{"id":458,"date":"2013-10-21T12:07:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T11:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sigbi.org\/cannock-and-district\/?p=458"},"modified":"2013-10-21T12:07:53","modified_gmt":"2013-10-21T11:07:53","slug":"soldiering-on-letters-from-war-widows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sigbi.org\/cannock-and-district\/2013\/10\/21\/soldiering-on-letters-from-war-widows\/","title":{"rendered":"Soldiering On: Letters from war widows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--[if gte mso 9]&gt;--><\/p>\n<p><!--[if gte mso 9]&gt;--><\/p>\n<p><!--[if !mso]&gt;--><\/p>\n<p><!--[if gte mso 10]&gt;--><\/p>\n<p><!--[if gte mso 9]&gt;--><\/p>\n<p><!--[if gte mso 9]&gt;--><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">\u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma\" lang=\"EN-US\">Soldiering On &#8211; Letters from War Widows\u201d was the title of a talk given to Cannock Soroptimists recently by club member Dr Janis Lomas.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Janis is an historian, specialising in the history of war widows in the UK.<br \/>\nShe gave a talk which was both insightful and emotional, using extracts from the letters of war widows to demonstrate not only the hardship faced by the majority of them from both World Wars but also the way in which they were treated. Pensions were dependant on rank and respectability and could be forfeited if any rules were broken. Amazingly, war widows from WW2 were actually worse off than those from WW1 for most of the war years and all war widows were impoverished after WW2.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma\" lang=\"EN-US\"><a href=\"\/cannock-and-district\/files\/2013\/10\/Janis-President-Lakwinder-Oct-13.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-459\" src=\"\/cannock-and-district\/files\/2013\/10\/Janis-President-Lakwinder-Oct-13-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sigbi.org\/cannock-and-district\/files\/2013\/10\/Janis-President-Lakwinder-Oct-13-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/sigbi.org\/cannock-and-district\/files\/2013\/10\/Janis-President-Lakwinder-Oct-13-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sigbi.org\/cannock-and-district\/files\/2013\/10\/Janis-President-Lakwinder-Oct-13.jpg 810w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>The women found themselves widowed at very young ages, often with small children &#8211; and could be left with no pension for many reasons, for example, if they had married a man already disabled from the first world war. These women were left with nothing to live on and of course at that time there was no child care!\u00a0 For many, on top of the grief of losing their husbands, they were faced with making the decision to give up their children to state care because they could not both work and look after them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma\" lang=\"EN-US\">One woman wrote: <\/span><em><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma\">Like many other war widows I had no capital and my boy went at eight years to a home, as I had no home and had to take domestic type work to get a roof over my head. So I missed all my son&#8217;s childhood only seeing him at holidays . . . the council would not give accommodation as I did not have enough income<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma\">. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma\" lang=\"EN-US\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma\" lang=\"EN-US\">In 1971, Iris Strange, a war widow herself, helped to set up the War Widows Association.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>After 19 years she saw all of their campaigning come to fruition when war widows were granted vastly increased pensions.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>Now, thank goodness, women who suffer because their husbands are killed in war or badly injured whilst fighting are treated much more fairly. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma\" lang=\"EN-US\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma\" lang=\"EN-US\">Team President Lakhwinder Thompson thanked Janis for her presentation which led to an interesting discussion of members\u2019 memories of how their own families had been affected. Photo: Janis Lomas (on left) with Team President, Lakhwinder Thompson.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cSoldiering On &#8211; Letters from War Widows\u201d was the title of a talk given to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-club-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Soldiering On: Letters from war widows | News | Blog | Events | SI Cannock and District<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"SI Cannock and District : Blog &amp; News : Soldiering On: Letters from war widows : Keep up to date with the latest news, articles and events from the Soroptimists of SI Cannock and District . 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