BW192/3/1/14

Margaret Cornish photograph collection

Series of black and white photographs showing a trainer and wartime women trainees, including Margaret Cornish, who were drafted to crew canal boats during World War II. These photographs appear in the book by Margaret Cornish 'Troubled Waters: Memoirs of a Canal Boatwoman (Working Waterways)' (M.& M.Baldwin, 1994). Some of the photographs were taken by Freddie Einengler, the source of them is Margaret Cornish.

1940s

BW192/3/1/14

Margaret Cornish was a trainee who worked aboard canal boats as part of a Ministry of War Transport scheme during World War II. She wrote a book about her experiences titled 'Troubled Waters: Memoirs of a Canal Boatwoman (Working Waterways)' (M.& M.Baldwin, 1994) in which she describes her efforts to match the ingrained skills of the closed community of working boat families. Margaret Cornish Admin history Margaret Cornish Ridout (1916-2011) was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk. She too sailing holidays on the Broads before the 1939 war. She was a pacifist who was a teacher before the war, and later a bus conductor. She joined the Ministry of War Transport boatwomen scheme in the summer of 1944. She trained under Daphne French, carrying on the Grand Union route, and the Oxford Canal route to Oxford in June 1945. She was one of the last women volunteers to leave the boats, just after the end of 1945. She later returned to pleasure boating on canals, living on The Alphons between 1971 and 1976, selling this in 1984. She wrote Troubled Waters (1987), her wartime memoirs, and Still Waters (1982), fiction set on canals. Joseph Boughey 2020

5 photographs