Papers relating to Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's involvement with the Young Women's...

This section contains papers relating to Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's involvement with the Young Women's Christian Association, particularly her work with the Association in Birmingham between the 1920s and the late 1940s. The section includes Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's Y.W.C.A. membership card, a typescript of her 1948 address about her involvement with the Association and a postcard illustrated with a photograph of Dame Elizabeth House.

Finding number: MS 466/164/1-2 and MS 466/152/87

Information about Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury and the Y.W.C.A. taken from Richenda Scott, 'Elizabeth Cadbury: 1858-1951' (London: Harrap, 1955), pp. 77-78 and Sara Delamont, 'Cadbury, Dame Elizabeth Mary (1858-1951)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/45784] accessed 27th October 2008.

Delamont refers to Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's lifelong interest in the Young Women's Christian Association (Y.W.C.A.) which began in the late nineteenth century and continued until her death in 1951. Scott provides an administrative background of the organisation which was formed in 1855 and had fifteen branches in the City of Birmingham by the late 1880s. Shortly after her marriage to George Cadbury in 1888, Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury was invited to become the District Referee for all branches of the Association in Birmingham and the wider County of Warwicksire. As the organisation developed, Taylor Cadbury was appointed the first President of the Warwickshire District Council of the Y.W.C.A. In 1913, following a reorganisation of the national Y.W.C.A. movement, Taylor Cadbury was appointed the President of the new Midland Division, a post which she occupied until 1936 when she became President of the new Birmingham Division. In 1946 the Birmingham Division became the City Association in a newly formed West Midland Division. Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury served as President of both until her death in December 1951.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury was responsible for locating suitable premises for a Y.W.C.A. hostel in the centre of Birmingham, overseeing the transfer and purchase of the former Conservative Men's Club buildings on Corporation Street in the city. Scott notes that this hostel developed to accommodate a restaurant and provided a number of clubs and activities for members of the Y.W.C.A. In 1939 when a new Y.W.C.A. centre was opened in Bordesley Green, the Y.W.C.A. Commitee named it Dame Elizabeth House in recognition of Taylor Cadbury's contribution to the development of the Association in the West Midlands. Taylor Cadbury delivered a public address relating to her involvement with the Y.W.C.A. in 1948 which provided an autobiographical account of her work with the Association and a brief history of its foundation and development.