Annette Laing's Non-Boring History

This is an Annette on the Road post at Non-Boring History, in which your host, historian Annette Laing, plays tourist around the US and UK.

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Note from Annette

James Garfield belongs to that select group of American presidents whom people remember—if at all— for being assassinated.

Look, I’m not an exception to “people”. I’m a historian, sure. Dr. Laing, that's me! But historians don't know everything about history. Not even in our own subjects. Not even close. Or close to close.

Hoosen and I did not mean to stop at President James Garfield’s home. But while Hoosen was peering at our tires in this land-that-time-forgot-yet-cool gas station parking lot in Mentor, Ohio, I peered at Google Maps. I noticed we were a half mile from the James A. Garfield House, and that it’s owned by the National Parks Service.

Sorry, libertarians, but even non-historian Hoosen has noticed that a federal government museum is a guarantee of high quality, and as is sometimes the case, as here, it means free admission. Think of the taxpayer value as I spread the word and you read it! Trust me, there's no commercial value in a Garfield museum, but there is value.

This museum isn't about Garfield's extremely short presidency (100 days) much less his political career. It's about James Garfield’s home, and what happened to that home after his untimely death.

Home, Sweet Home!

Middle class Victorians—American and British— put the family home on a pedestal. Until now, the home for most Americans had been a workplace, a farm or a shop or a workshop, where the whole family worked together, ate, and slept.

But big changes in the economy in the 19th century meant that many men of the new middle class now left the home to work, kind of the reverse of going remote. Such men now thought of home sentimentally, as a cosy refuge from a cruel and complicated world. Their wives (typically more educated than their predecessors) continued to stay home, but now had servants to do much of the drudgery. Middle-class women were encouraged to consider the home their domain.

The Garfields were no exception. This estate, Lawnfield, is their home, and it appears largely as it did when Mrs. Garfield died. The lawn of its name would become more important than the field.

When the Garfields bought Lawnfield, however, it was a working farm. Garfield bought this place because he wanted his kids to grow up on a farm, just like he had, only with more money.

James Garfield thought that farms were an essential part of a great, healthy childhood. Which is striking, because James Garfield was an unlikely champion of the “good old days”: He helped usher in the modern age.

Garfield fought in the Civil War, tried to improve civil rights and education for newly freed slaves, and even participated in the great money grab as the American “gilded age” began. He also added eleven rooms to his farmhouse to accommodate the family in comfort, so his commitment to the simple farm life had its limits. Yet James Garfield wasn’t entirely comfortable with modern life.

Garfield had grown up in what historians call a “face to face” society, in which people mostly dealt with people they knew, or at least recognized. Even the “front porch” political campaign technique James Garfield invented harked back to an earlier time: On Lawnfield's front porch, he met voters. But he also met there with newspaper reporters who communicated his words around the nation and the world- very modern.

Lawnfield, as a farm, was mostly cosplay for the Garfields. Most of the farmwork at Lawnfield was done by hired men. But James and the children also dabbled at farm chores, pitching hay to build character.

James Garfield was a self-made and possibly a teensy bit corrupt politician (see Credit Mobilier scandal).

I’ve written at Non-Boring History about an over-the-top monument to two of the most scandalous men involved in Credit Mobilier :

So James Garfield was very much a man of the mid-19th century. He was torn between the modern world of cities and business, and the agricultural world of his youth that was fast disappearing.

What I most enjoyed about visiting Lawnfield was that about 80% of the house furnishings really had belonged to the Garfields, which is very unusual for a house museum.

Let me rush to add that I'm not one of those people who's super-interested in old furniture. No, what I liked about the Garfield house is that I felt (rightly or wrongly) that I could sense the family personality. No, no ghosts, please. I'm a historian, for heavens’ sake. I have some standards. No, okay, I don’t, I love ghost stories, but not today.

Home Shadowy Home: American Victorians

I love a gloomy, gaslit Victorian house. Yes, ok, the Garfield home is all-electric now for health and safety, but work with me here. The house is dark, cluttered, and makes me think of arsenic poisoning, and other morbid mid-Victorian subjects.

Look, the problem isn’t me, at least I don't think it is. Victorians were weird, and especially the people I think of as mid-Victorians, a period I am going to date from 1851 to 1875, based on British historian Geoffrey Best’s definition of mid-Victorian Britain. In this case, those dates marking off the era work fairly well for America too. Oh, what the hey. If Geoffrey Best could decide when a historical period ends, so can Annette Laing! I say 1881 for the end of the mid-Victorian era. Oh, that's the year James Garfield died? You don't say. Perfect! 1881 it is!

ANNOUNCEMENT from the NBH QUALITY CONTROL GNOME : Dr. Laing is correct that historians can argue for changes in commonly-accepted dates for the beginning and end of historical periods. Most historians, however, would consider changing the ending date of the British mid-Victorian era simply because a United States president, in Annette’s words, “snuffed it” that year is, however, unconvincing. Thank you.

Mid- Victorians like James Garfield lived in an increasingly modern age, and yet death stalked the land like, as the old BBC historical sitcom Blackadder would put it, a giant stalking thing.

Americans and Brits, especially those living in cities, were defenseless against disease. Antibiotics were almost a century in the future. Anesthetics and antiseptics were in their infancy. Germs were a new concept. Sewer systems and clean water were a novelty. Victorians were only just learning that illness wasn't a product of “bad air” (note those high ceilings and lots of windows in Victorian institutions).

Result? Children, especially, died in horrifying numbers. James and Lucretia Garfield lost two kids in infancy, and James himself was named for a brother, James, who had died young. Get a little shudder at the idea of naming a child after a deceased sibling? Welcome to history!

How gloomy is this hallway in the Garfield House? In fact, my wonderful phone camera automatically brightened up the room: It was actually darker than you see. Here’s Claire, our NPS tour guide (but without the intimidating Smokey the Bear uniform) who was full of energy, knowledge, and good cheer, which while appreciated, seemed at first to be all wrong for this setting. I was thinking we should have been led by some guy dressed as Lurch the Butler from the Addams family.

This hall wasn't a welcoming space to strangers when the Garfields lived here. Most callers had to run through a selection process. When a servant greeted you at the door, she looked you up and down to see if you were suitable for admission. If you passed her first test, she invited you into this hall, and you deposited your visiting card on a waiting plate. A visiting card was basically like a business card, except that only your name was on it. If you graduated high school in the US, you may recall the company that expensively printed your graduation invitation also hit you up for visiting cards. A rip off, wasn’t it?

Right. Anyway. So the servant now shows you into the reception area (entryway is in the photo above, next to the dude on the left who’s staring at the ceiling). Here you wait awkwardly, standing or sitting on a bench or upright chair, while the maid takes the card upstairs to the mistress of the house. She will decide whether to come down and receive you in the parlor, or whether she will instruct the maid to tell you she's unavailable (at least to you) and show you the door. Until then, you are not admitted into the family home.

Indeed, there were sliding wooden “pocket” doors in this reception room which were closed so you can’t see into the family room or the dining room that leads off it. The pocket doors are now gone, but they were once there, as I pointed out to a surprised Claire the guide, who examined the doorways and confirmed my hunch, while everyone else wondered how that funny little British woman knew such a thing, or thought me some ghastly showing-off Karen.

This reception area, created for the purposes of the odd little ritual I just described, wasn’t here when the Garfields moved in, or even when James died. It was originally the kitchen. The reception area was devised by Mrs. Garfield after her husband's death. That's because, in her very public widowhood, Mrs. Garfield had further converted the home from workplace to middle-class family sanctuary.

On Garfield (man, not cartoon cat)

James Abram Garfield may have been the poorest man ever to have ended up as President, and he was definitely the last United States President to be born in a log cabin, a type of tiny dwelling that definitely wasn’t a lifestyle choice in 1831.

Not only was James Garfield’s family poor, but they got poorer: His dad, Abram, died when he was a baby, and he and his four siblings were raised in poverty by his single mother, Eliza.

Like many Americans, and especially in new Midwestern states like Ohio, the Garfields were repeat migrants. Eliza’s family started out in Wales, something of which she was very proud, while Abram’s came from Warwickshire, Shakespeare’s county, two centuries before James’ birth. The first American Garfields came over as part of the Great Migration of Puritans in 1630 who started Massachusetts. But, like many poor New Englanders, some Garfields eventually moved on to New York State, where land was cheaper.

Garfield’s dad, Abram, traveled to Ohio all the way from rural New York to propose to the girl of his dreams. He arrived to discover she had already married someone else, and so, not wanting to waste the journey, he married her sister instead.

When James was a baby, Abram and his wife Eliza were caught up in the Second Great Awakening of the early 1830s, a massive evangelical Christian movement that swept America. As an early Americanist, I’m more familiar with the first Great Awakening (about a century earlier) but the second was just as profound. The Garfields got religion, but Abram died not long after. James, as the youngest, became very close to his mum, Eliza.

So, in short, young James Garfield was poor, fatherless, and after his mother remarried and then divorced, a member of a scandalous family. He was ostracized by his peers.

But he had the kind of rags-to-riches success story that Victorian Americans loved, and that were broadcast in the books of Horatio Alger. Indeed, Alger wrote a biography of Garfield called From Canal Boy to President. Alger’s implied message was that if you're not rich, you’re just not trying hard enough, a message that has caused Americans great anxiety from that day to this, and kind of ignores the roles of inherited wealth, connections, corruption, and plain old luck in gaining worldly success.

James Garfield didn’t have boyhood friends. So, instead, he read books, and learned. He left home at 16, and tried working on the new canals of the 1840s. But illness forced him home. His mother encouraged him to try school, which he did, and the education bug bit him.

After two years of schooling, he was determined to go to college. Working as a part-time teacher, carpenter, and janitor, James Garfield paid his own way through Williams College in Massachusetts. And before anyone says “He couldn’t afford to do that now,” he would certainly have qualified for full financial aid today.

When I read Garfield described as a “radical Republican” and an abolitionist, I figured I had a handle on his politics. But I quickly realized that no, I don’t, and I don’t have time to learn enough to write confidently on his career.

I really don't get 19th century politics —good luck getting that kind of honesty from pretendy “historians” of the blowhard fake variety! Sure, Garfield was radical: He supported abolition, and education for former slaves. But he opposed the eight hour day, labor unions, and federal government relief during economic downturns. So I’m not going to write about his politics until I read a book or two.

Back to Garfield’s house and family!

Garfield’s Doting Mum

I started to get a feeling of looming tragedy when the tour got to this room. This was where Garfield’s mum Eliza lived when she moved in with the family. Check out the impractical but gorgeous Victorian stained glass firescreen emblazoned with Garfield’s face in the top right corner. A firescreen is supposed to prevent burning embers entering the room from a fireplace. In summer, when the fireplace wasn’t used, the fire screen served as a decorative thingy.

This firescreen, featuring Garfield’s head in stained glass, is just one of several images of Garfield in his mother’s bedroom, as you can see above. Eliza outlived her favorite child, the boy who, unbelievably, had become president, by several years. It was, it seemed to me, a tragic room, a fragile room. I was already thinking of the gloomy Garfield home as a very sad place.

Yet this was also a home filled with people, judging from the number of bedrooms. This one caught my eye because of the delicately patterned carpet.

Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

WHAT HELL IS THIS? Was President Garfield a Nazi before Nazis were a thing?? No worries. The swastika was a symbol of good luck before the Nazis ruined it. Please try to look at this carpet from the perspective of people who had never heard of Hitler, and would be horrified if they had.

Real, Flesh and Blood Americans: A President and His Family

Room by room, the Victorian Garfield family came to life. The dining room, where they gathered, was a typically formal middle-class Victorian room, sure. But the dining room was warmed by a fireplace surrounded by individually painted tiles that every child had a hand in creating.

Suddenly, I was intrigued. Painting personalized tiles was a project that suggested a happy home.

There were at least two pianos, so this wasn’t the quiet house that greets us today: I imagine a kid or two was always bashing away on the ivories. No, wait, they were Victorians . . . Playing the piano properly, with straight backs. Or was I stereotyping?

Garfield’s children remained a muddled lot in my head, but I did enjoy the teenage girl room, with its “Turkish corner”, bright fabric wall hangings over a daybed, kind of like having a batik hanging over a beanbag for a later generation, and its cluttered dressing table (think loads of make-up today).

Garfield’s library was a very masculine space, just what you would imagine a Victorian father would have. A sort of ship feel to the design. Pictures of Civil War Union General William T. Sherman, French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte, and founder of Germany Otto Von Bismarck, an odd collection of powerful men, lined up on the walls.

And, of course, a huge, eclectic book collection, including the delightfully titled Brain Hygiene, a Victorian manual of psychology from the people who brought you measuring heads to check for mental illness (Oh, and Americans, gotta love your often slightly odd applications of the word “hygiene” over the years, just saying. Love you. Mwah.)

The highlight of the house in my view, though, was this chair in Garfield’s study. His kids had it made for him in light of Dad’s habit of sitting in a desk chair sideways while reading, draping his legs over the side. Can’t you just see him lounging in this? Much less formal and stuffy than his portraits and the library suggest!

A Real Victorian Woman: Mrs. Garfield Takes Charge

For me, Lucretia Garfield did not come at all into the picture until Garfield’s assassination, and then, boy, did she. A Victorian GoFundMe raised the equivalent of millions for the family, and Lucretia sprang into action with the money. She had all the farm buildings (except the house) moved back on the lot, away from the road, and the house expanded to be more befitting of a martyred president. She completed Lawnfield’s emphasis as a respectable middle-class family home that received frequent visitors, more than a working farm.

And Lawnfield was an increasingly modern home. A widowed Lucretia did not shrink away from technical stuff. She learned that there was a source of natural gas on the property, and had the power source converted to gas from coal. The gas house is still on the grounds, next to the visitor center.

Garfield 's library now became the focus of Lawnfield’s third role as a semi-public shrine to a martyred President. Lucretia expanded the library in the years after her husband’s death, adding a walk-in safe for official documents that even included a desk for researchers who hopefully didn't have claustrophobia. Lucretia basically created the first US Presidential Library, although the official holder of that title is the purpose-built Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York.

There's even a touch of Lucretia in the remodeled library: A photo of Queen Victoria, who had written Lucretia a letter after James's death.

Queen Victoria, who became a professional widow after Prince Albert’s early death at age 41, twenty years before Garfield’s assassination, wrote Mrs. Garfield a very sweet letter of consolation, which you can also see on site. I was pleasantly surprised by her words. I thought Victoria would, as usual, turn the letter’s subject immediately to Albert (Never mind your husband, what about mine?) but she only did that a little bit in her note to Lucretia Garfield.

When Death and Life Came to Lawnfield

A deranged assassin named Charles Guiteau shot James Garfield at a train station in Washington DC in September 1881, just three months after he was inaugurated.

Garfield took two months to die, and might even have survived if his doctors had paid more attention to British surgeon Joseph Lister’s work, and not messed around in Garfield’s wound with unwashed hands and instruments.

Garfield was popular, and especially so after his death, only 100 days into his presidency, because it came as such a shock to the nation. In the museum in the visitor center, you will find all the creepy Victorian cult of death stuff on display: The preserved mattress used as an improvised stretcher to get him from the train station to a bed. The black-bordered stationery. The death mask. The souvenirs. The works.

But our tour guide, Claire, insisted that the Garfield children later remembered Lawnfield as a happy, lively place. Wikipedia uses the word “cheerful” to describe the family who came to the White House in 1881. James Garfield, the fatherless boy from poverty (but whose family roots in New England suggested he had inherited educational wealth), and Lucretia Garfield, the intelligent and educated woman of her time whom Garfield met in college in Massachusetts, had done well by their five surviving children.

Alone, Lucretia took charge, caring for kids, mother-in-law, home, and new role as Presidential widow. These people aren’t remote and fascinating relics. They’re real. Lucretia Garfield long outlived her husband, and spent at least part of the year at this house until her own death in 1918.

Before leaving, I had a chat with Mary the National Parks Service ranger at the reception desk. Yes, Mary was one of those unlikely-looking museum staff in a quasi-military uniform with broad hat, Brits, don’t worry, I don’t get it either. But Mary was very pleasant.

She asked me where Hoosen and I were headed next, and I told her. She said, “Oh, but you’ll know about Guiteau, of course?”

No. I didn’t know about Guiteau and his connection to my next destination. But I was about to find out.

Nothing is new

This post first appeared in earlier form (not much different) at Non-Boring History in 2022. Our next stop, long planned (unlike our stop in Mentor, Ohio), was in New York State, about 350 miles away. By astonishing coincidence, it really did have a direct connection with James Garfield, and also a very different interpretation of domestic bliss from the Garfield home in Mentor.

Did you know? Become a paid subscriber and you get access to all my work. That includes EVERY weekly Tuesday post and my Sometimes Saturday posts for supporting subscribers only. It's a deal, I tell you! Going paid also gives you access to more than five hundred other still-fresh posts, including these, about our fascinating visit to a unique place in New York State that followed our stop in Mentor:

Part 2 includes my chat with Dr. Tom Guiler, the resident historian at this truly astonishing site in New York:

I’m Annette Laing, a Brit in America, and I am beyond grateful to every “Nonnie”, aka paying subscriber, in the US, UK, Canada, and around the world, who supports Non-Boring History. No exaggeration: I cannot do this without you and more people like you. In going paid, you can take pride in knowing that you're making it possible for me to continue to write for you as the world churns around us.

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Podcast: 60 minutes

The American Revolution ends, and American travelers are back, visiting Europe. But if they’re not British, what are they? Continuing my riff on historian Daniel Kilbride’s Being American in Europe, 1750-1860

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The rich colonial Americans who crossed the Atlantic in the 18th century considered themselves more British than the British. The Brits were not quick to agree . . .

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PODCAST: 24 minutes

This is the podcast version of this Non-Boring History post about my recent visit to the fascinating and lively Victorian home of President James and Lucretia Garfield:

Non-Boring History is the ONLY newsletter of its kind, in which an academic historian (me, Dr. Annette Laing. cheers) leads you on a rollercoaster ride through British and US history that might seem random, and kind of is, but brings you close up to academic history and the joys of museums, and gets you thinking like a historian, only without tests and other painful experiences. Upgrade to a paid annual or monthly subscription today, and become a Nonnie, for full access to NBH offerings, past and future!

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Annette

This is the podcast version of this Annette Tells Tales post about the animals that pulled the wagons to California (and Oregon). Both post and podcast are my take on the work of my fellow historian, Diana L. Ahmad, in her marvelous book Success Depends on the Animals, which I recommend to you.

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Forget Hamilton: The Musical. When it comes to the American Revolution, this story will have you questioning everything you know about it. And it’s real.

This is the podcast version of this Annette Tells Tales post about the extraordinary, ordinary life of George Hewes:

Both post and podcast are my interpretations of the work of my fellow historian, the late Alfred F. Young, in his classic book The Shoemaker and The Tea Party, which I recommend to you.

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This is the podcast version of this Annette Tells Tales post:

This is my riff on Clare’s work, aimed at drawing in readers who might never have encountered Clare and Eglantyne Jebb otherwise. Eglantyne’s story, and Clare Mulley’s book, deserve an ever wider audience. If you enjoy podcast, post, or both, read Clare Mulley’s The Woman Who Saved the Children!

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A few days ago, I had a great video chat with Clare Mulley, and here it is for your mobile listening pleasure as an audio podcast! Clare is the bestselling author of critically acclaimed biographies The Spy Who Loved, The Women Who Flew for Hitler, and, our subject today, her first book, The Woman Who Saved the Children.

Eglantyne Jebb was an upper-middle class Victorian Englishwoman, but she was also a pioneering modern: She was among the second generation of young British women to go to university, she engaged in groundbreaking social science research, and, above all, she founded a charity that was ambitious and international from the beginning.

My chat with Clare is also available in transcript (at the end of this page) and as a video, which is in this post:

I introduce The Woman Who Saved the Children in my longform retelling of Clare’s story in Annette Tells Tales, which you might (or might not!) wish to read first (spoilers!). This post and the interview aim to thoroughly whet your appetite for this book, and all of Clare’s biographies:

TRANSCRIPT

I’ve lightly edited this for clarity. Annette

ANNETTE LAING: I'm Annette Laing. I write Non-Boring History on Substack. I'm delighted to have with me today Clare Mulley, all the way from the UK. Clare is an award-winning, bestselling author, writing meticulously researched historical biographies. 

Among her books is The Spy Who Loved, which is about Krystyna Skarbek, otherwise known as Christine Granville, a Polish noblewoman who was reputedly Churchill's favorite spy during World War Two, and who really out-Bonded James Bond. 

She's also written The Women who Flew for Hitler, about two women who flew airplanes during WWII for the Nazis, but ended up having two very different stances on the War. Clare is also a book reviewer for various august publications in the United Kingdom, including The Spectator, The Telegraph, and History Today. She's also familiar to British viewers for her frequent appearances on television, including BBC's Rise of the Nazis, Channel 5's Secret History of World War Two, and Adolf and Eva. All of her books, so far, are optioned for television and movies. These are all books with Incredible popular appeal that also complicate our understanding of her subjects. But the book I'm going to discuss with Clare today is her very first, and it's on quite a different subject. It is The Woman Who Saved the Children and this is story of Eglantyne Jebb who, as the title suggests, founded the charity Save the Children

Clare, by the way, holds a master's degree from the University of London, in social and cultural history. But unlike most of the authors that I write about and talk about at Non-Boring History, Clare wisely did not go into academia, which gives her a really terrific opportunity to connect with the public in very, very thoughtful ways. Welcome, Clare. Thank you for taking the time from your very busy schedule. I do appreciate it.

Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children, upper-class Victorian woman, very much a woman of her times, and she founds this charity. And yet she's very blunt about it: She didn't like children. You are a very modern person and the mother of three. What led you to write about her? 

CLARE MULLEY: Yeah, I love this seeming contradiction. I don't think it actually is a contradiction. But it is true that she'd been a teacher early on in her career and she really found children very stressful, exhausting, too loud, noisy. And yeah, I've got three. But she kind of respected them. You said she was a woman of her times. I think perhaps she was ahead of her times in many ways. So she saw children as human beings. I think she said the idea of closer acquaintance [with children] appalled her, and it was a dreadful idea, so she didn't beat any bones about it. In fact, in the year she set up Save The Children, she told her best mate,  her very close friend Margaret Keynes, that, she said,  it's appalling I have to give all these talks about Save The Children and, you know, the common love of humanity towards children. It disgusts me. So she really didn't particularly want to spend time around children. She wasn't particularly maternal herself. She didn't have any children of her own. She never, in fact, married.

There could be a number of reasons for that. But I do think she respected children. What she saw was young adults. She saw people, at a time when most people didn't think that children actually were humans enough to have human rights. Human rights were only for people of the age of 18, and below that,  there were parental rights, and the state had rights over children as well, but children didn't have individual rights.

So one of the things that she did was she pioneered the idea of children being human beings, and being party to human rights.

ANNETTE LAING: I noticed she laid the groundwork for the the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child. 

CLARE MULLEY: There's a wonderful story about that. Apparently, there was a sunny summer Sunday. [In] 1924, she climbed up Mont Salève. And in fact, I went out to Mont Salève. I was actually pregnant at the time, doing my research for this. And I went out and I thought, well, I'll climb up as well. This was my third child. So I'd had two. And I'd been watching The Sound of Music, and I thought these mountains might be, you know, filled with daisies in the fields, but, no, it's sheer, vertical rock for thousands of feet. It's incredible. And so I went up in a sort of ski lift that takes you up to the top, and it had black and white photographs in it of ladies in cloches, but it turned out that had only been put in place a couple of years after Eglantyne died. So she actually did go in her long skirts and tightly laced boots and climb up this mountain. She settled down at the top, and looked down over Geneva, which of course, is the international city. The lake of Geneva at that point was full of barges with building materials to build what is now the United Nations building, which was then the League of Nations. It's where Esperanto was formed, and the International Women's League was there. So she settled down and cracked a square of chocolate. One of the many things I take from her is my love of chocolate. And she looked out over this view, and she was inspired to come up with this idea that every child, everywhere in the world, should be party to the same universal, human rights, and she penned a statement. It was just five things, quite basic, initially,  about healthcare, food, education, a safe space to play. All those sorts of things. And she marched down the mountain and got it pushed through the United Nations, the League of Nations as it was then. She was actually the first adviser for women and health care to the League of Nations.

ANNETTE LAING: She was a very practical person. And one of the things that came out in the book, is that it is experience that pushes her to work for children, as opposed to with them. What were her pivotal experiences or influences that drew her into this work? 

CLARE MULLEY: She had already had . . . I don't want to go into cod psychology. You can go back to her childhood and the death of her younger brother, which affected her very deeply. She refers to him a lot later on in her life. I think he's this sort of representative of the potential abuse of the value of life. Another commitment she took at that point was to live a life of social purpose. And she was inspired by her parents. Her mother set up a national organization in the creative industries, to give people artisanal skills, and so on. So she had a wonderful example of a compassionate idea being turned into a national movement, through her mother's work. She was one of the second generation of women in Britain to get a university education and she went to Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford,  which now has a bronze bust of her in their library.

And so there are a number of inspirations. But of course, it was the First World War. Just before the war, she went out [to the Balkans] for her brother-in-law. She was very close to her sister Dorothy, who had married a Liberal MP, a Quaker. And he went out to the Balkans and saw what was really, we now know, the rumblings towards the First World War. But then, it was sort of seen as a civil conflict in that part of Europe. He sent out [Eglantyne]  because she'd already done good work in charities in Cambridge. But she had never really considered doing international development work, or help. So she went out and set up soup kitchens, and family tracing, and things like that. She realized then that this is really important work, but it's ambulance work, relief work, and what you need to do is try and stop some of this from happening [in the first place]. So she's taking a very progressive view, even very early on. Then she came back [to England], and her work is completely swept aside by the First World War which is very depressing. 

But [during WWI] she takes an active role, translating the [European newspapers] with her sister Dorothy. Eventually, at the end of the war, she's really appalled, because the British then-Liberal government decided to continue the economic blockade against Europe as a means of pushing through harsh peace terms, or really to get better reparations for Britain. Eglantyne felt if people knew the human cost of that policy, they'd be as appalled as she was. Because, at this point, there were about 800 children dying in Germany every week.

ANNETTE LAING It's interesting that she had this sort of early grasp of the power of propaganda. So that during the First World War, she and Dorothy, and others, Dorothy's husband, were working to translate the foreign press, articles showing a very different perspective on World War One, which really walked a fine line, didn't it, in terms of legality? Because the British government had  strict censorship, but you know what? They're showing that maybe the news you're getting isn't the news. And then after the war when she, when she was arrested for distributing pamphlets . . .

CLARE MULLEY: Exactly. You have this wonderful leaflet. She had become part of the planning council to try and change that legislation. That was getting nowhere fast. You said she was practical. She was. 

She gets up and produces this leaflet with a very upsetting photograph of what looks like a little baby, can't stand, massive head, tiny body, but it's actually a two and a half year old girl who's suffering from malnutrition and whose body hasn't developed sufficiently because the nutrients are needed for the brain. [Eglantyne] started taking that around, distributing it, mainly in Trafalgar Square, the sort of traditional site of public protest in the center of London, where the suffragettes often were,  and she was using suffragette tactics. 

So she was chalking up the pavement, saying, "Fight the Famine, End the Blockade". And she was, of course, arrested pretty much immediately. Well, she managed to get rid of eight hundred leaflets, but she was arrested and taken away. But they made a bit of a mistake. She's not the sort of person that you can quietly sweep under a carpet. 

So, when her court case came up, she actually insisted on presenting her own defense. And she knew that, legally, she didn't have a leg to stand on, because her leaflets weren't cleared by the government censors. So she focused on the moral argument,  and she gave the court reporters up in the gallery at the courthouse plenty to fill their columns with.

The crown prosecutor, Sir Archibald Bodkin, he didn't spare her in his condemnation. But once the case was closed, she was only fined five pounds, and it could have been five pounds for every leaflet, or she could've been given a prison sentence, you know, so it really was the minimum. Once the case was over, he came up to her, in front of everyone, including the reporters, and took out his wallet a five-pound note, you know, they were quite big in those days, and pressed it into her hands. You know, it's the sum of her fine. He's clearly saying, as far as I'm concerned, you know, morally you won your case. And she said, no thanks. I can pay my own fine. But she took his five pounds. She said, I'll put this towards a new cause, to help save the children of Europe. And that was the first donation ever to Save the Children, from the crown prosecutor at the founder's arrest. 

ANNETTE LAING : Lovely, lovely story. And, you know, what you said earlier. that she was a woman ahead of her time,  I do think you bring that out in the book that Save the Children rapidly becomes, not just a local little charity in London, coming out of this one little group. She meets the Pope! There are branches of Save The Children all over the world, in pretty short order.

CLARE MULLEY:  That comes from meeting the Pope, yes. She actually wrote first to the head of the Church of England, who was  Archbishop Randall Davidson at the time.  And because she was a Christian . . . Her faith was kind of unique and spiritual, but it was within the Christian fold, in her mind.

And so she wrote to the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for support. And he thought, well, actually, this is quite political, wasn't she arrested? You know, he didn't even bother writing back.

So she just wrote to the Pope, and he was much more interested,  and invited her to meet him. So she went over to the Vatican. She had to wear a mantilla over her face,  and then the door burst open, and an emissary called out in Italian.

She spoke many languages, but, sadly, not Italian, but he kind of turned and ran on his heels. She said he looked like an Indian rubber ball in a purple dressing gown, kind of bounding down this corridor. And she's holding onto her mantilla, and pulls up her skirt, and pegs after him.

And she went into this big hall. It was full of gold and big pillars, and there, she said, was a little figure at the back, standing still like a ghost, and suddenly remembering, you know, Popes tend to wear white, look a bit ghostly. She bobbed down on one knee, and it was the Pope, and he came and raised her up. 

And instead of the 20 minute appointment, he gave her over two hours, making notes in what she called a grubby little notebook. And he was so inspired by her. I mean, she commissioned some very early research, but her passion as well, her knowledge [came across]

He said, I won't just ask Catholic churches in England, as she had requested, to give their collections one day for Save the Children's cause, but I'll ask Catholic churches around the world. 

And because of that, these individual congregations overseas then said the need hasn't gone away, and they became the early Save the Children overseas.

So, you have this very interesting and very modern organization, that not only raises funds in Britain  and sends it overseas, but raises funds all over the world, and sends it wherever it's needed. 

Reciprocity like that is at the heart of what [Eglantyne] believed. So for example, one of the first donors to the children of Vienna after the First World War were the mining unions in Wales. They came together and all their members put some money in to help these children who were starving to death in Austria, in Vienna. And then about four, five years later, there was terrible poverty in the Welsh valleys, because there were miners' strikes, and a collapse of the industry. And there was real suffering among the children. And the City of Vienna got together and raised funds, and sent aid and, you know, funding support back over to Wales.

That's how it's always been. It's not about you know, what we now call the developed world, or the Western Hemisphere or the North helping the South or whatever. It's about wherever there is need and wherever there is opportunity to help,  it's reciprocal.

ANNETTE LAING: Right, she had, in that way, a very modern perspective, very egalitarian perspective. And yet, you know, at the same time, when I think of her as, here's this woman with this incredible upper-middle class confidence that is sort of developed, particularly, I imagine, at Oxford. And so, you know, in that sense, a Victorian woman who has such a short life,  dies at 52.

You know, the world of nonprofits, as we say in the US, or charities today, is a very different place from in Eglantyne Jebb's time. Would there be a place for an Eglantyne Jebb in the world of nonprofits or charities today? 

CLARE MULLEY: There are some, and we need more, there's no question of it. Yeah, and she was very ahead of her time. It wasn't just that. I mean she was the first person to use cinema photography, cinema footage, to really bring home to people what was going on. She used, you know, "skip lunch" for the first time, donate your lunch money. She did all of these things. Sponsor a child was part of that initial team. So was fundraising use of branding, it's absolutely fantastic. You see her wearing Save the Children hats. I've looked everywhere in people's attics for that hat. If you come across it , Annette, please let me know. 

ANNETTE LAING: I will, I will! 

CLARE MULLEY: She using all these very modern ways, and her language we're talking about, it's not patronizing, it's very modern. And so, yes, of course, we need much more people, you know, working along those lines.

And, you know, there's other things that she brings as well. So, I mean, her closest relationship in life was with a woman, and for a long time, this wasn't talked about because people are worried, you know, about the sensitivities around that. Thank goodness, a lot of the world has moved on now, and this is something discussed much more openly. In fact, Save the Children does a huge amount of work around LGBTQ+ issues, which is fantastic. So how wonderful to have a woman like that who was pioneering the way, back in the day. 

ANNETTE LAING: Fantastic. And you did yourself work for Save the Children when you began this project, which brought you into contact [not literally— A.] with Eglantyne Jebb. And all the royalties,  I believe, from this book go to Save the Children, which is fabulous and marvelous. 

So from your first project, then, to your most recent. You're writing a book, I believe already under contract with Weidenfeld and Nicholson, called Agent Zo. So can you give us a little preview what that's going to be about?

CLARE MULLEY: Lovely question, thank you. Agent Zo's the working title. Hope it'll be called that, we'll see, and it's about this incredible [woman] in the Second World War. She's basically a special agent in the Second World War, and she was the only Polish woman to manage to bring contact between their commander-in-chief in occupied Poland, the first of the occupied countries.  She gets through Germany, through France, over the Pyrenees, this extraordinary journey, and being shot at in the mountains and all the rest of it. [She] eventually reaches London, where she reported to the Polish commander-in-chief,  Władysław Sikorski and had to go through working with SOE [British intelligence during WWII]. And then she's there, and the Poles are just amazed that a woman has achieved this. Some of them say, can't we just kiss your hand, you're a goddess to us, I mean, how did you manage it? You're so wonderful.  And she's just like, oh, stop all that lip. Where are the files? Why aren't you answering the ciphers quickly enough? She tries to improve all their systems, and they can't stand it because she's a woman. So one of them tries flirting with her. He thinks, oh, maybe, if I talk about silk stockings, that'll, you know, get the feminine side out. She's just like, oh, come on. 

So she's just sort of given all these extra hurdles, and in the end they say, okay. thanks. We've got all the information. She brings this incredible stash of information about persecution of the Jews, about some of the V1 missiles, the Vengeance, you know, that's the buzz bomb, troop movements, everything. They go, okay, thank you. That's been fantastic, Zo. Now, where do you want to relax? Do you want to spend the rest of the war in Scotland? She said, don't be ridiculous. I'm going back to Poland. And they're like, well, how? You know, you can't parachute. And she said,  why not? The men are parachuting. 

So she becomes the only female member of the Polish Special Forces, paratroopers, the Cichociemni, or Silent Unseen, to parachute back behind enemy lines into Warsaw, and then fights in the Warsaw Uprising. And that's not the end of her story.

I mean, she's just this amazing, amazing woman.

ANNETTE LAING I detect this theme in your books, being drawn to these to these exceptional, extraordinary women. Or maybe they're not exceptional. I mean, that's the other thing. I often talk to teachers, and one of the things I chide everybody about is, don't assume you know everything about a subject. Just don't, you never will, and much of it still remains to be written. Most of it still remains to be written. There are just so many stories. And right now, and this is just my own personal comment that you need not endorse, we have just seen a very concerning uptick in misogyny in  the last couple of years, this thing about Karens that I find very, very strange. It is so good to see you complicating people's understanding of women's role in the past.

CLARE MULLEY: A gray area. 

ANNETTE LAING: Yeah, and you're dealing with stories that academic historians, and I think it's fair to say in Britain particularly . .  . It's a more conservative field. They're going to attack me for this, but it is a more narrow field, and you've been able not only to do work that they haven't, but also to bring it to this enormous audience. So for that, thank you so much, Clare Mulley. 

Once again folks, you can get this and any of Clare's wonderful books from the source of your choice. And of course, I do encourage folks, to, you know, avoid the dreaded Amazon if you can, but either way, do get ahold of Clare's books. Don't forget libraries and independent bookstores. Clare, it's been an absolute pleasure having you today. Thank you so much for your time.

CLARE MULLEY: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Clare Mulley’s The Woman Who Saved the Children is available from libraries and booksellers.

Non-Boring History is a reader-supported publication, in which historian Dr. Annette Laing introduces readers to the wonderful world of US, UK, and Atlantic World history, including by translating the hidden treasures of academic history for real people. To receive her posts and support this work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Podcast: 59 Minutes. Listen Now, or Download to Your Favorite App for Later, by clicking on “Listen in Podcast App” above right.

Sarah Kemble Knight of Boston, Massachusetts, is a widowed single mother of one child, in her mid-thirties, and juggling lots of responsibilities. But she has some business in New York to do with her husband’s estate, and anyway, she’s ready for a bit of a break. So she dumps the kid with grandma, and sets off, solo.

In 1704. On a horse.

Apart from that, Sarah Knight’s tale is a familiar story to anyone who ever does an American road trip: Lousy food, issues with the road and navigation, dodgy hotels, and a constantly-changing scene and cast of characters.

This is the podcast version of Sarah Knight’s Great American Road Trip, Annette’s original post at Non-Boring History, based on a 1920s reprint of Sarah Kemble Knight’s travel journal.

Not a fan of podcasts? You can read it here instead!

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Podcast: 27 Minutes.

Listen Now, or Download to Your Favorite App for Later, by clicking on “Listen in Podcast App” above right.

Thanks to old movie and TV Westerns, mid-19th century westward migration is completely misunderstood. And one of those misunderstandings is that everyone who went west with a wagon was white. Historian Shirley Ann Wilson Moore’s book Sweet Freedoms Plains: African Americans on the Overland Trails, 1841-1869 not only tells the fascinating stories of Black migrants, but helps shift the entire story of the West from flat caricature to a living, breathing past that just makes more sense than those Hollywood cliches.

This is the podcast version of Annette’s original post, her retelling of just two of those stories from Dr. Moore’s book. You can read it here:

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