Today is International Women’s Day, and I would like to take the opportunity to celebrate Mary Silyn Roberts and share a little about her life.
I learnt a lot about Mary from Angharad Tomos, who has spoken passionately about her on the radio and has given lectures sharing Mary’s story. Mary was born in 1877 in Mold, and although she was raised in London, she would return to her roots once married to a minister, Robert ‘Silyn’ Roberts, in 1905. The couple would go one to have 3 children. Mary earned a degree at Aberystwyth University, one of the earliest women to do so. Before WW1, she was involved in the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and she worked for the Government during the war as an agricultural organiser. After the war, she, along with Mary Gladys Thoday and Charlotte Price White, organised a peace march from Penygroes in Gwynedd all the way to London, where she gave a speech in Welsh in Hyde Park. This was in 1926, a year after the establishment of the North Wales District Workers’ Education Association (WEA).
I am nearing the end of a year-long project to catalogue, and provide access, to the WEA North Wales District’s Archive. The archive documents the works of the WEA’s presence in the District from its beginning, and shows how it operated across North Wales from before its establishment in 1925, until the 1990s. There are close to 300 boxes, and over 1500 files, and somewhere amongst the documents are little pieces of Mary Silyn Roberts that I’d like to share with you.
Mary and Silyn were dedicated to help the working class, to improve their lives and provide education. I mentioned that Silyn was a minister and they both saw that the chapel vestry was extended to give evening classes. To me it seemed natural upon knowing this that Silyn would help establish the North Wales WEA District and become the branch’s first secretary. It also seemed natural that after his untimely death in 1930 that Mary would take over as Secretary. Angharad Tomos often says that Mary is likely to have been the first woman to be in such a role in Wales, and quite possibly the United Kingdom. She was secretary until 1945.
Her dedication to supporting adult education was unfaltering, and in 1939 when The Second World War broke out she worked hard to ensure the work of the WEA did not stop when she was tasked with finding ways of ensuring that tutors could still travel to classes during a petrol shortage. I came across a letter written in 1940 where she tells of the honour and privilege she has had to work in Adult Education. At the end of the letter, she suggested that her secretarial fee was reduced to lessen the financial burden on the WEA.
It was clear to me that Denmark was important to Mary, I learnt from Angharad that when she was a schoolgirl, she earnt a scholarship to go to the country. She would visit Denmark several times in her life, sometimes with Silyn, and sometimes on her own. I came across a photo of Mary in Denmark, it was a class photo taken at Silkeborg and when my eyes settle on the year of the photograph I started thinking more about what I knew about Mary and Silyn.
In the Summer of 1930, Silyn went to Russia, and on his way back he was attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes. Although he was very ill, he seemed to have recovered and even taught at one of the Summer School, and Mary left to visit Denmark. It was when she was in Denmark that she learnt her husband had fallen ill again and she was advised to return to Wales as soon as she could. After she returned, Silyn passed away. This photograph I came across was something I could not stop thinking about. The Mary in the photograph is captured in a moment in time, a time before her life was about to change. I was also thinking about her taking over his position as secretary during what was probably the most difficult time in her life, when she was grieving her husband and supporting her children who had just lost their father. She really was a remarkable woman, and I’m so glad I have had the opportunity to learn so much about her.
A special thanks goes to the Tudor Bowen Jones Fund of Adult Learning Wales who provided the funding that enabled me to spend this past year working on this Archive and I look forward to sharing it with you.