Montague, The Misses Zoe and Ruth, Penton House, Old Tiverton Road, Crediton
Zoe Lind Montague (1888-1956) was the elder and Ruth Frances Montague (1897-1989)[1] the younger daughter of Amy (q.v.) and Leopold Montague. Like other members of the family, they appeared in amateur dramatic productions to fundraise in Crediton.[2] It is not always possible to identify which daughter was which either in these references or in their suffrage activities. One of them, for example, was foil to her mother in the dramatic performance of the Suffrage Duologue, A Chat with Mrs Chicky, as part of an NUWSS fund-raising entertainment in the Barnfield Hall in 1913, but no first name is given.[3]
A Miss Montague, probably Zoe, was one of the Exeter delegation who went to the Sunday march and rally in Hyde Park in June 1908.[4] At the Penton ‘At Home’ for Dr Garratt Anderson and local WSPU members in 1909, Miss Montague introduced Garrett Anderson ‘in a clever and telling speech’.[5] Ruth, like her mother, was absent from the 1911 census. Zoe joined her mother in the Exeter section of the NUWSS pilgrimage in July 1913.[6] A Miss Montague was present (with Juanita Phillips, q.v.) at the rally in support of Mrs Pankhurst outside Exeter Prison in 1913 and followed her down to the Great Western Hotel to see her onto the London train.[7]
Ruth worked as a Red Cross VAD at the end of the First World War, undertaking kitchen duties in the VAD Hospital in Crediton between September and December 1918. In 1920 she married Ernest Pickwood, a colonial civil servant, and remained a Red Cross reserve member during the Second World War. She lived on until 1989 when she died in the Woodlands Nursing Home, Kennford.
Zoe also worked as a Red Cross volunteer in the VAD Hospital in Crediton. She served as a nurse between March 1917 and March 1919. She never married and remained at Penton with her parents. She also continued her Red Cross reserve membership. After her mother died in 1953 she moved to St Aywill, Lapford. She died in a Nursing Home in Crediton on 28 Jun 1956 and is buried in Crediton Cemetery. Her estate was valued at £17,857.
Entry created by Julia Neville, September 2018
[1] Family and census information from www.ancestry.co.uk.
[2] WT, 16 Oct 1908; 24 Apr 1909.
[3] WT, 29 Nov 1913.
[4] WT, 23 Jun 1908.
[5] WT 13 Oct 1909.
[6] WT, 7 Jul 1913.
[7] E&E, 18 Mar 1939 (Mrs Phillips’s reminiscences).
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