The family that’s rattled tins for the Royal British Legion for 100 years

Just over a year ago – after her mother had decided to sort through the boxes of family memorabilia gathering dust in the loft – 51-year-old Jane Ayers was handed a remarkable letter.

Partly typewritten but with some scribbled arithmetics in black fountain pen, the sheet of yellowing notepaper had a slight tear that had been fixed long ago with a now-brittle strip of Sellotape.

Dated November 16, 1923, its contents showed not only how similar in passion and temperament she was to her late great-grandmother, but also how her family had played a small but not inconsequential part in establishing what is now a cornerstone of British military history – namely, how the nation unites every November to commemorate the contribution of war veterans.

The letter had arrived from the Golders Green and District branch of the British Legion, as it was then known, and addressed to Nellie Roberts, thanking her for her fundraising efforts in the area – and, in particular, for the £8 12s 8d (equivalent to some £4,000 in today’s money) that the 25-year-old poppy collector had raised for the charity’s relief fund.

By coincidence, Jane – who was born in Snodland, Kent, and now lives with her two sons in Aylesford – has also been a keen Poppy Appeal collector since her early 20s. In all the years that she has been rattling tins on her local high street, she was unaware that raising money for the Legion had been a small family tradition from the organisation’s earliest days.

Jane Ayers, 51, discovered by chance that her great-grandmother was also a keen Poppy Appeal volunteer Credit: Christopher P ledger 

The Royal British Legion, which celebrates its centenary this weekend, was launched on May 15, 1921 to provide help and a voice for veterans of the Great War. Founded by Lance Bombardier Tom Lister, who was the first chairman, and Field Marshal Haig, who served as the president of the charity, its mission was to support returning soldiers who had suffered as a result of their service during the First World War, which also caused the British economy to plummet and left millions of returning personnel unemployed.

Within months, the organisation hit upon the idea of using the poppy as a symbol of remembrance, and in 1922, a ‘poppy factory’ opened on London’s Old Kent Road, staffed by 40 wounded servicemen who manufactured 1,000 commemorative buttonholes every week. The following year, Ayers’ great-grandmother made the first of her exceptional tin-rattling collections.

“I was totally amazed and moved, because it was such a coincidence to find out that I had this deeply rooted family connection with the war effort,” she says. Not only was her great-grandmother one of the Legion’s first fundraisers, her grandmother and mother alike have been ardent donation collectors in their time, too – just like Ayers herself.

Today, the Royal British Legion will mark its 100th year supporting Armed Forces veterans with a wreath-laying service at the Cenotaph on Whitehall.

There are few families that can demonstrate a closer connection with the Poppy Appeal and its founding charity than Ayers, who still wears Nellie Roberts’s wedding ring (she died in 1977), as well as the engagement ring that belonged to her late grandmother, Joyce Cox, who died in 1985, aged 60.

“I wear them both in their memory,” she says. “I’ve been told that the wedding ring is actually a war ring, which means it is made from a particular, non-precious metal and covered in gold. There was so little of it around during the Second World War, when Nanny got married, so whatever they had, they needed to save. These rings were manufactured especially for brides. It’s an honour to wear it.”

Jane Ayers wears wears her great-grandmothers war ring in her memory  Credit: Christopher Pledger 

Ayers was fortunate enough to meet Roberts, whom she called her “nanny under the tunnel”, when she was about eight or nine. Visiting from Kent meant going through the Blackwall Tunnel to Wood Green, north London, where her great-grandmother lived in a three-bedroom townhouse with her second husband.

Ayers and her two younger sisters would sit and play with her great-grandmother’s ornaments, glassware and doilies that were all neatly arranged in her front room, while her mother and grandmother would spend the entire morning chatting and drinking tea.

“Until my mother found the letter, I hadn’t really thought about Nanny as a young person. I only remembered her as an old lady,” she explains. “She was sweet, very traditional and strong, like all the other women in my family.”

The letter addressed to Nellie Roberts, thanking her for her fundraising efforts in Golders Green Credit: Jane Ayers

Ayers believes the surge in national pride following the Great War would have encouraged her young great-grandmother to start fundraising for the British Legion. “I’m sure that she was both very proud of being British and the efforts of the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for their country, and believed selling poppies was just something she had to do.”

By another coincidence, Ayers’s home in Kent is close to the warehouse where, every autumn, the commemorative poppies are distributed around the world ahead of Remembrance Sunday. For the last seven years, she has been the Royal British Legion’s community fundraiser for the Poppy Appeal. Ayers says she feels “personally privileged” to play a small part ensuring that the organisation will be around for centuries to come.

“Supporting our current volunteers and partners, so that they can continue fundraising and collecting donations from a very generous public, is very important to me,” says Ayers.

And she ensures that her sons George, 18, and Dennis, 16, do the same through talking to them about their family history, fundraising for the Poppy Appeal and attending remembrance services locally, as she did with her parents as a child.

A couple of years ago, when Ayers and her mother went to watch her boys play rugby, the match happened to fall on November 11. They couldn’t believe the beautiful sight of “literally hundreds of young boys and girls”, between five and 15, all lined up on their individual pitches, respectfully silent for two minutes.

“It was just so moving to know that this was replicated all over the country at the same time,” she says.

These, says Ayers, are the family bonds that tie us all to the past – and will ensure that a nation never forgets the sacrifice of its fallen.

Click here for more about 100 years of the Royal British Legion