Louisa Wilkins
Louisa Wilkins
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Louisa Wilkins

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Louisa Wilkins

Louisa Wilkins OBE, also known as Mrs Roland Wilkins (born Louisa Jebb; 8 August 1873 – 1929) was a British writer and agricultural administrator. She was involved in the creation and recruitment for the Women's Land Army during World War One. She was an enthusiast for small holdings and after the war she inspired the creation of a small holding co-operative for women who had entered agriculture during the war.

Wilkins was born in Ellesmere in 1873. Her parents were Eglantyne Louisa Jebb (née Jebb) and first cousin Arthur Trevor Jebb. Her sisters Eglantyne and Dorothy (became Buxton) co-founded the children's international development agency Save the Children. Her brother Richard Jebb was a journalist and she was the niece of the classical scholar and politician, Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb.

Jebb attended Newnham College in Cambridge. She had studied agriculture and she worked as a bailiff at her brother's farm.

Jebb was a founder member of the Women's Farm and Garden Union which was formed in 1899. For three years up to 1907 she was retained by the Cooperative Small Holdings Association. In 1907 she published The Small Holdings of England which was an attempt to provide a survey of the small holdings of England. She describes the history of small holdings, the philanthropic acts that created them, current experiments and she tells her readers how to establish more.

In 1908 she and a female friend (she names as "X") decided to set out on an adventure. They first decided on the continent and that they "should choose a country which could be reached otherwise than by sea; and that, having reached it, its nature should be such that we could travel indefinitely in it without reaching the sea". Using a pencil on the map they decided that their destination should be Damascus and they would "fill in the details when we get there."

They decided to travel across the Ottoman Empire to Baghdad and Damascus. Neither of them could speak the local languages, they were unaware of customs, they wore long skirts and rode side saddle; Wilkins would later publish an account of their journey and the sights they saw.

In February 1916 the Women's Farm and Garden Union sent a deputation to meet Lord Selborne to establish a group in response to the war effort. Selborne's Ministry of Agriculture agreed to fund a Women's National Land Service Corps with a grant of £150 and Wilkins was to lead the new voluntary organisation that was to focus on recruiting women for emergency agricultural war work. She chaired the executive committee, offices were established in Upper Baker Street and the 9th Duke of Marlborough agreed to be president.

The new organisation was tasked with improving recruitment and providing propaganda about the benefits of women of all classes undertaking agricultural work. The new members of her organisation were not to become agricultural workers but to organise others (e.g. in villages) to do this work. By the end of 1916 they had recruited 2,000 volunteers, but they estimated that 40,000 were required.

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