Funeral for A Virgin - Maidens Crowns

A Maiden's Crown

In the seventeenth century, the death of an unmarried young woman was commemorated by the making of an unusual wreath or garland. If you died unmarried, it was considered you were now married to God. So during the funeral procession a garland shaped like a crown, represnting the 'Crown of Glory' would be placed on the coffin or carried before it. The oldest surviving garland was made in 1680 and is displayed at St Mary's Church, in Beverley, Yorkshire. The one below is a drawing of one from Matlock in Derbyshire.

In the early days of Christianity, funeral garlands were emblems of Virgin Martyrs and the practice of making maidens' garlands is likely to have derived from that. The deceased, who in some parishes could be male or female, must have been both baptised and confirmed and have been unmarried before death. During the funeral procession, the funeral crown was suspended from a white rod and carried before the coffin by another young virgin dressed in white. It was common for the crown to hang above the deceased person's pew as a sort of test, for three weeks. If nobody challenged its right to remain, it was then hung permanently from a bracket in the church.

The garland was shaped as a crown, because you would be becoming the 'consort' of  Christ the King, it was a headdress like a wreath, shaped top form a high crown, made of wood and wrapped in white lace. Families would make these for their daughter because she would never have a wedding, and often they included ribbons, handkerchiefs and flowers, both fabric and real. In the spring, primroses were often included, and at other times when flowers were much less plentiful, fake flowers made of ruched paper or cloth were used. Many young girls died of chlorosis, sparking a legend that young unmarried girls who died from this anaemia – of which one sign was a yellow-green complexion – were turned into primroses.

Virgins, time past, known were these,Troubled with Green-sicknesses,Turn’d to flowers: stil the hieuSickly Girles, they beare of you.

Herrick

According to Adkins History Website , their manufacture was described in a letter to the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1747 by a resident of Bromley in Kent:

Minsterley Garland

‘The lower rim, or circlet, was a broad hoop of wood, whereunto were fix’d, at the sides thereof, part of two other hoops, crossing each other at the top at right angles, which formed the upper part, being about one third longer than the width; these hoops were wholly covered with artificial flowers of paper, dy’d horn, or silk, and more or less beauteous, according to the skill or ingenuity of the performer. In the vacancy of the inside, from the top, hung white paper, cut in the form of gloves, whereon was wrote the deceased’s name, age, etc. together with long slips of various-colour’d paper, or ribbons. These were many times intermix’d with gilded or painted empty shells of blown eggs, as farther ornaments; or, it may be, as emblems of the bubbles or bitterness of this life; whilst other garlands had only a solitary hour-glass hanging therein, as a more significant symbol of mortality.’

Gloves and crants

Traditionally the crowns also had gloves tied to them, because gloves symbolised the binding of hands, and the young woman was being 'married' to death and eternity. When the coffin was eventually lowered into the ground, the crown remained in the church, probably displayed over her pew, over her grave, or in the chancel – as a token of her purity and virginity and as a memorial.  Interestingly, the customm was not only for young women, as the pcture below shows, but for any unwed woman.

A more modern crown from Abbots Ann, Hampshire.

In the original version of Hamlet, at Ophelia’s burial, the crown or 'crant' is referred to. The word ‘crants’  is an old Dutch word for a garland or wreath, retained by the Saxons.

Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants, Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home 

Of bell and burial.

Later editors substitute the word 'crants' with  'rites', making the lines easier to understand. Dr Johnson who was the first to explain the word crant,  revealed that the custom was still alive in his day. In earlier centuries it was considered unlucky to remove these garlands, or break bits from them, but as they decayed the fallen pieces were gathered up and buried in the church yard. 

The Minsterley Crowns or Garlands suspended in the church

Very few of these garlands, crowns, or crants survive now - victims of over-zealous cleaning and tidying in churches, and possibly the uncertainty of finding a virgin! But some can still be seen as a poignant reminder, now yellowed with age. The church at Minsterley has the biggest number of seven surviving crowns. Six of them, dating from the first half of the 18th Century, can be seen displayed on the wall of the church. Each one hangs on its own wooden peg which juts from the wall and is finished off a wooden heart, on which are inscribed the maid’s initials and the date of her death. All of the surviving garlands date from the first half of the 18th Century.

The Minsterley garlands have recently been a focus of conservation, and one of them is displayed in a glass case, so vistors can get a close look, But it is a rather sad affair now, disintegrating and brown with age.

Most of my books include a death or two, but so far no virgin deaths. Such an interesting custom deserves to be immortalized in a novel, don't you agree?

Thank you for reading! Find me on Twitter @swiftstory, or on my website www.deborahswift.com, 

Vanished: The Most Mysterious Missing Children Cases from History – By Anna Mazzola

Missing children make headlines: Madeleine McCann, Ben Needham, Jaycee Lee Dugard, Mary Boyle. They also line our bookshelves: The Girl in the Red Coat; What She Knew; Local Girl, Missing; Then She Was Gone.

While we often think of the preoccupation with lost children as being a modern phenomenon, it is in fact an age-old fear, one that is reflected in the lost and abandoned children in fairy tales and myths – Persephone, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, The Snow Queen.

Here I look at some of the infamous cases of missing children throughout history, focussing on cases that remain unsolved or shrouded in mystery.

1. The Lost Children of Hamelin

1592 painting of Pied Piper copied from the glass window of Marktkirche in Hamelin

Many of us remember the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Few are aware that the legend came from a true story, one that is one recorded on the walls of a 16th century building in Hamelin now called The House of the Piper: ‘In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul, the 26th of June, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced by a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours, and lost at the calvary near the koppen.’

The earliest mention of the Pied Piper, in the 1300s, was on a stained-glass window in the Church of Hamelin, which showed a man dressed in colourful clothing leading away a line of children. The earliest written record is from the town chronicles in an entry from 1384 which states: ‘It is 100 years since our children left.’

Although much research has been conducted over the years, there is no agreed explanation as to what happened to the children. Some believe they died of natural causes, were drowned in the nearby river, or were killed in a landslide, with the Pied Piper representing the figure of death. Others say the children may have died of the Black Plague (though the Black Plague didn’t reach Germany until later) or that the story represents mass emigration. Maria J. Pérez Cuervo explores the various theories in her excellent blog piece here.

What is clear is that there were no rats in the original story. They were first added into the story in a 16th century version, and are absent from earlier accounts.

2. The Princes in the Tower 

Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury were 12 and 9 when their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had them locked up in the Tower of London in 1483. This was supposedly in preparation for Edward's forthcoming coronation as king. However, they were taken into the ‘inner apartments of the Tower’ and then were seen less and less frequently. In July 1483 an attempt to rescue them failed. Then they disappeared altogether.

Richard took the throne himself, becoming Richard III, and many believed he had the princes killed in order to secure his hold on the throne. Certainly that was the complexion Shakespeare put on the story. But there are many other potential murderers including Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, or Henry VII. Some have suggested that the princes survived. In 1487, Lambert Simnel initially claimed to be Richard, Duke of York. From 1491 until his capture in 1497, Perkin Warbeck claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, having supposedly escaped to Flanders.

In 1674, workmen at the Tower dug up a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. King Charles II had the bones buried in Westminster Abbey, where they remain, untested. In 1789, workmen carrying out repairs in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, rediscovered and accidentally broke into the vault of Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth Woodville (the parents of the lost princes) discovering a small adjoining vault. This vault was found to contain the coffins of two unidentified children. However, no inspection or examination was carried out and the tomb was resealed. The fate of the princes remains unknown.

3. Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony

Virginia Dare was born in 1587, the first English child born in the New World. Her family was part of a group of 120 Englishmen and women who settled on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now Dare County, North Carolina. A few days after Virginia was born, her grandfather, Governor John White, left for England to obtain more provisions. When he finally returned three years later, Virginia and the entire colony had vanished. Only one clue remained: the word ‘CROATAN’ had been carved on one of the settlement's posts, leading many to believe that the Croatan tribe had kidnapped or killed the settlers.

Governor White and his men continued to search but never found any trace of Virginia or the other settlers. Roanoke Island became known as the Lost Colony.

4. The West Ham Vanishings

During the 1880s and 1890s a series of children and young adults disappeared from the East End of London. The first to vanish was Mary Seward, 14. The second was Eliza Carter, 12, who was reported to have been terrified of a man, or of returning home. The blue dress she had been wearing was recovered from West Ham Park, all of the buttons sliced off, but she was never seen again. The third to disappear was her friend, Clara Sutton. The fourth was Amelia Jeffs, 15, who lived on the same street as Mary Seward. However, Amelia, or “Millie” was found, violated and strangled.

In a 2016 book, Rivals of the Ripper, author Dr Jan Bondeson put forward the theory that a builder named Joseph Roberts, a key suspect in the murder of Amelia Jeffs, was responsible for both the West Ham vanishings and another series of horrible crimes against young girls in Walthamstow in the 1890s.

Others have suggested that, given reports of several strange individuals, including women, in the West Ham vanishings, the abductors may have been human traffickers. No one, however, was ever convicted, and most of the girls were never found. The story was partly the inspiration for my novel, The Story Keeper. 

5. The Strange Case of Bobby Dunbar 

Four year old Bobby Dunbar went missing on a family fishing trip to Swayze Lake, Louisiana, in 1910. After an eight-month nationwide search, investigators believed that they had found the child in Mississippi, in the hands of man called William Cantwell Walters. Dunbar's parents immediately claimed the boy as their missing son. However, both Walters and a woman named Julia Anderson insisted that the boy was in fact Anderson's son. Julia Anderson could not afford a lawyer and had three children out of wedlock, making her an unworthy witness in the eyes of the court, and they eventually found for the Dunbars. Percy and Lessie Dunbar retained custody of the child, who lived out the remainder of his life as Bobby Dunbar.

However, in 2004, DNA profiling established that the boy found with Walters and ‘returned’ to the Dunbars as Bobby had not been a blood relative of the Dunbar family. The fate of the actual Bobby Dunbar remains unknown.

6. Walter Collins: ‘The Changeling’

Nine-year-old Walter Collins was abducted from his home in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles, in 1928. His disappearance received nationwide attention and the LAPD came under increasing public pressure to solve the case.

Five months after the disappearance, a boy claiming to be Walter was found in DeKalb, Illinois and the police organised a public reunion. However, at the reunion, Christine stated that the boy was not her son. Despite the fact that dental records proved the boy was not Walter, the police had Christine Collins committed to a psychiatric hospital for her refusal to say that the child was her son. Only after the boy admitted he was Arthur Hutchins Jr., a runaway from Illinois, did the police release Christine. She went on to win a lawsuit against Captain Jones of LAPD, but he refused to pay up.

Walter Collins, left
Arthur Hutchins Jr, right

Walter was later determined to have been murdered by Gordon Stewart Northcott in what was known as the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. However, Northcott repeatedly changed his account, and seemed not to know what Walter had been wearing, or the colour of his eyes, leading Christine to believe that her son was still alive. He was never found.

The story formed the basis of the 2008 film Changeling.

7. The Sodder Children of 1945

On Christmas Eve, 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder home in West Virginia. George Sodder, his wife Jennie, and four of their children escaped. However, the bodies of five other children – Maurice, 14; Martha 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; and Betty, 5 – were never found. No remains were located in the ashes the morning after the fire.

Throughout their lives, the Sodders believed that the five children had survived. They disputed the fire department's finding that the blaze was electrical. They believed that they had been the victims of arson, leading to theories that the children had been taken by the Sicilian Mafia, perhaps in retaliation for George's criticism of Mussolini and the Fascist government of his native Italy. There were various alleged sightings of the children, including a woman who claimed to have seen the missing children peering from a passing car while the fire was still raging, and another woman who said she had seen the children a month after the fire ‘accompanied by two women and two men, all of Italian extraction’.

The Sodder family converted the site of the razed house into a memorial garden to their lost children. Until the late 1980s a billboard remained at the site showing pictures of the five dark-eyed children and offering a reward for information. The Sodder’s one surviving daughter, along with their grandchildren, have continued to publicize the case and to search for answers. See Karen Abbott’s fascinating piece in the Smithsonian for more.

8. The Beaumont Children: Australia’s Lost Family

At 10am on January 26, 1966, Nancy Beaumont kissed her three children  - Jane, 9, Arnna, 7, and Grant, 4 – before they boarded the bus for a short trip to Glenelg beach near Adelaide. She never saw them again.

Witnesses confirmed the children had made it to the beach and reported seeing them with a ‘tall, blonde, thin-faced’ man in his mid-30s. The last known sighting of the children was at 3pm, when they were seen by a postman they knew, walking up the main road in the general direction of their home. They were holding hands and smiling. They were alone.

The search for the children attracted wide media attention, with various suspects, hoaxes, and theories emerging over the years, and still making headlines over 50 years on.

Neither the children nor any of the items they were carrying have ever been found. For many years, their parents, Jim and Nancy Beaumont, remained at their Somerton Park home, hoping that the children would return. However, they later divorced and are now living separately, away from the public gaze. They still believe that their children may be alive.

9. Megumi Yokata: Kidnapped by North Korea

In November 1977, 13-year-old Megumi Yokota went missing while walking home from her school in Niigata on the Sea of Japan coast. Twenty years later, her family were told she had been kidnapped by North Korean agents. In 2002, North Korea confirmed that it had operated an abduction program, stealing people from Japan and forcing them to teach Japanese language and culture to Pyongyang agents.

Five of the kidnapped were released. However, North Korea claimed that another seven abductees had died of illness or in accidents, and that four others had never entered the country. They said that Megumi had committed suicide in 1994, and been cremated.

However, according to Japanese officials, DNA testing on the cremated remains that were sent to the Yokota family showed that they did not belong to Megumi. Further, her death certificate appears to have been falsified.

To this day, her family, and those of the other abductees, are fighting for answers.


__________________________________________________________

Anna Mazzola is a writer of historical crime fiction. Her second novel, The Story Keeper, will be published on 26 July 2018.

https://annamazzola.com
https://twitter.com/Anna_Mazz

How we talk about history - Gillian Polack

Last month you had a light post. This month you have a more solid one. This is because I want to talk about the effects the effects of the worlds writers create. I was in England for a few days at the end of October. It was entirely unexpected, and this was the reason I forgot half my blogpost. I took a ten thousand mile return trip with only a few days warning and quite a few things were affected by it.

The English branch of my family has been in Australia since the middle of the nineteenth century. This means that my relationship with England is mostly through literature and history. Given I’m a writer and also an historian (an historian of England, to boot) it’s not a simple relationship, but it’s not the same relationship that locals have. I noticed this when I walked through the streets of Exeter and when I talked to people at the university. As an Australian, I’m a favoured visitor, but I’m definitely not a local.

Exeter, autumn, 2017 picture: Gillian Polack

I’m giving you pictures I took in Exeter to remind you of this, for it’s important. Very important.

I teach writers how to write about people who come from different cultural backgrounds to themselves. Many writers have no idea how to do this. They write everything from their own viewpoint, as if another viewpoint is impossible to tell a novel from. 

One thing I love about History Girls and why I am delighted to be writing for them is that these writers are aware of who they are. They write in a complex world. This means they’re less likely to fall back on stereotypes due to lazy thinking. 

Exeter's Halloween 2017, picture: Gillian Polack

All fiction writers use stereotypes and tropes. It’s essential to make a novel work. The problem is when we use them unthinkingly. This is why I have such respect for writers who write about others with that bit of care. 

The thing about historical fiction is that it’s ALL about others. We bring the past into the present in a very personal way. We’re bring the lives of others into our lives. This is why respect is so important. 

Those we write about are dead: they can’t argue back. I wanted to argue with a writer all this afternoon, for she wrote Jews into her fiction in a negative way, as if there is no good in our existence. She’s still around and maybe, one day, I’ll get that discussion. I can’t ask any medieval Jews how they feel about work that associates them with the blood libel, for they’re gone.

‘Respect’ doesn’t necessarily mean being nice. It means understanding. It means taking intellectual and emotional steps and working past stereotypes and past hate and past tradition and finding out as much as we can about the real person.

Respect is complicated, Exeter 2017 picture: Gillian Polack

How does this apply to English history? 

I want to talk about two key points here.

First, England is one of the most written-about places in historical fiction, and certain periods are written about more than others. Regency England, Victorian England, the Middle Ages: these all have their own character for us. This character doesn’t come from the actual places and times, but from the number of novels written about them. All the themes and character types are brought together in our minds and create a fictional England.

The England of our dreams picture: Gillian Polack

This is a subject that’s been really well studied for Regency England in particular. Scholars have traced the differences between the actual England of that time and the influence of Georgette Heyer in creating the way we think about these things fictionally. 

I’m one of a number of Medieval historians who work on understanding these things for the Middle Ages. I’m also part of a number of historians who spend time teaching writers how to look beyond the fictional view and to see the people hidden beneath the stories and stereotypes. This is why The Middle Ages Unlocked exists. Writers said to me “We like it that you want us to think harder and do more research, but it isn’t easy – write us a reference book.” Katrin Kania and I did that. That was a much earlier stage in a conversation between historians, readers and writers that will probably last my whole life.

The stage I’m at now is a more troublesome one. 

When I teach world building to writers, I teach them how to think about and research the world for their novel. Traditionally, world building is a subject taught to writers who use fantastical worlds: science fiction and fantasy, for the most part. I teach it to all writers. Novelists who are setting a story in their own street are not actually setting it in the precise world they live in. We write fiction, after all. I use world building techniques as tools to help writers sort this out and create a better story.

Many writers who use history in their fiction tend to ‘own’ the history. They’ve built it for their novel, with a great deal of heart and a truckload of work. This is not a problem if they see it as building a world for their novel, for they’re owning the history for the world of their novel. It can be close to us, but it isn’t us. It can be based on real history, but it’s not the same thing. 

When they say it’s real history, a writer claims deep and special insights into the lives of others. Some of these claims are genuine: they share their characters with us. They don’t share all interpretations of historical people, however, only their own. 

Going back to where I began, this is important in another way, which is my second point. When I or someone else from outside England write about England, when any of us write about a place and time that’s not our own, we need to remember that our special ownership, as writers, doesn't have a more important cultural place than the lives of people who live there. 

Real people lie in our dream places   picture: Gillian Polack

If I were to write a story of Exeter or even a history of Exeter, I’d be writing it as an outsider. This isn’t actually a problem. Outsiders have special insights. Our responsibility is to remember that those who live in a country are connected more strongly than we are. That we write about their home. 

Even our special insights should never be permitted to eradicate their relationship and understanding of their own homeland. 

We entertain. We enrich. We create. But we should do all this with respect.

Sibling rivalry, Shakespeare style, by Vanora Bennett

I come from a family of rivalrous, competitive siblings. So I was horribly fascinated by the tomb I found at Southwark Cathedral. This is where Edmund, youngest of the Shakespeare brothers, who was an actor in Southwark, was buried when a bout of plague in 1607 took him off, aged 27. You'll see why I was struck as soon you take a closer look at the picture of the tomb below.



Yes ... The image on the memorial statue, and also on the stained-glass window above it, is not that of Edmund Shakespeare at all, local boy though he was - but of his more famous big brother. Picture the horror of that - if, even in death, you couldn't get your own memorial to yourself but had to continue a jealous-sibling seethe through all eternity. I can so easily imagine the rage, the turning in the grave.



Sibling rivalry is a bit of a theme in (William) Shakespeare's plays. King Lear provokes rivalry among his three daughters by asking them to describe their love for him; Cordelia, our heroine, is much more bashful than her scheming sisters Goneril and Regan about singing her father's praises, with unfortunate consequences. In the same play, Edmund contrives to force his half-brother Edgar into exile. In The Taming of the Shrew, sisters Kate and Bianca are shown fighting bitterly. In As You Like It, there is obvious sibling rivalry and antagonism between Orlando and Oliver, and also between Duke Frederick and Duke Senior. And, in Richard III, the bitter, twisted, evil, hunchbacked title character is at least partly motivated by rivalry with his handsome blond elder brother, King Edward.

I think this proves not only that William knew a thing or two about sibling rivalry, but also that it strongly suggests he learned what he knew back home in Stratford with his annoying younger brothers and sisters. Possibly even mostly with the baby of the family, the coddled mummy's darling.

So just to even things up, today I'm going to tell you the story of Edmund, the last of the Shakespeare siblings. His mother Mary gave birth to her eighth child in 1580 when she was forty years old and her husband John (a wool and corn trader, and a glover, with a sideline in money-lending) was forty-nine. They christened the baby on May 3. Though their family fortunes were in decline, Edmund had four, healthy, living siblings; William, aged 16, Gilbert, aged 14, Joan, aged 11 and Richard, aged 6.

As the youngest of the family, it is easy to deduce that Edmund is quite likely to have been spoiled. Due to the poor state of the family fortunes, he also probably didn't get much of an education. He must have idolised (but perhaps also horribly envied) his eldest brother, William, and been attracted by the stories told by his brother and of the colourful life in the theatres of London. When Edmund turned 16, his family's finances improved - but his parents were getting old, Stratford was not sophisticated, and Edmund headed straight for the bright lights of London to set up as an actor, in emulation of (or competition with) his theatrical brother.

William, 16 years older, may have helped the youngest Shakespeare. Edmund may have appeared in some of William's plays. We do not know. Edmund did not become a famous actor, though; and he was only 27 when he died (possibly of the plague - an outbreak the following year is documented).

William would have been the one who arranged his brother's funeral and the attendance of many fellow actors. It was customary for funerals to be conducted in the afternoon, but so was it customary to show plays at that time, and the records show that Edmund's funeral was conducted in the morning (perhaps marking William's priorities, but also those of the actors present). Edmund was buried in the Southwark church then known as St. Saviour's on December 31 1607. His funeral was expensive - a sign of feeling on the part of a mourner? - and was probably financed by his brother. Tolling bells were heard across the Thames. It is not known whether any other members of the family, including his brothers and sisters, were present at the burial.

At first, on finding out all this, there was no limit to my sympathy for the poor younger brother, striving so hard, yet forgotten by history. It felt easy to make William the bad-guy sibling in my mental picture of their relationship - a man exasperated by the squeaking wannabe bobbing along in his wake, and lavishing money on Edmund's funeral. Perhaps he felt just a tiny bit guilty at that irritation. Perhaps he was relieved to be the only Shakespeare in the London theatre again.

But I gradually realised that the stained-glass window and statue that tourists and worshippers can see today in Southwark Cathedral's South Aisle were not the mark of an ego-maniacal elder brother stamping out every last trace of his younger competitor.

Edmund wouldn't have turned in his grave at being commemorated by a statue of his brother for a good few centuries after being buried, either. The recumbent alabaster figure of William Shakespeare turns out to be modern, a 20th-century addition. It was carved by Henry McCarthy only in 1912, seven years after St Saviour's had been given cathedral status and was being upgraded with an elaborate programme of Edwardian improvements.

And there is still a trace of Edmund in the Cathedral, though you do have to look pretty hard to find it. Although the position of his grave is unknown, he is commemorated by an inscribed stone in the paving of the Choir.

Vanora Bennett's website: www.vanorabennettauthor.com

Elizabeth II’s 90th Birthday by Janie Hampton

On April 21st Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith, will be 90 years old.
When Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of York was born in 1926, her handsome and popular 32-year-old uncle, the Prince of Wales (later the Duke of Windsor), was heir to the throne. His younger brother, Elizabeth’s father, the Duke of York, enjoyed the traditional pursuits of a country gentleman, such as shooting pheasants and dancing Scottish reels. He took his daughter fox-hunting on her pony ‘Peggy’ when she was four years old. His favourite dog was a Labrador called ‘Stiffy’. Little ‘Lilibet’ called her adored grandfather, King George V, ‘Grandpa England’.

Princess Elizabeth aged 3 

George V died in 1936 and when Edward VIII abdicated a year later, Elizabeth’s shy father became King George VI and she became ‘Heir Presumptive’. Never ‘Heir Apparent’, because there was always the possibility that her father would produce a legitimate son who would automatically take precedence over any older sisters. The 10-year-old girl watched her father’s coronation in Westminster Abbey with quiet dignity and reserve.

Aged 7, painted by Philip de Laszlo

The Girl Guides Association has always been across
the road from Buckingham Palace

Princess Elizabeth had the finest private tutors in the country, headed by the vice-provost of Eton College. She studied constitution, American history, the Commonwealth, French and German. She was made to stand for many of her lessons, so that she would get used to the long hours on her feet watching regiments march past. She visited museums, factories, the Bank of England, the House of Commons and the Royal Courts of Justice – to see for herself how her country worked.

 

Marion Crawford, the royal governess, was determined that her charges, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, should live normal lives, and their parents wanted them to be members of the community. ‘Just how difficult this is to achieve, if you live in a palace, is hard to explain,’ wrote ‘Crawfie’. ‘A glass curtain seems to come down between you and the outer world, however hard a struggle is made to avoid it.’

In 1937 Miss Crawford suggested that the princesses become Girl Guides, so that they could understand the lives of ordinary children, and maybe even meet some. Their aunt, the Princess Royal, was President of the Girl Guides Association and recommended they meet the formidable Miss Violet Synge, who had driven ambulances during the First World War. She was appalled at the idea. ‘One of my greatest difficulties,’ wrote Crawfie, ‘was to get people to realise that these two little girls wanted only to be treated as any other normal and healthy little girls of their own ages.’ Nevertheless, the 1st Buckingham Palace Guide Company of twenty Guides was born and Miss Synge became its first Captain (and later Guide Commissioner for England).

Girl Guides Princess Elizabeth & Princess Margaret sent a message to other
Guides by carrier pigeon on Thinking Day, February 22, 1943.

The Company, made up of daughters of court officials and palace employees, met in the summerhouse in the palace garden. The King made one stipulation. ‘I’ll stand anything,’ he said, ‘but I won’t have them wear those hideous long black stockings. Reminds me too much of my youth.’ So the Palace Guides wore knee-length beige socks, an innovation soon adopted by Guides everywhere. Some of the new recruits didn’t quite understand the point about Guides and the purpose of uniform, and arrived in party frocks with white gloves, accompanied by their nannies who wanted to stay and watch. ‘We soon put a stop to all that,’ said Miss Crawford.

After the Blitz began over London in 1940, many people thought that the two princesses should be evacuated to the safety of Canada. But their parents were adamant that the Royal Family would stick together and bear the same risks as other British families. However, unlike most British families, they had a spare castle, and the girls and their governess moved to Windsor, where they remained until the end of the war. Despite this seclusion, the princesses were encouraged to perform, and Elizabeth played Principal Boy, in powdered wig and breeches, in pantomimes of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Aladdin. At a fundraising concert in Windsor Castle, she led the singing of rounds, sea shanties and Negro spirituals.

Aged only 15, Elizabeth addressed the children of Britain on the wireless. She told them that she sympathised with those who had been evacuated, as she too was often separated from her parents (though the King and Queen made it back to Windsor Castle most nights). ‘When peace comes, remember it will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place. My whole life shall be devoted to your service, but I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do,’ she announced in her clear, piping voice.

Like these Kent Guides, Princess Elizabeth
learned to cook on a camp fire.

In 1942, Princess Elizabeth, like any other 16-year-old girl, went along to the Labour Exchange in Windsor to register for National Service. She had by then attained Guide proficiency badges vital for her future career as a modern monarch: Swimmer, Dancer, Horsewoman, Child Nurse, Needlewoman and Interpreter. The last was especially useful for a queen: she could identify over fifty flags, including the Royal Standard, and tell foreigners where to find the main ports of Britain, the value of British money, and advise about local hotels, buses and cafés.

A year later, she became a Sea Ranger and learnt how to sail, cook in cramped quarters and re-leather rowing oars. ‘Slit trenches had been dug for the camp by the Grenadier Guards and air raid drill was taken by Company Sergeant Major of the Grenadiers,’ stated The Guider magazine. Her Majesty the Queen had tea in the camp and was taken out in a rowing boat, coxed by her daughter. Round the campfire, Princess Elizabeth sang shanties and took part in a sketch called ‘Mein Kamp’.

For her 18th birthday, the Girl Guides Association gave the princess a tent, a sleeping bag and a rucksack containing a looking glass, an ‘oil-silk sponge-bag’ and an aluminium egg cup.

By June 1945, press censorship of the weather had been lifted, and The Guider revealed that Princess Elizabeth made a speech in the pouring rain, to five thousand Girl Guides in Wales.

That same year Elizabeth was commissioned into the Auxiliary Territorial Service (later the Women’s Royal Army Corps) and was posted to the ‘No. 1 Mechanical Transport Training Centre’. Already a Colonel in the Grenadier Guards, Second-Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor (No. 230873) studied military law and learned how to drive and maintain cars, lorries and ambulances. The report on her performance by the Royal Corps of Transport Officers stated: ‘Extremely quick to learn, she is not rash, and drives with consideration and thought for others on the road, and with every care for her car.’

At 90 years old, and after 64 years on the throne, she still drives her Land Rover herself.

Happy Birthday, Lilibet!

Janie Hampton is the author of ‘Rationing & Revelry – the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II 1953’, available as a Kindle Single.  © Janie Hampton