Papers and Publications relating to Winifred and Frank Horrabin

This small collection supplements the main Winifred Horrabin collection (see Related Material). It includes five letters from Frank Horrabin to Winifred, sent while she was on holiday in Russia in 1926, as well as a letter from Myfanwy Westrope sent to Frank Horrabin in 1926. There is also a map drawn by Frank showing German and Italian penetration of the Balkans and a pay packet belonging to Winifred for making spitfire parts in 1943. There are various pamphlets and cuttings relating to Labour issues, conscription and conscientious objectors including Annual Reports for the Central Board of Conscientious Objectors. There is also a newspaper cutting on Frank's nomination as Labour candidate for Peterborough and a membership book for the British Communist Party.

Winifred Horrabin was born in 1887, the daughter of Arthur John Batho and Lilian Outram. Her father died when she was a child. She came from a nonconformist (congregational) background in Sheffield and attended the Sheffield School of Art where she met her husband, Francis (Frank) James Horrabin, whom she married in 1911. Frank Horrabin gained employment on the Sheffield Telegraph and went on to become a political cartoonist of considerable note with several newspapers. He and Winifred Horrabin shared socialist political principles. They were friendly with H G Wells and Frank Horrabin illustrated Wells's Outline of History, which appeared in 1920. Winifred Horrabin spent the early years of her marriage working on a number of writing projects, the most significant being her book on the socialist historian, Olive Schreiner, whose nonconformist background (Quaker) had been similar to her own (Dictionary of National Biography).

Winifred Horrabin was involved with her husband in the Labour Colleges Movement and he was the first editor of The Plebs, the journal of the National Council of Labour Colleges, and her diaries and letters have information about this work. Frank Horrabin served during the First World War and after the war he was briefly Labour MP for Peterborough and became involved in anti-imperialist politics, collaborating with Rita Hinden and Arthur Creech Jones in creating the Fabian Colonial Bureau. In 1942 Frank Horrabin left Winifred Horrabin. He remarried in 1948 and died in 1962. Winifred Horrabin died in 1971.

Access will be granted to any accredited reader

Donated by Bernard Barker, Peterborough, 19 November 2001

Hull University Archives:

Papers of Winifred Horrabin [U DWH]

Papers of Frank and Myfanwy Westrope [U DX135]