AGRICULTURE IN WILTSHIRE IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR 



73 



always being frightened by being told that "cows 

 will have them" are more nervous than the girls 

 from the towns.' 21 



Undoubtedly Edith Olivier and other members 

 of the committee looked to recruit 'the better sort 

 of girls' from the towns. Of the first group of six 

 girls at Manningford, three came from London, two 

 from Bournemouth and one from Essex. Of the 

 London girls, one had been employed making 

 bandoliers for soldiers and another had been 

 destined for the stage. All these girls were under 20 

 and, because of their youth and attitudes at the time, 

 it was expected that those running the scheme 

 would keep close pastoral care of the girls even when 

 they had gone off to farms. Edith Olivier, in her 

 diaries, recalls the countless problems she had to 

 deal with. She was dismayed when a new batch of 

 recruits arrived and did not match her expectations: 

 'the new ones are awful, not "educated" at all but 

 real dirty slum girls or so we thought'. On another 

 occasion she talks of 'A funny lot of girls. One awful 

 fat married woman exactly like Falstaff and the 

 Spackmans say she is very coarse and drinks and 

 smokes and takes God's name in vain'. On a 

 number of occasions she had to retrieve girls from 

 their work placements because they had proved 

 unsatisfactory or, in a case at Edington, in response 

 to a letter from the farmer's wife saying that her 

 husband had formed a liaison with one of the 

 milkers. 22 



But despite these problems, there were many 

 success stories. In November 1917 the Swindon 

 Advertiser carried a long article about a Bristol girl 

 from Redland High School who had been trained 

 at Longford Castle. She then got a job on a large 

 farm in north Wiltshire and, despite the long hours 

 and the wages which were 'by no means 

 overwhelming', she enjoyed the open-air life. She 

 had done most jobs on the farm - manure spreading, 

 sack mending, milking, threshing, chaff cutting, 

 haymaking, harvesting, ploughing, harrowing, 

 planting, root cutting, hoeing and feeding animals. 

 She described a typical October day: up at 6.30, 

 breakfast and cycle to the farm before 8, special 

 job of feeding the calves, then get a team of horses 

 ready, planting wheat and beans and ploughing 

 them in, finish in the fields by 3.30 to 4, back to 

 farm to unharness horses, feed them, tea, then feed 

 the calves, home about 5.30, dinner at 7, bed at 

 9.30. 23 Perhaps also the scheme could claim some 

 success in changing farmers' attitudes to female 

 labour. At a meeting of the War Agricultural 

 Committee in September 1917, Mr. Combes 



reported there was now an urgent need for under- 

 carters as many young men were being called up. It 

 was desirable for girls to be trained to take their 

 place. "From the experience some of them had had, 

 girls were capable of doing a great deal of work 

 (hear, hear) which farmers originally thought they 

 were incapable of." 24 



The government recognised the pressures on 

 agriculture, especially at harvest time, in agreeing 

 to release soldiers to give temporary help to farmers. 

 Later on they formed a more permanent group of 

 soldiers, the Agricultural Company, to give more 

 regular help. In August 1916 it was decided to 

 release 27,000 soldiers of whom 750 were to be 

 allocated to Wiltshire. Farmers could apply to the 

 local labour exchanges for the soldiers who were 

 based in the Salisbury area. The following year 200 

 men of the Agricultural Company were located at 

 Devizes barracks but it was said that only 40 of 

 these had been accustomed to working with horses 

 and that kind of agricultural work. In April 1 9 1 7 it 

 was reported that the military authorities had 

 provided 1,060 men of whom 800 were supposed 

 to be skilled ploughmen. These had originally been 

 made available until 1 5 April but their stay had now 

 been extended to 30 April. In November 1917 there 

 were 1,300 soldiers at work on the land in Wiltshire 

 and it seems to have stayed at this level well into 

 1918. Not everyone agreed that this was of great 

 help. In July 1 9 1 6, at the start of the scheme, Arthur 

 Stratton complained that many of the soldiers were 

 no good at all and did not understand farm work. 

 They had simply volunteered because they wanted 

 a change from army life. 25 The soldiers were not 

 cheap. Farmers had to pay 4s. a day for each soldier 

 or 2s. if lodgings were provided. Despite Arthur 

 Stratton's misgivings, he used a number of soldiers 

 during April-June 1917 at a total cost for labour 

 and billeting of £1 12 6s. 2d. 26 



Two categories of possible help were widely 

 rejected in Wiltshire. Conscientious objectors could 

 be exempt from call up if they got a job of national 

 importance which included farm work. But farmers 

 were unwilling to take them on: "We find great 

 difficulty in placing them. We try but they are refused 

 everywhere." 27 There was a similar response to the 

 offer of German prisoners of war after Spring 1917. 

 The Wiltshire War Agricultural Committee thought 

 they would be better used in road work, forestry 

 and spade work on derelict land being brought into 

 cultivation. The practical problem was that they 

 were to be based in local centres in groups of 75 

 with 35 guards. This was of little use to the smaller 



