MLW Biography Featured in Scotsman's Best of 2013

Exciting news! Mary Lily Walker: Visionary of Dundee, the biography written by author Eddie Small, has been named by Kirsty Gunn as one of the best reads of 2013, in The Scotsman. She wrote:

Finally, to Dundee where I teach, for a marvellously engaged story of one our great philanthropists. Mary Lily Walker: Forgotten Visionary of Dundee is by Eddie Small (Dundee University Press, £8.99), my colleague in writing studies at the university there. His book shows us how imagination and thoughtfulness can bring about change even when circumstances seem insurmountable. A great lesson for a UK society flattened by the excesses of capitalism ­ and inspiring indeed.

You can read the full article and selections HERE.

Author of the biography, Eddie Small said:

"It would have been easy for her to say some something nice about the author, seeing as we work together. But she's chosen to say nice things about the book and more importantly about Mary Lily Walker, and that's the key thing."

On hearing the news, research team member Suzanne Zeedyk said:

"I am over the moon.  Kirsty has shared my own view about the value of Mary Lily's story.  It isn't a story about yesterday.  It is a story about today — about what she still has to teach us about life, about creative solutions to massive social problems, about friendship and love.  I LOVE her story!"

If you are still looking for great Christmas gifts, its not too late to get a copy of the biography from us. Drop us an e-mail and we can post one out to arrive with you before the 25th!

New Dundee Nursery founded in the name of Mary Lily Walker

The High School of Dundee proudly announced today their plans to name their new nursery after Mary Lily Walker.  Ground work for the new-build site is now under way, with a finish date of June 2014 in mind and the first intake of children beginning in August 2014.  

Mary Lily Walker is a Former Pupil of the High School, which she attended aged 16 – 18 years (approx 1879 – 1881).  Like so much of the rest of her life, these details had been forgotten until our team began to undertake the research that has driven this project for the past two years.  The High School themselves only learned of their link to her when they heard a presentation by our team at the Dundee Rotary Club.

We celebrate Dundee High School's eagerness to mark her achievements in this way.  Although Mary Lily Walker herself would probably have been a bit embarrassed by all the public attention, she would have been delighted to know that her efforts on behalf of Dundee's children are still proving effective.

Here's some photos from the start of works, with more on our Facebook page HERE: 

Breaking ground for the new nursery - John Halliday Head of School, holding the spade! 

These young ones just the age that the new nursery will serve

Mary Lily Walker and Breast Feeding

One of the exciting aspects of our Mary Lily Walker Project is the fact that it is not only a historic project. Instead, her story gives us a historic context in which we can place the debates we still have today.

This week's announcement of an initiative to increase breastfeeding rates by providing incentives to
mothers is a perfect example.

Here's a summary piece our team wrote that shows the links between the past and the present:

Breast Feeding Incentives for working mothers :

The UK has been exploring what might be helpful for more than a century

One of the stories hitting the news this week (12 November 2013) relates to a newly- launched scheme in Sheffield, in which new mothers will be offered vouchers worth up £200, to encourage them to continue to breast feed their babies for 6 months. The concern arises from the fact that the UK has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe. An emphasis on breastfeeding is always controversial, because women feel controlled and judged, especially if they have been unable to breastfeed or decided not to. This feeling can be seen within the response to this initiative.

One of Mary Lily Walker's 'Restaurants for
Nursing Mothers (date unknown)

Our team thought it was valuable to place this scheme in a historical context. This is not the first time that boosting breastfeeding rates has been attempted by providing incentives to mothers. An attempt was made in 1906 in Dundee, when Mary Lily Walker set up the first ever ‘Restaurant for Nursing Mothers’ in Britain. Mary Lily Walker was leading the work of the Dundee Social Union, which was concerned about the appalling poverty rates in Dundee, as well as the shocking infant mortality. Dundee had the highest rate of child death in the country.

Mary Lily Walker had travelled to Paris to study the Restaurant initiative at first hand. A pioneering scheme had been put in place there by Madame Henri Coullet. According to Eddie Small, author of the recent published biography on Mary Lily Walker, she financed the initiative with her own private funds, in the hope that it would be successful enough to be taken up by the local Council and rolled out more widely. However she did not want attention drawn to her generosity, so she described the funding as coming from ‘a public spirited citizen’, and thereby kept her identity anonymous.

Dundee women in a Jute Mill, (circa late C.19th)

At the time, it was not uncommon for pregnant mothers working in the jute mills to work up to one week before giving birth and then to be back at the mill within a month after birth. Infant mortality rates for Dundee make grim reading. From 1901 onward, infant mortality rates had been falling steadily in both England and Scotland. In Dundee, though, they continued to rise until 1920. By 1920, the rates for England had dropped to 90 death per 1,000 birth. In Scotland, the rate was 99 death. But in the city of Dundee, the rate was 129 deaths per 1000. In some areas of the city social conditions were described as worse than in Calcutta – Dundee’s rival for jute production.

The Restaurant operated by providing a 3-course dinner on the condition that women brought their babies to be weighed and that the mothers did not return to work. Women who could afford to pay something toward the cost of the meal were charged 2d. Those who could not afford this were given the meal for free. The monitoring of the women was done in order to gather evidence of the effectiveness of the initiative.

Dundonian children in a close, circa C.19th

With the evidence of babies’ weight, statistical comparisons of their health could be made. By 1908 Charles Templeton, Dundee Chief Medical Officer reported that “the increasing weight of the Dinner babies [that is, the babies whose mothers were attending the Restaurant] show how much they benefit by one good meal a day being issued to the mothers.” In that year the mortality rate of babies attending one of the Restaurants was 60

per 1,000, compared to 200 for the wider district and 170 for the town of Dundee. This equates to a 300% improvement. Babies of mothers attending the Restaurant were 3 times as likely to survive to the age of 1 year.

Like today’s Sheffield scheme involving the offer of vouchers, the introduction of the Restaurant scheme was met with controversy. In 1906, the idea of keeping women from returning to their work at the mills was seen as interfering with employment patterns. There was also suspicion about snooping professional classes interfering with the privacy of families. Yet Mary Lily Walker saw herself as trying to improve the terrible conditions under which families and babies were being forced to live.

Mary Lily Walker’s first restaurant opened on 22 May 1906 in Temple Lane, with Miss Jessie Allen in charge. The second opened in March 1907 in Union Street, Maxwelltown. The town would later adopt the scheme and provide another two Restaurants. Through the work of Mary Lily Walker and the Dundee Social Union, the schemes adopted by the town led to Dundee having the first comprehensive Infant Welfare Service in the country.

Sources

Anthony Cox 1913 Empire, Industry and Class: the imperial nexus of jute , 1840-1940, Routledge

Myra Baillie 1996 Mary Lily Walker of Dundee: Social Worker and Reformer Open Dessertation McMaster University

Eddie Small 2013 Mary Lily Walker: Forgotten Visionary of Dundee, Dundee University Press

Emma Wainwright 2002 Gender, Space & Power: discourse on Working Women in Dundee Jute Industry c1870-1930. Unpubl. PhD Thesis. University of St Andrews

By Pete Kinnear & Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk

Member of the Mary Lily Walker Project Team

13 November 2013-11-13

suzanne@suzannezeedyk.com

Dundee Science Festival

5th November 2013.  We had a crowd of nearly 60 gathered at our presentation as part of the Dundee Science Festival.  The night's event was held at the McManus Galleries, which was originally built to house the 1867 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

This was the first time the Association had agreed to meet in a non-university town.  Mary Lily would take part in the Association's gathering the next time in returned to Dundee – in 1912. The full set of photos is available on our Facebook page

 The Albert Institute, built for the 1867 meeting of
 the British Association of Science

Book signing

Suzanne, enjoying the discussion

Researcher Pete Kinnear and biographer Eddie Small
taking audience question.

Further Research: Uncle James Allen

We've also been undertaking new research about Mary Lily Walker's life, to fill in the many gaps that remain in her story.

Here are some shots of the research we were undertaking in Kendal, in October.  Her Uncle, James Allen lived in Kendal, and she visited him there many times.  We have lots of letters in the archives of her correspondence to show that!

1912 Newspaper article about MLW's
Uncle, James Allen

In other news, there's cheap cheese at Leightons!

Laying the foundations for The Allen Institure in 1912

Suzanne reading up on Uncle James

The Allen Institute, Kendal, funded with
James Allen's fortune

The interior of the Allen Institute

The Kendal Library, to which some of Uncle James'
fortune also contributed

James Allen -- Painting by Frederic Yates

Dundee Literary Festival 2013

We've had an active time since our celebrations in June!  We're now involved in doing a whole series of talks to the public about her life and about Eddie Small's terrific biography.  Here's some shots of our contribution to the Dundee Literary Festival in October.

Our activity doesn't stop here however! There are more future talks scheduled, you can find out where and when on our Future Events page.

Mary Lily Walker biographer Eddie Small, in full flow

The biography itself on display

Pete Kinnear & Brett Housego in conversation with
2 attendees afterwards

Researcher Pete Kinnear, taking notes as always.

Suzanne Zeedyk and Eddie Small in conversation

A Big Thanks

A brief message from the research team:

We had a great time with all the MLW activities and thank you to everyone who joined us for any of them. We're putting up photos from all of our events this week over on our MLW Facebook page - feel free to tag yourself if you're in any of them!

Thank you very much to all of our speakers at our events, particularly the MLW conference and church service. A big thank you as well to all the organisations involved in helping the events to happen, particularly the University of Dundee, Waterstones, Dundee City Council and Grey Lodge Settlement.

It has been a pleasure sharing the story of Mary Lily Walker's life and times, and we all hope that it may in some small way inspire change that we still need today in the 21st century. Although the Mary Lily Walker Centenary is over, we are still continuing to learn and talk about Mary Lily Walker and her continuing influence. 

To get involved in the discussion you can use the Twitter hashtag #MLWproj, you can keep following us here on the Mary Lily Walker Project blog or you can also find us on Facebook