History Alive! is a tour guiding company owned by Jerseyman Marc Yates, aiming to show you Jersey's fabulous unique history in a new and captivating way.
25/03/2025
A bit of history I am doing tomorrow! Marian Gamwell was an incredible woman who packed so much into her life including going off to the Front in WW1 and then recruiting agents and wireless operators to work with the SOE undercover in occupied Europe in WW2.
Société Jersiaise Spring Lunchtime Talk Series 2025
Up next!
"Marian Gamwell O.B.E, a lifelong F.A.N.Y. (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry)" presented by Marc Yates.
Wednesday 26th March 2025 - 1:10-1:50pm - Members' Room - 7 Pier Road, St Helier.
Marian Gamwell was a lady who retired to Jersey with her sister Hope in the 1960s. They died in the 1970s. I recently acquired her photograph album quite by chance and discovered that she one of those women in the days of the suffragette movement who wasn't one to protest about the lack of woman's rights, but she just got on with doing things in a man's world which weren't considered appropriate for a woman!
So, it was driving cars and motorbikes, flying planes, smoking in public, volunteering to go off to the Western Front in WW1 in uniform and so on. In modern popular language, she might have been referred to as a "very badass woman"!
The photograph album contains very rare photos from the front when soldiers were not permitted to have cameras.
In WW2 she volunteered her service again and became a member of Special Operations Executive (the SOE) which was a British organisation formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and to aid local resistance movements during World War II.
Free Entry. Tea & coffee will be served from 12.45pm. All welcome.
