Florence Mary Barrow
Florence Mary Barrow (27 January 1876 – 3 March 1964) was an English International Aid worker, Quaker and housing reform activist particularly associated with her home city of Birmingham. She co-founded the Birmingham Conference on Politics, Economics and Citizenship (COPEC) House Improvement Society that pioneered municipal slum clearance and the regeneration of inner-city housing. She served on the Council of Birmingham Civic Society for 30 years. Early life Florence Barrow was born on 27 January 1876 in Birmingham, to Richard Cadbury Barrow (1827–1894), Quaker businessman and mayor of Birmingham (1888–89), and his wife, Jane, née Harrison (b. 1831). She was educated at Edgbaston High School and Mason College, Birmingham. Together with her mother, brothers and sisters-in-law, she was a supporter of Birmingham Women's Suffrage Society and was active in a number of social welfare and reform initiatives in Birmingham. In 1900 she trained as a social worker at St Hilda's Settlement in Bethnal Green, London. She began her career as an aid worker in Russia before moving to Poland and later to the Middle East and the Balkans. Career Like others, Barrow was politicised by the First World War. She applied for permission to attend the controversial Women's Peace Congress at The Hague in 1915, but was denied permission to travel. In 1916 she embarked on a long period of humanitarian relief work with the Friends' War Victims Relief Committee. After a brief period in France working at a quarantine station for Serbian refugees on the Frioul islands near Marseilles, she was sent was sent from Newcastle by sea to Murmansk to do Quaker relief work in Buzuluk, western Russia. She remained in Russia during the revolutions of 1917 working on feeding, clothing and medical programmes, as well as establishing occupational workshops, orphanages, nurseries for refugee children, and even a circulating library. The Russian revolution, the collapse of the Russian empire, and the ensuing civil war (1917–1921) had profound consequences for the displacement of population. In her autobiographical recollections, she reflected: Language and the need for an interpreter was a constant barrier for Barrow, who struggled to learn Russian even though she already spoke French and German. The British and later the American Society of Friends established hospitals, orphanages and workshops in Samara, as well as shelters in Moscow for refugees in transit. Barrow left Russia by travelling east on the Trans-Siberian Railway, reached Japan, and then America, before crossing the U-boat-infested Atlantic in a camouflaged vessel in order to report back to the Society of Friends in London. In 1919, following the end of the war, Barrow was one of the first civilians allowed into defeated Germany to investigate conditions on behalf of the Quaker Relief Services. In January 1920 Barrow travelled to Poland on behalf of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) Her work in Poland involved the provision of housing in a country devastated by war, in addition to supplying food, clothing medical aid and education. In June 1921, she became the leader of British and