Joyce Hatton, Vera Cox (wearing her AEWHA blazer) and Frances Heron-Maxwell. This photograph was colourised for Frances Thompson’s talk at The Hockey Museum.

Last Wednesday 4 May, Frances Thompson travelled from Australia to The Hockey Museum (THM) for a rather personal research visit, and we asked her to give a talk.

Frances presented on the work she has been doing to piece together the fascinating life of her great grand aunt, Vera Cox. Vera played for Atalanta HC, Kent, the East and then England between 1908 and 1912, captaining the team in 1912. Her international hockey career was brought to an early conclusion following a knee injury sustained in the 1912 fixture against Ireland but she continued to play club hockey and went on to coach, select players for representative honours and umpire. Vera umpired at international level until the early 1930s. She was also involved in hockey administration and then in support of her friend, Frances Heron Maxwell the early feminist and suffragette, went on to be one of the driving forces behind the setting up of the England Women’s Cricket Association and the development of international women’s cricket.

To find out more about Mrs Frances Heron Maxwell, click on the following link: Feminist Icon Frances Heron-Maxwell | GreatBritishLife.co.uk

England women’s hockey team c.1910. Vera Cox is seated middle row far right.

Frances’ talk gave a fascinating insight not only into Vera’s many early achievements but also Vera the person – one of ten siblings who wrote constantly to each other. These letters still exist and are held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Frances has been researching them and the talk covered the period up until the beginning of World War 1.

Hockey Shorts will cover details from the talk including a video of the presentation itself in a later edition. Meanwhile, you can listen to Frances’s podcast 100 Years of Cox; series 3, episode 17 uncovers Vera’s hockey life through her letters.

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100 Years of Cox S3E17: Vera – The Joys of Hockey | Apple Podcasts

Prior to her talk, Frances Thompson spent the day at THM in Woking pouring over copies of Hockey Field magazine and other items that our Archivist Marcus Wardle had unearthed in our collections management database. Among these were four large scrapbooks containing photographs, programmes and other memorabilia relating to Kent and England women’s hockey from the early 1900s. While we knew we had these books, our records revealed nothing about how they came to be created or by whom. Amazingly, as soon as Frances looked at them, she recognised the handwriting as Vera’s – having read so many of her letters, the style was so distinctive! These four scrapbooks have now been identified as Vera’s record of her hockey career from 1906 through to 1912 – such an amazing find for all of us. Frances was thrilled. As Mike Smith, THM’s Hon. Curator reflected later, discovering the link between the scrapbooks and Vera is what makes all the work at THM worthwhile – positioning more pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of hockey’s heritage to create a better image of our sport’s fascinating past.

One of the four scrapbooks from the Pat Ward collection held at The Hockey Museum in Woking, now identified as having been created by Vera Cox.