THIS year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, and the Argus has teamed up with a campaign to mark the contribution of Gwent people in the Great War.

The column is written by organisers of a project called ‘Journey’s End’ and its title reflects how many of the dead were buried here and how the search is hoped to be complete in time for the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War on November 11.

ON JANUARY 14 1918, it was announced in Parliament that Lady Mackworth, daughter of Lord Rhondda of Llanwern House, had been appointed Chief Controller of Women’s Recruiting for the whole of Britain.

She thus became one of the most prominent women in the country. Margaret Mackworth had gained considerable business experience by taking charge of her father’s affairs when he was abroad and by 1918 was a director of 27 companies and chairman of several, including the Sanatogen tonic wine company.

As a militant suffragette she had been briefly imprisoned in 1913 after putting an incendiary device into a postbox in Risca Road, Newport, but during the war took the path of many other suffragettes in giving full support for the war effort as a means of converting the government to the cause of women’s suffrage.

In 1915 she had been on the Lusitania when it was sunk by a U-boat off the coast of Ireland. Prior to her appointment she had been responsible for recruiting members of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps in Wales.

As the Argus reported, “she will be practically the head of a board of women who are controlling the war work of hundreds of thousands of other women”, including with the armed forces , in industry and on the land. After the war, having made a success of her wartime duties, she was to spend the next 50 years running her father’s business empire and campaigning for women’s rights.