Worthington, Mrs Evelyn

Worthington, Mrs Evelyn, 30 Southernhay East, Exeter

Evelyn Marian Worthington née Bankart (1875-1953)[1] was born on 26 September 1875 at 19 Southernhay West, the third daughter of James and Gertrude Bankart. Sisters Ethel Rose and Lilian Gertrude were both older than Evelyn. She also had a younger sister, (Beatrice) Sybil, and brother Arthur.

James Bankart FRCS[2] was a doctor who had set up a practice as a GP and surgeon at 19 Southernhay West at the end of the 1860s. He came to public notice in 1870 as an advocate of smallpox vaccination[3] and later that year he married Gertrude Moss in Hull.[4] At the end of 1871 he secured election as a surgeon at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.[5] Gertrude Bankart displayed an early interest in the movement for women’s suffrage, attending the lecture given by Mrs Fawcett in Exeter in 1871.[6]

The girls were initially educated at home by a governess, shown on the 1881 census, whilst Arthur went away to school. Later Edith and Evelyn both attended the High School for Girls (the Maynard School),[7] and joined the classes run at the Albert Memorial Museum for the Cambridge Local Examinations and as part of the University Extension Movement.[8] Ethel Bankart was a talented violinist who studied both in London at the Royal College of Music and at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig. Evelyn became involved in the Charity Organisation Society.[9] Lilian does not seem to have been actively engaged outside the home and died in 1917 in her early forties.[10]

At the time of the 1911 census Evelyn Bankart was still living at 19 Southernhay West with her mother Gertrude and sister Lilian (James Bankart had died in 1902). They still employed a cook and a housemaid in the 13-room house but there was no longer a parlourmaid, as there had been in 1901 when James had seen patients in his consulting room there. Evelyn was already engaged to Dr Robert Worthington, whom she married in Exeter Cathedral in October 1911.[11]  They set up home in 30 Southernhay West, where Robert had his consulting rooms. He became the first Consultant ENT Surgeon at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in 1914 and spent the First World War serving as the Officer Commanding at Exeter’s Temporary War Hospital No 2, first for the Red Cross and then for the War Office.[12]

Ethel and Evelyn Bankart both joined the Exeter branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) when it was formed at the end of 1909, acting as stewards at the public meetings in December 1909 and March 1910.[13] Evelyn, by this time Evelyn Worthington, also acted as secretary to the Exeter Branch’s Hospitality Committee, which oversaw the arrangements for hosting the visit of the NUWSS Provincial Council in May 1913.[14]

Worthington was a Conservative supporter and is noted as assisting in the Conservative headquarters in the election in December 1910.[15] In October 1913, when Jessie Montgomery (q.v.) set up the Devon and Exeter branch of the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association she became assistant secretary, and subsequently joint secretary with Montgomery.[16] In this connection she was involved in organising the Sweated Industries Exhibition held in Exeter in February 1914.[17]

During the First World War Evelyn became a member of the Belgian Relief Committee.[18] She and her mother also worked on Ethel’s behalf for the relief of the Serbians. Ethel, who had been back in Exeter at the start of the War, and had also enthusiastically assisted in the work of the Belgian Relief Committee with Clara Andrew (q.v.), went out to Belgrade as a Red Cross volunteer in April 1915 and worked in Serbia and Corsica until the end of the War.[19] Evelyn and her mother collected clothes to send out to help equip an orphanage there.[20] The Worthingtons’ only child, a daughter, was born in October 1915.

During the war Ethel Bankart was awarded the Serbian Cross of Mercy and the Medal of the Order of St Sava in addition to her British medals. She returned from Corsica to Serbia at the end of the War and set up a hospital for children with tuberculous scrofula in Koviljaca which she ran for many years, and raised funds for, returning to Exeter and 19 Southernhay West during the Second World War. She died there in 1961.[21]

The Worthingtons continued to live in Exeter until their house was hit during the Exeter Blitz in 1942. Robert Worthington died in 1945 and Evelyn in 1953.

 

 

Entry revised by Julia Neville, April 2019


[1] Family and census information from www.ancestry.co.uk

[2] James Bankart biography at http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E000747b.htm  Accessed 25 August 2018.

[3] Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 19 Feb 1870.

[4] Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 6 Jun 1870.

[5] Western Times, 16 Dec 1871.

[6] Western Times, 16 Mar 1871.

[7] Devon Heritage Centre 68/5/2/2, Maynard School Magazines.

[8] Recorded for example in Western Times, 26 Mar 1888; 9 Jun 1891.

[9] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 19 Dec 1907.

[10] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 4 Dec 1917.

[11] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 2 Mar 1911; Robert Worthington biography at http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E004814b.htm  Accessed 25 August 2018.

[12] Glimpses of the Worthington’s home life, including the birth of their daughter and only child, are given in Margaret Kelly’s diary for 1915, http://kelly-house.co.uk/margarets-ww1-diary-100-years/  Accessed 25 Aug 2018. Kelly stayed with them while volunteering as a VAD nurse.

[13] Western Times, 1 Dec 1909; 17 Mar 1910.

[14] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 20 Jan 1914.

[15] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 5 Dec 1910.

[16].Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Review, 1 Oct 1913; 1 Jan 1914.

[17] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 21 Feb 1914.

[18] Western Times, 5 November 1914.

[19] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 26 Jan 1915; British Red Cross volunteer card for Ethel Bankart, https://vad.redcross.org.uk/Card?sname=bankart&id=10374&first=true&last=true  Accessed 25 August 2018.

[20] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 13 Aug 1915.

[21] Ethel Bankart’s life and service in Serbia have been researched by Marija Šcekic Markovic of the Jadar Museum in Loznica Serbia (book forthcoming, April 2019).

 

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