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Elsie Lavinia Gibbs
Place of birth: Grangetown, Cardiff
Service: Munitions worker
Death: 1918/07/01, National Shell Factory, Chilwell, Nottingham, Explosion / Ffrwydrad
Memorial: Saltmead Gospel Hall, Grangetown, Cardiff, Glamorgan
Notes: Elsie was born in 1901, and lied about her age to work in munitions (minimum age was 18). She was posted to the National Shell Filling Factory, Chilwell in Nottingham, where she died in the explosion that killed 133 others, the worst civilian tragedy during the War. Her body was never identified, and she was buried in a mass grave with 101 other unidentified victims.
Sources: www.grangetownwar.co.uk
Reference: WaW0211
Munitions workers
Group of munitions workers. Elsie is to the right of the man with the moustache, collar and tie, middle row. Presumably taken at Chilwell.
Death certificate
Copy of Elsie’s death certificate, giving cause of death ‘presumed killed as result of explosion – Deceased know[n] to have been in works at time and since missing’. It gives her age, erroneously, as 19, and describes her as a ‘powder worker, daughter of Albert Gibbs’ with a Nottingham address. Her father was Albert Gibbs, but he lived in Dorset St, Grangetown, Cardiff.
Edith Mary Tonkin
Place of birth: Sandford Devon
Service: Ward maid, VAD, 1917/11/06 – 1918/10/13
Death: 1918-10-13, 3rd General Hospital Le Treport, Pneumonia / Niwmonia
Memorial: War memorial, Llandaff, Glamorgan
Notes: Edith was born on a farm in Devonshire in 1892. She moved to Cardiff when her father inherited a pub from his uncle. She worked as a ward maid at the 3rd General hospital in Tréport, France, where she died aged 26. Her name appears on Llandaff war memorial with that of her younger brother William John (Jack), who died at the battle of Loos in 1915.
Reference: WaW0061
headstone
Headstone commemorating Edith Mary Tonkin, Mount Huon Military Cemetery Normandy. Courtesy Peter Bennett Dewberry Yorkshire
Tonkin family
Photograph of the Tonkin family on the family farm in Devon, c 1910. Courtesy Maureen Roberts, Western Australiarn
Maud Williams
Place of birth: Llanharry ?
Service: Nurse
Memorial: Penuel Chapel , Llanharry, Glamorgan
Notes: Nothing is known of Nurse Maud Williams , whose name appears on the Roll of Honour in Penuel Chapel, Llanharry
Reference: WaW0171
Eva Martha Davies
Place of birth: Llantwit Major ?
Service: Nurse, VAD, Aug / Awst-1914 - 1918
Death: 1918-06-16, Newport, Septic poisoning contracted on duty. Gwenwyno septig a gafwyd tra ar ddyletswydd
Memorial: War memorial, Llantwit Major, Glamorgan
Notes: Worked at Newport Hospital. Eva’s photograph was collected by the Women’s Subcommittee of the Imperial War museum as part of its collection of women who died during the War. Two of Eva’s brothers were killed in France. Daughter of Mary Davies (WaW0172),
Reference: WaW0008
Eva Martha Davies
Eva’s photograph was collected by the Women’s Subcommittee of the Imperial War museum as part of its collection of women who died during the War.
C A Howell
Place of birth: Neath ?
Service: Nurse, ‘Red Cross Nurse’ (VAD) ‘Nyrs y Groes Gochï¿
Death: January 1918 / Ionaw, Cause not known
Memorial: Soar Maes-yr-haf Chapel,, Neeath, Glamorgan
Notes: C A Howell’s name appears on the Roll of Honour in Soar Maes-yr-haf Chapel, Neath. She is described as a Red Cross Nurse.
Reference: WaW0138
Roll of Honour, Soar Maes-yr-haf Chapel
Name of Miss C A Howell Red Cross Nurse on Roll of Honour, Soar Maes-yr-haf Chapel, Neath
Emily Ada Pickford (née Pearn)
Place of birth: Penarth
Service: Entertainer
Death: -1919-07.02, River Somme, Drowning / Boddi
Memorial: War memorial, Penarth, Glamorgan
Notes: aged 37. A member of one of Lena Ashwell's Concert Parties, she died when the car in which she was a passenger skidded into the River Somme on the way back from a concert. Buried Abbeville Community Cemetery Extension Plot V, Row G, Grave 23
Reference: WaW0043
Penarth War Memorial
Name of Emily Pickford on Penarth War Memorial. She was a singer who drowned in an accident in the Somme January 1919
Florence Gwendolin Howard
Place of birth: Pontypridd ?
Service: Staff Nurse, Territorial Nursing Service/Gwasanaeth Nyrsio Tiri
Death: 1914-11-18, Not known, Septic poisoning / Gwenwyno septig
Memorial: St Catherines Church, grave Glyntaff Cemetery, Pontypridd, Glamorgan
Notes: Nothing is currently known of Florence Howard.
Sources: http://twgpp.org/information.php?id=2257521; http://www.qaranc.co.uk/war_graves_memorials_Nurse/Nyrss.php
Reference: WaW0026
St Catherine’s Church, Pontypridd
Name of Florence Howard on war memorial plaque in St Catherine’s Church, Pontypridd
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Thomas
Place of birth: Seven Sisters
Service: Nurse, QAIMNSR, 1915 - 1920
Death: 1921/09/27, Neath ?, Tuberculosis / Y dicléin
Memorial: Seven Sisters , Glamorgan
Notes: Born in 1890, Lizzie attended Neath County School and trained as a nurse at Swansea General and Eye Hospital. She volunteered for QAIMNS Reserve in 1915, and was sent to Salonika via Egypt in November. It is said that the troopship she was on was torpedoed, and that she spent some hours in the water. She returned home in December 1916, and in January 1917 was given a reception by the local community, including the presentation of a medal and the singingof an embarrassingly effusive poem in Welsh. She spent the rest of the War, until she was demobbed in October 1920, at Fort Pitt Military Hospital, Chatham. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross in April 1919. Lizzie returned home to nurse in Neath, but died less than a year later of TB. Her name appears on the Seven Sisters War Memorial
Sources: Jonathan Skidmore: Neath and Briton Ferry in the First World War
Reference: WaW0477
Poem / song
The embarrassing song performed at the reception for Nurse Thomas in January 1917. ‘Composed by Mr R. D. Harris and sung by Messrs. D. T. Davies and John Hughes’. Llais Llafur 6th January 1917
Army Form W. 3538
Lizzie Thomas’s new posting to Fort Pitt Military Hospital, Chatham, 1st September 1917
Edith E Copham
Service: Munitions Worker
Death: 1918-11-18, NEF Pembrey, Ffrwydrad
Memorial: Cenotaph, Swansea, Glamorgan
Notes: aged 19. She was killed in the same explosion as Mary Fitzmaurice and Jane Jenkins; MF and EEC shared a public funeral.
Sources: Explosion report Herald of Wales 14th December 1914; Funeral report South Wales Weekly Post 30 Nov 1918 / Adroddiad am y ffrwydrad Herald of Wales 14eg Rhagfyr 1914; Adroddiad am yr angladd South Wales Weekly Post 30ain Tachwedd 1918
Reference: WaW0002
Mary D Davies
Place of birth: Swansea
Service: Unknown, ATS
Memorial: Cenotaph, Swansea, Glamorgan
Notes: Nothing is currently known of Mary D Davies, who worked, perhaps as a WAAC, in the Army Transport Service.
Reference: WaW0119