Inez Macdonald’s journal

This is the first page of the journal Inez Macdonald wrote about her visit to the children’s hospital in Murcia. 

In 1937, MacDonald, Janet H. Perry, Erica (Jones) Brown and Helen (Newsome) Grant, some of the first women hispanists in British universities, were among the many volunteers who joined the British Quaker humanitarian aid to the victims of the Spanish Civil War. These qualified linguists, educators and translators, competent in Spanish and other languages, had insightful knowledge of Spain and its culture, as well as strong connections with the Aid Spain Movement. This combination of expertise and socially minded convictions led them to join the Quakers as translators and interpreters. 

The British Friends Service Committee (FSC) was among the first to respond to the need for humanitarian assistance in Spain. Among other activities, they organized the evacuation of children from war zones and established a number of children’s hospitals and feeding camps in the area of Murcia, where thousands of refugees fled after the Málaga–Almería road massacre by Italian and German bombing, also known as the Desbandá, on 8 February 1937. 

It was in Murcia that Inez Macdonald (1902-1955) a tutor and Research Fellow at Cambridge University worked with refugees from Málaga in the summer of 1937. She was temporary Superintendent in the children’s hospital funded by Francesca Wilson, a fellow Cambridge graduate. Macdonald’s support for refugees continued after her return to England working with the Cambridge colony of Basque children and her championing of the cause of Republican exiles.

Like Macdonald, Erica Brown (1909-1984), went to Spain with the FSC to help refugees from Málaga who were trying to escape to Barcelona. She was Assistant French and Spanish Mistress at Manchester High School for Girls and worked in the Spanish Intelligence Service of the BBC Spanish section before moving to the Foreign Office Research Department. On her return to England, she helped to set up the Basque Children’s refugee camp near Oxford and befriended many Spanish Republican intellectuals.

Helen Grant (1903-1992), a lecturer at the University of Birmingham and later on at Cambridge University, was a strong supporter of the Republican government. She was a close friend of Brown and like her worked for the BBC European Service and the Foreign Research and Press Service. In March 1937, Grant went to Barcelona where she acted as a facilitator and interpreter for a group of Friends sent to assess the progress of the relief work in the light of the growing number of refugees. On her return to England, she became a Labour Party by-election candidate (1938) and raised funds for the Basque children and other exiles in Britain.

Janet Hunter Perry (1884-1958), the first woman lecturer in Spanish at King’s College London in 1921, was in her fifties when she went to Spain with Relief for Women and Children organizations. She accompanied the Chairman of the Friends’ Service Council as his interpreter to investigate the refugee work. Back in England, she worked as Switch Censor for the BBC until in 1940. She was a firm supporter of the Spanish Republican Instituto Español in London.

MGB