Rare WW1 British War & Victory Medal (female recipient) – Awarded to Worker (TELEGRAPHIST) LOTTIE ELEANOR STEVENS Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps, formerly Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps + brass Q.M.A.A.C. cap badge – Attached RE Signal Service

Stock Reference – MM-MED-0058

Rare WW1 British War & Victory Medal (female recipient) – Awarded to Worker (TELEGRAPHIST) LOTTIE ELEANOR STEVENS Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps, formerly Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps + brass Q.M.A.A.C. cap badge – Attached RE Signal Service

You are looking at a rare British War Medal and Victory Medal pair awarded to female recipient, Worker (TELEGRAPHIST) 1595 LOTTIE ELEANOR STEVENS of the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps, formerly of the Woman’s Army Auxiliary Corps. The medals come with the recipients Q.M.A.A.C. cap badge.  

The medal is inscribed ‘1595 WKR. L.E.STEVENS. Q.M.A.A.C.’

The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (W.A.A.C.) were formed in 1917, following the Battle of the Somme (1916), with senior commanders realising there was a need to recruit female service personnel to handle some of the duties carried out by soldiers who could be released for front line duties....The all-female recruits were employed in various roles, such as catering, as clerks, drivers and telephone operators, in stores.

Queen MARY became the patron of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps on the 9^th of April 1918, at which point the corps was renamed the Queen MARY’S Army Auxiliary Corps.

Between January 1917 and November 1918, around 57,000 women enlisted into the W.A.A.C. & Q.M.A.A.C., and around 17,000 members served overseas, most in France, but with never more than 9,000 servicewomen deployed overseas at any one time, and towards the end of WW1 there were just over 40,000 still serving, with around 7,000 serving in France.

Of the 57,000 members of the Q.M.A.A.C., it is believed that between 1,500 and 2,500 were employed as telephonists and telegraphists, but they were very different roles, telephonists involved in the operation of switchboards and the routing of telephones, and telegraphists operating more complex electronic equipment, transmitting data by Morse Code etc.....The exact numbers of telephonists compared to telegraphists is not known, but it is estimated that there were probably 3 x telephonists to every 1 x telegraphist, and previous research has suggested that there was in fact 400 to 600 actual telegraphists who served with the Q.M.A.A.C., although there is no definitive information to confirm this.  

Most of the Q.M.A.A.C. telegraphists were specifically recruited / headhunted to serve in the corps, and by agreement with their employer the General Post Office (GPO). They were selected for the telegraphy skills they possessed and the fact that they could be immediately deployed into an active overseas role without the need for formal training. 

LOTTIE, with the service number 1595, was one of the early pioneering women who enlisted into the Q.M.A.A.C., and as a ‘TELEGRAPHIST’, based on the uncorroborated figures provided above, she was one of a relatively small number of female telegraphists who served with the Q.M.A.A.C. in France, making her WW1 medal pair a particularly rare set of medals.

LOTTIE ELEANOR STEVENS, the daughter of JOHN and CLARA STEVENS. was born at Withycombe Raleigh, Exmouth in Devon on the 1^st of January 1895.

She obtained her Civil Service Certificate (Civil Service Commission Examination) on the 20^th of July 1911, when she was sixteen years old, and less than two weeks later, on the 31^st of July, she entered the Post Office as a ‘Learner’ or probationer, completing her probationary service on the 1^st of March 1913, and commencing in the permanent rank of ‘Sorting Clerk & Telegraphist’ on the 2^nd of March.

On the 25^th of June 1917, LOTTIE ELEANOR STEVENS of 19 George Street in Exmouth, a ‘telegraphist’ by profession, and an employee of the Post Office, enlisted into the ‘Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (W.A.A.C.)’ at London, and having been accepted into the Corps, she was immediately posted to Cardiff as a ‘telegraphist’.

Just over one month later, on the 29^th of July 1917, LOTTIE embarked onto a ship at Southampton, and she disembarked at Le Havre the following day, the 30^th of July, at which point she was sent to Rouen, where she served in ‘Signal Unit APO2 BEF’, or more precisely, ‘Army Post Office 2’ at Rouen, whose communications work came under the control of the Royal Engineers Signal Service.

Her service record shows a number of entries relating to her movements whilst in France, with many made, authorised or acknowledged by an officer in the Royal Engineers, or ‘R.Es’ as they appear in the record, that appears to confirm  LOTTIE was under the direct control of the ‘Royal Engineers Signal Service’.

From contemporary newspaper reports, there were at least two enemy air attacks on Rouen in 1918, during the time LOTTIE was serving there, one on the 27^th of May and the other on the 31^st of July, but no evidence to suggest the signal unit in which she was employed or the location she and her colleagues were billeted was struck.....However, it is worth noting that overnight of the 29^th-30^th of May, just two days after the first aerial attack, Q.M.A.A.C. Camp No. 1 in Abbeville was attacked by German aircraft with the loss of 9 x members of the corps, with colleagues photographs showing members of the corps marching in the funeral procession.

To members of the Q.M.A.A.C. serving in France, the loss of their comrades must have brought into sharp focus the world in which they were living and the dangers they faced.

LOTTIE was still serving in France when the war ended, and on the 21^st of December 1918, LOTTIE was admitted to hospital and found to be suffering from keloid scars on her chest...She was discharged from hospital on the 8^th of January 1919, and having been granted a period of leave, appears to have been employed in minor duties at the Connaught Club at the Marble Arch in London, also referred to as the ‘Marble Arch Dispersal Hostel’ that was used by the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps’ as a dispersal and demobilisation centre for those members of the corps returning home from France.

She was awarded the Silver War Badge.

In April 1919, a representative of the ‘Postmaster General to State’ wrote to the Army Council, providing that they had received a report to the effect that Miss ELEANOR STEVENS, who enrolled as a telegraphist in the QMAAC for service in France , was unfit for further foreign service and currently on minor duties at the Connaught Club. The letter went on to ask, that due to the shortage of women telegraphists in the Post Office, that Miss STEVENS, in fact all women telegraphists in the QMAAC who were deemed unfit for foreign service, should be returned to their normal duties in the post office, and they asked for LOTTIE to be discharged.

She was discharged on medical grounds  on the 4^th of April 1919, according to one record, although another suggests she was discharged on the 1^st of June that same year, but on a medical authority dated the 3^rd of April.

In 1919, LOTTIE married ARTHUR BLAKE, with the event registered at St Thomas in Devon in the September quarter of that year, St Thomas being the registration district in which Withycombe Raleigh appears, and where LOTTIE was born....She therefore married within a short period of her having been discharged from the Q.M.A.A.C.

LOTTIE and ARTHUR had two children, ELEONAR B B BLAKE born 1921 and JOHN A B BLAKE born 1925, and in 1925, the family were living at 18 Militia Buildings in the Chester area.

ARTHUR BLAKE may have had some issues of a criminal nature in 1928, and it is not clear what happened to him after that, but he does not appear alongside his wife and daughter in the 1939 Register, when they were living in Bristol and both employed as S.C. & T staff within the General Post Office. It is likely LOTTIE was no longer with ARTHUR at the time, because she married TOM POWELL in 1942, with the event registered at Wallasey and in 1945 she was living at 16 St Lukes Place in Cheltenham.

LOTTIE’S son JOHN ARTHUR BUCKLEY BLAKE served with the Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort’s Own) during WW2, as a rifleman, and he was killed on the 29^th of March 1945 at the age of 19 years.

TOM POWELL, of 62 St Nicholas Road in Wallasey, died on the 30^th of May 1950, with the administration of his estate handled by his wife LOTTIE ELEANOR POWELL.

LOTTIE ELEANOR BLAKE-POWELL, born 1^st January 1895, died in 1986 at the age of 91 years, with her death registered at Exeter in the November of that year.

SELLER NOTE – When acquired, these medals were attached to a card, with their ribbons glued to the card itself. The seller has removed them from the card and attempted to remove some of the original glue, but the ribbons, if original, are in the state you can see in the photographs provided.  

SELLER NOTE = Supporting documentation obtained and / or created during this research will be provided.