Dame Agnes Weston, the "Sailors' Friend," who was born 100 years ago, died in October, 1918. Her perpetual memorials are the Royal Sailors' Rests—remarkable institutions now working at full pressure. The Navy knew Agnes Weston familiarly as "Aggie." She was a barristers daughter, born in London and educated in Bath, where she started to publish her monthly letters or "bluebacks" for distribution to ships. They reached a circulation of 500,000 copies.
In 1873 she moved to Devonport. There with Miss Sophia Wintz, she founded the first Sailors' Rest three years later as a temperance house in Fore-street, near the Dockyard. After a few years a second was opened at Portsmouth; the work flourished, and Queen Victoria approved of it and granted the prefix "Royal." The Rests became an established part of naval life on shore; Miss Weston. untiringly vigorous, was created D.B.E. in the year of her death.
A representative of the "Observer" was told recently about the work of the oldest Sailors' Rest, that at Devonport.
"Its doors." said an official, "have never been closed since the Rest opened. There is always someone on duty; the staff work in three eight-hour shifts, Since the last war a new wing has been built, and now more people are using the home than at any previous time. We have 777 beds, and on most nights since war began they have all been occupied; often as many as a thousand men are lodged nightly. No man is ever refused a chair or a couch or a shakedown' of some kind.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.