The remarkable Gwendolyn Adams
While researching her family history, Marion McAllister happened upon this fascinating story about her maternal great-aunt Gwen. With much help and consent from Marion, her nephew Ben Hughes and second cousin Martin Hamer, Mal Corfield explains…
Gertrude Gwendolyn Adams was born in 1895 in Ellesmere, Shropshire. The daughter of Harry, a water engineer who was responsible for supplying and installing the underground drainage in the town, and Lottie, she left school at 15 and was apprenticed to a milliner. But Gwen would not be one to settle for the life of a hat maker.
During the First World War, she worked as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at the Auxiliary Military Hospital in Ellesmere and the 1st Southern General Hospital in Birmingham, providing medical care for men who were wounded in action. Perhaps it was hearing their accounts of Europe that inspired in Gwen a wanderlust, for towards the end of the 1920s she would undertake a series of journeys that saw her tour the Continent on a variety of motorcycles.
On one September morning in 1926 she turned up at the Kingsdown works of Douglas and announced her intention to travel to Venice on her 350cc Douglas EW. It was a standard model and heavily laden with the luggage needed for a month’s tour and the staff at Douglas must have been a little bemused at this attractive young woman and the challenge she had set herself. But they welcomed her and drew up a list of Douglas agents she could call upon on her travels. Gwen, on her part, was impressed. She wrote in her diary that day: ‘If ever there was even the least doubt as to the reliability of my motorcycle, it was turned to absolute confidence on beholding the numerous tests given to every model before despatch from the Works. I explained my project and was at once given such assistance as I had not hoped for.’
“I decided to go and see…”
In chronicling a later trip, she explained her reasons for the journey, saying: ‘Like many other motorcyclists who had never been outside the British Isles, I had always wondered what one would find abroad. Would urban district councils play at tar-spraying? Would there be speed traps? How would one get on with a foreign language, especially for the things one’s bike requires? And many other perplexities. So I decided to go and see…’
It hadn’t been Gwen’s intention to make a solo trip and she had previously advertised extensively for another young lady to accompany her. But, as she said: ‘Several replied, but when the route was shown them, each and all decided to spend their vacation at home.’ Travelling alone clearly suited her because she would make no effort to find a companion for her future trips.
Unsurprisingly, the young Englishwoman was greeted with interest and hospitality at many of her stops. On the way to Briouse in France, the landlady of a wayside inn insisted Gwen drink a glass of ‘Cider de la Pomme.’ It was horrible, but Gwen pretended to enjoy it and surreptitiously tipped the contents of the glass into the landlady’s aspidistras where she imagined they would promptly die! In Paris, a crowd gathered around Gwen and the Douglas and refused to disperse even when the police were called – a gendarme informed Gwen that the crowd was curious because French girls didn’t ride motorcycles. She found the Paris traffic to be tremendous and she had to travel very fast, so little has changed in a hundred years!
The Douglas ran well and she was into the French Alps before suffering her first puncture – caused by the nail from a peasant’s sabot – and which Gwen mended in ‘a matter of minutes.’ The roads were frequently atrocious and the horn on the Douglas was almost worn out by Gwen’s signalling of her approach to other vehicles. In Italy she was constantly surrounded by motorcyclists asking about the Douglas and she wrote in her diary: ‘I was very proud of the mount, for neither France nor Italy can produce anything to equal it.’ But Italy did present problems when it came to fuel. Throughout France, said Gwen, it was the custom to strain fuel through an old felt hat but this wasn’t the case in Italy. ‘The inside of my tank [was] a muddy pool,’ wrote Gwen. ‘I often [had] to shake it up to get the petrol to my carburettor.’ But garages took great interest in the Douglas and often mechanics would ask her to leave the Douglas on display for a few hours, which she would do when she could. In Milan, Mr Lanfranchi, the Douglas agent, greeted her with cheers and insisted on having her motorcycle checked over and cleaned.
She duly arrived in Venice and, after some sightseeing, turned around and headed back to England on the Douglas. After travelling across several countries, traversing the Alps twice, conquering frozen and treacherous roads with countless hairpin bends, the last part of the journey must have seemed very dull and, indeed, Gwen finished her account by saying:
‘The final stage of the journey to Ellesmere was uneventful and needs no special mention in my already well filled diary.’ But she had covered 3000 miles on the Douglas with the only problems being two punctures. Douglas itself was so delighted by the trip that it published her diary as a small book, primarily one imagines to demonstrate the reliability of Douglas machines.
This trip led her to make several others for the British motorcycle industry. In 1927 she once again travelled to Europe, this time on her ohv New Imperial, on a trip which was serialised in The Motor Cycle as ‘Through Feminine Goggles.’ She found that, in post-war Europe, many
of the roads were in a dilapidated state; even in Germany where the roads were in better condition, Gwen reported: ‘The road signs are in need of improvement; many cross roads have none and often only the names of the tiny villages are given.’
In Czechoslovakia she found the roads were in ‘terrible condition … the roads were flooded in many parts and pot-holes caused many a splash and an unwelcome jolt. The mud of the villages was now very greasy and I often stopped to wash the mud off my face. By the end of a day’s ride it would have been difficult to guess my nationality by the colour of my skin!’ However, the worst roads were in Austria she found, although there were many motorcyclists. In 1927, any kind of mechanically driven twoor three-wheeled vehicle was tax free and so motorcycles were popular. There was even a Ladies’ Motor Cycle Club with whom Gwen spent a merry evening.
“A girl has never crossed this pass!”
Having crossed the Gothard Pass into Switzerland, Gwen prepared to start for the Furka Pass, something which caused great local interest. A girl had never crossed through this pass before, she was told, and a crowd gathered to see her off. Despite a frightening encounter with a motor coach she managed it and, on her travels, met ‘a party of English boys who were regretting every minute of their holidays that they had not brought their motor cycles with them, especially when they say the mountains were not too impossible for a ‘girl.’
The following year, Gwen was off again, this time to explore France and Spain. She chose for this trip an ohv 364cc Royal Enfield with an electric lighting set and balloon tyres. On this journey she covered 10,108km (6315 miles) with, once more, no mechanical troubles along the way. That she gave her mileage in kilometres may give a clue to the fact that Gwen had fallen in love with Europe. After her third Continental trip she settled in Barcelona and established an English school, with the intention of improving the level of education for local children.
In 1931 she married Jose Puertas, and under the law took on the nationality of her husband. Had she waited just three months, Great Britain would pass a law which meant that a woman could retain her own nationality on marrying an ‘alien.’ But, in the eyes of the law, having married a foreigner the woman from Shropshire was now Spanish and so was not entitled to any aid from the British government. And the Spanish Civil War was looming…
On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Gwen left teaching and joined the Red Cross. A major part of her work during the war was acting as a liaison officer between the Republican government department of Welfare and the International Solidarity fund, which required regular travel between Spain, France and the UK – I would like to think on her motorbike. Throughout the war she worked for the Red Cross until, when the war ended in 1939, she was evacuated with other refugees to France. There she continued work to provide housing, food and clothing for the exiled Spaniards and, on the outbreak of the Second World War, helped to evacuate women and children away from Paris and the Maginot line, to the south of France.
“She was quite a girl!”
In October 1939, Gwen and Jose were informed by the British and Spanish authorities that their property in Spain had been confiscated by the Nationalist authorities and that they should go to Spain immediately. But, on arrival (despite having a Red Cross convoy), they were immediately arrested and charged with having spied for the Communists, produced propaganda and having associated with leaders. Gwen spent nine months in four different jails, and, of course, because she was seen as a Spanish citizen, the British government declared itself unable to give her any assistance. It was only through the efforts of the Labour Party that the British Ambassador was instructed to unofficially lobby the Spanish authorities for her release and she could finally leave Spain.
On her return to Britain, Gwen threw herself into the war effort again, starting a war hostel and rest centre for the Ministry of Health in Hammersmith while also raising and training a youth detachment of nurses for the Red Cross. In 1943 she wrote to the Home Secretary asking for the cancellation of the Alien’s Certificate which was issued to her in Oswestry in 1940. That was just nine miles from where she had been born, but she was, of course, still considered an ‘alien’. When the war ended, she resumed her work with Spanish refugees. By 1947 she was living in Perpignan, France, and engaged in helping many of the exiled Spaniards living in the area. She lived in Perpignan until her death in the late 1970s.
Gwen’s great-niece Marion writes: “Gwen was quite a girl! She loved motorbikes and was a fantastic rider. My dad always remembers visiting her, I think in London, when she was quite old. They were out on the street, where some lads had a motorbike.
“They got talking and they dared her to ride it – little did they know her pedigree! She took the bike a long way up the road and then came zooming back, with her head right down, doing over a ton! Apparently, it caused quite a commotion!”
To Venice and Back. A Journal of a Motorcycliste was published by Douglas Motors Ltd.
With thanks to the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, for its kind permission to use some of the text in this article.