Beatrice “Betty” Cadbury Boek: Conscientious Objector & Peace Campaigner

Beatrice Cadbury - known as "Betty" - was the youngest child of Richard and Emma Jane Cadbury, who were members of the famous Midlands Chocolate Manufacturing Quaker Family, Beatrice was born at Moseley Hall in 1884 and lived there until she was 7 years old, when the family moved to the newly built house named Uffculme on Queensbridge Road. She spent 4 years attending the Fröbel kindergarten, a child centred, experimental school which focused on learning through play. At the age of 11 she began her formal education at Edgbaston High School for Girls, later spending two years as a boarder at The Mount Quaker School in York. After this Beatrice attended Westfield College, London from 1903 to 1905.

Beatrice Cadbury

Beatrice’s idyllic childhood also included many holidays abroad with the family including a tour of Egypt and Israel and Syria when she was 13, staying for a time with her father Richard’s cousin Caroline Cadbury in Brummana, Syria,at the Friends Mission Station. Unfortunately a second trip to Egypt in 1899 would prove fatal for Richard Cadbury who contracted diphtheria and subsequently suffered a heart attack and died.

Despite her father's death,  the opportunities for travel continued, including a world tour in 1906 for Beatrice and Emma Jane en route to visit another Cadbury daughter, Daisy and her husband who were missionaries in China for the Friends Foreign Missionary Association (FFMA). Luck while travelling didn’t seem to be on the Cadburys side, as Beatrice’s mother Emma Jane Cadbury fell downstairs whilst on a ship to Canada. She never regained consciousness and died on the 21^st May 1907. After their mother’s death, Beatrice moved in with her older sister, Helen and her husband Charles. Their home, which was called "Tennessee", was situated in the grounds of Uffculme. 

Barrow Cadbury, Beatrice’s eldest brother, had inherited the Uffculme estate and turned the main house into an Adult Education Centre in memory of their father. Helen’s husband Charles was an evangelical preacher whose work took him around the world, and so further opportunities for travel presented themselves, instilling Beatrice with a strong desire to do some kind of missionary work of her own. 

Beatrice joined the FFMA and served on the Candidate Committee, the group responsible for appointing missionaries. The FFMA worked in China, India, Madagascar and Syria. Having previously visited in Syria she agreed to also serve on the Syria Committee. In 1910 the Candidate Committee met to select a Head teacher for the Boy’s School in Brummana. One of the candidates was Cornelius Boeke who was always known as Kees (pronounced Case). Kees was the youngest child in a large family of Mennonites and the son of a secondary school teacher from Alkmaar in Northern Holland. He was 26 years old and a post graduate student of engineering at Delft University, but had been studying at the University of London. He was recommended for the post by Henry Hodgkin, chair of the Student Christian Movement Conference and FFMA. 

Kees Boeke

Kees Boeke had decided he did not want to be an engineer because he felt called to do mission work, especially in education, and he was very interested in the work of the Society of Friends. Kees was given the job and began a year’s training, some of which was at Kingsmeade, and some at Woodbrooke in Selly Oak.

Beatrice remained involved with Kees and his fellow Brummana trainee Christofer Naish, by inviting them to a study group at Kingsmeade. Their courtship began when Kees wrote to Beatrice asking her to pray for him because he was nervous about speaking at a conference and an attraction blossomed based on their common beliefs and ideals. For Beatrice it was truly a meeting of minds. On July 19^th 1911, after only 6 weeks they became officially engaged. Although some of the family were not happy with the speed of the courtship, Helen and Charles were supportive. In September Kees went out to Brummana to get acquainted with the school and the Arabic language, before returning in December to marry Beatrice on the 19^th after exactly 5 months of engagement. 

The journey back to Syria was taken at a leisurely pace to include a trip to Kees’ mother in Alkmaar and also stops in Paris, Marseilles, Cairo and Beirut. The Boeks enjoyed life in Brummana, the boys at the school were well behaved and although simple, the living conditions and cuisine agreed with Beatrice. Tackling ‘the evils that characterise village life’ was more difficult, despite their progress with learning Arabic. In November 1912, their first child, a daughter they named Helen was born, but soon afterwards Beatrice was struck down by Typhoid, and was severely ill for some time. Whilst the couple were away in England and Holland recuperating, another headmaster was appointed for the school.

When they returned in 1913, Kees was instead given the job of inspecting day schools, traveling by donkey to different villages. Integrating with the locals was more difficult but their effort in learning the language paid off as Kees was able to give addresses in Arabic at meetings. In 1914 while arranging to return to the school at Brummana, their plans were shattered by the outbreak of the First World War. Although Beatrice was now officially Dutch by marriage and Holland was neutral in the war, they were persuaded by the British consulate that as they worked for an English Missionary society it would be better for their Arab friends not to be associated with English people. Sadly Beatrice and Kees returned to England, expecting the war to be over soon so they could return to Syria, this time with two children, as Beatrice was now pregnant for the second time.

When the boat arrived at Southampton, their Dutch papers were under suspicion and they were ordered to stay on the boat until London to receive their official paperwork. After this they remained largely untouched by the war during 1914, as they returned to live at Tennessee and prepared for the birth of a second child. However as Quakers, Beatrice and Kees would have to decide what their moral attitude was towards the war. 

Beatrice and Kees

In 1915 they joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Different Christian denominations banded together to oppose the war on religious grounds. Their activities included press campaigns and street preaching.  Kees became the secretary of the Birmingham branch. The FOR opposed Conscription and worked with the No Conscription Fellowship to support Conscientious Objectors. 

The Cadbury family were somewhat divided in their views on the war with some like Egbert Cadbury joining the military or working towards the war effort and others taking a compromise position, like Lawrence Cadbury who joined the Friends Ambulance Unit. For Kees and Beatrice, their position was an Absolutist one.  Kees decided to take a more active role in peace campaigning and in July 1915 he travelled to Germany at the request of the FOR to meet with German anti-war campaigners. With Holland remaining neutral in the war, Kees was ideally placed for travel across Europe and hoped to enter Germany without being interrogated. While Kees was away Beatrice was questioned by a policeman, his letters from Holland had been opened and the authorities wanted to know the exact nature of his trip. Beatrice proudly told the policeman that her husband was “carrying out peace work in Europe”. When Kees returned in September, he was elated to have met with prominent peace campaigners such as Elizabeth Rotten, a Swiss Quaker who was helping prisoners in Germany, Eduard Bernstein the socialist and Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze who was a friend of Henry Hodgkin’s. 

Kees had been able get papers allowing him to travel to Germany by getting a separate Dutch passport which didn’t show his travel from England, but because of this, he was almost stopped from re-entering England. Fortunately his policy of honesty with the customs official – freely admitting that he’d travelled around Germany by using a Dutch passport - was successful and he was allowed to return to his wife and family.

Kees’s troubles began in 1916 when he was asked to resign from the private school Woodruffs where he had been teaching since October 1915. During scripture lessons he told the boys that ‘the Germans are our brothers’ and quoted biblical passages including ‘Love your enemies’. Several parents feared their children were being taught German propaganda!

Beatrice was angry at the way her husband was treated, but both agreed that they were now free to throw themselves into working with the FOR. The time had also come when Beatrice felt that living in luxury at Tennessee was wrong - it did not balance well with the horrors which European civilians were enduring, and the hardships that their Syrian friends were facing. Beatrice may also have been worried that their forceful stance towards the war would reflect badly on the Cadbury family and her sister Helen’s household.

Kees and Beatrice moved into 52 Anderton Park Road in Moseley. It was a modest house by their standards, without fine furniture and servants, but the couple’s close friend Eveline Fletcher moved in with them to be on hand to help with the children. Eveline’s husband Ernest was a Photographer, and both had a strong Church of England faith which would not allow them to support the war. Ernest was currently serving a sentence in Portland Prison as a conscientious objector and was relieved to hear that his wife was being taken into the Boeke household. 

At this time Kees was regularly preaching outside a munitions factory and Beatrice was involved with the Friend’s War Victims Committee, giving support to the families of ‘enemy aliens’; German, Austrian and Hungarian men living in England at the outbreak of war, who were interred in camps to prevent them being a danger to the state.

In December 1916, Kees was preaching as usual when unnoticed by him, two special constables began to observe and write down his speeches in their notebooks. As usual a crowd had gathered to listen to him. He was a compelling orator, and he told them:

 ‘’Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you! The Germans are our brothers. Let soldiers throw down their arms and refuse to fight - join the brotherhood of man.”

 

Most of the crowd was enthusiastic, and there were cheers of support, but then a drunken soldier accused Kees of being a traitor. The special constables intervened and stopped the speech on the grounds that it was ‘becoming disorderly’ and Kees was moved on. He defiantly continued preaching in the streets, whilst Beatrice, who was now pregnant with their fourth child, would hand out leaflets to the crowds. She remarked to her children that:

“It speaks much for English freedom of speech that Daddy is able to speak at street corners and in squares without being officially forbidden”.

 

Their anti-war work continued to grow in boldness. In January 1918 they were sent on behalf of the FOR to help mobilize the pacifist movement which was growing in the Welsh mining communities. The family moved to Neath,and Kees spoke at many church and chapel meetings, but the reception was not what they might have hoped for. The Welsh sometimes mistook his accent for German and he was arrested under a local bye law for causing an obstruction, being sent to Swansea prison when he refused to pay the fine. A search revealed sufficient money on his person to pay the fine and he was subsequently released. 

The press in Birmingham got hold of the story and goaded the police by saying:

 “How is it that this young Dutchman is left free to undermine military authority and public morale? We answer by publishing a certificate of his marriage”

 

This implied that Kees’ connection to the Cadbury Family was the only thing that kept him out of serious trouble but this was not to be the case.

Kees Boeke

  In February 1918 Kees was summoned to stand trial for offences against the new DORA (Defence of the Realm Act) at Birmingham Law Courts. The charge was that in a public square he had made statements ‘likely to interfere with the success of His Majesty’s forces and prejudice their recruiting and discipline’. The prosecutor argued that Kees’ statements - especially the call for soldiers to lay down arms - made him an insurrectionary force and therefore he posed a threat to the country’s stability. The magistrate, Lord Ilkeston, was not likely to listen to Kees’ philosophical arguments that his statements were in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ and thus he was only breaking the law to “fulfil a higher law”. Kees was ordered to pay a £50 fine or face 41 days imprisonment, as was expected Kees would not, on principal, pay the fine and so was sentenced to serve out the term at Winston Green Prison.

This was not unexpected and it could even be said that Beatrice and Kees had an overly romantic vision of the nobility of confinement. However no one expected Lord Ilkeston’s next move – he recommended that Kees Boeke be deported back to Holland. 

Although Kees himself remained calm, the reaction from their friends on the FOR was one of shock and disbelief – causing Lord Ilkeston to order the immediate clearance of the courtroom. Although support for Kees continued after the trial, with members of the FOR writing to the home office and a supportive article in The New Crusader a Christian Socialist magazine, it made precious little difference. In April 1918 a Deportation Order was issued and Kees was transferred from Winston Green to Wormwood Scrubs to await deportation. Here he discovered that he was actually suspected of being a German spy. Beatrice struggled to make plans whilst Kees was in London and their only contact was through fortnightly letters on prison paper.

The date for deportation was kept secret, perhaps to foil a publicity campaign. This meant that Beatrice travelled to London on April 9^th only to find her husband had been deported the previous day! Despite fears about the danger of a channel crossing he arrived safely at his mother’s house in Alkmaar. However it would be months before the rest of the family could join him. They were finally granted permission to travel with a camouflaged convoy in July 1918 and they had to undertake their own perilous journey across the English Channel. 

After a blissful summer of reunion, in September 1918 they began to look for a house of their own and settled in Bilthoven, outside Utrecht. Their villa was known as Het Boschhuis – the house in woods - and it was an idyllic location in which to raise the children, and a perfect place to continue their peace work. They had just begun to settle in to their new home, when on their eldest daughter Helen’s 6^th birthday on the 11^th November 1918, the armistice was signed and the war finally ended. 

After the war the joy which the ceasefire should have brought was somewhat marred by Kees once more getting himself into trouble with the authorities. In the evening of the 11th Kees cycled to Vreeburg Square in Ultrecht and began to preach for the first time in Holland. He was promptly arrested (although later released without charge) because outdoor meetings were still illegal in Holland, without prior permission from the Mayor, and Kees was not in possession of the proper license. This was an early indication that the authorities in Holland would prove to be even less forgiving than those in England. 

The joyful mood of the time could not be dented for long though –this was an era of idealism, with many working hard to ensure a conflict on the scale of ‘The Great War’ could never happen again. Kees, Beatrice and their friends Ernest and Eveline Fletcher, who had relocated to Bilthoven after the war, worked with Henry Hodgkin of the FOR to bring together pacifists from across Europe, for a conference at Het Boschhuisin October 1919. There were 35 delegates – both men and women, from 10 countries. These delegates included Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (realising Kees’s dream of bringing him and Henry Hodgkin together) and many others including Pierre Ceresole from Switzerland, whose staunch pacifism included refusing to pay tax in protest at government spending on arms. He had also given away a large part of his inherited wealth. His views would go on to have a powerful effect on the Boeke’s. The delegates had come together in friendship to share their belief that war and Christianity were incompatible; they formed the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and parted joyfully with plans for another conference in the following year.

Beatrice & Kees Boeke

Kees and Beatrice were now even more determined, and after a few months of pamphlet making and speech writing, they took to the streets once more to spread their Christian pacifist message, despite their applications for permits being rejected. The Armistice Day incident had given some indication of the likely consequences, but no one was prepared for the actual outcome. Once Kees began to speak, himself, Beatrice and Ernest who had accompanied them were all quickly arrested and fined for preaching without a permit. The real trouble began when they all refused to pay their fines because they believed they had done nothing wrong, and were ordered to appear in court the following week. All three were given prison sentences – Kees and Ernest for three weeks, and Beatrice for two weeks. This was a complete shock to all because at that time Beatrice was 8 months pregnant with her fifth child.  

The jail sentence was borne by all with as much patience as possible, but it was especially hard for Beatrice who suffered from claustrophobia in her cell alone at night and could not bend down to the grate which provided the only source of fresh air. Thankfully her baby did not arrive early, and Candia Boeke was born on the 6^th May 1920, 8 days after Kees was released from prison. 

When the news of Beatrice’s incarceration reached Birmingham, the Cadbury family were dreadfully worried. Little did they know that this was the start of a much more radical period for the entire Boeke family.

Despite using her wealth for many good causes – including the building of a new conference centre next to Het Boschhuisan, Beatrice felt increasingly guilty about her wealth. She would go on to decide to gift her shares in Cadbury to the workers – giving workers power to affect company policy and money to spend as they saw fit on advancing the cause of peace. They would also stop paying their taxes, and instigate an open door policy in their home. 

The circumstances surrounding these momentous decisions are detailed in Fiona Joseph’s excellent book, Beatrice: The Cadbury Heiress Who Gave Away Her Fortune, which also goes on to describe the Boeke’s eventual decision to start a school. Kees Boeke became well known in Holland as an educator and founder of The ‘Werkplaats’ School (The Workplace or Workshop School). Several works about the school were published in Dutch.

The impact which The Great War (and later the Second World War) had on the ideals of both Beatrice and Kees Boeke, remained central to their unending commitment to creating a better society, where Christian values would ensure that conflict was unthinkable. Their legacy is ensured as ‘two of the most original and exceptional educators of the twentieth century, in Holland and around the world’.

Dorothy Lawrence: Journalist & Sapper at The Somme

Dorothy Lawrence was an English journalist who secretly posed as a man to become a soldier in the trenches in France during World War I. Silenced by the government from telling her story until after the war was over, she published a book about her experiences but died in the 1960's after spending over 30 years locked away in an asylum for the insane. 

Lawrence was born on 4 October 1896 in Polesworth, Warwickshire and was the  daughter of Thomas Hartshorn Lawrence and Mary Jane Beddall - a couple who were not married. As an illegitimate child, when her mother died in 1909, Dorothea was adopted by trusted guardians of the Church of England in Salisbury - the wealthy and well-respected Mrs Josephine Fitzgerald and her husband.

By 1911 The radical tactics of the suffragette movement were everywhere , challenging perceptions of what women could do and be. Wanting to become a serious journalist, Dorothy managed to get some articles published in The Times and in Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine. Despite the general atmosphere of empowerment, Dorothy’s status as a woman severely limited her career prospects as a  news reporter. Although she contributed regularly to both publications she would not have been allowed her own by-line, and her journalistic work remained limited to light entertainment stories and show business interviews. At the outbreak of war in 1914 she wrote to a number of the Fleet Street newspapers in the hope of reporting the war but was ridiculed by editors who were unable to secure access for their seasoned male foreign correspondents.

Dorothy did manage to persuade the editor of the Times newspaper to help her to procure a passport to get across the Channel to Paris. She sweet-talked a courier into smuggling her bicycle onto the boat, and on midsummer’s day in 1915 she set out for France, aged 19 to volunteer as a civilian employee of the Voluntary Aid Detachment - but even here, she was rejected.

Dorothy left Paris and headed for the smaller town of Creil in search of her story. A young woman travelling alone, she was greeted with curiosity and amusement by the large numbers of bored troops waiting to be deployed. She appears to have spent a considerable amount of time hanging around in coffee shops, getting by with a smattering of French and trying to avoid misunderstandings with the soldiers who assumed that she was ‘out for love’. After about six weeks she became tired of the monotonous reality of war behind the lines. She made a resolution: ‘to get into the thick of it – right to the front of the front’. She packed up her bicycle and headed back to Paris.

She decided that the best way to get to where she really wanted to be was to enter the war zone via the French sector as a freelance war correspondent. She was arrested by French Police 2 miles short of the front line, and was ordered to leave the area. Spending the night sleeping on a haystack in a forest, she returned to Paris where she concluded that only in disguise could she really get the story that she wanted to write but her gender and youth restricted where she could go and the information she could access. She soon realized that she would only be able to get the story she wanted if she undertook a radical physical transformation.

“ I'll see what an ordinary English girl, without credentials or money can accomplish."

 

She befriended two British Army soldiers in a Parisian café, and persuaded them to smuggle her a khaki uniform, piece by piece, within their washing; ten men eventually shared in this exploit, later referred to in her book as the "Khaki accomplices". 

She then began practicing transforming herself into a male soldier, by: flattening her figure with a home-made corset and using sacking and cotton-wool to bulk out her shoulders. She persuaded two Scottish military policemen to cut her long, brown hair in a short masculine style. She darkened her complexion with Condy’s Fluid, a disinfectant made from potassium permanganate, razored the pale skin of her cheeks in the hope of giving herself a shaving rash and added a shoe-polish tan. Finally she asked her soldier friends to teach her how to drill and march like them.

Wearing a blanket coat and no underwear, lest soldiers discover her abandoned petticoats, she obtained forged identity papers, re-invented herself as Private Denis Smith of the 1st Bn, Leicestershire Regiment, and headed for the front lines.

Targeting the British sector of the Somme, she set out by bicycle. A narrow escape from a suspicious Gendarme in Amiens Cathedral sent her off course, towards the town of Albert. The skyline of the town was dominated by the shadow of a statue of the Virgin Mary – which the Germans had taken to using for target practice. The Virgin now hung precariously at a 90 degree angle, and the locals held that when she fell so would the town.

Whilst hiding in a dugout, she met Lancashire coal-miner turned British Expeditionary Force Sapper, Tom Dunn, who, beguiled by Dorothy’s mad bravery, offered to assist her. Fearing for the safety of a lone woman among female-companionship starved soldiers, Dunn found Lawrence an abandoned cottage in Senlis Forest to sleep in. During her 10 days on the front line, she returned there each night to sleep on a damp mattress, fed by any rations and water that Dunn and his colleagues could spare. For almost two weeks in August 1915, she was able to camouflage herself among Dunn's comrades and spend time in the sniper-infested trenches of the Somme - the only British woman to do so. 

In her later book, she writes that Dunn found her work as a sapper with the 179 Company of The Royal Engineers, who were a specialist mine-laying and tunnelling company that operated within 400 yards of the front line. Lawrence writes that she was directly involved in the digging of tunnels, but this maybe not be true. later evidence and correspondence from the time after her discovery by British Army authorities, including from the files of Sir Walter Kirke of the BEF's secret service, suggest that she did not undertake this highly skilled digging work, but she was still at liberty and working within the trenches in some capacity.

Rebecca Nash, curator of the Royal Engineers Museum explains: 

‘The sappers’ uniform would have given Dorothy some leeway to move around – tunnellers had a kind of right to roam. They were not subject to the same military strictures as infantry soldiers, for example, and would often turn up without the commanding officer of an infantry regiment having been informed.  It was the perfect cover.’

 

Dorothy Lawrewnces's biographer, Simon Jones, who is also Britain’s foremost expert on the Somme tunnels, is not wholly convinced by Dorothy’s account. He reveals: 

‘I am sceptical of the passages in the book in which Dorothy talks of tunnelling under the front line, but there is no doubt whatsoever that she was in the trenches and that she was disguised as a man.’

The toll of the job, and of hiding her true identity, soon gave Dorothy constant chills, rheumatism, and fainting fits. Concerned that if she needed medical attention her true gender would be discovered and the men who had befriended her would be in danger, after 10 days of service she presented herself to the commanding sergeant, revealed herself to be a female civilian, and was promptly placed under military arrest. 

Taken to the BEF headquarters and interrogated as a possible spy by a colonel, who declared her to be a prisoner of war, she had a fit of the giggles - ‘I really could not help it,’ she wrote.

From there she was taken cross country by horse to Third Army headquarters in Calais, where she was interrogated by six generals and approximately twenty other officers. They did not laugh - but nevertheless, in reports the scene does sound comical.

‘So utterly ludicrous appeared this be-trousered little female, marshalled solemnly by three soldiers and deposited before 20 embarrassed men.’

She did not realize that the derogatory term "camp follower" which they used to describe her, was actually army slang for  a "prostitute" and she later recalled: 

"We talked steadily at cross purposes. On my side I had not been informed what the term meant, and on their side they continued unaware that I remained ignorant! So I often appeared to be telling lies."

The men who interrogated her could not understand her real motivations for making the treacherous journey to the heart of the fighting. From Calais she was taken to Saint-Omer and further interrogated. The Army was so embarrassed that a woman had breached security and was fearful of even more women taking on male roles during the war if her story got out but Dorothy knew she had the scoop of her life, a story which would set Fleet Street alight - but only if she could get it published. 

On the orders of a suspicious judge, fearing she could release sensitive intelligence information into the public domain, she was ordered to remain in France until after the Battle of Loos. Held within the Convent de Bon Pasteur for 2 weeks, she was  made to swear not to write about her experiences, and had to sign an affidavit to that effect, or she would be sent to jail. 

Sent back to London, she travelled across the English Channel on the same ferry as Emmeline Pankhurst, who asked her to speak at a suffragette meeting and address the ever-growing ranks of women desperate to contribute to Britain’s war effort. 

Once in London, Dorothy tried to write about her experiences for The Wide World Magazine, a London-based illustrated monthly, but she was quickly silenced by the War Office, who invoked the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act to stop her. Dorothy was banned from telling her inspirational story either through newspaper articles or public talks until after the Armistice in 1918.  Correspondence held by the Harry Ransom Centre in the University of Texas in Austin includes a letter from Dorothy saying she had had to scrap her first book on the direct instructions of the War Office. The letter is on the headed notepaper of The Wide World Magazine, so there is no doubt that Dorothy was telling the truth.

She later commented:

“ In making that promise I sacrificed the chance of earning by newspaper articles written on this escapade, as a girl compelled to earn her livelihood.”

She drafted a book in the months following her return to London, but burnt it in desperation shortly after. Her physical health went into decline due to ‘septic poisoning’ contracted from dirty water in France; and her mental health suffered too. She later wrote of a ‘nervous complaint’ that caused her to shake so much that she ‘could not easily hold a pen’. These symptoms were perhaps the initial manifestations of an illness that, unchecked and misunderstood, was to consume her. It is possible that Dorothy was suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress following her experiences in northern France.

On returning to London with fragile health and without a home or any employment prospects, it would have been quite possible that Dorothy chose to seek help from her former wealthy guardian Mrs Fitzgerald but something terrible had happened between Dorothy and Josephine that led to an irreconcilable rift. Unwell and unable to explain her psychiatric symptoms to those around her, Dorothea eventually confessed everything to Josephine – along with her intention to publish her war story. Josephine offered Dorothy an ultimatum which she did not accept. When Josephine died she left money to numerous ‘godchildren’ – but nothing to Dorothy.

 

By 1919, Dorothy was living in rented rooms in Canonbury, Islington, had secured a book deal with John Lane Publishers and finally published an account of her experiences: 

Sapper Dorothy Lawrence: The Only English Woman Soldier.

Although the book was well received in England, America and Australia, reviews were less than favourable, and it was still heavily censored by the War Office.The Spectator Magazine described Dorothy in its September 1919 review of her book as a ‘girlish freak’. With the world wishing to heal itself from the scars of the war, and move forward into the Roaring Twenties, the book did not become the huge commercial success that Dorothy had hoped it would be.

With no income and no credibility left as a journalist, by 1925 her increasingly erratic actions were brought to the attention of the authorities. She privately confided to a doctor that she had been raped in her teenage years by her church guardian's husband, and with no family to look after her, she was taken into care and was later deemed insane. Perhaps the rift between Dorothy and Mrs Fitzgerald had occurred because Dorothy had told her guardian about the rape too - but the staunch Christian woman refused to believe her adopted daughter.

Committed first to the London County Mental Hospital at Hanwell in March 1925, Dorothy was later institutionalized at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in Friern Barnet, North London. There is no evidence that her rape allegations against Mr Fitzgerald were taken seriously or were ever investigated further. In medical notes her only friend is named as Mrs Fitzgerald of Salisbury but Josephine never made contact with Dorothy again died shortly afterwards. Nowhere in Dorothy’s medical records are any other visitors mentioned.

Dorothy was incarcerated in the asylum for a shocking 39 years until her lonely death in the Friern Hospital in 1964. She was buried in a pauper's grave in New Southgate Cemetery, where today the site of her plot is no longer clear.

Why did Dorothy tragically die alone in a lunatic asylum? It is possible that she was declared insane just because she dared to speak about her rape allegations and was already seen as a dangerous, subversive woman with psychiatric problems. A century ago he word of a wealthy man of the Church would have always been believed over that of a woman and wealthy wives often stood by their husbands for social and financial reasons, regardless of what they did. It is possible that Mrs Fitzgerald could not imagine that her husband could be capable of something so terrible - so the only other explanation in her mind was that Dorothy was mad.

Dorothy's biographer Simon Jones says:

At the time she was committed her account of the rape was seen as delusional, manic behaviour, but if it was true it might go some way to explaining why she did what she did during the 1^st World War. We know today that victims of sexual abuse do not value their own well-being – did Dorothy deliberately put herself in danger by going to France? If she understood the danger she was in, she did not seem to fear it. Albert in the Somme in those days was somewhere even the soldiers tried to avoid – they would even deliberately injure themselves – yet she headed straight for it.’

 

Jones later found that Lawrence's rape allegations were sufficiently compelling to be included in her medical records, which are held in the London Metropolitan Archives but are not available for general access.

In 2003, Richard Bennett, the grandson of Richard Samson Bennett who was one of the other soldiers, along with Dunn, who had helped Lawrence in France, found note of her within the correspondence files of Royal Engineers Museum in Chatham, Kent. On further investigation, East Sussex historian Raphael Stipic found a letter written by Sir Walter Kirke about Lawrence. Military historian Simon Jones then found a copy of Lawrence's book at the REM and started collecting notes in order to write her biography.

Her story later became part of an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum on women at war. Curator Laura Clouting said: 

‘This was a time when there was no provision for women to join any branch of the Services and they weren’t even able to work in munitions factories. Mostly they were involved in charity fundraising or succumbed to knitting mania. We’re including Dorothy Lawrence because she proved the exception to the rule.’

 

Finally, over 100 years after Dorothy Lawrence became a Sapper on the Somme, her place in history is finally secured. YTwo plays and a film have been made about her life and her experiences in recent years.

Lizzie Crarer has recently written and directed a 2 handed play called " Over the Top: The True Life Tale of Dorothy Lawrence" with the theatre company The Heroine Project Presents, which aims to give a voice to women from history who have been overlooked or misrepresented. The production toured in the UK between 4th March and 11th July 2016.

Julie McNamara has also written a play called "The Disappearance of Dorothy Lawrence" which debuted at The Pleasance Theatre, London on 25 & 26 September 2015 and was directed by Paulette Randall MBE. The Cast included Penelope Freeman as Dorothy and Suni La, Gareth Turkington, Simon Balcon, Matthew Gurney and Becky Allen.

  Macnamara also wrote and directed the short film Blue Pen which focuses on ten women journalists whose voices have been silenced through censorship, confinement in institutions and abuse. Although largely set in the present day, the film’s title refers to the wartime government’s practice of censoring letters and reports from the front.

“I was considering the number of women journalists who are disappeared and executed to this day,” says McNamara, who is also the artistic director of Hackney-based theatre company Vital Xposure.“So I began to make an experimental short film looking at censorship and blue pen, and Dorothy Lawrence’s story was the springboard for it. Blue Pen is more an art film than anything else and is not a dramatic film,” says McNamara.

“It begins with truth of Dorothy Lawrence’s story and creates in the audience’s mind an atmosphere of Dorothy Lawrence’s interrogation and what became of her.

“It then moves on to give ten names from the last decade who have each been disappeared, the majority executed, and so the final question you’re left with is: what is it with the dangerousness of women telling the truth?”

Vaughn De Leath: The 1st Lady of 1920’s Radio

Female American singer Vaughn De Leath was was a household name in the 1920's earning herself the nicknames "The Original Radio Girl" and the "First Lady of Radio." Nowadays she is mainly regarded as an obscure recording artist, but her fascinating life story and her outstanding contribution both to modern music and to Radio Broadcasting deserve much greater recognition. 

De Leath was an early female exponent of the style of vocal singing known as “crooning”.  One of her later hit songs, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" recorded in 1927 achieved everlasting fame when it was covered by Elvis Presley in 1960. She also originally recorded “I Want To Be Loved By You” - a song that was later made famous by the Hollywood movie star Marilyn Munroe. 

Leonore Vonderlieth was born in the town of Mount Pulaski, Illinois on September 26, 1894. Her parents were George W Vonderlieth, the son of German immigrants Henry Vonderlieth and Catherina Vonderlieth, and Katherine “Katie” Vonderlieth - formerly Miller - who had been a local musician and singer before her marriage. Leonore also had an older sister called Alma but sadly their father died on October 2nd 1901 when his youngest daughter was just 7 years old. 

At the age of 12, Leonore relocated to Los Angeles with her mother and sister, where she finished high school and studied music. Whilst at Mills College, she began writing songs, but she soon dropped out of her studies to pursue a singing career and adopted the stage name of "Vaughn De Leath." which was a play on her German surname. Her vocals ranged from soprano to deep contralto and were well adapted to the emerging, less restrictive jazz vocal style of the era.

The decade named as “The Roaring Twenties” took place in a fast paced, ever- changing world, where automobiles began to roll off the production lines in their thousands and astonished crowds gathered to see the exciting new 'moving pictures'. To prosper or just survive in this innovative and creative decade, one had to be adaptable, intuitive, enterprising and talented. Vaughn De Leath was all of these things and more - as can be heard by the extraordinary breadth of her musical repertoire and her flexible singing style. Such talents were instantly recognized in a survivor and achiever. She was an “all American girl” completely in tune with the modern times.

In January 1920, inventor and radio pioneer Lee DeForest brought her to the tiny studio of his station, 2XG, located in New York City's World's Tower, where she sang "Swanee River" in a live broadcast. This was a whole year before the first broadcasting station went on the air in an experimental way. It was very crude broadcasting in 1920, compared with the kind of work done only seven years later, but when Vaughn de Leath sang her jazzy tunes to satisfy a whim of De Forest, transmission was much cruder. She recalls:  

    "The studio at that time was a very small room, hardly any bigger than a fair-sized closet, and the broadcasting was done by means of an instrument which greatly resembled an old fashioned phonograph horn."

Although this was not, as is sometimes wrongly stated, the first time a female vocalist had  broadcast live, Vaughn nevertheless established herself as a skilled radio performer whilst Radio broadcasting was still in it’s infancy. De Leath wasn't the first female singer to broadcast for Lee De Forest either - a "contralto singer named Van Boos" (Eugenia Farrar) sang "I Love You Truly" for him over an experimental New York City station in 1907.

 De Forest would later say about Vaughn De Leath:

 "She was an instant success. Her voice and her cordial, unassuming microphone presence were ideally suited to the novel task. Without instruction she seemed to sense exactly what was necessary in song and patter to successfully put herself across".

Having been advised that high notes sung in her natural soprano might shatter the fragile vacuum tubes of her carbon microphone's amplifier, De Leath switched to a deep contralto and in the process invented "crooning", which became the dominant popular vocal singing style for the next three decades. 

By 1921, in the formative years of commercial radio, De Leath began singing at WJZ, in Newark, New Jersey (a station later known as WABC in New York City). She also performed on the New York stage in the early to mid-1920s, but radio became her primary medium, and she made a real name for herself as a radio entertainer. She was able to accompany herself on banjo, ukulele, guitar, and piano, and could literally entertain the listeners for hours at a time when there was an excess of programming time and very little recorded material to go on the air with. De Leath also had a highly versatile range of styles, and as the material required, could adapt to become a serious balladeer, a playful girl, a vampish coquette, or a vaudeville comedian.

Her recording career began in 1921. Over the next decade she recorded hundreds of songs for a number of labels, including Edison, Columbia, Okeh, Gennett, Victor, and Brunswick. She occasionally recorded for major label subsidiaries under various pseudonyms such as Gloria Geer, Mamie Lee, Sadie Green, Betty Brown, Nancy Foster, Marion Ross, Glory Clark, Angelina Marco, and Gertrude Dwyer. She literally appeared under one name or another for just about every single US record label around in the 1920s.

The roaring twenties were also known as "The Jazz Years”. The first jazz recording had been made in 1917 by the white jazz band The Original Dixieland Jazz Band and in 1920 it was the black blues singer, Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues”, selling 75,000 copies in Harlem within a month that set the ball rolling for blues records too. But in a racially segregated USA the records of black artists were placed into what the industry then categorised as “Race Recordings” allotting them to issue series of their own. This was black music for a black audience but through artists like Vaughn de Leath the songs could also reach a broader white audience and blur those musical boundaries.

Listening to her recordings and hearing the many musical and subject references to the south, it is difficult to believe that Vaughn De Leath was not born or associated with the South in any way. I Love The Land Of Old Black Joe, was one of several "Southern" style songs that she recorded including Is Ya?, Honey, Honey (l’se A Waitin’ Jes Fo’ You) and Stay In Your Own Backyard and the novelty song Blow, Blow, Blow On Your Old Harmonica, Joe 

Though not mimicking the stereotyped southern black accent Vaughn still accentuated a “slight southern drawl” in her light hearted “popular” songs such as  As Long I’m With You and Since I Found You. These recordings are tantalizing in the way that the listener is left wondering how much of the performance is pure theatre and how much is a true reflection of her character; carefree, humorous and determined? 

Similar clues to her wonderfully comic character are found in  When The Pussywillow Whispers To The Catnip which was also known as The Whisper Song. This comedy song proved to be very popular in 1927 with several recordings of the number being released in the same year by other artists, including Cliff "Ukelele" Ike who had recorded it in the previous month to her release. It’s slightly surreal subject matter and silly sound effects border on the zany and one cannot help but wonder what could have happened had it got into the hands of Spike Jones a few years later.

Dancing The Devil Away was a snappy “hot” jazz number which Vaughn recorded in the company of Don Voorhees And His Earl Carroll Vanities Orchestra - under whose name the record was released. Vaughn also provided the vocals for the flip side of the record The Same Old Moon. 

De Leath's “Crooning” style is beautifully demonstrated on the delicate There’s A Cradle in Carolina. The song is that of the restless, displaced, wandering hobo who at “the end of the road” has journeyed so far only to find himself staring at failure and dreams of returning to the comfort of home. The record was evidently a hit with Gene Austin, Ben Bernie and Nat Shilkret, including the song into their recordings within days of Vaughn’s release.

The knock-about novelty duet with Jack Kaufman I’m Gonna Dance Wit’ De Guy Wot Brung Me (also known as The Gum Chewers Song) was originally written by Walter O’ Keefe with music (for ukulele) by Harry Archer. This wonderful comedy song is made all the more humorous by Vaughn’s attempt to sound like someone from the Bronx when she actually sounds more like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins! 

The gloriously catchy hit song I Can’t Give You Anything But Love had featured earlier in the year in what was to become the longest running black musical of the twenties, “Blackbirds of 1928”. It opened in May of the same year, featuring Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson and singer, Adelaide Hall. The song was written by Dorothy Fields, daughter of the musical’s producer Lew Fields, with music by Jimmy McHugh. Vaughn De Leath recorded it with Ben Selvin's Knickerbockers!

I’ve Got A Feeling I’m Falling was originally written by Billy Rose with music by Thomas “Fats” WaIler. This popular song with it’s Waller trade mark composition does have a diluted jazz feel and Vaughn’s crooning style gives the song great justice. It seems to have been first recorded by Beb Bernie and his Roosevelt Orchestra in late March 1929. “Fats” WaIler, himself, left the piece alone until August, by which time several artists had recorded this hit including Gene Austin and Miff Moler. He did record it was as one of his many piano instrumentals which he then re-recorded six years later, again only as an instrumental.

With her versatile singing style Vaughn approached the moods of her song with great effect, from the lively Marianna to the melancholic love song My Dear which is set against the background of what sounds like the accompaniment of the popular Hawaiian guitarist of the day Frank Ferrara. Her best-known recording over the years was probably the version of "The Man I Love" she sang with Paul Whiteman's Concert Orchestra for Columbia.

De Leath also recorded songs for silent films - she composed the title song for the 1922 silent film Oliver Twist. An article in Spotlight's Glare in The Music Trades (November 11, 1922) described the link with the Jackie Coogan movie as "One of the biggest tie ups ever undertaken in connection with a picture feature song".

De Leath's recording accompanists included some of the major jazz musicians of the 1920s, including cornetist Red Nichols, trombonist Miff Mole, guitarists Dick McDonough and Eddie Lang, and bandleader Paul Whiteman. She demonstrated a high level of instrumental ability on the ukulele, and occasionally accompanied herself on recordings, including on the hit 1925 hit Ukulele Lady, which was covered by Bette Midler. Vuaghns version was later used in the 1999 film, The Cider House Rules

In 1923, Vaughn became one of the first women in America to manage a radio station - WDT in New York City, on which she also performed:

Boston Herald, July 29, 1923

FAMOUS  'RADIO  GIRL'  NOW  OWN  DIRECTOR: 

Miss  De  Leath  Extends  Versatility  as  Manager  of  WDT

Vaughn De Leath, so popular with radio fans through her frequent appearances before the microphone, is about to challenge the approval of radio audiences in a new role--that of studio and program manager of station WDT, now opening for general broadcasting.

Rated among the leading women composers of the country, her songs and musical scores are known to all lovers of good music. As a recording artist, her phonographic records have an enormous circulation, marked by an unusually even distribution over the entire country, due, no doubt, in a large measure, to the great range of her contralto voice (three octaves) and its quality of sympathetic appeal.

This young woman's remarkable versatility is further shown by her high rank as a piano player (not the mechanical kind) and by her success as a director of her own band and orchestra, or more than 60 pieces, as well as her own popularity as a concert singer and recitalist.

Sadly her career as a Director of a Radio Station did not progress any further than that - the station eventually became defunct and Vaughn simply went back to singing again.

She was one of the first American entertainers to broadcast to Europe via a transatlantic radio transmission. The Wireless Age (1923) presented an interview with "Vaughn De Leath, The Original Radio Girl", which recounted the 12:30AM December 9, 1922 WJZ radio broadcast from New York to London.

 The Star-Spangled Banner burst upon the air like the coming of a cyclone. ... And then a voice came in "WJZ - WJZ - WJZ." ... His Majesty's Consul-General in New York then spoke briefly, expressing the hope that radio will be the means of cementing the English- speaking peoples of the world even more closely. Then Vaughn De Leath sang.

This was the first confirmed trans-Atlantic reception of a U.S. broadcasting station ever. 

One of her last newspapers interviews was with The Zanesville Ohio Times in 1927 where she reflected back on her career and described her love of singing on the Radio:

    "I never fail to feel a shiver of joy when I enter a broadcasting room," she says. "My enthusiasm for it is boundless, for each time I feel it is a new experience. My underlying thought always is that, somewhere or other in the extensive ether, there is someone who has never heard me before.That, together with the thought of my faithful listeners, gives me an incentive always to do my best."

 Still one to break broadcasting boundaries, in 1928 she appeared on an experimental television broadcast, and later became a special guest for the debut broadcast of Voice of Firestone Radio Hour.

She made her final nationwide network performances in the early 1930s and in her waning years, she made radio appearances on local New York stations, including WBEN in Buffalo. 

For most of her career Vaughn DeLeath had billed herself as "the First Lady of Radio," but in 1931 she sued singer Kate Smith for also using this name. Smith withdrew, and went back to using her other trademark nickname "the Sweet Songbird of the South”. However it was a bittersweet victory, as after a final recording session for Eli Oberstein's Crown label in 1931, Vaughn De Leath disappeared from the radio and the music business altogether. 

Little is known about what happened in De Leath's personal life after 1931 but from records we know she had two husbands. Her first was Leon Geer, an artist whom she had married in New York on 17 April 1924 and then divorced in 1935. She subsequently wed Jewish musician Irwin Rosenbloom, on June 9, 1936 at Bel Air Methodist Episcopal church, Maryland. Four years later on May 20, 1941 in Reno Nevada she was granted a divorce from Rosenbloom on the grounds of extreme cruelty. Rosenbloom went on to marry the infamous Opera Soprano, Lydia Locke in the 1950’s. (See Separate blog post on Lydia Locke for more details)

  

With the decline of her radio performances, no more recordings being made and two failed marriages behind her, tragically Vaughn De Leath went from being the pioneering "First Lady of Radio" to an alcoholic living in absolute poverty within the space of just 10 short years.

She was only in her late 40’s when she died on May 28, 1943 in Buffalo, New York and her ashes were taken buried in her childhood home of Mount Pulaski, Illinois. 

Her lasting legacy was that she left behind a wonderful collection of songs and music from the early days of recording and broadcasting, which we can still enjoy today. 

©The History Researcher / Chrissy Hamlin