NATURAL HEALTH SERVICE
Sitting among a line of women all capped and dressed in spotless white, surrounded by woven baskets filled with moss and a Singer sewing machine, Fanny Frances Howell was an active member of Dartmoor’s sphagnum moss working party. Throughout the First World War, she joined an army of volunteers – mainly women, older men, young Scouts and Brownies – who gathered this bog moss from the moors surrounding Princetown in Devon and transformed this absorbent natural material into sterile wound dressings for injured soldiers.
Married to a prison officer based at Dartmoor Prison, Fanny collected moss from the boggy peatlands with the help of her seven children. Her great-granddaughter Colette Grace describes the labour-intensive moss processing as
