Retallack, Miss Joan, The Moorings, Maer Road, Exmouth
Joan Retallack (1875-1937) was born on 28 January 1875 at Chytane, St Enoder, Cornwall. By that time her father, Captain Francis Retallack, had retired from the army; his final post was as aide-de-camp to Sir Edmund Walker, Governor General of Canada. Joan lived with her parents well into adulthood. Before she was eight years old the family had moved to Leamington Priors, ten years later they were living in Ealing, they then moved to Bournemouth and in 1904 they moved to Exmouth, first living at The Moorings, a substantial 14-roomed property in Maer Road and then to Chypraze in Isca Road.
As soon as Joan arrived in Exmouth she threw herself into all of the sporting activities she loved. She was an outstanding tennis and croquet player and had a long association with the Exmouth Croquet & Lawn Tennis Club where, in addition to taking part in tournaments, she was involved in the administrative side of club activities.[1] She competed in local badminton tournaments, played in the Exmouth Ladies Cricket team[2] and was elected a member of the Rolle Ladies’ Rifle Club on the evening it was formed.[3] However it was at croquet that Joan excelled. She took part ‘with distinction in many open tournaments’ and ‘was ranked as England’s third-best woman player’. She competed in many tournaments with success and in 1929 represented England in a series of matches in Australia.[4]
As well as her sporting activities, Joan was a supporter of the women’s suffrage movement in Exmouth. When the Exmouth branch of the NUWSS was formed in 1912 Joan became the secretary. She attended their meeting in June 1912 at All Saints Exmouth where the speaker was Miss Frances Sterling from the executive committee of the NUWSS.[5] When the Suffragist Pilgrimage arrived in Exmouth at the beginning of July she accompanied them, along with Miss Fell, as they left the town.[6] In November 1913 the south-west branch of the NUWSS held a fund raising event in Exeter – a Fete and Forest of Christmas Trees; she took part in that event on behalf of the Exmouth branch.[7] In February 1914 the Exmouth branch of the League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage held a meeting in the Public Hall; women from the Exmouth NUWSS distributed leaflets before the meeting and then took their place in the audience. During the president’s introduction he mentioned Mrs Fawcett’s speech in Exeter and referred to her as ‘the president of the union of suffragettes’. With that Joan Retallack rose in the body of the hall’ and asked ‘if she might be allowed to contradict the statement’. The president swiftly told her to sit down or else leave the meeting saying ‘I cannot allow any interruptions, even from suffragettes’. Joan persisted and pointed out that it was a correction she wanted to make; one of the other NUWSS members made the correction for her by stating that Mrs Fawcett was the president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.[8]
When WW1 came the Exmouth NUWSS devoted their time to supporting the War effort. For instance, at the end of September they held a jumble sale in aid of the Patriotic War Fund at All Saints’ church and then had an appeal for the NUWSS Scottish Hospitals Fund; Joan was involved in organising these events.[9] In June 1915 Lady Clinton presided over a very crowded meeting in Exmouth which had been called to explain the national scheme for the registration of women for work. Representatives from a variety of different organisations in Exmouth attended including Joan (with Mrs Oliver) from NUWSS. Joan announced that the Exmouth branch of the NUWSS was opening a registration office in Exmouth under the national scheme; it was going to be in a room lent to them by the committee of the Girls’ Patriotic Club.[10] Two years later at a meeting of the Devonshire Women’s War Service Committee held at the Castle, Exeter, having had some experience of the scheme, she reported that some of the workers seemed to have an objection to registering and that many women were working very freely, unregistered, in a great many parishes.[11] During the war she was a member of the executive committee of the Devon County Council Women’s War Agricultural Committee responsible for the co-ordination the employment of women in agriculture, Exmouth District Secretary and the Selection and Allocation Sub-Committee secretary.[12]
Joan remained in Exmouth for a time after the war but eventually moved to Garth Granary Lane, Budleigh Salterton where she died on 25 November 1937. She is buried in Littleham churchyard, Exmouth.
Entry created by April Marjoram, June 2018
[1] Tennis Forum, Biographies of Female Tennis Players, Retallack Joan, https://www.tennisforum.com/59-blast-past/497314-biographies-female-tennis-players-177.html, Accessed 10 Sep 2018
[2] East &South Devon Advertiser, 16 Jun 1906.
[3] ExJ, 3 November 1906.
[4] WMN, 29 November 1937.
[5] DEG, 28 June 1912.
[6] WT, 8 Jul 1913.
[7] WT, 29 Nov 1913.
[8] DEG, 25 Feb 1914.
[9] WT, 1 Oct 1914; DEG, 24 Feb 1915
[10] DEG, 1 Jun 1915
[11] DEG, 26 Jun 1917
[12] WT, 24 Nov 1916; Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Circular 59/1, 1916; WT, 24 Apr 1917.