Francesca Wilson
Francesca Mary Wilson (1888–1981) was an English schoolteacher, refugee relief worker and writer.[1][2]
Life
Francesca Wilson was born into a
In 1914, Wilson met Belgian refugees in Gravesend, and decided to suspend her teaching to take up relief work:
My urge to do relief work was not high-minded and Ruth Fry, who interviewed me, rightly sensed that my motives were selfish. I began without dedication or any desire (except the vaguest) to do good. I wanted foreign travel, adventure, romance, the unknown.[3]
In 1916, Wilson worked with French evacuee children at
In 1925, Wilson took up a job at the
any house that Francesca owned, however spacious, ended up crowded from cellar to attic with delightful, deserving people, the owner's territory having shrunk in no time to a more or less poky bed-sittingroom.[4]
The white Russian refugee scholar Nikolai Bachtin (1896–1950) became a close friend, and lodgers included the biologist Maurice Wilkins. In 1929, she travelled to Macedonia to report for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Her report was delivered to the WILPF's Sixth International Congress in Prague in August 1929, and published as Yugoslavian Macedonia (1930). In the early 1930s, she travelled regularly to Germany, visiting her sister Muriel, whose husband Pallister Barkas was a lecturer at the University of Göttingen.[5] She became increasingly worried about fascism, and opened her house to refugees including Nikolaus Pevsner. When the Spanish Civil War began in 1937 she travelled to Murcia in Southern Spain, where she organized food relief, established a children's hospital, and started occupational workshops for Spanish refugees.[1]
In October 1939, shortly after the outbreak of the
For the remainder of her life Wilson lived in London, teaching adult education classes at the University of London and for the Workers' Educational Association. She died at the Royal Free Hospital on 5 March 1981.[1]
Works
- Portraits and sketches of Serbia. London: Swarthmore Press, 1920.
- Yugoslavian Macedonia. London: Women's International League, 1930. With a foreword by G. P. Gooch.
- In the margins of chaos; recollections of relief work in and between three wars. London: John Murray, 1944.
- Aftermath: France, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia 1945 and 1946. West Drayton: Penguin, 1947.
- Strange island; Britain through foreign eyes, 1395-1940. London: Longmans Green and Co, 1955.
- They Came as Strangers: The Story of Refugees to Britain. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1959.
- Rebel Daughter of a Country House: The story of Eglantyne Jebb, Founder of the Save the Children Fund. London: Allen and Unwin, 1967.
- Muscovy: Russia through foreign eyes, 1553-1900. New York: Praeger, 1970.
References
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/103379. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 978-0-8264-4962-7.
- ^ Horder et al, Francesca Wilson, p.105. Quoted in Oldfield, p. 279.
- ^ Elsie Duncan-Jones, obituary, Newnham College Roll Letter (January 1982), pp.61-3. Quoted in Oldfield, p.280.
- ISBN 978-1-317-84995-7.
Further reading
- June Horder et al., Francesca Wilson: A Life of Service and Adventure. Privately printed, 1993.