Nellie - recruiting for the FANYs in 1941. Formed the Mau Summit/Molo branch of the EAWL in 1929.

Seventy - a most able and public spirited worker, has done a tremendous amount for European education in Kenya, and was President of the EAWL from 1953-55. She was elected to Legco in 1938, and due to pressure of work she resigned as DVP of the EAWL in 1939.  

Who's Who - Clerk in Min. Inform. 1914-18 - War Office, London; Raised and Commanded Womens Terr. Services EA 1931-42, Staff Off. M.E.F. 1942-45; Member of Legco Kenya 1937-42 (First Woman Mem. Colonial Leg. in British Empire); Pres. EAWL 1953-55.  

Obituary - Lady Sidney Farrar, MBE, a formidable figure among Kenya settlers between the wars, and a bitter critic of the "wind of change" that led to independence for the African colonies, has died in Zimbabwe at the age of 87. A daughter of the seventh Earl of Buckinghamshire, she went to Kenya with her husband, Captain Thomas Farrar, in 1924. They opened up some 500 acres at Mau Summit, 8,000 feet up on the western side of the Great Rift Valley, farming wheat and cattle. Her husband died ten years later. Lady Sidney carried on alone and was a pioneer in the growing of pyrethrum, whose pungent roots are used for medicinal purposes and whose flowers, when ground to a powder, serve as an insecticide. The crop was the salvation of many a Kenya farmer after the disaster years of locusts and wheat rust in the 1930s. But Lady Sidney was much more than a farmer. In 1938 she became the first woman member of the Kenya Legislative Council; and she set up a system of voluntary training, on almost spartan lines, for British girls when they returned to the colony from school in England. Her military instincts were strong. She spent the war in the East Africa Women's Territorial Service, serving as a major in the Middle East. She was mentioned in despatches and was made an MBE. Threatened with expropriation after Kenyan Independence, she moved to Southern Rhodesia. There, too, she soon felt that Britain had sold out her people. She is survived by a son.

Women 3/87 - "So her long and courageous life has come to an end, in the country which she had only recently learnt to call Zimbabwe, far from Mau Summit where she farmed and the aristocratic surroundings of her birth. Lady Sidney Farrar died peacefully on 16 July 1987. Lady Sidney Mary Catherine Anne Hobart-Hampden-Mercer-Henderson was born in 1900, the younger daughter of the 7th Earl of Buckinghamshire, privately educated by a governess she went on to take a degree in History at London University. In late 1917 she carried out wartime clerical duties with British Military Intelligence. On a visit to Kenya in 1921 Lady Sidney met Captain Thomas Innis Farrar; they were married in England in 1924 and came to Kenya and opened up some 500 acres at Mau Summit to farm wheat and cattle. In 1930, she imported what was to become the leading strain of Alsatians in Kenya, and her beloved 'Pony' sired many Kenya Police dogs. In 1931 she raised and commanded the EA section of the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry), the first detachment to be established outside the British Isles, which later was renamed East Africa Women's Territorial Service. FANY HQ was a tented camp on the farm at Mau Summit and members were augmented by recruits from Southern Africa. In 1939 with the rank of Captain, Lady Sidney cammanded and expanded the WTS to what amounted to Battalion strength, with the members taking on every kind of job; signals, telephone exchange, drivers, clerks, eventually serving all over the EA Command ........…..

Lady Sidney was always an eloquent public speaker and in 1938 was elected to the Kenya Legco, the first woman to take her seat in a Colonial Parliament. In 1942 she reluctantly gave up her command of the FANy and her seat in Legco to go to Middle East HQ in Cairo as a Major, where she was mentioned in despatches and was awarded the MBE (Mil). On demobilisation she returned to her farm and in 1950 imported a foundation to what became the best Dairy Shorthorn herd in Kenya; her cows together with her dogs gave her lasting pleasure. Throughout her life Lady Sidney took an active part in District and National farming and civic affairs. .......... (EAWL work) ........

Lady Sidney was one of the great personalities of pre-Independence Kenya ......Her son, Ewan writes:- "Mother was, I truly believe, the best type of Victorian Gentlewoman. Totally honest, outspoken (sometimes to a fault) in her beliefs, she felt a great sense of responsibility and involvement in the develoopment of Kenya and its peoples - of all colours. We would like to feel that her 18 years of retirement were a fitting close to a long and eventful life." ..... (MAJ)

EA Stud Book 1954 - Cattle - Shorthorns - Lady Sidney Farrar, Pele Farm, Mau Summit

Legion - Major, Womens' Territorial Service (WTS)

Old Africa - 28-9-15 by Christine Nicholls - She was the daughter of the 7th Earl of Buckinghamshire, who boasted the names Sidney Carr Hobart-Hampden-Mercer-Henderson. He must have been hoping for a son when she was born on 17 April 1900, for he called her Sidney (also Mary Catherine Anne). She grew up at the family seat at Great Hampden, Buckinghamshire, but her early life is something of a mystery. She appears in the 1901 census, but none of the family (she had an elder brother and sister) appears in 1911, so they must have been abroad, possibly in India. The next we hear of Sidney is that she joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANYs) and served in France in World War 1. We hear nothing more of her until her marriage on 14 January 1924, to Captain Thomas Innes Farrar (born in British Guiana on 17 June 1896). We do know quite a bit about Thomas. He came from a family prominent in the religious life of British Guiana and the West Indies. His father Walter became Bishop of Antigua and of British Honduras. Thomas volunteered for active duty in 1914 and was commissioned into the 5th Battalion of the Royal Devonshire Regiment. He won the MC in the military campaign in Mesopotamia.

After their marriage at St George’s, Hanover Square, London, the Farrars moved to Kenya. They first appear in the voters’ roll for Rift Valley in 1926, with Thomas described as a planter living at Mau Summit. They had a son in 1927, Thomas Ewen Farrar. But Sidney’s husband had been gassed in World War 1 and his health failed. When he died at Kisumu on 21 October 1934, Sidney remained on her farm in Kenya with her son. She was an indomitable woman and had decided to start a branch of the FANYs (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) in Kenya. From 1932 she toured schools, encouraging girls to join, offering them camping and adventure at her farm, Pele, at Mau Summit. The first training camp was held at Mau Summit in 1932.

Lady Sidney also busied herself in politics, standing for Kenya’s Legislative Council in 1937 and being elected for Rift Valley, defeating Conway Harvey by only two votes. She was LegCo’s first woman member, and she spoke up on such matters as alien immigration. She held the Rift Valley seat until 1942.

By 1939 Sidney had recruited seventy women to the FANYs. Ironically, they were drilled and marched by a German woman, Sergeant Hessflueger, who was interned after the outbreak of World War 2. Recruitment shot up and by the end of 1940 the Kenya FANYs numbered 700-800 members, all of them local women. Since they were no longer nursing, but pursuing other useful occupations, their name was changed to Women’s Territorial Service. They acted as transport drivers with the Northern Brigade of the King’s African Rifles, they guarded 100 enemy alien women and children interned at Mau Summit, and they were posted to Addis Ababa as part of the occupying force. About 100 of them served in the Signal Office in Nairobi and provided a despatch rider letter service, doing the same at Mombasa Fortress headquarters. One of the despatch riders was Juanita Carberry. At the end of the war the FANYs were disbanded. Lady Sidney Farrar gained the rank of Major and was appointed an MBE for her war services in 1941. She wrote the introduction to Our Saga 1939-45 Women’s Territorial Service FANY (Nairobi, 1946).

Sidney was also a prominent member of the East Africa Women’s League, in the Molo/Mau Summit branch and was Vice-President at various times, ultimately ending as EAWL President (1953-4). During her tenure the EAWL was asked to take a census on the need for Primary day schools in rural areas; as a result of this several schools were opened, the first in Molo in 1954. She also became Chairman of the National Council of Women in Kenya.

On the death of his grandmother, Sidney’s son Thomas Ewen succeeded to the Camperdown estate on the outskirts of Dundee, when he was ten years’ old. Lady Sidney died in 1987, but I have been unable to find out where.