Victorian spinsters – they were
amazing, especially when they left Great Britain behind and went to live and
work in lands under foreign rule, such as China, tropical Africa and the
Ottoman Empire.
In 1889 in the Muslim provinces Christendom
lumped together as Palestine there were at least 41 unmarried British women qualified
teachers, nurses and in one case even a doctor, working as missionaries. During
the course of background research for my novels I came across the bizarre story
of one of these women. You have the title above but just as appropriate might be
The Derbyshire Woman who threw both Oil and Lighted Matches on Troubled
Waters.
‘Comely but
podgy — tall and masterful, with the hell of a temper and always having rows.’ is
how, at the age of 56, Miss Frances Emily Newton is described by journalist,
Owen Tweedy. By that time she had been living in Palestine for 35 years.
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| The Manor House, Mickleford |
The
character traits, he describes, are probably the result of a childhood spent holding
her own against several older step-sisters. Since they were all educated at home by governesses she would have
enjoyed no respite. As for her looks, I have not yet tracked down any portraits.
I have one however a photo of the house in which she was born. Whatever
else her childhood may have been, it was not financially impoverished. Her
father was a banker; her mother had considerable private means. The family
lived in the Manor House in the village of Mickleover, which, by the end of the
nineteenth century, was rapidly becoming a suburb of Derby.
 |
| Mickleford Church |
For the Newton sisters, however, the village still
centred round the 13th century church and they became infatuated with stories
of the missionaries the church supported. By the 1880's one of Frances’ sisters,
Edith, had already left home to work in
Palestine with the Church Missionary Society (CMS for short.) When Frances, was
17 in 1888, she accompanied another stepsister, Constance, who had bought
property in Jaffa for conversion into a medical centre that catered not only
for Jaffa but also for the nearby towns of Lydda and Ramle.
Frances was so enthused by both her sisters’ work that
she decided to become a missionary herself and travelled in the company of
fully fledged missionaries in both Palestine and Transjordan, while learning
Arabic before returning to England to train as a nurse, During her training her
mother died leaving her a woman of ample independent means. She abandoned her
training and returned to Palestine to work with her sister Constance in
Jaffa. She also invested in several
properties in fast-developing Haifa including at least two hotels. and also bought a magnificent home for herself
on top of Mt Carmel.
The most memorable time of her Jaffa years was the winter
of 1901 to 1902, when a terrible outbreak of cholera broke out in Lydda, one of
the largest market centres in Palestine. Frances and her sister worked there
flat out until the epidemic was over. During that time Frances became even closer to the Arab peoples
of Palestine.
In 1909 ill health forced Constance to give up work. She bequeathed the medical centre to the CMS.
Although Frances continued to support the centre financially moved to Haifa, which was now a town of paved
roads connected by rail and steamship to Europe.
A visitor describes her house there as “ very
lovely, in a most beautiful situation, looking out towards the Bay of Acre and
the Ladder of Tyre. The principal living room, high up in the house, is very large
and not much encumbered by furniture: everything in it being either useful or
beautiful, and sometimes both. Its air of spaciousness is made more so by
French windows s opening onto an almost equally large veranda. Room and veranda
can easily accommodate a public meeting of several hundred people.”
Frances
made good use of her new home. She took it upon herself to act as a counsellor
to the Arabs of Haifa, turning the lower part of her house into a virtual
lawyer's office. People with grievances, either physical, moral, or political,
real or imaginary, came to seek her advice. The British vice-consul also relied
on her local knowledge and so began her journey into politics.
As with
many other people, the outbreak of WW1
disrupted France’s life. The Ottomans requisitioned her house and exiled her to
Egypt.
Frances
volunteered to serve as a war-time police officer in Leicester Square,
but instead the CMS persuaded her to represent them on the committee of the
Syria and Palestine Relief Fund along with the Red Cross and the order of St
John of Jerusalem. Her service as secretary led to her being honoured by St
John’s as a Lady of Grace
While
in Egypt she became the British High Commissioner’s unofficial
adviser on Palestinian affairs and translated from Arabic top secret
correspondence on both the Sykes-Picot agreement and the promises made to the
Haj Husseini. It was during her time of exile that she became acquainted with T. E.
Lawrence of Arabia and Prince Faisal, son of the Sharif of Mecca, later
to become Emir of Transjordan.
On returning home to Mt Carmel in 1919, Frances found
her house stripped of all its belongings. She was even more distressed ,
however, by the dejection of her Arab friends who feared the 1917 Balfour
Declaration had handed their country over to the Jews, who according to the
Arabs, were already parading arrogantly through the streets of Haifa..
Frances’
ant-Zionist increased in correspondence with the growth of Haifa’s Jewish
population. Indignant over broken promises made to the Arabs, she passed on the
secrets she had learnt in Egypt to a Daily Mail journalist who used them in his
newspaper articles. The material was not officially available to the British
public and its appearance in the Daily Mail caused a considerable stir in
parliament. The journalist later published his articles in a book ‘The
Palestinian Deception 1915-1923.’
British administrators, who did not realise Frances
was the source of Jeffries’ material, treated her as their advisor on Arab
affairs and occasionally the district commissioner asked her to play hostess
for his social functions.
Although Frances spent most of her time on Mt Carmel,
she was addicted to travel, and made the 100 mile journey to Jerusalem almost
every month to keep in touch with government affairs. A close friend of hers
there was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Like many British ladies she was
attracted by his charisma. Her ardent support for him was to change the whole
course of her life.
In 1924, at his suggestion, she undertook a prolonged
trip to Europe to submit a report on the situation of the Arabs in Palestine to
the League of Nations and also arranged an interview with the Secretary of the
permanent mandates committee in Geneva.
On returning home, she questioned a close friend, the editor
of an Arab newspaper ‘El Carmel’, on the
fate of five villages in the district of Affuleh.
Shortly afterwards the , head of the Jewish Agency’s
Department of Arab Affairs, Dr Chaim Kalvarisky, visited Frances appealing that
she use her influence to persuade her Arab friends to co-operate with the
Palestinian administration. Frances passed on to the editor of el-Carmel her
reply that she could not comply with the request so long as the present unjust
conditions of the Mandate prevailed. The editor reported the incident in his
paper, urging all Arab intermediaries and sellers of land to follow her
example.
To make her position on Zionism even clearer, when
Lord Balfour paid a visit to Palestine soon afterwards, Frances wrote a strong, anti-Zionist leader
entitled “J’accuse” for another fierier Arab language paper ‘Filastin’.
For the next four years Frances concentrated on
publicising the suffering of evicted fellaheen from the five villages in the
Affuleh district demolished to make way for the Jewish town of Afula. She did not
, however, investigate the legal aspects in detail.
August 1929 saw Arab riots resulting in the massacres
of Jews in Hebron and Safad. The government appointed a commission to enquire
into the causes.
The Jewish Agency employed a former British solicitor
-general, Sir Boyd Merriman to protect their interests.
Frances volunteered to witness on behalf of the Arabs of
the Affuleh district.
Sir Boyd
reduced her to tears by not only , revealing her factual ignorance but also by
exposing her as the source behind the Daily Mail’s disclosures.. Frances’
humiliation was compounded when the English language paper, ‘The Palestine
Bulletin,’ published a transcript of Sir Boyd’s cross examination. Her
mortification, however, was somewhat mitigated, when a few weeks later she
became Dame of Justice of the Venerable Order of Saint John.
All the same for the next few years she concentrated
on safer projects such as helping the Coptic Christians with whom the
Anglican Church in Palestine had a close connection and
serving on the Palestine Women's Council that advised the British on matters
affecting women and children
Then in 1936 came the Great Arab Rebellion, headed by
the Grand Mufti. Frances was one of several British female admirers of the
Mufti to become founding members of the Palestine Information Centre (PIC)
based in Victoria Street, London. The
Grand Mufti persuaded Frances to become its honorary secretary., and from then
on she yo-yoed back and forth between England and Palestine.
She took her
new role very seriously and wrote to the daily papers and all British MPs telling
them she hoped the PIC would a centre for academic studies on the Palestine
situation and provide a meeting place for Arabs and English to exchange ideas.
During the next few months, Frances, via the Centre,
produced several anti-Zionist pamphlets. Helping her run the London Office was
a law student cousin of the Grand Mufti. Frances approved of the young man’s
attitude and thought he should be given more responsibility,
She visited Jerusalem at the beginning of 1937, during
a lull in the rebellion, and suggested to the Grand Mufti that Arab members
should play a greater part in the organisation of PIC.
The Mufti welcomed her proposals and held a reception
in her honour. He then renamed the PIC, the Arab Office, appointed two Arab
notables to head it and affiliated it to his own political party. He placed his
young cousin in day to day control.
Theoretically, British members now held only advisory
roles but Frances, while in London, spent almost every day at the Arab Office..
In July 1937, The
Peel Commission announced its plan for the partition of Palestine. All Arabs
united to oppose it and rebelled more violently than they had before. The
British administration reacted by sending the Grand Mufti and most of his party
leaders into exile.
Frances was back in Haifa when the British at last put
the country under martial law. She attended the first post-war military court
in the history of Palestine. It was a drizzly day in November. Kingsway now
lined with Palestinian police. The doorway of No 61, was strongly guarded by
British Palestine Police holding the public at bay until they knew how many
seats were left after journalists had poured in. Frances was one of the few
non-journalists allowed into the second storey courtroom where 82 year-old Sheik
Farhan es-Sa’adi was on trial.
This Sheik had taken part in the 1929 riots, in a
minor rebellion of and had led the first gang to fire weapons in the 1936
revolt. The gang had dragged three
Jewish civilian passengers off an Arab bus and shot them in cold blood. Even
Frances could not condone that crime nor complain about the imposed Death
sentence.
She did however, oppose a military court replacing a
civilian one when, in her opinion , the military had committed
even more violent incidents than the Arab rebels. From then on she focused on
investigating alleged British atrocities.
For that purpose early in 1938 she visited a village
near Haifa, which had undergone a collective punishment after the
assassination of an RAF Squadron Leader. She had profited from her humiliation
of 1929 and was now meticulous in visiting the sites of incidents she intended
to expose.
In sixty houses of this village she found that doors
had been torn from their hinges, mirrors smashed, cupboards emptied, furniture
smashed to pieces, bedding and clothing soaked in olive oil. Nine hundred sheep
and goats had been rounded up by British soldiers and taken to Haifa. The
owners had to buy the animals back for eight shillings a head.
She returned to England to write up her exposure.
By this time the administration in Palestine had had
enough of her. They banned her from re- entering Palestine under ‘Regulation 15
of the Emergency Regulations Act of 1936, as amended by Defence regulations in
1938’. No reason was ever given.
She boasted that she was now as famous as Ze’ev
Jabotinski, the right wing Zionist leader, who had received a similar ban.
She lived on in England during WW2 unshaken in her
beliefs.
Even when Amin
al-Husseini went to Germany, met up with Hitler and helped create the
Yugoslavian Muslim SS, she remained loyal to him.
Her ban was eventually lifted in September 1945 after
Frances pleaded it was ruining her business interests. However, she never again
resided in Palestine. Instead, along with other female British admirers of the
Grand Mufti, she formed the Anglo-Palestine Friendship Society in England.
Unfortunately for her, prominent veterans of
the Palestine administration had formed a rival anti-Zionist group, the
Committee for Arab Affairs (CAA). This very masculine organisation was
infuriated by the existence of an emotional pro-Mufti female group, liable to
bring into disrepute other pro-Palestinian organisations. Sir Edward Spears,
the founder of CAA attempted to bring her under his control by offering an
amalgamation the Anglo Palestine Friendship Society and CAA with herself a vice
president. She refused and published her pamphlet ‘The
Truth about the Mufti,’ in which she defended her idol and
blamed his collaboration with the Nazis on English atrocities. This was not a
popular stance in Post-War Britain since most people thought the Mufti should
be on trial at Nuremberg along with the other Nazi leaders.
The Anglo-Palestine Friendship Society now sank into
oblivion. Frances concentrated on writing her Memoir. ‘Fifty Years in
Palestine.’ and died of a heart attack in 1955 in her Chelsea flat, leaving
44,675 pounds and two shillings, a substantial sum at a time when newly qualified
teachers received £26 a month and a semi-detached three bed roomed house could
be bought for under £2000. All or most of her money went to provide medical
services for Palestinian refugees in Jordan.
Margaret Penfold
