Letters from Alizon Fox

Written from France and Poland, when she was serving with the Friends’ War Victims Relief Committee after the Great War.

 Edited by Hubert C Fox.

 Digitised by Gerald Franklin for the Frenchay Tuckett Society

October 2014.

Although not herself a Quaker, Alizon Fox was a member of a family which had belonged to the Society of Friends for many generations.

Alizon went to Holland in 1916 when she was in her middle twenties. For over two years she worked in a camp for refugees at Udon under the auspices of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee.

After the war, Alizon volunteered to continue working for the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, which had been working in France since 1915. In November 1918, at the suggestion of the French Authorities, it undertook responsibility for the rehabilitation of certain districts near Verdun. Alizon went there in October 1919.

The following year she went to Poland to do rehabilitation work in the devastated regions of that country. Later she worked in Greece.

Ruth Fry, [youngest daughter to Sir Edward Fry, the Judge.] Honorary Secretary of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, has written that Alizon Fox gave "as many year’s work in as many countries as perhaps any other in the Mission"

Alizon settled down in England in the 1930's looking after her father in his old age. She became a Magistrate and gave much time to public service. She died in 1967.

These letters were mostly written for circulation to her family. A few more personal ones were written to her Aunt Marion (T'Min). The letters describe her day to day life in France and Poland. In editing them I have been helped by two of Alizon's fellow workers, Dorice White and Harry Stevens, who was nicknamed Stephano.

Hubert C Fox

The full document and letters are reproduced here in .doc format.

In her letters, Alizon paints a very stark view of the after-effects of war.

Take time to read these letters: such a clear view of the misery you will not find anywhere else.

You will also be impressed by the courage and strength that Alizon and her fellow workers must have had.

Follow this link...

Alizon is the lady at the rear, in the doorway.

The lady next to her, in black, is her Auntie Marion, and the gent seated bottom left is her grandfather, Joseph Hoyland Fox. Both Marion and Joseph were accomplished artists, and several of their sketch books can be viewed at the Frenchay Village Museum.

Alizon's father, Hugh Fox, is far right.