Anne Fletcher’s latest book, Widows of the Ice, “brings a new perspective to a story that we thought we already knew” by focussing on the three women widowed by Scott’s Antarctic expedition – and sidelined by its ‘heroic tragedy’ narrative.
The idea for this book came when I was on holiday and thinking about the history that I had been taught at school and at university in the 70s and 80s. It revolved around great men and great events. and I’m not sure that a single woman was mentioned, except those that were queens.
But of course, behind every great moment in British history, there were women, and it was they who very often had to pick up the pieces, keep the home going and raising the children who had been left behind by heroic events.
I had always been fascinated by Antarctic exploration and the heroism of Scott’s final expedition which ended as he lay freezing and starving to death with only the strength left to write with a stub of pencil, his final words: “For God’s sake look after our people.” I wanted to know more about these people, specifically the women.
Four men went with Robert Falcon Scott on the final push to the South Pole and three women were left widowed by their deaths on the return journey; Kathleen, Scott’s own bohemian, artist wife; Oriana, the devout wife of the expedition’s chief scientist Ted Wilson, and Lois, the Welsh, working class wife of Petty Officer Edgar Evans.
Kathleen Scott had wholeheartedly embraced the attempt to reach the Pole, telling her husband that he should take any risks necessary. The others had felt differently.
Oriana had been asked previously by her fiancée to sign an agreement saying she was happy for him to go; now, as his wife, she had little option to obey what they both saw as God’s will.
Lois accepted a financial risk when Edgar joined the expedition and was taken off the Naval pay roll. Later when the expedition ran into financial difficulties and salaries were not paid, she was forced to take her three children home to Wales to subsist there with her family.
When in February 1913 the news came that the men of the Polar Party were dead, they became heroes, their story filling column inches in newspapers across the world.
But their widows were not the first to know.
Kathleen was at sea on her way to a reunion with Scott in New Zealand and Oriana heard the news from a newspaper hawker as she arrived by train into Christchurch to meet Ted.
Lois, the only one still at home, was tracked down in the wilds of Gower and doorstepped by journalists. Her children, who did not yet know their father was dead, were photographed on their way home from school.
In the months that followed, the widows remained at the centre of the news coverage of the Antarctic tragedy, forced to grieve in full public view, and keeping a stiff upper lip while the world held their men up as heroes.
They had little in common except that their husbands had died together; but this shared experience was to shape the rest of their lives.
Their treatment by the press and the public was influenced by their class and contemporary notions of both manliness and womanly behaviour and it was Lois who experienced the worst of it.
As millions of pounds were raised in a public appeal, money was awarded to the widows according to their rank and status.
Lois, who needed the most, received the least and struggled financially for the rest of her life.
She struggled, too, to defend Edgar when the finger of blame was pointed at him, fuelled by the popular belief that the working classes were physically and mentally weaker and that if he had not slowed them down then perhaps the four ‘English gentlemen’ might have got home safely.
It was an accusation that coloured not only Lois’s life but those of her children, too.
Widows of the Ice is not the story of famous women but of forgotten wives, whose love and support helped to shape one of the most iconic moments in British history.
Kathleen, Oriana and Lois have drifted to the outer edges of the Antarctic narrative and bringing them back brings a new perspective to a story that we thought we already knew.
Their lives also give us a glimpse of what it was like to be an Edwardian woman navigating a fraught destiny.
This is a story of imperialistic dreams, misogyny and classism, but also of enormous courage, high ideals, duty – and, above all, love.
Widows of the Ice: The Women that Scott’s Antarctic Expedition Left Behind by Anne Fletcher was published on 15 May, 2022.
Anne Fletcher is a historian and writer. She has worked in heritage for 30 years, developing an expertise in translating the treasures and stories of historic buildings to the general public, and has worked at historic sites in the country including Hampton Court Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Bletchley Park and Tower Bridge. She is a member of the Society of Authors and of the Biographers’ Club.
annefletcherauthor.wordpress.com
Twitter: @Annecfletcher
Anne’s previous book was From the Mill to Monte Carlo. She writes about the background to this intriguing story of mill worker turned millionaire in The true story of the man who broke the Monte Carlo bank: Joseph Hobson Jagger.
Images:
- Page from the Daily Mirror, 15 February, 1913 (see below for details): supplied by the author
- Kathleen Scott with her husband aboard the Terra Nova, 1910, by Herbert Ponting: British Antarctic Expedition 1910-13 (Ponting Collection) via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Oriana Souper Wilson, 1910: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Lois Evans and her three children: supplied by the author
- Page from the Daily Mirror, 15 February, 1913, showing (centre) Scott’s mother; (clockwise, from top left) Oriana Wilson, Lois Evans, fourth member Henry Bowers‘s mother and Kathleen Scott; (bottom) Muriel, Ralph and Norman Evans and Peter Scott: supplied by the author
