Fwd: OBITUARY : Pamela Biggs-Davison

Monday January 22 2018

OBITUARY : Pamela Biggs-Davison
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Bletchley Park codebreaker who hitched a ride with American soldiers and 
gave up a singing career to marry a politician

- Pamela Biggs-Davison in 1941

Most of the visitors to Bletchley Park in the early Forties took little 
notice of Pam, the cheery Wren who claimed to be a lorry driver with 
occasional forays into radio engineering. This was exactly as Admiral 
Cunningham, also known as ABC, wanted it. Pamela Hodder-Williams, as she 
was called then, had been recruited by ABC to serve the war effort as 
one of Churchill’s “golden geese”. Her main responsibilities were 
working within the Japanese section of Bletchley operating the primitive 
computers, the so-called bombes, that were trying to break the Enigma code.

Her work was so secretive that not only did her parents have no idea 
what she was doing, but her husband, John Biggs-Davison, never found out 
the full extent of her work because it was covered by the Official 
Secrets Act until after his death. It was not a time that she looked 
back on with especial fondness; in 2014 she recalled: “We did eight-hour 
shifts, got awful food and were always covered in oil from the machines.”

She was based at Gayhurst Manor, an Elizabethan house in Buckinghamshire 
that had been a recusant house in the early Jacobean era, sheltering 
Catholics including Everard Digby, one of those involved in the 
Gunpowder Plot. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Pam was received into 
the Catholic Church during her work with the Wrens.

Nonetheless, her time in the army was not all secrecy and religion. On 
free weekends she would hitch rides, against orders, to stay with her 
grandmother in Kent. On one occasion she found herself in an American 
open-top army truck with beer-swigging soldiers who were impressed by 
her poise and beauty. After a while the officer in charge suggested that 
she got off, because he could not be responsible for the behaviour of 
his intoxicated men.

Pamela Mary Hodder-Williams was born in Chelsea, west London, in 1924, 
the eldest of four children. Her father, Ralph, was the chairman of 
Hodder & Stoughton, which specialised in publishing the works of 
adventure writers such as John Buchan, Dornford Yates and Sapper. 
Hodder-Williams knew more of military valour than many of his 
colleagues, having been wounded in action at Passchendaele. Pam’s 
mother, Marjorie (née Glazebrook), was born in Canada and had been one 
of the first women to attend Toronto University.

Just before the Second World War the family bought Duddings, a manor 
house near Exmoor. At the beginning of the war Marjorie remained there 
with the children while Hodder-Williams relocated with the rest of his 
company to the evacuated St Hugh’s School in Bickley. Although Duddings, 
where Pam enjoyed riding Topsy, her Exmoor pony, seemed a world away 
from London and the Blitz, there were ever-present reminders that 
Britain was at war. She recalled a German aircraft flying low over a 
nearby hill and seeing the pilot inside, while on another occasion she 
was playing in a field near the house when an aircraft strafed down the 
centre of the field, the gunner seemingly aiming for a young target. She 
avoided his attack by jumping into the stream and hiding under a nearby 
bridge.

There were more civilised distractions. Pam and her sister Jane enjoyed 
hunting, spent time in the company of Sir Alfred Munnings, the 
equestrian artist, and his wife, Violet, and sang in a jazz band with 
her brother Christopher and his friend Humphrey Lyttelton. She had a 
great interest in music and possessed an impressive coloratura voice. 
After the war she trained as an opera singer and would have pursued it 
as a career had she not met John Biggs-Davison. He had seen her 
photograph on a grand piano at a friend’s house in Delhi and 
announced,“This is the girl I’m going to marry,” only to be told :
“No you are not, you haven’t any money.” Nonetheless, he successfully 
courted Pam, his visits being so frequent that her father would announce 
: “Here comes the bicycle again.”

They married in 1948 and had six children, who survive her : Lisl, an 
economist; Tom, who followed in his grandfather’s footsteps at Hodder & 
Stoughton; Harry, a headmaster; Helena, a solicitor; Arabella, a sports 
trainer; and Sara, who has severe learning disabilities. Biggs-Davison 
was elected as the Conservative MP for Ongar and Chigwell in 1955 and 
held the seat until his death in 1988 ( boundary changes in 1974 had 
turned it into Epping Forest ). He was knighted in 1981, making his wife 
Lady Biggs-Davison, although she still preferred Pam.

Although Biggs-Davison was on the right of the party, being a leading 
member of the Monday Club and a defender of Enoch Powell, their domestic 
life was one of tolerance and liberalism. Their home was open to 
visitors, one of whom recalled walking the family dog, Orlando, in the 
evenings while checking car number plates : the inevitable consequence 
of Biggs-Davison’s work in Northern Ireland.

After her husband’s death Pam lived in Somerset, where she was 
housekeeper to Father Norbury, the priest in Minehead. Her kindness, 
patience and goodwill to others were a constant part of her personality, 
and she had an especially great love of her family. Faith was an 
important part of her life, and she once upbraided her local Anglican 
vicar after a funeral by saying: “You never once mentioned Our Lord.”

Pamela Biggs-Davison, codebreaker, was born on April 2, 1924. She died 
on December 11, 2017, aged 93

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/pamela-biggs-davison-xp65v6ck2

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F8839103c-fecd-11e7-9de1-e6776d524215.jpg
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Tuesday 23 January 2018

OBITUARY : Lady Biggs-Davison, MP's wife who worked at Bletchley
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-  Pam Biggs-Davison during her time as a Wren

Lady Biggs-Davison, who has died aged 93, was a leading Wren at 
Bletchley Park during the war and later the ebullient and supportive 
wife of the long-serving Tory MP Sir John Biggs-Davison who was, among 
other things, a prominent champion of Northern Ireland’s union with 
Great Britain.

She was born Pamela Mary Hodder-Williams in Chelsea on April 2 1924. Her 
father, Ralph, was chairman of Hodder and Stoughton, the publishers, and 
had won an MC in the First World War. Her Canadian-born mother, 
Marjorie, was one of the first women to attend Toronto University.

When the Second World War broke out the family was at Duddings, the 
house in Somerset which her parents had bought after the First World 
War, where Pam spent most of her time riding her Exmoor pony, Topsy, 
escaping lessons with the governess.

Pam and her sister enjoyed hunting and were looked after in the field by 
Lady Munnings, wife of the fashionable equine artist Sir Alfred 
Munnings, who lived in nearby Wootton Courtenay.

On one occasion a German aircraft spotted Pam in a field by a river near 
Duddings and swooped down with its guns firing. Pam jumped into the 
river and hid under a bridge.

It was Admiral Cunningham, visiting friends in Somerset, who suggested 
she apply to join the Wrens, and arranged for her interview and medical 
at Exeter. She became a Leading Wren at Bletchley Park, based at 
Gayhurst Manor, one of the Park’s outstations, housing some of the 
“bombes” used to decode the Enigma messages.

Here Pam, who had been brought up as an Anglican, met and became firm 
friends with another Wren, Jeannette Hannah, a Roman Catholic, and was 
subsequently received into the Catholic Church.

Her cover story at Bletchley was that she was a radio engineer, though 
after the war ended she told everyone that she had driven lorries. 
Neither her parents, nor her husband, who died in 1988 before the 
Official Secrets Act allowed some of the information to become public 
knowledge, ever knew of her secret wartime work.

After the war she trained as an opera singer and was going to turn 
professional. Instead she married John Biggs-Davison, who had fallen in 
love with her after seeing her photograph on the grand piano at the 
house of her sister and brother-in-law, Anne and George Wyndham, in 
Delhi. They married at the Brompton Oratory in 1948.

In 1955 Biggs-Davison was elected Conservative MP for Ongar and Chigwell 
( later Epping Forest ), and for the next 33 years until her husband’s 
death, Pamela Biggs-Davison was an active and busy MP’s wife and mother 
of six. She was president of the local Girl Guides and participated in 
many constituency activities.

The Biggs-Davisons were not rich. Weekends were spent in a two up-two 
down cottage on the edge of the forest of Hainault, and holidays in 
Somerset, to which the family and a menagerie of pets would travel in a 
Morris 1100.

Luckily Pam was a jolly, carefree character who never worried too much 
about money or leaking roofs. She and her husband were perfectly matched 
and they entertained a shifting cast of friends and visitors, who would 
recall Pam’s many acts of kindness and her infectious laugh.

Pam Biggs-Davison’s two youngest daughters were active in the West 
Somerset Pony Club, and Pam became district commissioner of the club.

She was widowed at the early age of 64 and subsequently she lived 
permanently in Somerset, where, besides her involvement in the Pony 
Club, she looked after the parish priest at Minehead Catholic Church, 
and also taught local children their catechism.

She is survived by two sons and four daughters.

Lady Biggs-Davison, born April 2 1924, died December 11 2017

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2018/01/23/lady-biggs-davison-mps-wife-worked-bletchley-obituary/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2018/01/22/pam_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bql3pFZErgWQv1J1ei-AUwv00eI47VY86CqRTzAo6Pc2M.jpg

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http://www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk/news/11594442.Recognition_for_Wootton_Courtenay_
woman_for_top_secret_WWII_work_at_Bletchley_Park/