This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was published in the Parish Magazine in July 2022
Well, I hope you have all recovered from the truly memorable Platinum Jubilee celebrations! A magnificent week of pride and pagaentry in celebration of our hard-working, devoted and beloved monarch.
If you can cast your mind back to before this time (it seems an age away!) and the last article, which was all about our famous one time resident H A L Fisher and his involvement in Operation Mincemeat, I wanted to continue the story, this month focusing on his wife Lettice Fisher and next month their daughter, Mary, at one time, all past residents of Thursley. They were both ground-breaking and inspiring women in their own right and here is Lettice’s story.
Lettice Fisher (nee Ilbert) was born in 1875 in Kensington, London, to Lady Jessie and Sir Courtenay Peregrine Ilbert, a lawyer who was soon to become Clerk of the House of Commons. She was one of the earliest female students at Somerville College, Oxford and as such, Herbert (HAL) agreed to take her on as a pupil. In 1897, Lettice duly got her first in Modern History, and proceeded to the London School of Economics, working as a researcher for a two-year tenure. The Ilberts, so Lettice’s sister later wrote “had long coveted Mr Fisher as a son-in-law”, and Lady Ilbert took appropriate steps; she rented a house on the outskirts of Oxford for the summer following Lettice’s London placement. With four lively daughters between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three, plus their engaging little sister of eight, there was no shortage of young men to walk up Headington Hill for tennis or dinner, Fisher being among them. The engagement was announced, and in the summer of 1899, they were married. She then returned to Oxford to teach History at St Hugh’s College and also teaching Economics for the Association for the Higher Education of Women in Oxford.
As her daughter, Mary, recounted; “With his in-laws, Fisher was an unqualified success, however the Fishers were not so sure about Lettice. It was true that she was an efficient housekeeper – the Ilbert daughters were all brought up to believe that husbands must be sheltered from practical cares! It was true also that she was an admirable hostess to his colleagues, friends and pupils, and that it never occurred to her not to put his work first. But the Fisher view of Woman was as a “dark star” reflecting the glory of Man and Lettice was not at all like a dark star. She was enthusiastic, confident and articulate, ready to throw herself into any generous cause, not in the least concerned with conventions and quite determined to earn her own living. She gardened and kept hens, she played the violin, she involved herself in housing management, infant welfare, women’s suffrage and liberal politics. As a teacher of History and Economics, she was one of the first, perhaps the very first, married woman to hold a tutorship in an Oxford women’s college. As a good liberal, her husband approved all the causes but perhaps wished there were not so many of them!”
In 1913, the Fishers had a daughter Mary, destined to be their only child. It didn’t appear to have diminished Mary’s ambitions and in 1916-1918 she chaired the national executive of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. During World War 1, Lettice undertook welfare work among women munitions workers. It was the wartime scale of illegitimacy and its resulting hardships that led her, in 1918, to found the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, in order to challenge the stigma associated with single parent families, and to provide them with the support they needed.
The Council aimed to reform the Acts that discriminated against illegitimate children, and also to address the higher death rates of children born outside marriage, by providing accommodation for single mothers and their babies. Lettice Fisher was the first chair of the Council, from 1918 to 1950. In the early 1970’s, after Lettice’s departure, the name was changed to National Council for One Parent Families and in 2007, it merged with Gingerbread, and continues to this day working to improve the livelihood of single parents. J K Rowling is currently the charity’s President.
Mary continues “There was a very odd situation after my father died in 1940, because my mother thought that New College (where my father was Warden) would elect another Warden and she would be returning to Thursley as soon as she could get out of the house. However, New College decided that they didn’t want to elect another Warden at the beginning of the war; they wanted to hold the position and let the Sub-Warden go on administering. And so, they asked her to stay on and keep on running the Lodgings, perhaps put up some evacuees, keep in touch with undergraduates and so on. So that is what my mother did until 1943, when they did brace themselves and elect another Warden.”
Hence why H A L Fisher’s belongings were still in Oxford when Operation Mincemeat had the need for his quality underwear. And why Lettice Fisher did not move permanently to Rock Cottage at the top of Highfield Lane until 1943. She was then able to involve herself in the activities of the village: she was a governor of Thursley School, a member of the WI, started a choir and made many friends. She suffered her first stroke in 1949 and died in 1956. Lettice was an extraordinary woman of her time, strong, fiercely intelligent with a great capacity for empathy and kindness. Thursley should feel very proud to have had such a dazzling (not dark!) star in its midst during this time.
Next month – Mary Bennett (nee Fisher).