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 21st 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 19th 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 19th 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 9th
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 6th birthday on the 11th
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 6th 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’.
No comments:
Post a Comment