Ferguson's Gang was an anonymous and somewhat enigmatic group that raised funds for the National Trust in the United Kingdom during the period between the late 1920s and the outbreak of the second world war. The group is believed to have consisted entirely of young women, who hid their identities behind masks, unusual pseudonyms, and mock-Cockney communiques.^[1][2]

The gang was influenced by Clough Williams-Ellis's publication England and the Octopus, which denounced insensitive building and ugly development. They determined to save what they could. Their donations enabled the purchase of Shalford Mill, in Surrey, and Newtown Old Town Hall, on the Isle of Wight. They also funded the purchase of stretches of the coastline of Cornwall, priory cottages at Steventon in Oxfordshire, and supported appeals for money to purchase land in Derbyshire, the Lake District, Devon and Wiltshire. In total they raised the sum of £4,500, a considerable sum for the time.^[1]

As an example of their methods, in 1933 a fully masked Red Biddy deposited a large sack of Victorian coins to the value of £100 on the Trust secretary's desk. In 1935, one of the 'gang' was interviewed by the BBC, and turned up at Broadcasting House wearing a mask.

Members of Ferguson's Gang included Bill Stickers, Sister Agatha, Red Biddy, Erb the Smasher, Kate O'Brien The Nark, Silent O'Moyle, See Mee Run, Gerry Moham, Black Maria, and the Lord Beershop of the Gladstone Islands & Mercator's Projection. To date, only one member of Ferguson's Gang has been publicly identified. When the Oxbridge Sanskrit scholar and adopted Cornish bard Margaret Steuart Pollard died at the age of 93 in 1996, her obituaries revealed that she had been Bill Stickers.^[1][3]

[edit] See also

• The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty

[edit] References

[edit] External Links

• Photograph of members of the Ferguson Gang at Shalford Mill
• Archive photograph of three members of the Ferguson Gang enjoying a picnic in 1935
• Archive photograph of the Lord Beershop "blessing" Newtown Old Hall on the day the Ferguson Gang visited in 1935
• Ferguson's Gang: masked maidens with an excellent cause: Daily Telegraph 2008-04-02
• The secret female benefactors to the National Trust: Womans Hour BBC Radio 4 2007-12-31 (with audio)
• The Ferguson Gang: A Story from Secret Britain
• Report on Ferguson Gang from the Children's Newspaper 1933-12-02
• Ferguson’s Gang and the hazards of oral history and hearsay: National Trust Arts Buildings Collections Bulletin Oct 2009

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