During the First World War, Alice was Vice Chairman of the Merioneth Women’s War Agricultural Committee and also worked for the French Wounded Emergency Fund in London, Paris and Geneva. She wrote and published a number of plays and pageants, among them “Liz”, a propaganda play which was performed all over Wales in 1915 to raise funds for the French Wounded Emergency Fund and another entitled “Brittania”.
With some of her friends Alice set up the Signal Bureau in Paris which gave assistance to people looking for injured, missing or displaced persons. The French Government awarded Alice the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Française. In 1917, Alice was made a Welsh Bard, her bardic name being Alys Meirion.
After the First World War, Alice helped to set up the Women’s Institute Movement in Britain and became the President of the Deudraeth WI. She donated a parcel of land and helped to raise funds for the building of Britain’s very first Institute Hall at Penrhyndeudraeth. The building was opened by Mrs Lloyd George. Alice was elected on to the Committee of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes as their first Honorary Secretary and was later elected to the Executive Committee.
Alice then became General Secretary of the Federation, a paid post. She went on to found “Home and Country”, the official journal of the Women’s Institute, a post which she held until 1920.
The setting up of branches of the Lyceum Club in Paris and Berlin were also due to Alice’s hard work and dedication. The Lyceum Clubs were set up in the early 1900s for women interested in the arts, sciences, social concerns and in the pursuit of lifelong learning – they are still going strong today.
In 1919, Alice founded the Forum Club, a women’s club in London for Women’s Institute Members. Alice took on the role of Chairman at the Club’s inception and from 1928 to 1938. As well as accommodation for members and their maids, the club sported a dining room, lounge, photographic dark room, a room that could be hired for exhibitions, a bridge room, billiard room, library and hairdressing salon – a haven for women who, unlike their male counterparts, until then had nowhere similar to go when in London.
An accomplished artist, Alice was a member of the Union des Femme Peintres et Sculpteurs in Paris and of the Union Internationale des Aquarellistes, also in Paris. She died on 15th August 1957, aged 94.
Sources:
Information kindly supplied by Professor Stephen Cribari from information held at the Women’s Library, LSE, London;
www.calmarchive.londonmet.ac.uk www.lyceumclub.org
