at 2 Barnfield Crescent, Exeter
the birthplace of one of the Angels of Pervyse.
compiled by Ian Maxted
2017
The exhibition was held inside the house on the day of the unveiling on 4 November 2017. The contents have been deposited with the Devon Remembers Heritage Project at the Devon Heritage Centre where printouts of the images from the Imperial War Museum may be seen.
Early life
Elizabeth Blackall Shapter was born at 1, Barnfield Crescent, Exeter, Devon on 29 July 1884, the youngest of five children of Dr. Lewis Shapter and Charlotte (née Bayly). During her childhood she picked up the nickname, "Elsie".
She was orphaned at an early age. Her mother died of meningitis on 2 May 1888. Lewis was already suffering from tuberculosis and he succumbed to it on 13 November 1890. The five children were farmed out to different realtives and Elsie was cared for by a maternal uncle. She was subsequently adopted by Lewis Edward Upcott, a teacher at Marlborough College, and his wife Emily who sent her to be educated at St. Nicholas's, Folkestone, and then at the exclusive Château Lutry in Switzerland and a later at a cookery school in Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Elsie never referred to Lewis and Emily as her parents. They were always foster-parents or aunt and uncle and she is less than kind to them in her memoirs.
From an early age she showed an adventurous spirit. Staying with an aunt in Topsham she worked at stables and a riding school in Alphington. While there she rode on horseback into Green's drapery store in Exeter High Street, up the stairs, round the millinery department and downstairs back into Exeter High Street for a £5 bet (perhaps £400 in 2017 prices).
Hospital service and first marriage
On 5 April 1906 she married an older man, Leslie Duke Knocker (1875-1921), an accountant, and and it was suggested that he should join his elder brother in Singapore, where he could earn more money. Elsie accompanied him but retuned to England for the birth of her son, Kenneth Duke, in 1907. The marriage was not a success. Her husband drank heavily and seems to have been abusive. On her return to Singapore with her son Elsie had took a flat, but after six months she became ill and was advised to go home, which she did, weighing just five stones. Once recovered, she was persuaded to give the marriage another try and leaving Kenneth with the Upcotts, she returned to her husband, who was now in Java. After a year there, things had not improved and she finally sailed home to obtain the divorce. Since being divorced was a status frowned upon in Edwardian England, Knocker invented the myth that her husband had died in Java, leaving her a widow.
She trained as a nurse at the Children's Hip Hospital, Sevenoaks, Kent, and worked for a time in Java and Australia. She then trained in midwifery at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London. In about 1913 her eldest brother, John, who had been badly injured, needed someone to look after him, so she took Kenneth off to his cottage near Fordingbridge in Hampshire.
With a legacy she purchased a Chater Lea motorcycle and, nicknamed Gypsy after the Motorcycle Club she joined, she became a leading light in the motorcycling fraternity. It was through this shared interest that she met Mairi Lambert Gooden Chisholm of Chisholm (1896–1981), with whom she was later to work in Belgium. When riding she wore a dark green leather skirt and long leather coat buttoned all the way down with a belt "to keep it all together" designed by Dunhill. She also learned how to dismantle, reassemble, service and repair such machines. She possessed a number of motorbikes including a Scott, a Douglas solo, and the Chater-Lea with a sidecar which she took to the Western Front.
World War 1
When war was declared in 1914, Knocker wrote to her friend and fellow motorcycle fanatic, Mairi Chisholm, that there was "work to be done", and suggested they go to London to become dispatch riders for the Women's Emergency Corps. When Chisholm was chosen to join Hector Munro’s Flying Ambulance Corps she was able to convince Munro to accept Knocker as well seeing as she had some training as a nurse, was an excellent mechanic and chauffeur, and spoke both French and German. The day before she was due to ship out she wrote in her diary: "This time tomorrow night I shall be in Belgium… in the midst of all the terrors of war."
In the evening of 25 September 1914, Knocker, Chisholm and the other woman volunteers, including Dorothie Feilding and May Sinclair, followed Dr. Munro down the gang-plank of the S.S. Princess Clementine at Ostend, West Flanders. Whilst visiting the town of Nazareth, eight miles south-west of Ghent where the corps was initially quartered, Knocker witnessed to the aftermath of a massacre when she came across 26 Belgian military policemen who had been shot and mutilated by the Germans. In fact Belgian civilians were massacred indiscriminately and Elsie saw with her own eyes children with their hands and feet cut off and, on one occasion, a baby nailed to a door. She was deeply affected and resolved to seek a way to help even if it meant facing extreme danger. At the end of October 1914, the corps relocated to Furnes in unoccupied Belgium, near Dunkirk, where the women worked tirelessly picking up wounded soldiers mid-way from the front and bringing them back to their field hospital at the rear.
Work at Pervyse 1914-1916
Unlike the British military authorities, the Belgians welcomed the volunteers who were based at the Belgian headquarters at La Panne. In November 1914, they decided to leave the corps and set up their own dressing station five miles to the east in Pervyse, 17 miles north of Ypres and just one hundred yards from the trenches. Elsie Knocker early realized that many of the wounded being transported were dying unnecessarily because the effects of clinical shock were not treated quickly. She was one of the first volunteers to recognize that giving the wounded basic first aid before moving them increased their chances of survival. With Dr Munro's support, she got Belgian agreement to set up a forward first-aid post and dressing station in the partly ruined Cellar House of Pervyse on the front line. Equipped with a Wolseley ambulance, donated by the people of Sutton Coldfield, Elsie Knocker, followed shortly by Mairi Chisholm, went up to the Belgian front line at Pervyse. Helped by a pair of Belgian soldiers, Alphonse and Désiré, who had been sleeping in the cellar, Elsie and Mairi did what they could to make it habitable and serviceable for treatment of the wounded. At one point the renowned double Nobel Prize winner, Marie Curie, who was running an X-ray unit in Furnes, visited the Cellar House to discuss treatments. She left a graphic account of her work in the diaries she kept at the time. Here, in this cellar, which they named the "Poste de Secours Anglais" ("British First Aid Post"), the two would spend most of the next three and a half years aiding the wounded in the Belgian sector. Knocker gave most of the medical attention, while Chisholm transported the injured, often in terrible conditions and under fire, to a base hospital 15 miles away. No longer affiliated with the Belgian Red Cross, they were forced to raise their own funds. With donations they arranged for the cellar to be reinforced with concrete and even have a steel door fitted, supplied by Harrods. Through sheer perseverance Knocker was able to arrange for the two of them to be officially seconded to the Belgian garrison stationed there.
Equipped with cameras, both women photographed not only each other but also much of the suffering around them. The work of the Cellar House attracted considerable publicity and the enterprise was accorded celebrity status, which Elsie Knocker rather enjoyed. This contributed to a rapid breakdown in relations with Dr Munro. Always a forthright woman to mince her words, Knocker described him as an ‘idiot’, adding in her diary on 1 November 1914: ‘I simply loathe him’. Disgusted by what she regarded as major failings of leadership and organization, she increasingly sought support from the Belgian authorities and from friends among senior British and Belgian officers. The Cellar House now distanced itself from the Flying Ambulance Column.
After spending Christmas 1914 in England, she returned to the Cellar House and on 31 January 1915 was appointed chevalier of the Order of Léopold II, Knights Cross (with palm) by King Albert of the Belgians in recognition of their courageous work on the front lines. Soon afterwards one of Elsie and Mairi's two houses at Pervyse suffered several direct hits and they went to the seaside area of La Panne to consider what to do next. It was a brief period of respite in a town where the Belgian Royal Family was based and it may have been here that she met her second husband.
Second marriage, 1916
On 6 January 1916, Elsie married in the royal chapel in La Panne, a pilot in Belgian Flying Corps Baron Harold de T'Serclaes. He was born on 5 January 1889 in Antwerp, so was five years younger than her. She wrote of her marriage: “So much of me went into my work that I suppose I was easily swept along on a tide of glamour and welcome frivolity. Perhaps I had a desire just to drift for once, not to struggle. It was pleasant to imagine that all would turn out well, and after fifteen months' risking my life at the Front marriage seemed a comparatively small risk to take. I did want someone to take some of the burden off my shoulders and thought how good it would be for Kenneth to have a father. After a lightening honeymoon we hardly saw one another again. I was too busy at Pervyse, and my husband had to return to his squadron.”
War service, 1916-1918
Knocker and Chisholm undertook many battlefield rescues, sometimes carrying men on their backs to their first-aid station. After she and Chisholm rescued a wounded pilot in No Man's Land both women were awarded the British Military Medal on 10 October 1917, and made Officers, Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.
The work at Pervyse was punctuated by visits from various dignitaries, including King Albert, Queen Elisabeth and Prince Alexander of Teck, Earl of Athlone (Head of the British Military Mission and brother of the then Queen Mary, consort of King George V).
Known increasingly as the Madonnas of Pervyse, they they began to get visits from journalists, photographers and became probably the most photographed women of the war. Photographs show her in the uniform of veil, long coat, breeches, and knee-length boots that she designed. She was a striking woman of above average height, with dark hair and strong, well-defined features. Their fame enabled them to return to Britain to raise support and funds to continue their front line first aid. One of these visits was to Exeter when Elsie described their work in the Barnfield Hall on 9 May 1916. She claimed that £60 a month ran their dug-out, base hut, two ambulance cars and one motor lorry. The Exeter audience collected £184 4s, enough to fund them for three months.
In 1917, just before the third Battle of Ypres, the British took over the Pervyse sector. This caused friction, since the women were in the way of the big British guns and the Commander said, they had to leave. The situation was eventually resolved. Elsie enlisted the support of influential friends, such as Prince Alexander, and carried on regardless.
In February 1918 the girls went to London for a gala matinee in their honour and then returned to Pervyse. On 17 March 1918 there was a huge explosion and arsenic gas poured into their dug-out; one of their assistants and the terrier, Shot, died. Elsie and Mairi were overcome and taken to hospital in La Panne; they were both transferred to London. The two Madonnas of Pervyse had treated some 23,000 casualties in nearly four years at the front.
Inter-war period
Elsie finished the war as an officer in the newly formed Women's Royal Air Force. After training she became Administrator in charge of catering and welfare at Eltham, Greenwich, and then head of the Motor Transport Section at Hurst Park in Molesey, Surrey. She was billeted in the mews at Hampton Court Palace.
By 1919, Knocker's marriage to the Baron had unraveled when both he and the Roman Catholic Church discovered the truth about her previous marriage. For Chisholm, who was greatly opposed to divorce, this deception ended their friendship and the two barely spoke again. The Baron seems to have made several attempts at an annulment, but Elsie retained the title of Baroness de T'Serclaes.
Elsie went to recuperate at the country home of the Countess of Warwick in Dunmow, Essex, a a former mistress of King Edward VII. She found Daisy Warwick and her social circle which included the author H G Wells to be most stimulating.
In 1921 her ex-husband, Leslie Knocker died leaving Kenneth a legacy which enabled them to move into a larger flat.
She joined up with a General Macfie to establish a small welfare organisation. Elsie's drove all over Britain, relating her war experiences, attract funding, but following an attack by Horatio Bottomley MP, proprietor of the magazine 'John Bull', she collapsed exhausted and resigned from the organisation, which was then disbanded.
She got a job as supervisor at the country house of industrialist H G Tetley in Cranleigh, Surrey who died about eighteen months later and the house was sold. Her next job was to make a luxury hotel out of Addington Manor in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, where she stayed for two years. She then became general manager for a businesswoman called Mrs Stevenson, who also owned hotels. Then she moved to Torquay, near to her now-retired 'foster parents' and set up a knitwear shop (which she later sold at a good profit), did some nursing and finally returned to London, having seen Kenneth settled into naval training.
General Strike 1926
During the general strike of 1926 she immediately decided to volunteer. Hearing that Poplar was a dangerous no-go area, she volunteered to go there. She managed to persuade a Red Cross official to lend her a car and driver and off she went, the intention being to set up a post to provide medical assistance because the hospitals were largely closed. The local police found her an empty butcher's shop to use. The locals were very hostile, to the extent that the Police Superintendent told her she would have to leave, as the Strike Committee intended to burn down the shop. Elsie refused to go, and she was then summoned to appear before the Strike Committee to explain herself. She was interrogated about what she was doing and suspected of belonging to a feminist organisation called the 'Six Points Group' but her answers were convincing and the locals started to offer help.
At the time she had a small flat in Bayswater where her son Kenneth joined her. He had decided not to pursue a career in the Navy and was considering joining the RAF, which he did. Elsie's next job was in a private nursing home, where her salary was just £1 a week. After a year she left and then found some driving jobs, but she eventually collapsed.
Friends arranged for her to stay at the Red Cross Nursing Home in Weybridge to rest. In effect she was physically and emotionally exhausted by the many years of stress and hard work and she remained in the Nursing Home for three months. When Elsie emerged from the Nursing Home the Red Cross had arranged for her to be offered a small cottage at Ashtead via the Earl Haig Homes charity and at last she had a proper home of her own, which she kept for the rest of her life. She called the cottage 'Pervyse'.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Kenneth seems to have been with her for a lot of the time, until his RAF duties took him away. She had a variety of jobs, including private nursing and lecturing, and became good friends with the jockey Steve Donoghue.
World War II
When war threatened once more she was asked to supervise training of female ambulance drivers in South-west London and in 1939 she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a senior officer working with RAF Fighter Command and was twice mentioned in despatches. On 3 July 1942 she lost her son, Wing Commander Kenneth Duke Knocker, who was killed when his plane was shot down over Groningen.
She left the RAF in 1942 following her son's death and because she needed to look after her elderly foster-father Lewis Upcott whose wife had just died: he was over 90 years old, living alone in a large house. She eventually brought him back to Pervyse Cottage in Ashtead where he remained there until his death, which brought her a legacy from his estate.
Later life
From 1949 to 1959 the Baroness participated in raising funds for the RAF Association and the Benevolent Fund. Later in life she began breeding Chihuahuas and was always accompanied by three or four of them. She was greatly concerned about the welfare of both animals and the conservation of Ashtead Common where she could often be seen walking her pets, "flamboyantly dressed with large earrings and a voluminous dark cloak".
In 1959, by which time she was 75, her energies were declining and she decided to retire, although she did later consider doing some more voluntary work. However, she broke both legs in a fall and, when she recovered, spent her remaining years in conventional retirement. In 1964 she published her memoirs, Flanders and Other Fields. The book reveals little of her life before 1914 and is less than generous in its mention of the enormous contribution made by Mairi Chisholm at Pervyse. Much about her remains an enigma. She writes: This life of mine has been a bungled affair. Only in time of war have I found any real sense of purpose and happiness.
In 1977 she was featured in the Imperial War Museum's exhibition ‘Women at War, 1914–1918’, where her diaries and medals, including the Military Medal, were shown. She also featured in an episode of the BBC television series Yesterday's Witness, broadcast that same year. She died aged ninety-four in a nursing home at 1 West Park Road, Epsom, from bronchopneumonia and senile dementia on 26 April 1978 and was cremated at Randalls Park crematorium, Leatherhead, Surrey, on 4 May.
Postscript: Baron Harold de T'Serclaes
Harold had been highly decorated during World War I and by all accounts was a fearless pilot and patriot. The DNB biography states that he died in 1919 but there is a strange twist to the remarkable tale of Elsie Knocker's life.
After retiring from the Forces he opened a zoo with his mistress, Marguerite Anciaux, who was known as the Baroness de T'Serclaes. During the Second World War he became a German collaborator, spying for the enemy, infiltrating the Antwerp resistance movement and denouncing its members; he also betrayed people who hid Jewish families from the Nazis. He had an accomplice in these activities, who was his young 'secretary', Suzanne Marten.
Shortly before the liberation of Belgium in June 1944 he and Marten fled, first to Antwerp and then to Kessel in Germany. Anciaux stayed behind to dispose of incriminating evidence and went into hiding, but was soon arrested and sentenced to 20 years' hard labour. Harold and Marten went to Berlin where they were provided with new identities and German passports.
In 1947 they were tried in absentia by the War Council of Brussels and sentenced to death by firing squad, but remained in hiding, initially in Austria and then in Italy. Harold was stripped of most of his decorations and his title. Later, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and Marteau surrendered. Harold remained at large until he died in Rome in September 1952, aged 63.
Bibliography
Diaries
The Imperial War Museum holds Knocker's diaries along with recordings and transcripts of interviews.
Books and articles
Atkinson, Diane. Elsie and Mairi Go to War: Two Extraordinary Women on the Western Front. Cornerstone, 2009.
Condell, Diana and Liddiard, Jean (Sept 2004). T'Serclaes, Baroness Elizabeth Blackall de (1884–1978).
Hallam, Andrew & Nicola. Lady Under Fire on the Western Front: The Great War Letters of Lady Dorothie Feilding MM. Pen & Sword Military, 2010.
Knocker, Elsie [Baroness de T'Serclaes] Flanders and Other Fields. London : Harrap, 1964.
Mitton, Geraldine Edith, T'Sercles, Baroness Elsie, Chisholm, Mairi. The Cellar-House of Pervyse : A Tale of Uncommon Things from the Journals and Letters of the Baroness T'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm. London : A.C. Black , 1917.
Vanleene, Patrick. Op Naar de Grote Oorlog. Mairi, Elsie en de anderen in Flanders Fields. De Klaproos, 2001.
Vanleene, Patrick. Fearless: Dorothie Feilding's War, 1914-1917. Academia Press (forthcoming 2015).
Online
Atkinson. Elsie And Mairi Go To War: Two Extraordinary Women On The Western Front (2009) at Kobo https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/elsie-and-mairi-go-to-war Accessed November 2018.
Condell, Diana and Liddiard, Jean (Sept 2004). T'Serclaes, Baroness Elizabeth Blackall de (1884–1978). online edn.
Fraser, Helen. Women and War Work (1918), Chapter IV. at LexCycle Library
Cook, Bernard A. Women and war: a historical encyclopedia from antiquity to the present, Volume 1 (2006) at Google Books
Gleason, Arthur. Young Hilda at the Wars (1915) at Internet Archive
Gleason, Arthur. Golden Lads (1916) by Arthur Gleason & Helen Hayes Gleason at Internet Archive. "'How War Seems to a Woman'; Excerpt from: The Golden Lads" (1916) by Arthur Gleason & Helen Hayes Gleason at greatwardifferent.com Accessed August 2017.
Hosie, Rachel. British "angels" who braved WW1 trenches, by Rachel Hosie BBC News Brussels, 5 Aug 2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28609597 Accessed August 2017.
Jackson, Linda. The Baroness de T'Serclaes (Elsie Knocker). In Epsom and Ewell history, 2012. http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/Tserclaes0.html Accessed August 2017.
Madonnas of the Western Front (2009) from The Scotsman.
Mitton, Geraldine Edith; T'Serclaes, Elsie Shapter Knocker and Chisholm, Mairi (1917). The Cellar-house of Pervyse: A Tale of Uncommon Things from the Journals and Letters of the Baroness T'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm. London: A & C Black, 2017. On Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/cellarhouseofper00mitt/page/n7 Accessed November 2018.
Excerpt from: The Cellar-House of Pervijse (1917) from 'The War Budget' http://greatwardifferent.com Accessed August 2017.
Souttar, Henry Sessions. A Surgeon in Belgium (1915) on Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/surgeoninbelgium01sout/page/n9 Accessed November 2018.
Timpson, Trevor. World War One: The great and the good who were spared. BBC NEWS. 20 March 2014. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26170799 Accessed August 2017.
Women in the War (1914) from the magazine 'T.P.'s Great Deeds of the Great War' http://greatwardifferent.com Accessed August 2017.
Digital archives
Imperial War Museum. The Women of Pervyse [and other collections]
BFI National Archive. Women at War: The Two Women of Pervyse.
National Library of Scotland. The Nurses Story: Tending the Wounded at the Front.
Sound and video
BBC World Service. Witness. WW1: The Two Women of Pervyse. 6 March 2017 9 minutes http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04v481x
Exeter, Devon: Elsie Knocker's courageous service on the frontline. Presented by Jo Loosemoore: 17 February 2014, 13 minutes http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01sf5jq
Baroness de T'Serclaes. BBC Woman's hour. 2 Aug 1964. 12 minutes. Includes interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01ld54h
The following images were exhibited:
Elsie Knocker at "The Sick and Sorry House", where the women of Pervyse established a first-aid post in late 1914.
© IWM (Q 105862). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1914. Photographer: Mairi Chisholm.
Elsie Knocker photographed at Pervyse in late 1914.
© IWM (Q 105864). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1914. Photographer: Mairi Chisholm.
Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm outside the English First Aid Post in Pervyse, 1915.
© IWM (Q 105915). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1915. Photographer unknown.
Elsie Knocker with the Belgian soldier she married, Baron Harold de T'Serclaes, in Pervyse, 1916.
© IWM (Q 105919). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1916. Photographer: Mairi Chisholm.
Elsie Knocker, assisted by Mairi Chisholm and a Belgian orderly, operating on a wounded Belgian soldier in their first aid post in Pervyse, 1917.
© IWM (Q 105940). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1917. Photographer unknown.
The Women of Pervyse and a Belgian orderly wearing gas masks to give artificial respiration to a victim of a gas attack at their first aid post at Pervyse, 1917.
© IWM (Q 105948). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1917. Photographer unknown.
Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm with Prince Alexander of Teck (later known as Sir Alexander Cambridge, 1st Earl of Athlone) and another officer in Pervyse, 1917.
© IWM (Q 105960). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1917. Photographer unknown.
Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm in steel helmets checking their cameras (probably) in Pervyse, 1917.
© IWM (Q 105969). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1917. Photographer unknown.
Elsie Knocker, the Baroness de T'Serclaes (left), and Mairi Chisholm (right) with their motor ambulance, in Pervyse. It was presented to the St John Ambulance Association by Sutton Coldfield and District, 30th July 1917.
© IWM (Q 2659). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 30 July 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm attending to a wounded Belgian soldier in their third advanced first aid post at Pervyse. The two "Madonnas of Pervyse' ran a series of first aid posts in the Belgian front line.
© IWM (Q 2676). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 6 August 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Elsie Knocker attending to a wounded Belgian soldier in the street at Ramscapelle, 9 September 1917. Note the screen at the back at the side of the road.
© IWM (Q 2964). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 9 September 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Miss Mairi Chisholm driving Elsie Knocker in their motorcycle and side-car, Pervyse, 9 September 1917. A camouflage screen borders the road.
© IWM (Q 2967). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 9 September 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Miss Mairi Chisholm driving the motor-cycle with Elsie Knocker in the side-car, past the ruins of their second "poste", destroyed by shellfire, Pervyse, 11 September 1917.
© IWM (Q 2968). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 11 September 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Elsie Knocker and Miss Mairi Chisholm outside their sandbagged third "poste" in Pervyse, 9 September 1917.
© IWM (Q 2969). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 9 September 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Elsie Knocker and Miss Mairi Chisholm taking cover from a shell bursting on a light railway near Pervyse.
© IWM (Q 105984). Belgian First World War official exchange collection. Date: 1914/1918. Belgian official photographer
Certified copy of entry of birth of Elizabeth Blackall Shapter, daughter of Lewis Shapter, physician, and Charlotte, née Bayly, born 29 July 1884 at 1, Barnfield Crescent, Exeter. © Crown copyright. General Register Office. Date: 9 August 2017.
Elsie Knocker, Baroness de T'Serclaes
Early life
Elizabeth Blackall Shapter was born at 1, Barnfield Crescent, Exeter, Devon on 29 July 1884, the youngest of five children of Dr. Lewis Shapter and Charlotte (née Bayly). During her childhood she picked up the nickname, "Elsie".
She was orphaned at an early age. Her mother died of meningitis on 2 May 1888. Lewis was already suffering from tuberculosis and he succumbed to it on 13 November 1890. The five children were farmed out to different realtives and Elsie was cared for by a maternal uncle. She was subsequently adopted by Lewis Edward Upcott, a teacher at Marlborough College, and his wife Emily who sent her to be educated at St. Nicholas's, Folkestone, and then at the exclusive Château Lutry in Switzerland and a later at a cookery school in Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Elsie never referred to Lewis and Emily as her parents. They were always foster-parents or aunt and uncle and she is less than kind to them in her memoirs.
From an early age she showed an adventurous spirit. Staying with an aunt in Topsham she worked at stables and a riding school in Alphington. While there she rode on horseback into Green's drapery store in Exeter High Street, up the stairs, round the millinery department and downstairs back into Exeter High Street for a £5 bet (perhaps £400 in 2017 prices).
Hospital service and first marriage
On 5 April 1906 she married an older man, Leslie Duke Knocker (1875-1921), an accountant, and and it was suggested that he should join his elder brother in Singapore, where he could earn more money. Elsie accompanied him but retuned to England for the birth of her son, Kenneth Duke, in 1907. The marriage was not a success. Her husband drank heavily and seems to have been abusive. On her return to Singapore with her son Elsie had took a flat, but after six months she became ill and was advised to go home, which she did, weighing just five stones. Once recovered, she was persuaded to give the marriage another try and leaving Kenneth with the Upcotts, she returned to her husband, who was now in Java. After a year there, things had not improved and she finally sailed home to obtain the divorce. Since being divorced was a status frowned upon in Edwardian England, Knocker invented the myth that her husband had died in Java, leaving her a widow.
She trained as a nurse at the Children's Hip Hospital, Sevenoaks, Kent, and worked for a time in Java and Australia. She then trained in midwifery at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London. In about 1913 her eldest brother, John, who had been badly injured, needed someone to look after him, so she took Kenneth off to his cottage near Fordingbridge in Hampshire.
With a legacy she purchased a Chater Lea motorcycle and, nicknamed Gypsy after the Motorcycle Club she joined, she became a leading light in the motorcycling fraternity. It was through this shared interest that she met Mairi Lambert Gooden Chisholm of Chisholm (1896–1981), with whom she was later to work in Belgium. When riding she wore a dark green leather skirt and long leather coat buttoned all the way down with a belt "to keep it all together" designed by Dunhill. She also learned how to dismantle, reassemble, service and repair such machines. She possessed a number of motorbikes including a Scott, a Douglas solo, and the Chater-Lea with a sidecar which she took to the Western Front.
World War 1
When war was declared in 1914, Knocker wrote to her friend and fellow motorcycle fanatic, Mairi Chisholm, that there was "work to be done", and suggested they go to London to become dispatch riders for the Women's Emergency Corps. When Chisholm was chosen to join Hector Munro’s Flying Ambulance Corps she was able to convince Munro to accept Knocker as well seeing as she had some training as a nurse, was an excellent mechanic and chauffeur, and spoke both French and German. The day before she was due to ship out she wrote in her diary: "This time tomorrow night I shall be in Belgium… in the midst of all the terrors of war."
In the evening of 25 September 1914, Knocker, Chisholm and the other woman volunteers, including Dorothie Feilding and May Sinclair, followed Dr. Munro down the gang-plank of the S.S. Princess Clementine at Ostend, West Flanders. Whilst visiting the town of Nazareth, eight miles south-west of Ghent where the corps was initially quartered, Knocker witnessed to the aftermath of a massacre when she came across 26 Belgian military policemen who had been shot and mutilated by the Germans. In fact Belgian civilians were massacred indiscriminately and Elsie saw with her own eyes children with their hands and feet cut off and, on one occasion, a baby nailed to a door. She was deeply affected and resolved to seek a way to help even if it meant facing extreme danger. At the end of October 1914, the corps relocated to Furnes in unoccupied Belgium, near Dunkirk, where the women worked tirelessly picking up wounded soldiers mid-way from the front and bringing them back to their field hospital at the rear.
Work at Pervyse 1914-1916
Unlike the British military authorities, the Belgians welcomed the volunteers who were based at the Belgian headquarters at La Panne. In November 1914, they decided to leave the corps and set up their own dressing station five miles to the east in Pervyse, 17 miles north of Ypres and just one hundred yards from the trenches. Elsie Knocker early realized that many of the wounded being transported were dying unnecessarily because the effects of clinical shock were not treated quickly. She was one of the first volunteers to recognize that giving the wounded basic first aid before moving them increased their chances of survival. With Dr Munro's support, she got Belgian agreement to set up a forward first-aid post and dressing station in the partly ruined Cellar House of Pervyse on the front line. Equipped with a Wolseley ambulance, donated by the people of Sutton Coldfield, Elsie Knocker, followed shortly by Mairi Chisholm, went up to the Belgian front line at Pervyse. Helped by a pair of Belgian soldiers, Alphonse and Désiré, who had been sleeping in the cellar, Elsie and Mairi did what they could to make it habitable and serviceable for treatment of the wounded. At one point the renowned double Nobel Prize winner, Marie Curie, who was running an X-ray unit in Furnes, visited the Cellar House to discuss treatments. She left a graphic account of her work in the diaries she kept at the time. Here, in this cellar, which they named the "Poste de Secours Anglais" ("British First Aid Post"), the two would spend most of the next three and a half years aiding the wounded in the Belgian sector. Knocker gave most of the medical attention, while Chisholm transported the injured, often in terrible conditions and under fire, to a base hospital 15 miles away. No longer affiliated with the Belgian Red Cross, they were forced to raise their own funds. With donations they arranged for the cellar to be reinforced with concrete and even have a steel door fitted, supplied by Harrods. Through sheer perseverance Knocker was able to arrange for the two of them to be officially seconded to the Belgian garrison stationed there.
Equipped with cameras, both women photographed not only each other but also much of the suffering around them. The work of the Cellar House attracted considerable publicity and the enterprise was accorded celebrity status, which Elsie Knocker rather enjoyed. This contributed to a rapid breakdown in relations with Dr Munro. Always a forthright woman to mince her words, Knocker described him as an ‘idiot’, adding in her diary on 1 November 1914: ‘I simply loathe him’. Disgusted by what she regarded as major failings of leadership and organization, she increasingly sought support from the Belgian authorities and from friends among senior British and Belgian officers. The Cellar House now distanced itself from the Flying Ambulance Column.
After spending Christmas 1914 in England, she returned to the Cellar House and on 31 January 1915 was appointed chevalier of the Order of Léopold II, Knights Cross (with palm) by King Albert of the Belgians in recognition of their courageous work on the front lines. Soon afterwards one of Elsie and Mairi's two houses at Pervyse suffered several direct hits and they went to the seaside area of La Panne to consider what to do next. It was a brief period of respite in a town where the Belgian Royal Family was based and it may have been here that she met her second husband.
Second marriage, 1916
On 6 January 1916, Elsie married in the royal chapel in La Panne, a pilot in Belgian Flying Corps Baron Harold de T'Serclaes. He was born on 5 January 1889 in Antwerp, so was five years younger than her. She wrote of her marriage: “So much of me went into my work that I suppose I was easily swept along on a tide of glamour and welcome frivolity. Perhaps I had a desire just to drift for once, not to struggle. It was pleasant to imagine that all would turn out well, and after fifteen months' risking my life at the Front marriage seemed a comparatively small risk to take. I did want someone to take some of the burden off my shoulders and thought how good it would be for Kenneth to have a father. After a lightening honeymoon we hardly saw one another again. I was too busy at Pervyse, and my husband had to return to his squadron.”
War service, 1916-1918
Knocker and Chisholm undertook many battlefield rescues, sometimes carrying men on their backs to their first-aid station. After she and Chisholm rescued a wounded pilot in No Man's Land both women were awarded the British Military Medal on 10 October 1917, and made Officers, Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.
The work at Pervyse was punctuated by visits from various dignitaries, including King Albert, Queen Elisabeth and Prince Alexander of Teck, Earl of Athlone (Head of the British Military Mission and brother of the then Queen Mary, consort of King George V).
Known increasingly as the Madonnas of Pervyse, they they began to get visits from journalists, photographers and became probably the most photographed women of the war. Photographs show her in the uniform of veil, long coat, breeches, and knee-length boots that she designed. She was a striking woman of above average height, with dark hair and strong, well-defined features. Their fame enabled them to return to Britain to raise support and funds to continue their front line first aid. One of these visits was to Exeter when Elsie described their work in the Barnfield Hall on 9 May 1916. She claimed that £60 a month ran their dug-out, base hut, two ambulance cars and one motor lorry. The Exeter audience collected £184 4s, enough to fund them for three months.
In 1917, just before the third Battle of Ypres, the British took over the Pervyse sector. This caused friction, since the women were in the way of the big British guns and the Commander said, they had to leave. The situation was eventually resolved. Elsie enlisted the support of influential friends, such as Prince Alexander, and carried on regardless.
In February 1918 the girls went to London for a gala matinee in their honour and then returned to Pervyse. On 17 March 1918 there was a huge explosion and arsenic gas poured into their dug-out; one of their assistants and the terrier, Shot, died. Elsie and Mairi were overcome and taken to hospital in La Panne; they were both transferred to London. The two Madonnas of Pervyse had treated some 23,000 casualties in nearly four years at the front.
Inter-war period
Elsie finished the war as an officer in the newly formed Women's Royal Air Force. After training she became Administrator in charge of catering and welfare at Eltham, Greenwich, and then head of the Motor Transport Section at Hurst Park in Molesey, Surrey. She was billeted in the mews at Hampton Court Palace.
By 1919, Knocker's marriage to the Baron had unraveled when both he and the Roman Catholic Church discovered the truth about her previous marriage. For Chisholm, who was greatly opposed to divorce, this deception ended their friendship and the two barely spoke again. The Baron seems to have made several attempts at an annulment, but Elsie retained the title of Baroness de T'Serclaes.
Elsie went to recuperate at the country home of the Countess of Warwick in Dunmow, Essex, a a former mistress of King Edward VII. She found Daisy Warwick and her social circle which included the author H G Wells to be most stimulating.
In 1921 her ex-husband, Leslie Knocker died leaving Kenneth a legacy which enabled them to move into a larger flat.
She joined up with a General Macfie to establish a small welfare organisation. Elsie's drove all over Britain, relating her war experiences, attract funding, but following an attack by Horatio Bottomley MP, proprietor of the magazine 'John Bull', she collapsed exhausted and resigned from the organisation, which was then disbanded.
She got a job as supervisor at the country house of industrialist H G Tetley in Cranleigh, Surrey who died about eighteen months later and the house was sold. Her next job was to make a luxury hotel out of Addington Manor in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, where she stayed for two years. She then became general manager for a businesswoman called Mrs Stevenson, who also owned hotels. Then she moved to Torquay, near to her now-retired 'foster parents' and set up a knitwear shop (which she later sold at a good profit), did some nursing and finally returned to London, having seen Kenneth settled into naval training.
General Strike 1926
During the general strike of 1926 she immediately decided to volunteer. Hearing that Poplar was a dangerous no-go area, she volunteered to go there. She managed to persuade a Red Cross official to lend her a car and driver and off she went, the intention being to set up a post to provide medical assistance because the hospitals were largely closed. The local police found her an empty butcher's shop to use. The locals were very hostile, to the extent that the Police Superintendent told her she would have to leave, as the Strike Committee intended to burn down the shop. Elsie refused to go, and she was then summoned to appear before the Strike Committee to explain herself. She was interrogated about what she was doing and suspected of belonging to a feminist organisation called the 'Six Points Group' but her answers were convincing and the locals started to offer help.
At the time she had a small flat in Bayswater where her son Kenneth joined her. He had decided not to pursue a career in the Navy and was considering joining the RAF, which he did. Elsie's next job was in a private nursing home, where her salary was just £1 a week. After a year she left and then found some driving jobs, but she eventually collapsed.
Friends arranged for her to stay at the Red Cross Nursing Home in Weybridge to rest. In effect she was physically and emotionally exhausted by the many years of stress and hard work and she remained in the Nursing Home for three months. When Elsie emerged from the Nursing Home the Red Cross had arranged for her to be offered a small cottage at Ashtead via the Earl Haig Homes charity and at last she had a proper home of her own, which she kept for the rest of her life. She called the cottage 'Pervyse'.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Kenneth seems to have been with her for a lot of the time, until his RAF duties took him away. She had a variety of jobs, including private nursing and lecturing, and became good friends with the jockey Steve Donoghue.
World War II
When war threatened once more she was asked to supervise training of female ambulance drivers in South-west London and in 1939 she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a senior officer working with RAF Fighter Command and was twice mentioned in despatches. On 3 July 1942 she lost her son, Wing Commander Kenneth Duke Knocker, who was killed when his plane was shot down over Groningen.
She left the RAF in 1942 following her son's death and because she needed to look after her elderly foster-father Lewis Upcott whose wife had just died: he was over 90 years old, living alone in a large house. She eventually brought him back to Pervyse Cottage in Ashtead where he remained there until his death, which brought her a legacy from his estate.
Later life
From 1949 to 1959 the Baroness participated in raising funds for the RAF Association and the Benevolent Fund. Later in life she began breeding Chihuahuas and was always accompanied by three or four of them. She was greatly concerned about the welfare of both animals and the conservation of Ashtead Common where she could often be seen walking her pets, "flamboyantly dressed with large earrings and a voluminous dark cloak".
In 1959, by which time she was 75, her energies were declining and she decided to retire, although she did later consider doing some more voluntary work. However, she broke both legs in a fall and, when she recovered, spent her remaining years in conventional retirement. In 1964 she published her memoirs, Flanders and Other Fields. The book reveals little of her life before 1914 and is less than generous in its mention of the enormous contribution made by Mairi Chisholm at Pervyse. Much about her remains an enigma. She writes: This life of mine has been a bungled affair. Only in time of war have I found any real sense of purpose and happiness.
In 1977 she was featured in the Imperial War Museum's exhibition ‘Women at War, 1914–1918’, where her diaries and medals, including the Military Medal, were shown. She also featured in an episode of the BBC television series Yesterday's Witness, broadcast that same year. She died aged ninety-four in a nursing home at 1 West Park Road, Epsom, from bronchopneumonia and senile dementia on 26 April 1978 and was cremated at Randalls Park crematorium, Leatherhead, Surrey, on 4 May.
Postscript: Baron Harold de T'Serclaes
Harold had been highly decorated during World War I and by all accounts was a fearless pilot and patriot. The DNB biography states that he died in 1919 but there is a strange twist to the remarkable tale of Elsie Knocker's life.
After retiring from the Forces he opened a zoo with his mistress, Marguerite Anciaux, who was known as the Baroness de T'Serclaes. During the Second World War he became a German collaborator, spying for the enemy, infiltrating the Antwerp resistance movement and denouncing its members; he also betrayed people who hid Jewish families from the Nazis. He had an accomplice in these activities, who was his young 'secretary', Suzanne Marten.
Shortly before the liberation of Belgium in June 1944 he and Marten fled, first to Antwerp and then to Kessel in Germany. Anciaux stayed behind to dispose of incriminating evidence and went into hiding, but was soon arrested and sentenced to 20 years' hard labour. Harold and Marten went to Berlin where they were provided with new identities and German passports.
In 1947 they were tried in absentia by the War Council of Brussels and sentenced to death by firing squad, but remained in hiding, initially in Austria and then in Italy. Harold was stripped of most of his decorations and his title. Later, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and Marteau surrendered. Harold remained at large until he died in Rome in September 1952, aged 63.
Bibliography
Diaries
The Imperial War Museum holds Knocker's diaries along with recordings and transcripts of interviews.
Books and articles
Atkinson, Diane. Elsie and Mairi Go to War: Two Extraordinary Women on the Western Front. Cornerstone, 2009.
Condell, Diana and Liddiard, Jean (Sept 2004). T'Serclaes, Baroness Elizabeth Blackall de (1884–1978).
Hallam, Andrew & Nicola. Lady Under Fire on the Western Front: The Great War Letters of Lady Dorothie Feilding MM. Pen & Sword Military, 2010.
Knocker, Elsie [Baroness de T'Serclaes] Flanders and Other Fields. London : Harrap, 1964.
Mitton, Geraldine Edith, T'Sercles, Baroness Elsie, Chisholm, Mairi. The Cellar-House of Pervyse : A Tale of Uncommon Things from the Journals and Letters of the Baroness T'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm. London : A.C. Black , 1917.
Vanleene, Patrick. Op Naar de Grote Oorlog. Mairi, Elsie en de anderen in Flanders Fields. De Klaproos, 2001.
Vanleene, Patrick. Fearless: Dorothie Feilding's War, 1914-1917. Academia Press (forthcoming 2015).
Online
Atkinson. Elsie And Mairi Go To War: Two Extraordinary Women On The Western Front (2009) at Kobo https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/elsie-and-mairi-go-to-war Accessed November 2018.
Condell, Diana and Liddiard, Jean (Sept 2004). T'Serclaes, Baroness Elizabeth Blackall de (1884–1978). online edn.
Fraser, Helen. Women and War Work (1918), Chapter IV. at LexCycle Library
Cook, Bernard A. Women and war: a historical encyclopedia from antiquity to the present, Volume 1 (2006) at Google Books
Gleason, Arthur. Young Hilda at the Wars (1915) at Internet Archive
Gleason, Arthur. Golden Lads (1916) by Arthur Gleason & Helen Hayes Gleason at Internet Archive. "'How War Seems to a Woman'; Excerpt from: The Golden Lads" (1916) by Arthur Gleason & Helen Hayes Gleason at greatwardifferent.com Accessed August 2017.
Hosie, Rachel. British "angels" who braved WW1 trenches, by Rachel Hosie BBC News Brussels, 5 Aug 2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28609597 Accessed August 2017.
Jackson, Linda. The Baroness de T'Serclaes (Elsie Knocker). In Epsom and Ewell history, 2012. http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/Tserclaes0.html Accessed August 2017.
Madonnas of the Western Front (2009) from The Scotsman.
Mitton, Geraldine Edith; T'Serclaes, Elsie Shapter Knocker and Chisholm, Mairi (1917). The Cellar-house of Pervyse: A Tale of Uncommon Things from the Journals and Letters of the Baroness T'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm. London: A & C Black, 2017. On Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/cellarhouseofper00mitt/page/n7 Accessed November 2018.
Excerpt from: The Cellar-House of Pervijse (1917) from 'The War Budget' http://greatwardifferent.com Accessed August 2017.
Souttar, Henry Sessions. A Surgeon in Belgium (1915) on Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/surgeoninbelgium01sout/page/n9 Accessed November 2018.
Timpson, Trevor. World War One: The great and the good who were spared. BBC NEWS. 20 March 2014. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26170799 Accessed August 2017.
Women in the War (1914) from the magazine 'T.P.'s Great Deeds of the Great War' http://greatwardifferent.com Accessed August 2017.
Digital archives
Imperial War Museum. The Women of Pervyse [and other collections]
BFI National Archive. Women at War: The Two Women of Pervyse.
National Library of Scotland. The Nurses Story: Tending the Wounded at the Front.
Sound and video
BBC World Service. Witness. WW1: The Two Women of Pervyse. 6 March 2017 9 minutes http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04v481x
Exeter, Devon: Elsie Knocker's courageous service on the frontline. Presented by Jo Loosemoore: 17 February 2014, 13 minutes http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01sf5jq
Baroness de T'Serclaes. BBC Woman's hour. 2 Aug 1964. 12 minutes. Includes interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01ld54h
The following images were exhibited:
Elsie Knocker at "The Sick and Sorry House", where the women of Pervyse established a first-aid post in late 1914.
© IWM (Q 105862). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1914. Photographer: Mairi Chisholm.
Elsie Knocker photographed at Pervyse in late 1914.
© IWM (Q 105864). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1914. Photographer: Mairi Chisholm.
Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm outside the English First Aid Post in Pervyse, 1915.
© IWM (Q 105915). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1915. Photographer unknown.
Elsie Knocker with the Belgian soldier she married, Baron Harold de T'Serclaes, in Pervyse, 1916.
© IWM (Q 105919). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1916. Photographer: Mairi Chisholm.
Elsie Knocker, assisted by Mairi Chisholm and a Belgian orderly, operating on a wounded Belgian soldier in their first aid post in Pervyse, 1917.
© IWM (Q 105940). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1917. Photographer unknown.
The Women of Pervyse and a Belgian orderly wearing gas masks to give artificial respiration to a victim of a gas attack at their first aid post at Pervyse, 1917.
© IWM (Q 105948). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1917. Photographer unknown.
Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm with Prince Alexander of Teck (later known as Sir Alexander Cambridge, 1st Earl of Athlone) and another officer in Pervyse, 1917.
© IWM (Q 105960). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1917. Photographer unknown.
Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm in steel helmets checking their cameras (probably) in Pervyse, 1917.
© IWM (Q 105969). Women of Pervyse collection. Date: 1917. Photographer unknown.
Elsie Knocker, the Baroness de T'Serclaes (left), and Mairi Chisholm (right) with their motor ambulance, in Pervyse. It was presented to the St John Ambulance Association by Sutton Coldfield and District, 30th July 1917.
© IWM (Q 2659). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 30 July 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm attending to a wounded Belgian soldier in their third advanced first aid post at Pervyse. The two "Madonnas of Pervyse' ran a series of first aid posts in the Belgian front line.
© IWM (Q 2676). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 6 August 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Elsie Knocker attending to a wounded Belgian soldier in the street at Ramscapelle, 9 September 1917. Note the screen at the back at the side of the road.
© IWM (Q 2964). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 9 September 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Miss Mairi Chisholm driving Elsie Knocker in their motorcycle and side-car, Pervyse, 9 September 1917. A camouflage screen borders the road.
© IWM (Q 2967). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 9 September 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Miss Mairi Chisholm driving the motor-cycle with Elsie Knocker in the side-car, past the ruins of their second "poste", destroyed by shellfire, Pervyse, 11 September 1917.
© IWM (Q 2968). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 11 September 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Elsie Knocker and Miss Mairi Chisholm outside their sandbagged third "poste" in Pervyse, 9 September 1917.
© IWM (Q 2969). Ministry of Information First World War official collection. Date: 9 September 1917. Photographer: Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.
Elsie Knocker and Miss Mairi Chisholm taking cover from a shell bursting on a light railway near Pervyse.
© IWM (Q 105984). Belgian First World War official exchange collection. Date: 1914/1918. Belgian official photographer
Certified copy of entry of birth of Elizabeth Blackall Shapter, daughter of Lewis Shapter, physician, and Charlotte, née Bayly, born 29 July 1884 at 1, Barnfield Crescent, Exeter. © Crown copyright. General Register Office. Date: 9 August 2017.
Copyright © Ian Maxted 11 November 2018
This page last updated 14 November 2018
