Queer Places:
Bensham Lodge, Gateshead, co. Durham
University of Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ
7 Thurloe Court, 131 Fulham Rd, Chelsea, London SW3 6RT, UK
Wickham Farmhouse,
14 College Ln, Hurstpierpoint, Hassocks BN6 9AG, UK
Winifred
Dakyns CBE (née Pattinson, September 16, 1875 - January 22, 1960) was a British naval officer
during World War I and assistant director of the Women's Royal Naval
Service (WRNS) from December 1917 until the WRNS was disbanded in 1919 (to
be revived in 1939).[1]
She was born on 16 September 1875 at Bensham Lodge, Gateshead, co. Durham, the youngest daughter of John Pattinson, analytical chemist, and Mary Jane Swan. She was educated at Gateshead High School and Newnham College, Cambridge.[1] She married Henry Graham Dakyns in 1902; he died in 1937.[2]
Henry Graham Dakyns was the son of Henry Graham Dakyns, friend of John Addington Symonds and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He entered Trinity College in 1892. He received his BA in 1895 and his MA in 1919. He married Winnifred Pattinson around 1902. They lived at 7 Thurloe Court. He died in 1937 for heart failure. He was cremated at Golders Green on February 20, 1937.
She worked with Katharine Furse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) and then in the earliest days of the WRNS.[2] During the First World War she was closely associated with her friend, the late Dame Katharine Furse, first of all in the women's VAD department (under the Joint Council of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John), and later, between 1917 and 1919, with the Royal Women's Naval Service, of which, as Deputy Director, she was the second in command of Dame Katharine.
At the time of her death in 1960 one of her uniforms was shown in the Imperial War Museum as a representative WRNS officer's uniform.[2] She was appointed CBE (military) "for valuable services in connection with the war" in 1919, and was also an honorary serving sister of the order of St John of Jerusalem.[1]
She died at her home in Hassocks, Sussex on 22 January 1960.[1] Her home, Wickham Farmhouse in Hurstpierpoint, was designated a grade II listed building on 11 May 1983.[3][4]
My published books:
