Page 21 - Thrapston Life November 2024

GLANCE AT THE PAST
Eric Franklin looks back
Some of my readers may have heard Helen Frost (top left), speaking locally over the
last few years. She has spent much time researching the Women’s Land Army during the Great War (1914-1918). Her book, ‘Voices from the Great War Women’s Land Army’, which was seven years in the making,
was given to me as part of the Barbara Knight archive. Regrettably, nobody is named and the only detail written on the back is ‘W. J. Smith, Bell Inn Yard Islip’. Any information about any of these people and their work would be gratefully received.
will be published on 30th October 2024. A comprehensive study of the subject, I would recommend both the book and her talks to anybody with an interest in women during the Great War. Contact me for further details.
At the start of World War I this
country produced just 35% of the food
it ate so, when Germany mounted naval blockades in 1915 to stop imported
food from arriving, a big problem was
faced. Many farmers and farmworkers had gone to fight in the war leaving a major labour shortage. In 1917 the harvest failed leaving
the country with just a few weeks of food reserves. The Women’s Land Army was formed in January of that year to alleviate the labour shortage with the aim of increasing production.
I have just one picture of a group of local Land Army girls from the First World War (top right), in the Bell Inn Yard in Islip, which
Many farmers and farmworkers had gone to fight in the war leaving a major labour shortage
I have discovered one lady with a local connection who was part of this organisation, Ethel Mary Petch. She was born in Gillingham, Kent in 1898, her father serving in the Royal Navy. By 1913 she was living in Twywell and in 1916, aged 18, she joined the Land Army. After training in Moulton, she was placed in Tansor looking after pigs for the last eight months of the war. She trained as a nurse at Leicester Royal Infirmary between 1920 and
1924. She received her nursing registration (number 34037) on 21st November 1924, her home address being Rosemead, Woodford Hill, Woodford. By 1934 she had returned to live in Twywell and may appear in the 1930 photo (on the next page) of the Twywell Women’s section of the Red Cross (again from the Barbara Knight archive). In 1939 she was living in Leicester with a group of State Registered Nurses and was also a sister in the
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