Below is a extract taken from 1915, today the WI is still going strongly and enjoyed by many.
Fast forward to 2018 and notice the cost of a yearly membership in 2018, it is £41:00. Sounds a lot but you have 11 meetings a year and usual in August a garden party not so bad when you work it out monthly.
Each month you receive a WI magazine and most groups give you a monthy book called 'Norfolk WI News'
Report from 1915
The Women’s Institute in England and Wales was born in 1915 at a time of great upheaval. The First World War saw tens of thousands of women drawn into the workforce, both on the land and in the towns. Things were changing for women. The WI’s first biographer wrote that while the Suffragettes had made the pot boil, the WI knew what to get out of the pot. Now, 100 years on, the world has altered dramatically, but the WI remains successful and relevant.
In the early 20th century, life was hard for country dwellers. An exodus of people to the cities in search of work had left farming bereft. Many farmers had gone bankrupt and unemployment among agricultural labourers was high. This brought great hardship to their dependents. Many communities were underpopulated and impoverished, financially and educationally.
Although academics had suggested for some time that it would be wise to educate farmers’ wives in order to improve life in the rural villages, it met with little interest until two events coincided. One was the very real prospect of serious food shortages during the First World War; the other was the arrival from Canada of Madge Watt. The world’s first Women’s Institute had been formed in Canada in 1897; and in 1911 Mrs Watt had been a founder member the British Columbia branch. Once in the UK, she campaigned to get the organisation started here, too.
So a century ago, with support from Bangor University, the UK’s first Women’s Institute opened on Anglesey, in a village with the longest name in Britain but usually known as Llanfairpwll. Once the movement began, there was no stopping it.
