Agnes Weston

Dame Agnes Elizabeth Weston, GBE (26 March 1840 – 23 October 1918), also known as Aggie Weston, was an English philanthropist noted for her work with the Royal Navy. For over twenty years, she lived and worked among the sailors of the Royal Navy. The result of her powerful influence is evidenced in the widespread reform which took place in the habits of hundreds of men to whom her name was a talisman for good. In her day, one man out of every six in the navy was a total abstainer. Weston's work included her monthly letters to sailors, "Ashore and Afloat", which she edited, and the "Sailors' Rests", which she established in Portsmouth.[1] She was the first woman ever given a full ceremonial Royal Navy funeral.

Agnes Weston
"Aggie" Weston
Born26 March 1840
London, England
Died23 October 1918(1918-10-23) (aged 78)
Devonport, Borough of Plymouth,
Devon, England
NationalityUnited Kingdom
Occupationphilanthropist, temperance activist, writer
AwardsGBE

Early life

Weston was born on 26 March 1840 in London, the daughter of a barrister. In 1851 she, her mother and siblings were living in Weston, Bath.[2] She was influenced from her teenage years onward by the Reverend James Fleming,[3] curate of St Stephen, Lansdown, in the parish of Walcot, Bath (1855–1859), an advocate for total abstinence, lack of ritual in religious expression, and living one's faith through good works.

Career

In 1868, she took up hospital visiting and parish work in Bath, and through beginning a correspondence with a seaman who asked her to write to him, developed into the devoted friend of sailors, superintendent of the Royal Naval Temperance Society, and co-founder (with Sophia Wintz) of three Royal Sailors' Rests (two in Plymouth and one in Portsmouth), or clubs for sailors, by the start of the First World War. She published a monthly magazine, Ashore and Afloat, and established temperance societies on naval ships by personal visits to each ship (such as HMS Topaze) at a time when every ship had a grog pot. She published her memoirs My Life Among the Bluejackets in 1909.[4]

Weston served as Superintendent of Work among Sailors for the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and was the President of the Plymouth Branch of the National British Women's Temperance Association.[1]

Honours

In June 1918, her work for the Royal Navy was publicly recognised when she was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE).[5] She received an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Glasgow University. On her death at age 78 in Devonport she became the first woman ever given a full ceremonial Royal Navy funeral.[4]

Legacy

Charles Causley's first collection of poems, Farewell, Aggie Weston[4] (1951) contained his "Song of the Dying Gunner A.A.1":

Farewell, Aggie Weston, the Barracks at Guz,
Hang my tiddley suit on the door
I'm sewn up neat in a canvas sheet
And I shan't be home no more.

A portrait of her is included in the mural of heroic women by Walter P. Starmer unveiled in 1921 in St Jude's Church, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London.[6]

In March 2020, it was announced that Aggie Weston had come top of a public poll from a list of well-known Plymouth women to decide the recipient of the city's next blue plaque.[7]

References
  1. Chapin 1895, p. 17.
  2. Agnes Weston in the 1851 England Census. Census Returns of England and Wales, 1851. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO), 1851. via Ancestry.com paid subscription site: 1851 England Census (database on-line). Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Accessed December 2019.
  3. Kennerley, Alston. "Weston, Dame Agnes Elizabeth". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36842. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)(subscription required)
  4. Weston Mill, Plymouth: The Mother of the Navy National Museum of the Royal Navy, bbc.co.uk; accessed 19 June 2017.
  5. Agnes Weston named GBE, thegazette.co.uk; accessed 31 August 2014.
  6. "Campaign from on high at St Jude’s", Church Times, 31 July 2015
  7. https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/winner-plymouths-next-blue-plaque-2611286?fbclid=IwAR3M7coaZJ5dxJRAcVj69a4dNu96R2mpy5bqM9-JFVgB_Y2SWUaUD_kmDnQ

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