HIST 4420 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Childrens Hospital
About Lady Matthews:
- Lady Matthews – a woman who was really ahead of her time;
- Before the war broke out she was very involved in social work:
- In 1910, she spent some time in a Woman’s Settlement in the East End of London;
- In 1911, she served as a nurse in Children’s Hospital in England; and
- In 1912 she acted as a Poor Law Guardian in Scarabourough;
- In 1914, she worked as a secretary of the Scarbourought Women’s Suffrage Society and she
continued to work there up until women got their vote.
- She has a husband who is at the front and three children: two boys and a girl;
- In he journal she talks mostly about food, horses, rumors and refugees;
Food shortage:
- In her journal she wrote that once the war was officially declared, a panic broke out and food
supplies came under pressure as people began buying everything they could;
- She recorded that several food shops closed earlier in her neighbourhood because they were
emptied by anxious shoppers.
- At some point the soliders were ordered to shoot a warning bullet to stop the madness.
- She indicates that Britain reallied relied on her exports because the prices on wheat and meat
continued to grow every year; in the first year of war it grew approximately 60 per cent
immidiatly;
- I got the impression that Lady Matthews was not impacted by that too much;
- She wrote that there were rumors that farmers were holding back their stock because they were
afraid that they themsleves won’t have enough food saved for Christmas.
- She also mentioned that people were not confident in the meat they were byuing because
sometimes butchers sold the meat of dead cats;
- She also described several cooking books that were published to give women ideas for reciepts
that used leftover foods. She wrote that: in the kictehn we exercise the most rigid economy – we
have a list of puddings that do not require eggs – we are living even more simplier than before.
- In terms of war ethusaism, according to Lady Matthews people were quiet, sad and pissimisitc.
The horses were taken for war efforts everyday, it was a very depressing view.
- She also wrote that there were rumors about spies; people were constantly arrested esepcially
photographers;
- Rumors were also spreading that Russians are about to enter the war; she does not believe they
will.
- Lady Matthews also wrote down several conversations she had with women; she writes:
Yesterday I had a led with a widow whose only child is at the down. She is miserable, paces up
and down her room at night. Foreaken by sleen. She die a hundred death a day in her anxiety for
him.
- Laddy Matthews also gives an account on refugees, she saw a woman with 5 little girls – they
walked for 3 days and 3 nights without stopping – there was no skin on their feet. There are
German soldiers and spies among the refugees; In October approximately 10, 000 refugees from
Belgium arrived in a single day;
