Most of the visitors to Bletchley Park in the early Forties took little notice of Pam, the cheery Wren who claimed to be a lorry driver with occasional forays into radio engineering. This was exactly as Admiral Cunningham, also known as ABC, wanted it. Pamela Hodder-Williams, as she was called then, had been recruited by ABC to serve the war effort as one of Churchill’s “golden geese”. Her main responsibilities were working within the Japanese section of Bletchley operating the primitive computers, the so-called bombes, that were trying to break the Enigma code.
Her work was so secretive that not only did her parents have no idea what she was doing, but her husband, John Biggs-Davison, never found out the full extent of her work because it was covered by the Official Secrets Act until after his death. It was not a time that she looked back on with especial fondness; in 2014 she recalled: “We did eight-hour shifts, got awful food and were always covered in oil from the machines.”
She was based at Gayhurst Manor, an Elizabethan house in Buckinghamshire that had been a recusant house in the early Jacobean era, sheltering Catholics including Everard Digby, one of those involved in the Gunpowder Plot. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Pam was received into the Catholic Church during her work with the Wrens.
Nonetheless, her time in the armed forces was not all secrecy and religion. On free weekends she would hitch rides, against orders, to stay with her grandmother in Kent. On one occasion she found herself in an American open-top army truck with beer-swigging soldiers who were impressed by her poise and beauty. After a while the officer in charge suggested that she got off, because he could not be responsible for the behaviour of his intoxicated men.
Pamela Mary Hodder-Williams was born in Chelsea, west London, in 1924, the eldest of four children. Her father, Ralph, was the chairman of Hodder & Stoughton, which specialised in publishing the works of adventure writers such as John Buchan, Dornford Yates and Sapper. Hodder-Williams knew more of military valour than many of his colleagues, having been wounded in action at Passchendaele. Pam’s mother, Marjorie (née Glazebrook), was born in Canada and had been one of the first women to attend Toronto University.
Advertisement
Just before the Second World War the family bought Duddings, a manor house near Exmoor. At the beginning of the war Marjorie remained there with the children while Hodder-Williams relocated with the rest of his company to the evacuated St Hugh’s School in Bickley. Although Duddings, where Pam enjoyed riding Topsy, her Exmoor pony, seemed a world away from London and the Blitz, there were ever-present reminders that Britain was at war. She recalled a German aircraft flying low over a nearby hill and seeing the pilot inside, while on another occasion she was playing in a field near the house when an aircraft strafed down the centre of the field, the gunner seemingly aiming for a young target. She avoided his attack by jumping into the stream and hiding under a nearby bridge.
There were more civilised distractions. Pam and her sister Jane enjoyed hunting, spent time in the company of Sir Alfred Munnings, the equestrian artist, and his wife, Violet, and sang in a jazz band with her brother Christopher and his friend Humphrey Lyttelton. She had a great interest in music and possessed an impressive coloratura voice. After the war she trained as an opera singer and would have pursued it as a career had she not met John Biggs-Davison. He had seen her photograph on a grand piano at a friend’s house in Delhi and announced,“This is the girl I’m going to marry,” only to be told: “No you are not, you haven’t any money.” Nonetheless, he successfully courted Pam, his visits being so frequent that her father would announce: “Here comes the bicycle again.”
They married in 1948 and had six children, who survive her: Lisl, an economist; Tom, who followed in his grandfather’s footsteps at Hodder & Stoughton; Harry, a headmaster; Helena, a solicitor; Arabella, a sports trainer; and Sara, who has severe learning disabilities. Biggs-Davison was elected as the Conservative MP for Ongar and Chigwell in 1955 and held the seat until his death in 1988 (boundary changes in 1974 had turned it into Epping Forest). He was knighted in 1981, making his wife Lady Biggs-Davison, although she still preferred Pam.
Although Biggs-Davison was on the right of the party, being a leading member of the Monday Club and a defender of Enoch Powell, their domestic life was one of tolerance and liberalism. Their home was open to visitors, one of whom recalled walking the family dog, Orlando, in the evenings while checking car number plates: the inevitable consequence of Biggs-Davison’s work in Northern Ireland.
After her husband’s death Pam lived in Somerset, where she was housekeeper to Father Norbury, the priest in Minehead. Her kindness, patience and goodwill to others were a constant part of her personality, and she had an especially great love of her family. Faith was an important part of her life, and she once upbraided her local Anglican vicar after a funeral by saying: “You never once mentioned Our Lord.”
Advertisement
Pamela Biggs-Davison, codebreaker, was born on April 2, 1924. She died on December 11, 2017, aged 93