raising of their offspring in a respectable and stable home. ⁷⁸ The unfortunate case of Mrs Mangan, a Dublin-based wife of a stoker from HMS Queen Mary, highlighted a Victorian mentality of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor which did not account for circumstance, nor opportunity, within their everyday lives. ⁷⁹

Never have seen such dreadful specimens of humanity as this old woman & her sister. Mrs Mangan said she had 13 children, but lost all except this one. Father O′ Reilly says that they are the very lowest dregs of humanity & nothing could be done for them. If you give such people clothes they will only pawn them for drink. ⁸⁰

Most shockingly, however, was an account of a young widowed mother who, rather than being characterised as overwhelmed and bereaved, was accused of being too lazy to help herself. Just months after her husband died leaving her widowed with an infant child the visiting Roman Catholic Priest in Hartlepool characterised Mrs Jeffries thus,

tho’ a young woman, seems little disposed to keep herself. Has not done a day’s work since husband was killed & has scarce applied for any. ⁸¹

Assistance for the bereaved mother of a small child was limited to a package of clothing for her child on 6 March 1917 and she was given a message from Lady Beatty ‘to go and work.’ ⁸² The clear mentality which emanated from the LBJF ledgers was that in the eyes of Lady Beatty and the administrators of local war pensions, the widows needed to find ways to support themselves.

Self-help - Portsmouth Royal Dockyard’s Women workers

Many widows found that the WWP was not sufficient to live on, especially if they had dependents to support. ⁸³ One avenue for supporting the family was to undertake war work. Naval and private shipbuilding yards in Britain became a locus for women’s employment in port towns and cities, especially following the introduction of conscription in 1916. ⁸⁴ Women workers increasingly took on what was previously considered men’s work so that men could serve in a combatant role for the war effort. The role of shipbuilding as a means for women to take part in the war effort has been largely overlooked in favour of other means of production such as munitions work, service in military auxiliary organisations like the Women’s Royal Naval Service, nursing in the Queen Alexandra Royal Naval Nursing Service and the Royal Army Medical Corps, or in agricultural roles such as the Women’s Land Army. ⁸⁵

Oral history testimonies from war widows who worked in Portsmouth Dockyard reflected on the patriotic pride they felt due to their role in the war effort. However, it is important to note that in many cases financial want was a deciding factor in the decision to enter the Dockyard workforce. ⁸⁶ While Woollacott’s assertion that patriotic skilled work challenged gender norms and empowered young, single women it obfuscated the material realities for others. ⁸⁷ The admission of ‘want’, rather than a fervent patriotism, which spurred widowed mothers into dockyard work adds complexity to the narrative of women who became industrial workers during the First World War. However, rather than undermining the notion of empowerment and agency for widows and women workers in general, this section seeks to articulate their hard choices – and hard work – which enabled them to survive and keep their families solvent.

Although nearly a third of British women were in work before the First World War, ‘the nation only grudgingly admitted women to war work after other alternatives failed.’ ⁸⁸ There had been a precedent in the Dockyard for women workers; however, their labour was related to a strict gender division that excluded heavy manual, technical or mechanical work. The widows of sailors and marines had been employed in the royal dockyards in the Colour Loft where they manufactured sewn items such as naval flags. They were segregated from the male workers in the adjacent Sail Loft and even had to enter the building via a separate entrance. A very small number of female workers were employed by the Admiralty in royal dockyards by the outbreak of the war as typists, polishers, tracers and copyists. However, due to increasing mechanisation female workers were able to take over many aspects of dockyard war work. Soon trades such as welding, buffing, drilling, engraving, woodturning and electrical work were common tasks for women employed in the Dockyard. By August 1916 1,630 women were employed in the royal dockyards across the country, rising to 4,200 a year later. By October 1918 there were 2,122 women employed in Portsmouth Dockyard alone, only 280 of which were clerks, the rest worked in manual jobs. ⁸⁹

War widows experienced the double bind of being expected to work while also being subjected to concerns about ‘moral laxness’ from their surveyors. ⁹⁰ This would be especially true of women of working-class backgrounds who would be entering male-dominated workplaces. Much of the rhetoric of the deservedness of the war widow was predicated on their role in bringing up the next generation of patriotic, ‘useful citizens.’ ⁹¹ Immediately after the news of the Battle’s losses broke a lady visitor in an unnamed naval port town recalled a ‘sublime’ woman who argued that, despite criticism being levelled at Admiral Beatty’s battle tactics, her husband would not have shied away from the fight and would have ‘rather died as he did.’ The proud wife exclaimed,

And look at them children, his children! Think of the blood in ‘em, with a father like that! Think of the blood in ‘em and what it will mean for England in the next generation. ⁹²

The corresponding lady visitor wholeheartedly agreed, ‘Think of the blood in them, with a father, and a mother, like that.’ ⁹³

However, entry into the workplace was complicated by the question of who would look after the widow’s dependents. War widows actively asked in the local newspaper what was to become of the children during the school holidays while their parents were ‘at work on munitions of war?’ ⁹⁴ Many relied on relatives to take care of their children but for those without such support networks the philanthropy of the Royal Navy was activated to aid naval and marine widows entering the workplace. Lady Adelaide Colville, wife of Admiral the Honorable Sir Stanley Colville, Commander-in-Chief of Portsmouth, opened the Royal Naval Crèche for ‘War Orphans’ in Commercial Road on 8th November 1916. This was not a free service, and charged at a rate of 6d. per child for children between nine months and school age. ⁹⁵ Although women were desperately needed to undertake war work, the traditional notion that a woman’s income was supplementary to her husband’s, and therefore worthy of lower pay, persisted. As army war widow Beatrice Hobby reasoned, men were paid more because they had wives to support, ‘I only had the baby to look after and that’. ⁹⁶ There were also bitter discussions within the shipbuilding unions and associations over the issue of ‘dilution’ and the de-skilling of the various trades. Representatives of the skilled artisans of the dockyard were panicked at the challenge to their status and hierarchy that the introduction of mechanisation and women workers represented. ⁹⁷ Moreover, the strength of the unions ‘helped ensure that women’s work did not threaten male wages or, ultimately access to their jobs.’ ⁹⁸ It is not within the scope of this article to interrogate the working relationships or experience of working in the dockyard, but it is worth noting that working in a male-dominated industrial environment was fraught with sectionalism, dangerous working conditions, and fractious encounters with male co-workers. ⁹⁹

Entry into the royal dockyards for war work was highly competitive and many of the workers were either war widows or already had connections to the dockyard. ¹⁰⁰ However, being a war widow was not a guarantee of employment as the case of Jutland widow Mrs Margaret Hobden could attest when she sought work at Rosyth Royal Dockyard in 1917. ¹⁰¹ It is also interesting to note that some workers became widows while working in the Dockyard, as two interviewees attested on the case of a colleague whose husband had been killed at Jutland while serving on HMS Black Prince. ¹⁰² Some of the women were highly mobile, and had moved to the town in search of support following the death of their husband. Mrs Smallman, wife of the late Sergeant Smallman RMLI, was described in the LBJF ledger as,

… one of the widows who was up north at the time of the Battle. She was in a terrible state when she came south, but has been ever so much better since she went to work in the Dockyard where she has had her money raised 3 times & it is now 26/- a week and she is on piece work. I think she will do very well. She is a nice little woman & rather lonely. She has a step mother who is good to her. ¹⁰³

Similarly, Mrs Rose was reported to be unable to work and suffering from the effects of shock when visited in November 1916 and was subsequently awarded £1 for medical bills. By March 1917 she was working in the Dockyard Torpedo Store and was recorded as being ‘perfectly delighted with her job.’ ¹⁰⁴ Mrs Richardson worked at Priddy’s Hard armaments depot in the neighbouring naval town of Gosport when her health permitted. In February 1917 Miss Kelly reported, ‘No children, works at Munitions. Not in need of assistance.’ Similarly, childless widow Clara Fearnley, widow of a skilled Engine Room Artificer, was not given any assistance. She was reported to be working as a chargewoman in the dockyard and was able to let out her ‘excellent house’ in a desirable part of Portsmouth. ¹⁰⁵

Paradoxically, taking up work in the dockyard had enabled these widows to provide for themselves a level of self-sufficiency that situated them as being ‘deserving’ but no longer poor enough to be in receipt of additional aid. Indeed, actively seeking work elevated their respectability through not being reliant on charity or parish aid, which had been socially stigmatising since the introduction of the Poor Laws. ¹⁰⁶ It also enabled their contribution to the war effort to be enshrined in the narrative of war heroism, as entries in the National Roll of the Great War attest. Dorothy Downer, widow of Leading Cook’s Mate Ronald Downer of HMS Tipperary, is cited as being a Patternmaker in Portsmouth Dockyard from May 1917 until February 1919. The entry stated that she ‘performed her responsible duties with great care and skill, and rendered valuable services throughout.’ ¹⁰⁷ Kate Ford, wife of Stoker Petty Officer Charles Ford of HMS Queen Mary, was also mother to two children under the age of three at the time of the Battle. ¹⁰⁸ Her citation acknowledged her almost two years of service in the Dockyard ‘thereby releasing a fit man for service in the Army.’ Her duties in the storehouse ‘were of a responsible nature, and were carried out in a very able manner.’ ¹⁰⁹ Emma Plaskett, widow of Chief Armourer George Plaskett, was a mother of one who joined the Joiners' Shop Upholstery Department and ‘did excellent work from July 1916, discharging her duties throughout in a most satisfactory manner.’ ¹¹⁰ The women workers of Portsmouth were locally celebrated in a way that highlighted the progressiveness of the adaptation that had taken place through admitting women into the male sanctuary of heavy industrial shipbuilding where they ‘more than justified the highest expectations.’ ¹¹¹ This re-conception, however, also glossed over the real heartache and struggle, exposure to elements of sexism, and sheer hard work that they had undergone.

The best feature of this employment was the camaraderie which was established with the men. At first they were kept at work by themselves, and they left the Yard in advance of the men; but before many months had elapsed no distinction was shown. They entered with the men, worked with the men, and left together when the bell rang: whether it was light or dark, wet or fine, they went cheerfully to their daily task, and wended their way homeward with a happy consciousness of duty done. ¹¹²

This pride evidenced in their work would align with Fell’s reconceived narrative of women as war veterans, although it is easy to see how their efforts would be overlooked in retrospect. The end of the First World War stemmed the ability of British war widows to maintain this progressive culture and self-sufficiency as women were laid off in workplaces in order to accommodate returning servicemen and to make economies in the reduction of activities that had supported the country through the conflict. In March 1919 Dr Thomas Macnamara, Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty, publically stated that although their services had been appreciated, there was no alternative but to make women redundant in the royal dockyards. ¹¹³ Although the women workers were praised for their contribution to the war effort, a public discourse ensued about who deserved to be employed, and distinctions made based upon which women should be made redundant first. Immediately cases were made for war widows who had no other means of support, whereas young women from wealthier families were considered to be better financially supported, and thus eligible for early redundancy. At a Trades and Labour Council meeting in March 1919 a letter from the Admiral Superintendent of Portsmouth Royal Dockyard was read promising that women workers with ‘necessitous cases’ would be ‘retained for as long as possible.’ One delegate remarked that he ‘hoped that the Admiralty would consider the 24 women remaining in the Dockyard who were widows and had no other means of subsistence.’ ¹¹⁴ A solution, which was broadly supported, was to employ women in making garments through an extension of the Colour Loft. ¹¹⁵ However, such employment negated the inroads women workers had made into mechanised and specialised industrial jobs, thus highlighting an underlying assumption that women were expected to revert to traditional gender roles in the workplace. In August 1919 a deputation of the Portsmouth Branch of the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Soldiers and Sailors visited Portsmouth Dockyard with the express task of showing that certain jobs in the Dockyard which were occupied by women could be undertaken by disabled returning servicemen. In particular, daughters of well-to-do businessmen and dockyard officials were identified as workers that should be replaced, and less physical roles such as those in the Dockyard Telephone Exchange were recommended for ‘a number of legless men’ returning from war. ¹¹⁶ Macnamara assured the deputation of his support and promised to take immediate action on replacing non-dependent ‘girls’ with disabled men. The release of swathes of women workers was particularly concerning for the town as it was reported that the discharged workers were not yet in receipt of the ‘special out-of-work pay’ which had been promised by the Government. ¹¹⁷ However, their views on the speed of redundancies changed in early 1919 when the Hampshire Telegraph opined that the discharge of women workers from the Dockyard and other government establishments was a ‘regrettable necessity’ and that the men that they relieved are ‘rightly asking for their replacement.’ ¹¹⁸

The recently published 1921 Census can provide further insight into what many of these women did after the First World War. As Lomas has highlighted, second marriage was ‘one of the very few avenues open to women which offered a chance of financial security during the interwar years’, the other (for working-class women) being ‘low-paid, sporadic work of the most menial kind.’ ¹¹⁹ Indeed, although we cannot attest to the contentedness of their situation, tracing a sample of Portsmouth Dockyard’s Jutland war widows through the 1921 Census highlights examples of remarriage and a reversion to household duties. Emma Plaskett most probably met her second husband William H. Perry, a Rigger at HM Mining School, in the Dockyard. She expanded her family with the birth of another daughter in 1920, was listed as occupied in ‘home duties’, and lived in the same house in Portsmouth that she would have received the news of her first husband’s death. ¹²⁰ Clara Fearnley, however, is listed as a visitor in her native Halifax, Yorkshire, and her probate suggests that she never remarried. ¹²¹ As the 1921 Census becomes more accessible and searchable new evidence will continue to emerge about these women. Agency may be evaluated through the war widows' limited options whereby, in the absence of the work they sought during the war, woman had to choose between the solitude, surveillance, and stringent financial security of having a regular income via the WWP, or forego it to once again be regarded as a ‘kept’ woman.

Conclusions

This article has argued two points, firstly, that due to their extensive experience of disaster relief port towns such as Portsmouth were influential in shaping the response of State authorities in regards to providing for families bereaved during the First World War. The sheer scale of loss on the Western Front has eclipsed the experiences of those who were bereaved by the war at sea, leading to the stories of port towns and naval widows to be overlooked in the popular imagination of the First World War. Moreover, little work has hitherto been undertaken to track the lineage of the adoption and management of the WWP in 1916 that arose from the discourses of pre-First World War maritime disaster relief. The bitter experience of Portsmouth’s civic elites in negotiating and provisioning large scale loss was crucial to the way the town was able to react to the bereavement caused by the North Sea battle. While the civic elites of the town were keen to do their patriotic duty, this article has highlighted that more attention must be paid to the ways in which key regional and municipal figures shaped the administration of war relief. The town was not merely a passive adopter of these measures and remained critical to, and perhaps more broad-minded in their attitudes towards, their needy citizens. It is hoped that this article will prompt further investigation into the sentiment and mechanisms for local pre-war maritime philanthropic aid and further interrogate the role of port towns and cities in shaping home front responses to state-wide welfare provision.

Secondly, the article aimed to advance the understanding of the working-class war widow of the First World War. The funds war widows received were not sufficient to cover their total loss of household earnings. Rather than becoming victims of their fate, the story of Portsmouth Dockyard’s Jutland war widows has highlighted their hard work in the face of moral scrutiny to supplement their income and also do ‘their bit’ for the war effort. During the war Portsmouth Royal Dockyard, like other naval and private dockyards around the country, employed women in capacities that have yet to be explored. Most disappointingly, the reversion to pre-war gender normative roles and expectations meant that many aspects of women’s war work have been buried within the continuum of the notion that heavy industry was the preserve of male workers. Recasting women workers as war veterans could enable new scholarship on the subject of agency in First World War studies. Entry into the dockyard broke the boundaries of gender norms but the re-employment of returning servicemen and the prevailing narrative following demobilisation highlighted the precariousness of women workers, especially widowed mothers, during the period. Even the decision to remarry or keep in receipt of the WWP became acts of agency, and highlights the ways in which widows, a group largely overlooked and marginalised, were able to navigate and survive their personal tragedies in a naval town.