1917. 8vo, pp. x, 325, [3] list of personnel; with frontispiece, one partially coloured folding map (with small tear at gutter), and 15 photographic plates (the majority with two images); some light soiling and foxing throughout, a few corners creased, pp. 31-33 fore-edges nicked due to rough opening; in the original decorative cloth, spine lettered in black, head and tail of spine bumped and slightly nicked, book block slightly shaken, covers darkened with some staining and soiling, extremities lightly rubbed and bumped; with the signature of ‘Winfrey’ on paste down and front free endpaper; a sound copy. Second edition (first 1916) of this first hand account of the work of the Women’s National Service League during WWI, under the courageous leadership of the feminist and medical relief work, Mabel Annie St Clair Stobart (nee Boulton 1862 - 1954). Stobart believed passionately in the value of women in wartime, hoping that once they’d proved as capable as men, that they would ultimately secure the right to vote, and had previously established the Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps, and led a successful relief expedition helping the Bulgarian Red Cross during the First Balkan War of 1912. Members of the corps were provided thorough training based on methods used by the Royal Army Medical Corps. Despite offering the services of her all-female corps to the British Red Cross, the offer was rejected by its head, Sir Frederick Treves, who did not believe that women belonged near the battlefield. Undeterred, Stobart took direct action herself, and travelled independently with her team to Serbia, and later Bulgaria, where she set up a hospital in Thrace for the Bulgarian Red Cross. She penned an account of her experiences in 1913, published as ‘War and Women’.
Shortly after the beginning of WWI Stobart established the Women's National Service League. Again her offers of help were rejected by Treves, and so bypassing him for a second time, she set off with a team to the front. At one point she was arrested by the Germans as she was setting up a hospital in Belgium, but fortunately avoided the same fate that befell her contemporary Edith Cavell. She set up further field hospitals in France before turning her attention to war-torn Serbia, where an epidemic of typhus has broken out. Stobart fund-raised for ambulances, X-ray machines and medical supplies, and travelled to Serbia with her seven female doctors, eighteen nurses and a large general staff including her second husband, John Greenhalgh. ‘The tented military hospital she and her team created at Kragujevac and the network of civilian clinics they established in the area provided medical aid to thousands. Stobart, as the commander of First Serbian-English Field Hospital (Front), was given the rank of major. When the Serbian army was forced to retreat to Albania in 1915, Stobart led her mobile hospital over mountainous terrain for 81 days. Her unit was the only one to arrive in Albania without any losses or desertions. For her services, she was awarded the Serbian Orders of the White Eagle and of St. Sava. In 1916 she was appointed a Lady of Grace of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica online). The present work provides a detailed and graphic account of her experiences, and Stobart went on to conduct several lecture tours, donating the money made to the Serbian Red Cross.
‘Stobart continued speaking out for women’s rights. By the end of World War I, the United Kingdom had passed a law that gave some women the right to vote, and full suffrage came not long after. In later life she was active in various causes. She became involved in the spiritualist movement and in 1925 published the book Torchbearers of Spiritualism. In 1929 she became one of the founders of the SOS Society, an organization that provided housing for the unemployed. Her autobiography Miracles and Adventures appeared in 1935’ (ibid).