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Forewoman Mary Jamieson
Women's Army Auxiliary Corps 2nd Artists Rifles OTC
from:Tullibody, Clackmannanshire
After the death of my aunt, in Australia in 2007, a box of her memorabilia arrived at my house. Among the items was a very faded photo of a WW1 soldier in uniform, wearing a Military Medal ribbon, on the back of which my aunt had written “This is a photograph of my father who died of wounds in 1918. He was the eldest son of an old English Catholic family”. His shoulder badge is unfortunately too faded to clearly make out the lettering/numbers displayed.
My aunt also left a photo herself and one of her elder brother, both as young children. This tied in with what my late mother told us, that her mother had had two children by this unnamed soldier. Having tracked down the birth details of the other child we ordered the birth certificates but, unfortunately, in both cases, the father’s name was missing. The fact that the father may not have been present to register the birth if serving in France may be one reason why it was left blank.
My grandmother, Mary Jamieson, was born in the small Scottish village of Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, and died in London in 1949, sadly before my sister and I ever had the chance to meet her. In 1911, her two brothers and one of her sisters already having earlier emigrated to the U.S. and to Canada, she is on the census as being in service in Stirling. Perhaps because of a Suffragette rally held there, although we don’t know exactly when, she was inspired to move to London and became involved in women’s suffrage. According to my late mother, she mixed in some quite elevated circles and at times spoke at Speakers’ Corner on the subject.
Among the people she is said to have had contact with were members of the Brooke family, distantly related to the Earls of Warwick, it being a time when class barriers were becoming less rigid, especially among those supporting women’s rights. Many years afterwards she would regale her second family, including my mother, with tales of her early life and was clearly ahead of her time with regard to equality for women.
She joined the WAAC – my mother said she was one of the first so we assume early in 1917 – and had the rank of Forewoman. With her catering background, we assume it was in this capacity that she was employed, and at some point she was stationed somewhere outside Lille in France. As we have no date for this it is unclear as to whether she would have been there as a WAAC or in some other auxiliary capacity. The only documentation we have is a postcard photo of her taken with several other WAACs on the back of which she wrote “WAAC 2nd Artists Rifles, Romford OTC, Essex”, the photographer being G.W. Secretan, Regimental Photographer to the Artists Rifles OTC. I have been told that the photo number, 5025, shows it was taken around October 1918. Unfortunately, her service record did not survive the Blitz and so we have no details of her time with the WAAC.
She was living and working in Marylebone, London, when she gave birth to her first child, John, in January 1916 in the hospital at Marylebone Workhouse, her occupation given as servant. Two years later, in June 1918, while working in the Euston area as a cook, she gave birth to my aunt, Mary Joan (always known as Joan), in the hospital at St Pancras Workhouse.
It is hard to imagine how difficult it must have been for her without the support of a husband or any nearby family, and understandable that she felt she had no choice but to give up John to friends to look after. We don’t know when this happened but she must have kept in touch with the family because of the photo my aunt had of him as a boy. My mother vaguely remembered that the elder child had been unofficially adopted by friends of my grandmother in Leamington Spa but with no family connections in that area we didn’t expect to find out any more about him.
However, through the internet and after many postings we managed to locate the granddaughter of the family who took him in. We exchanged photos and he was clearly the same boy, although she had been under the impression that he had been an orphan. Sadly she could offer no clues as to how the adoption came about and knew of no WAACs in her family. We subsequently managed to contact some members of John’s family, but they knew nothing about his story and sadly had no photographs either.
Perhaps the adoptive family was that of one of her WAAC friends? My mother had no memory of ever meeting her older half-brother John, just knew he had been adopted, so clearly he didn’t feature in my grandmother’s later family. Joan, however, was part of my mother’s family growing up.
We have undertaken a great deal of research in trying to identify the soldier – did she meet him while as a WAAC at Hare Hall? But as John was born in 1916 she must have known him in early 1915 at which point there was no WAAC. Was there a Warwickshire connection via the Brooke family and the fact that John was ‘adopted’ by a family there? Was his name John, given that it was quite customary for the first children to be named after their parents, as with Mary Joan?
Mary Joan was baptised at St Pancras Church in Euston Road in July 1918, and my mother’s story was that her godmother had been a “Lady Joan someone” hence her middle name. A pity it wasn’t a Catholic baptism where godparents’ names are included in the church record. My grandfather’s surname was Reid and he and my grandmother went on to have six more children, five of whom surviving childhood. Curiously, on the birth certificate of the eldest of these children, my late uncle George, the mother’s name is written “Mary Reid, nee Jamieson, formerly Cameron”. None of the younger children’s birth certificates include the name Cameron. As my grandfather would have been the person registering the birth, he must have had a reason to include it, but having checked both English and Welsh marriage records, as well as those held in Scotland, there was no marriage between a Mary Jamieson and someone by the name of Cameron during the years in question. While my grandmother’s paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Cameron it seems unlikely that this was the reason for its inclusion. Was this the soldier’s surname? If so, he sounds more Scottish than English, but if he was Catholic there might have been a reason he and my grandmother didn’t marry as she was brought up a Scots Presbyterian.
The centenary of our unknown soldier’s death seems an appropriate time to try and get to the bottom of this mystery and we hope his identity will eventually emerge after so many years of searching.
