A Strong Woman's Story

Visitors to Pumpsaint, Carmarthenshire, in West Wales might visit a chapel there, and see adorning the Wall  a small plaque celebrating the life of a woman who never sought  a plaque or expected any recognition at all. Hers was to be the life of a working class woman, work hard, die and be forgotten after a few years. This was Jane Evans. She is not very famous, but she has a corner in the historical records. Nor was Jane especially strong, she was not weak, but she built up her strength running a pig farm. Not in the least a glamorous occupation, as anyone who has been in a pigsty will testify. I have  had occasion to visit pigsties and they do not bless the visitors with beautiful scents. Jane already had a corner in history by being the first woman to work as a cattle drover, a role that involved travelling on foot  from her home in Wales to the markets in .London, driving herds to market.

She seems to have been single. There is no mention of a man in her life, which is surprising as she seems to have been popular with men, not for looks, but for her character, which seems gentle and kind. Nowadays it is common to delve into historical figures' sexual orientation, but in the nineteenth century this practice was not done.   

A drover,s life was hard. They slept by curling up under hedges, but some had to be on guard duty.  The nineteenth century was a period of change. Steam trains were coming into use, but large  instances of rail transport  of animal freight had yet to be developed. So animals had to  be walked ,o the markets  in London. Great herds of cattle and sheep trod the time-hallowed drove ways across Britain, some coming from Scotland and others from Wales. On these cattle droves all sorts of animals were transported, including pigs and geese, both of which.are more difficult than cattle or sheep . Days on the drove were hard work, all to be done on foot, except for the master of the drove, who rode a horse in normal circumstances. Robbery was well known and fights between drovers and would be robbers were part of the experience. Droving was a man's job. But no one told Jane. Even before her exploits in the Crimea she had broken the glass ceiling, she crossed England and Wales on foot, herding pigs, sleeping in the open air, and then walked back with a wage in her pocket. She had earned the respect of the tough men who drove cattle. They would have her work with them again. She seemed content.

Jane settled back to a life of pig farming. She reserved Sundays for chapel, as she was a devout Protestant. But the Crimean war stirred up her compassionate spirit. She felt, maybe sensed, the call of God to do something to serve. Taking part in the battles was tough. she was not a warrior.  She reminds me of Lucy in the Nania stories, who is ordered not to take part in the battle. Instead  she is to be a healer. What she was good at and that for which she sensed herself called was a nurse. We must not underestimate the dangers of nursing in the nineteenth century, even in the twentyfirst century we lost medical staff to covid. There in the Crimea typhoid, tuberculosis and other diseases were rife. The ongoing fear of being captured by men who had never heard of the Geneva convention was real and longstanding.

But Jane had a more pressing matter than thinking about what could happen. Florence Nightingale was recruiting in London. How was she to get there. Jane was a poor woman who could not scramble together the money to pay the train fare. She might try taking a coach, but that would expose her to robbery during the long journey . Easy, she told herself, she had done it before. She would walk to London. But she could not afford to stay at inns on the way. Whereas on her previous walk she had slept outdoors near to others, now she would be sleeping alone in the open. This was very dangerous. The remedy was clear, she would join a drove. That would mean that she was being supported by several, even many tough men.she then walked to London again, finding Florence Nightingale in enough time to be taken on. She sailed to Crimea with the team of nurses.

Jane met all the criteria for a strong woman, while she was not blessed by musculature, she was strong enough to march miles across the country, run a farm and spend hours nursing in a hospital. She had strength enough to do what she needed to do, and for her that was strength enough. She also enjoyed emotional strength, for dealing with battle field wounds and coping with the smells of gangrene and other infections could not have been easy.she dealt with the military wounds carefully and professionally, but she left no written records of her own. All we have is the mention of her in the records left by others. This did not bother her. She had fulfilled her calling, so she went home. She took with her a heifer, a young female cow, as a gift from the grateful men whom she had tended. She lived on some years after the war. A plaque was erected on the wall of her chapel, in the Carmarthenshire village where she lived. It was the village of Pumpsaint, a word derived from Welsh and English meaning Five Saints. Would not six be a more apt number?

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