Cowdray Club
The Cowdray Club, formally The Nation's Nurses and Professional Women's Club Ltd, was a British women's club for nurses and other professional women. It was founded in 1922 by Annie Pearson, Viscountess Cowdray, in close association with the College of Nursing, and was based at 20 Cavendish Square, London.[1]
Created in the aftermath of the First World War, the club combined a private members' club, a London base and a professional meeting place for women connected with nursing and other professions. Its rules stipulated a membership of 55 per cent nurses, 35 per cent professional women and 10 per cent "suitable women".[2][3] The club remained at Cavendish Square until 1974, when it merged with the Naval and Military Club.[4]
Foundation and premises
[edit]The creation of the Cowdray Club was closely linked to the beginnings of the College of Nursing, founded in 1916. The archive catalogue for the club links its creation to Lady Cowdray's involvement with the Nation's Fund for Nurses, which raised money for a benevolent fund for nurses and for the endowment of the College.[1] The same catalogue records the club's intended purpose as a gift of a social club for nurses and professional women that would provide a "centre for intercourse and recreation" and some of the comforts associated with home.[1]
The premises at 20 Cavendish Square were an early Georgian house built in 1727–1729 by George Greaves.[5] In 1894 Sir Charles Tennant bought the house as a wedding present for his daughter Margot Tennant and H. H. Asquith. The Asquiths sold it in 1920, after their wartime return and a decline in income.[5] A 1966 article in The Times also identified Asquith as the previous owner of the building.[6]
The freehold for 20 Cavendish Square was acquired for the nursing movement in 1920 after Rachael Cox-Davies shared a taxi journey with Lady Cowdray and lobbied her to purchase the "old Asquith house". Lady Cowdray bought the freehold for £20,000.[7] The Royal College of Nursing also describes Cox-Davies as responsible for persuading Lady Cowdray to fund a new home for the College, saying that Cox-Davies raised the College's growing membership during a ten-minute taxi journey and asked whether Cowdray would gift the College a new building for educational facilities.[8]
The relationship between the club and the College was close but not identical. The building belonged to the College of Nursing and was leased to the club, while the College held 50 per cent representation on the club council.[1] The architect Sir Edwin Cooper altered the house and designed new College premises along Henrietta Street. Survey of London describes the 1921–1922 works as including alterations to the house, a lift, remodelling of upper floors mainly as bedrooms, and a separate dining room for The Nation's Nurses and Professional Women's Club, "soon known as the Cowdray Club".[9] The College block was completed in 1925 and formally opened by Queen Mary in May 1926 as Cowdray Hall.[9]
The popular name "Cowdray" came from Lady Cowdray, who was described in a memorial booklet as the "fairy Godmother of the nursing profession".[10] According to the same source, she wanted the club to provide "a centre for intercourse and recreation" and some of the comforts associated with "home", and took a close interest in its furnishing.[10]
Purpose and membership
[edit]The Cowdray Club offered nurses and professional women a club-house in the medical district around Cavendish Square, close to the College of Nursing, the Royal Society of Medicine and other medical institutions. For much of its existence it had more than 4,000 members.[1] The RCN states that, in 1925, its rules stipulated a membership of 55 per cent nurses, 35 per cent women professionals and 10 per cent "suitable" women.[3] The National Archives catalogue describes the last category as women without professional qualifications.[1]
The club's early growth was rapid. It opened in June 1922 with 650 members. By the end of July that year membership had risen to 2,000, and by May 1923 it was 3,045. In the same period the club provided 53,076 lunches, 25,705 teas and 17,910 dinners.[11] The club's records include council and committee minutes, detailed membership records, annual reports, photographs, building plans and press cuttings.[1]
The club also had the physical amenities expected of club life. The Westminster Gazette of 20 June 1922 reported that the club included several themed rooms, including a French Room, Writing Room, Silence Room and Recreation Room.[12] Cooper's new oak-panelled dining room, later used as the RCN Council Room, had Corinthian pilasters, a domed lantern ceiling and relief busts of Florence Nightingale, Edith Cavell and Viscount and Viscountess Cowdray.[9][13] A 1926 newspaper account also described marble plaques in the dining room dedicated to Nightingale, Cavell and Lady Cowdray.[14]
Women's clubland and professional life
[edit]The Cowdray Club belonged to a broader history of women's clubs and professional networks in London. Its archive records note links with other women's clubs, including the University Women's Club and the VAD Ladies Club.[1] Bridget Keown, writing on women's war service and nursing, argues that the club gave women-only professional space in a culture where many men's social and professional clubs explicitly excluded women.[2] Keown also notes the club's rules about conduct and propriety, while observing that pro-rated fees and scholarships made membership more accessible to some women.[2]
The club's importance was also tied to the professionalisation of nursing. Historian Nick Black writes that the College of Nursing, founded in 1916, sought better training, greater uniformity between nursing schools and a register of proficient nurses.[15] In that setting, the Cowdray Club supplied a social and residential counterpart to the College's educational and professional work.
The club also hosted public and political events. In 1924 it hosted a dinner for all eight women then serving as members of parliament, including Lady Astor.[16]
War workers and related funds
[edit]The club should be distinguished from related funds and institutions associated with Lady Cowdray and the College of Nursing. The Nation's Fund for Nurses was a benevolent and endowment fund, not the club itself.[1][15] The Queen Alexandra Relief Fund for War Nurses was a separate relief charity for nurses affected by the First World War.[17] Lady Cowdray was also involved in other wartime medical charities, including the British Women's Hospital Fund and the Royal Star and Garter Home; these were separate from the Cowdray Club. A 1915 appeal poster for the Star and Garter Home named her as honorary treasurer of the British Women's Hospital Fund.[18]
Keown situates the Cowdray Club and its associated networks within post-war efforts to support women who had served as nurses, ambulance drivers and medics and who were often marginal to male veterans' organisations. Citing Wellcome Library records for the Nation's Fund for Nurses and Queen Alexandra Relief Fund, she states that the club board and branches worked with charities and funds to support women who did not qualify for military pensions, including women affected by psychological trauma.[2] This material is best understood as a connection between the club and related nursing-welfare networks, rather than as evidence that the Cowdray Club alone administered military pensions.
Later history and legacy
[edit]After Lady Cowdray's death, the club remained connected with the Cowdray family. Gertrude Denman, Baroness Denman, Lady Cowdray's daughter, served as chairman of the Cowdray Club for Nurses and Professional Women from 1932 to 1953.[19]
The Cowdray Club remained at 20 Cavendish Square for more than fifty years. In 1932–1934 Cooper refaced and heightened No. 20 as part of a further redevelopment after neighbouring property was acquired.[5] Survey of London records that in 1974 a developer helped the RCN raise money to persuade the club to surrender its lease; the club moved out and merged with the Naval and Military Club, while a proposed redevelopment of the RCN block was later abandoned.[9] The Times reported the 1974 merger under the headline "Women invade the 'Naval and Military' world".[20]
The surviving Cowdray Club records are held by The London Archives as collection A/COW. The 93-file collection dates from 1919 to 1974 and includes legal papers, administration files, membership records, building material, photographs and printed material.[1] The RCN retained 20 Cavendish Square, and later refurbishments opened a public heritage centre on Henrietta Street in 2012–2013.[5]
Members and users
[edit]The club's membership records and later accounts connect it with nurses, writers, politicians, performers and other professional women.[1]
- Mary Frances Billington, journalist and writer, was a member.[21]
- Lady Violet Bonham Carter, politician and close political ally of Winston Churchill, was associated with the club.[16]
- Gertrude Denman, Baroness Denman served as chairman of the club from 1932 to 1953.[22]
- Canadian public-health nurse Eunice Henrietta Dyke used the club in 1923, staying for a month during a tour as a consultant on public health nursing.[23]
- Rose Heilbron, judge, was associated with the club.[24]
- Valerie Hobson, actress, was associated with the club.[24]
- Amy Johnson, aviator and the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, was associated with the club.[16]
- Mary Snell Rundle, nursing reformer, was associated with the club's early council.[25]
- Josephine Tey, writer, used the club as her London base. Nicola Upson has written in the The Times Literary Supplement that names in Tey's fiction can be traced to Cowdray Club records, including Grant, Ashby, Blair, Farrar and Marion Sharpe.[26]
- Ninette de Valois, dancer, teacher, choreographer and founder of the Royal Ballet, was associated with the club.[16]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Cowdray Club (The Nation's Nurses and Professional Women's Club Ltd)". The National Archives. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 Keown, Bridget (28 September 2017). "Caring for Women Veterans: A Brief History of the Cowdray Club". Nursing Clio. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- 1 2 "Our history". Royal College of Nursing. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- ↑ Philip Howard, "Women invade the 'Naval and Military' world", The Times, 1 June 1974, p. 2.
- 1 2 3 4 Survey of London (29 April 2016). "Cavendish Square 4: No. 20 (the Royal College of Nursing)". The Survey of London. University College London. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- ↑ Elizabeth Cayley, "Where Women Club Together", The Times, 28 March 1966, p. 13.
- ↑ Bowman, Gerald (1967). The Lamp and the Book: The Story of the RCN 1916–1966. London: Queen Anne Press. pp. 72–74.
- ↑ "The Right Sort of Women". Royal College of Nursing. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 "Cavendish Square" (PDF). Survey of London. University College London. pp. 69–71. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- 1 2 London Metropolitan Archives, ref: A/COW/87, memorial booklet by Agnes L. Douglas, private secretary to Lady Cowdray, 1920–1932.
- ↑ London Metropolitan Archives, ref: A/COW/93, collected annual general meeting minutes of the Cowdray Club.
- ↑ London Metropolitan Archives, ref: A/COW/089, scrapbook of press cuttings relating to the Professional Women's Club and College of Nursing.
- ↑ "The History of the Building". 20 Cavendish Square. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- ↑ Norris, H. C. (14 February 1926). "Most Pitiful Thing in the World". The Tacoma Daily Ledger. Tacoma, Washington. p. 61.
- 1 2 Black, Nick (May 2007). "From trades to professions". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 100 (5): 219–224. doi:10.1177/014107680710000511. PMC 1861407.
- 1 2 3 4 Newark, Tim (2015). The In & Out: A History of the Naval and Military Club. p. 171.
- ↑ "Queen Alexandra Relief Fund for War Nurses". Charity Commission for England and Wales. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- ↑ "Star & Garter Home for totally disabled soldiers and sailors". Library of Congress. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- ↑ "Papers of Lady Denman, Gertrude Mary, 1884–1954". King's Collections. King's College London. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- ↑ Philip Howard, "Women invade the 'Naval and Military' world", The Times, 1 June 1974, p. 2.
- ↑ Vorachek, Laura. "Miss Mary Frances Billington". Society of Women Journalists. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- ↑ "Papers of Lady Denman, Gertrude Mary, 1884–1954". King's Collections. King's College London. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
- ↑ Marion Royce, Eunice Dyke: Health Care Pioneer (2006), pp. 80–81.
- 1 2 Heilbron, Hilary (2012). Rose Heilbron: The Story of England's First Woman Queen's Counsel and Judge. p. 156.
- ↑ "Miss Mary Rundle", obituary, The Times, 16 March 1937, p. 18.
- ↑ Upson, Nicola (24 February 2023). "The Josephine Tey Mystery". The Times Literary Supplement.