Fletcher, Mrs Olga, 48 Polsloe Road, Exeter
Olga Marie Rachel Fletcher, née d’Avigdor (1869 – 1953),[1] was the eldest daughter of Elim and Henriette d’Avigdor, born on 1 July 1869 in Marylebone, Middlesex. Elim Henry d’Avigdor was a Franco-Jewish civil engineer, who worked on projects all over the world.[2] Henriette, formerly Jacobs, was the daughter of Bethel Jacobs of Hull, whom Elim had probably met when employed there on the Samuelson Iron and Shipbuilding Works. Olga had three younger sisters and a brother.
The family appear to have been well off, as in 1881 they were living at Derwentwater House in Acton, with five servants, a governess and a nurse. In 1883, when Elim applied for naturalisation for himself and the children, he gave their address as The Manor House, Bushey, and when he died in 1895 his address was 35 Lancaster Gate, Hyde Park. By this stage he was a partner in the firm of McKeone, Robinson and Avigdor, Railway Engineers and also indulging his interest in writing and publishing.
After his death Olga’s family moved to Tonbridge, Kent, where most of them appear on the 1901 census. Olga was not listed with other members of the family, however, and it has not proved possible to trace her exact whereabouts. It was known in Exeter, however, that she had ‘done much work as a COS organiser in the East End of London’[3], and that must have taken place during this phase of her life. In August 1901 she married Frank Fletcher first at a cermony in Mile End Old Town, London, where she had been working and subsequently in the Reform Synagogue in Berlin. Frank had been a school teacher, boarding in Islington at the time of the census in 1901 but when they were married he was described as a lecturer at Uninversity College, Bangor.[3a]
In 1909 the Royal Albert Memorial University College in Exeter advertised for the post of lecturer in classics, and Frank was appointed.[4] (He later became professor.)[5] The family, which by this time included daughters Rachel and Molly, moved to 4 Marlborough Road. One further daughter, Joan, was born there in September 1910. They moved to 48 Polsloe Road in 1912,[6] and this remained the family home until well after the war.
Fletcher is first referred to at an Exeter NUWSS event in November 1910, when the branch entertained Lord Lytton, Chairman of the Conciliation Committee, to lunch.[7] She was elected to the committee in January 1911, and then, two months later, when Jessie Montgomery (q.v.) resigned as branch secretary, she took on the role.[8] Although the family are shown on the 1911 census as employing a cook, a nurse and a housemaid, this was a considerable commitment for a mother of three children aged under four who also undertook other work. Indeed in the summer of 1913 she did offer her resignation, but the committee, anxious not to lose her, raised enough funds to provide a paid assistant secretary and she agreed to stay on.[9]
Once appointed, Fletcher was an energetic organiser. There were public meetings, both those with local speakers only[10] and those with national speakers such as Miss Abadam.[11] There were regular branch meetings, committee meetings (fortnightly)[12] and AGMs together with more social events and fundraising activities such as the garden parties at Spreytonway and the ‘Christmas Trees’ Fundraiser.[13] The Society was active after the 1910 elections in lobbying the Exeter MP, Mr Duke, a Conservative, who was lukewarm at best in his attitude towards women’s suffrage. Between March 1912 and March 1913 the society sent at least four deputations, all involving Fletcher, to interview him, mainly seeking to persuade him how to vote on suffrage issues,[14] but on one occasion to persuade him how to vote on the white slave trade.[15]
Other branch activities in which Fletcher would have been involved included support for women standing for election, Mrs James for the Board of Guardians in 1912 and Adelaide Baly (q.v.) in 1913. The branch held a meeting for women ratepayers in the city, who were entitled to vote in municipal elections, to persuade them to support the cause of women’s parliamentary suffrage.[16] She also wrote to the Press on behalf of the branch. When appointed as secretary she had suggested that the branch should set up an office and a library, and both these proposals were achieved during 1913.[17] Although not one of the branch’s most frequent public speakers, she assisted in presentations, such as the open-air meeting organised by the Independent Labour Party and gave an address on citizenship to the Exeter Women’s Liberal Association.[18] She appears herself to have been a Liberal, but worked with the Devon and Exeter branch of the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association when that was established at the end of 1913.[19]
Fletcher was also involved in the wider work of the South West Federation, on whose committee she was one of the Exeter representatives, and organised the visit of the Provincial Council of the NUWSS to Exeter in 1913.[20] She spoke at an outreach meeting in Kennford in 1912.[21] In addition, she was responsible for the Exeter section of the Suffrage Pilgrimage in 1913, when, with the help of the committee and her husband, she organised the pilgrims’ rendezvous at Barnardo Road; the march through Exeter with two stops for speeches at Gervase Road and the Triangle; and the send-off from York Road for the march onward to Tiverton.
Fletcher was prompted by her background in social work to join the Exeter branches of the Charity Organisation Society[22] and National Union of Women Workers (NUWW). She encouraged the NUWSS to share her concerns about white slave traffic, on which she had already organised NUWSS action and suggested the topic of industrial law for the winter study group.[23] In their 1913 discussion on how to encourage more women to stand for public office she urged the need to lobby for a change in legislation to allow married women to stand for town councils.[24] In 1912 the NUWW nominated her as the woman representative of deposit contributors on the Exeter National Insurance Committee, formed to oversee the implementation of the new National Insurance legislation, and she was elected as a member.[25] This became a regular commitment, and Fletcher took a particular interest in the work of the Sanatorium Committee[26] and pressed for women to be able to choose ‘a doctor of her own sex’.[27]
When war broke out Fletcher continued her membership of the National Insurance Committee. The NUWSS branch determined to take action to relieve the unemployment which many women workers in the collar factory and tailoring businesses experienced on the outbreak of war, and Fletcher supported Mary Willcocks (q.v.) in the establishment of a toy factory.[28] She kept branch activities going, with a deputation lobbing Mr Duke MP in 1915 (at which they did extract from him the statement that ‘he did not believe that the nation would forget what it owed to women after the war’)[29] and she organised the visit of Mrs Fawcett in 1916.[30] Her experience and her position within the NUWW and the NUWSS also led to her involvement in Exeter’s Women’s War Service Committee[31] and in initiatives such as organisation of lectures on the ‘Economical Buying and Cooking of Food’.[32] She also became involved in the expansion of the Infant Welfare movement, when a new centre was opened for East Exeter, and became the chairman of the St Sidwell’s District.[33] She and Frank both became involved in the establishment of the Exeter branch of the WEA, where he gave a course on ‘The Study of Greek through the Greek Testament’ and she gave a lecture during a course on ‘Women in Modern Times’[34]
After the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed, the Exeter Branch of the Women’s Citizenship Association was formed. The note of the first meeting, in May 1918, states that ‘Mrs Fletcher gave particulars of an intensive course of study it was hoped to arrange later on in the year’, demonstrating the commitment by this successor organisation to the NUWSS’s ethos of study and preparation for responsibilities.[35] She continued as NUSEC secretary until at least 1927.[36] In 1923 she stood as a Liberal candidate in Heavitree for election to the city council, but was unsuccessful.[37]
Fletcher also became involved in the work of post-war reconstruction. Although the Exeter branch of the Charity Organisation Society, of which by that time Fletcher was a paid secretary, decided in 1919 to suspend its activities,[38] she turned her intention to the support of initiatives in health, welfare and housing[39] and establishing a branch of the League of Nations.[40]
Later in life she moved away from Exeter and in 1939 was living with her daughter Rachel and her husband, Cameron Hunter, in Cambridge. She died on 17 January 1953 in Balham, leaving effects of over £800. Frank Fletcher died in 1956.
Entry created by Julia Neville, October 2018
[1] Family and census information from www.ancestry.co.uk
[2] See his biography in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, available on-line at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2169-avigdor-elim-d . Accessed 12 Oct 2018.
[3] Mentioned by Mary Willcocks, WT 17 Aug 1914.
[3a] Sussex Agricultural Express, 3 Sep 1901. The author is grateful to Bill Newton for this reference, see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/D%27Avigdor-3. Accessed 13 Mar 2020.
[4] DEG, 23 Jul 1909 (advertisement); E&E, 8 Jan 1910, list of staff.
[5] Referred to as Professor in WT 13 Jan 1913.
[6] CC, 3 Oct 1912.
[7] WT, 8 Nov 1910.
[8] DEG, 20 Jan & 4 Mar 1911.
[9] DEG, 20 Jan 1914.
[10] e.g. DEG, 30 May 1912
[11] e.g. DEG, 30 Nov 1912.
[12] DEG, 20 Jan 1914.
[13] DEG, 28 Nov 1913.
[14] DEG, 30 Dec 1912; 18 Mar 1913; 20 Jan 1914
[15] DEG, 29 Oct 1912
[16] CC, 27 Jun 1912.
[17] CC, 27 Apr 1911; WT, 19 Feb 1913; DEG 20 Jan 1914.
[18] WT, 19 Jul & 26 Oct 1912.
[19] WT, 30 Oct 1913; 13 May 1914.
[20] WT, 27 May 1913.
[21] WT, 5 Jul 1912.
[22] DEG, 1 Mar 1916.
[23] DEG, 29 Oct 1912.
[24] WT, 13 Feb 1913.
[25] DEG, 29 Jun 1912.
[26] See, for examples. DEG 31 Jul, 28 Aug. 23 Oct, 20 Nov 1912; DEG, 21 Dec 1915.
[27] DEG, 26 Feb 1913.
[28] Report at NUWSS AGM, DEG, 2 Feb 1915; WT, 6 Dec 1915.
[29] WT, 13 Apr 1915.
[30] CC, 17 Nov 1916.
[31] DEG, 5 May 1915.
[32] DEG, 13 Sep 1915.
[33] WT, 6 Jun 1917.
[34] WT, 27 Sep 1917; 8 Nov 1918.
[35] DEG, 29 May 1918.
[36] CC, 11 Feb 1927.
[37] DEG, 10 Oct & 2 Nov 1923.
[38] DEG, 20 Dec 1919.
[39] WT, 24 Dec 1918; WT, 17 Jan 1919; WT, 17 May &17 Oct 1919.
[40] WT, 29 May, 28 Jun, 9 Nov 1920.