'Can any mother help me?' The question that inspired Britain's first women's magazine more than 70 years ago
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... with this plea, a unique writing club was founded in 1935 which allowed women to pour out their troubles and secrets to each other. Their words paint a tantalising portrait of a very different era.
During 1935, a lonely young mother wrote an impassioned letter to the women's magazine Nursery World: 'Can any mother help me? I live a very lonely life as I have no near neighbours. I cannot afford to buy a wireless. I adore reading, but with no library am very limited with books. I dislike needlework, though I have to do a lot of it!
'I get so down and depressed after the children are in bed and I am alone in the house. I know it is bad to brood and breed hard thoughts and resentment. Can any reader suggest an occupation that will intrigue me and exclude "thinking" and cost nothing?'
Women from all over the country wrote back expressing similar frustrations. Many were intelligent women who, once married and confined to the house, found that they were not ideally suited for life as a housewife and mother.
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Tales of woe: Housewives' letters went into a magazine they circulated among each other
Lonely and bored, they were full of ideas and opinions but had nowhere to express them. So they decided to start a private magazine. Each woman, writing under a nom de plume, would contribute an article on any subject and post it to the editor, who would assemble the articles.
She would mail the completed magazine to the first woman on a pre-arranged list, who had a set amount of time to read it, and who would add her own comments on the pages before sending it on to the next member. There were up to 24 members at any one time, and just one copy of the fortnightly magazine, so often more than one issue would be circulating at a time.
The Co-operative Correspondence Club - or CCC - was a place for these women to describe subjects close to their heart: the pain and elation of motherhood, wartime difficulties, marriage troubles or the struggles of daily routine. As they poured out their innermost thoughts over the years, many formed deep friendships and society members often met up.
Now, a new book, Can Any Mother Help Me?, reveals the fascinating, joyful and moving human stories that emerged over 50 years.
One of the first members was 26-yearold 'Janna', who described her regret at marrying young. She said: 'There was so much else I wanted out of life, and in those days marriage often equalled housewifery, which I loathed. I didn't, even then, want children, and really had poor little Julian more because of boredom than anything else.'
Choices were limited as women were expected to become mainly housewives and mothers. Many - like 'Ad Astra', a passionate teacher who loved her work - were forced to give up their careers because of legal and social barriers that restricted women from working after marriage.
'Ad Astra' met her future husband John in 1927, but delayed marriage until 1930 because she didn't want to give up teaching.
Once confined to the house, many of these intelligent women found they were not well suited to be housewives.
Auricula, a mother of five, confessed: 'I had always wanted a family, although I was hopelessly incompetent. I had no idea how to look after myself, let alone a husband and a child.
'I had never cooked a meal or ironed a shirt in my life when I got married. Many was the time when my tears mingled with the soap suds as I tried to get white collars clean - in the end I scrubbed them with Vim.'
Although the women of the CCC were brought together by motherhood, it was their shared experience of World War II that solidified their friendships and created life-long bonds.
One popular wartime contributor was the outgoing and eccentric 'Roberta' - famous for her atrocious typing, which made many of her articles almost illegible. 'Roberta' was born into a middle-class family in Chislehurst, Kent, in 1912. When she left school, around the age of 16, she worked as a teacher until she married her husband Walter in 1934. He was a Swiss-German stockbroker in London. The couple had their first son, Nicholas, in 1935, followed by Christopher in 1937.
At the outbreak of war, Walter continued to work as a stockbroker and also served as an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Warden.
On 17 September 1940, Roberta wrote: 'It is Sunday. We awoke at 8am, pulled back the curtains and beheld the view. A fresh September morning, we both agreed. Then we talked about our plans for the day.
'There was much to be done and seen to. The goat house to be swept. The pond to be cleaned. A pile of logs to be sawn. For me, there were beds to be made, a hasty dust around, the lunch to be prepared.
'Then, over the quietness of the air, came the sound of the siren. We didn't shift until planes could be heard. Presently, the air was humming with them. We waited and watched. The machine gunfire was a gentle, distant pop-pop. We came inside. Suddenly, roaring overhead - so low that the noise was terrifying - were six planes, fighting like mad. We both ducked for the shelter, the noise of the machine gun was deafening.
'A fearful noise, a moaning, a rush of wind and whirr of propellers, a crash. We both went out to see. There lay a mass of twisted, tortured metal, pieces here and there, iron railings of the field bent and buckled in her trail.
'The all-clear sounded. We sat down to lunch, sober and quiet. I didn't know the nationality of the plane, but I couldn't eat. A burning lump was inside me. I looked at Walter and he turned away.
'After tea, I said I'd like to view the plane. I'd like to know whether it was German or English, and I'd like to talk to Palmer (the special constable and our gardener). Perhaps they had all bailed out before the crash. Perhaps no one was hurt.'
She continued: 'We looked at this incredible wreck. A little mound, covered by a once white parachute, spattered with blood, patches of crimson here and there. Sickened, I asked Palmer, praying he would not confirm my thoughts, but yes, the German pilot of that bomber lay in pieces, beneath his stained covering.
'Palmer held out his hand to reveal the pilot's Iron Cross. He'd done something to earn that, now he was dead. No longer a body, or a man, but pieces. There lies a man who this morning had his breakfast, who slept last night, who spoke perhaps a few hours ago, now he is no more - he'll never speak again, or look, or eat - he's dead. He was someone's child, someone's brother perhaps, sweetheart, husband.'
In 1952, Walter was offered a job in Johannesburg with his bank. Roberta prepared to follow with the children. But Walter soon told Roberta that he had met another woman in Johannesburg and wanted a divorce.
She continued to share her shock and the unfolding news of the forthcoming divorce with her friends in the CCC, finding the other women's responses remarkably comforting. 'Well thank you for your loving thoughts and messages. I did appreciate them all more than I can tell you,' she wrote.
'It is like waking up from a bad dream and knowing one can go on and all is well, that what has been can't come back, but gladness and thankfulness are truly within my heart. I DO thank God for the luck which has been mine and will always be grateful.'
She went on to describe with honesty the release she found escaping from her unhappy marriage: 'Now I have floated free, free, free, bliss . . .
'I looked at my lawyer with eyes full of tears and made his heart be sorry for me! I melted my father-in-law's heart, so that he wrote to me how sad he was for me and, though he always felt divorce was a matter of two people being wrong, in my case he felt I was in no way to blame.'
Another struggling mother was 'Accidia', who lived in aching rural isolation away from family and friends.
When Accidia joined the CCC in 1951 she had four children, was pregnant with her fifth and trapped in an unfulfilling marriage. She had been reading about nuns suffering from accidie, a form of depression caused by loneliness. She adapted this name to form her own nom de plume.
Born in 1918, Accidia spent her childhood in Bristol. In 1937, aged 19, she read English and then Modern Language at Girton College, Cambridge, then an all-women college.
When she left, she started teaching and joined the pacifist movement, where she met her future husband John, nine years her senior. They married in 1941, and after having their first daughter Phyllida, John's mother convinced him to move nearer to her in Caton, Lancashire. It was the loneliest time of Accidia's life. Because John was a conscientious objector, the villagers refused to speak to her for the 18 months they lived there. Accidia gave birth to Adrian, Althea and Humfrey - leaving her with four children, no transport and few companions.
She wrote the following after giving birth to her fifth child Julian in October 1951, describing the nursing home practice of taking babies straight from their mother's arms.
'I was denied the pleasure of holding Julian as he was whisked away in his cot and did not reappear for four hours. Nor did the children have the joy of seeing him all new, as no child visitors were allowed in the Nursing Home.
'This removing of the babies from their mothers except at feeding times is a practice I hope will soon be abandoned. I missed very much indeed the joy of having the cot next to me and hearing the occasional snuffle and irregular breathing.'
In February 1955, pregnant with her sixth child, Accidia described the monotony of domestic life.
'There are times, as with the four weeks immediately after Christmas this year, when a black accidie descends; I wake to a feeling of "What the hell?" seeing the years' relentless passage, so little time, so little accomplished, and my life endlessly spent in tidying the muddles of others, cleaning the horrid little house, trying to fit a gallon-size family into a pint-pot establishment.
'The fields are grey and sodden, the sky ditto. Of my contemporaries I see nothing, hear nothing - since Christmas John has spoken to over 400 people - I to about four: the dustman, fishman, policeman and the woman from one of the Harewood Estate lodges.
'The children bounce back from school with complaints that "Elaine wouldn't play with me," "Y was bossy," I listen, make the necessary soothing comments and give no indication that my own life at the moment seems a dull waste, a vale of (unshed) tears, an empty vessel, a froth of frustration . . . I refrain from shouting, "For God's sake, let's get away from here - I hate the North, I am sick of this house, I am bored, bored, BORED."
'No, I just lie low and say nothing - simply because accidie has brought me so low that I can't be bothered to complain.'
Some of the saddest entries to the CCC were written by 'Isis' - a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and experiencing waves of depression which would later result in suicide attempts.
Born in 1906, the daughter of a clergyman, 'Isis' lost both her parents in 1920 during the influenza epidemic that devastated Europe. Sent to live with distant relatives, she later read history at Oxford where she met her future husband Alistair.
'Isis' taught in South Africa for a few years, then returned to England and married Alistair in 1936. In the years that followed, she gave birth to Thomas, Peter, David and finally Matthew.
In 1951, five years after Matthew's birth, 'Isis' wrote a series of articles for the CCC, sharing problems she faced during her marriage before and after Matthew was diagnosed with Down's Syndrome.
'You may remember that in 1945 I wanted a fourth baby. But after we had discussed it very fully, Alistair told me to put the idea right out of my head, as it would upset all the educational plans he had for the other boys. By the spring of 1946 I had renounced all thoughts of ever having another child.
'Alistair and I mostly made use of the safe period, because my cycle was 28 days exactly, like clockwork. If we did have intercourse at a fertile time we always used a Rendall's Pessary (an old-fashioned contraceptive cream made from cocoa butter and quinine).
'One night at the end of March 1946, "A" suddenly took me unawares and unwilling, disregarding all protests - when I asked, "What about precautions?" he answered, "Oh, to hell with precautions. They spoil everything, Besides, we aren't as fertile as we were."
'I said, "Are you quite sure you want a baby exactly at Christmas time, because you'll certainly have one." "Rubbish," said Alistair; and I resigned myself.'
With frankness, she went on to write: 'Next morning I worked out exactly when the baby would arrive, December 24.
'We were at the seaside in the Easter holidays when I missed my first period. "Nonsense," said Alistair. "You've miscalculated it." But when the fact was established he was furious. How dared I do such a thing? I was equally furious with him. "I warned you, didn't I?" And so we reproached each other.
'Alistair was just out of the Army and none too pleased at being back in his civvy job. Following a sort of nervous breakdown, he was having psycho-analytical treatment almost every day in London.
'The effect was to make him completely and absolutely wrapped up in himself - morose and exceedingly irritable. He seemed to regard it as the most dreadful disgrace, and said that if it were known, he would lose his job.'
Isis's misery continued. A year after her beloved baby Matthew was born, doctors gave a devastating diagnosis - choosing to tell the father, and not the mother.
'Dr L. told Alistair his diagnosis in private. Late that evening when I was at work in the kitchen, "A" came in and told me, and he was crying. I could only stare at him and say, "But he surely is mistaken, Matthew doesn't look like a Mongol."
'Alistair said, "I'm afraid it is absolutely definite." I then tried to comfort him and to make him feel that we could help each other to bear it.
'That evening, perhaps, we were truly united in our misery but after that first shock, I had the feeling that "A" was, unconsciously, feeling that I ought to be "punished" for Matthew's condition. I felt that he positively hated me for being the mother of a defective child.
'There was a complete barrier between us, and nothing I could say or do seemed to get over it.'
Matthew was cared for in various homes throughout his life, visited by both his parents until his death in 1974. Alistair and Isis moved to Oxfordshire when he retired from his job as a teacher. Suffering from bouts of depression, Isis embraced Catholicism and died in 1989.
Hers is one of the more harrowing stories in a collection that sheds fascinating light on the shifting social and sexual mores of the decades before and after the War.
For today's generation of women, served by advanced medical techniques and with every economic and social freedom, these voices from an age when to be a woman often meant to suffer in silence makes for uncomfortable reading.
Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey is published by Faber at £16.99.
'Can any mother help me?' The question that inspired Britain's first women's magazine more than 70 years ago | the Daily Mail
'Can any mother help me?'
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