A series of short biographies of women and men who served as ambulance drivers and assistants in Chelsea, London, during the Second World War.
My research into the wartime ambulance drivers of Chelsea has taken me to some obscure corners of our history, including this one.
The subject of today’s post is Barbara Pouschkine, about whom I know very little. In fact, I am not even that sure of her name. A line on a website about theosophist and writer Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854-1934) tells me that Barbara Pouschkine was the birth name of the first wife of another noted theosophist, Oscar Gustaf Köllerstrom, who was also a writer, priest and psychotherapist, born in Australia in 1903.
In 1939 the Chelsea census taker recorded the woman living at 62 Pont Street as 37-year-old architect and ambulance driver Barbara Köllerstrom. Her marriage to Oscar was over. There may have been a child or children – a ship’s manifest from 1926 records a Mr, Mrs and Miss O Köllerstrom, who lived at The Manor, Mosman, Sydney (where up to 50 theosophists lived. Someone called it a “great occult forcing-house”)
So what, I hear you ask, is theosophy? Basically, it’s a cult, maintaining that a knowledge of God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations.
I have no idea if or when Barbara left theosophy, but perhaps it is telling that The Gazette published a legal notice in July 1940 in which she repudiated the Köllerstrom name and was henceforth to be known as Cole. She gave her address as Henley-on-Thames so perhaps she had left the ambulance service by then.
I can find no online evidence of her work or her life after that point, except for a record of death under the name Barbara Cole, in Buckinghamshire in 1978.
Barbara Cole did exist, she was my mother. Born in Kharkov in 1903 to Barbara née GALITZINE and married to Evgeny Pouschkine, judge, She lived mostly in St Petersburg and Moscow until 1917. Her mother was active in the movement, and in close contact with Lady Emily Lutyens, her equivalent in the UK. In 1917 for obvious reasons the whole family, Barbara Pouschkine the mother, Xenia, my aunt, and George, my uncle, left St Petersburg on a British ship, and arrived in England. Evgeny had died in 1915. It’s not clear how the family lived in England ; I believe the theosophists helped them. My mother lived near Camberley, and went to school there. Later she studied at the Bartlett School of Archiecture, University College, London. She was a gifted student and won a prize for a project for redesigning the rather messy concourse in front of King’s Cross Station. She qualified as an architect and one of her first jobs was interior design counselling for the furniture shop Maples in Monte Carlo. The family seems to have settled in France, the document being a lease for a restaurant in the name of my grandmother in the Rue de la Montagne Geneviève, in the Latin Quarter of Paris, just off the Place du Panthéon. This must have been around 1934-35. Shortly afterwards my grandmother died after being hit by a car. At the time she was living in a home for old Russian survivors, and she is buried in the Russian cemetery in St Geneviève des Bois.
The family now moved to England ; my aunt Xenia lived in London working the Foreign Office translating documents into English. My mother worked as an architect, in London, then in Oxfordshire (Fingest). She met my father, Walter Cole at this time (1939). He was called up to join a regiment in Malaya, where he had already worked, and died in 1943 working as a prisoner on the Burma railway.
This all very sketchy, but I hope it will help to advance your work on Ambulance Drivers, which I was very happy to find.
I can add that Barbara also worked around 1936 – 39 as an animator for an English producer of cartoon films.
During the war she continued to live near Fingest, Wheeler End more precisely, where she rented a cottage which she kept until her death in 1978. She equipped an office where she could work for her architectural practice, and after the war she lived from her activities, remaining in contact with her russian relations who lived in England, continuing her architectural work mostly for friends.
I haven’t mentioned Tessa, my sister, born in 1931 to Oscar’s Kollerstrom, in a marriage which didn’t last very long.
Your mention of ambulance driving woke up a distant memory. It’s difficult to imagine exactly at what moment could have done that.
Congratulations on your work, ask any questions you like.
Best wishes, Nicholas Cole
What fascinating information, Nicholas. What a full and interesting life your mother had. Many of the volunteer drivers I researched served only for a short time, some on a part-time basis, and went on to other services or war work. Sadly, because the records for the LAAS (London Auxiliary Ambulance Service) were not retained after the war, it is difficult to work out who did what and when. Your mother’s story illustrates the diverse backgrounds of residents in Chelsea at the time, and of the volunteers drivers. Thank you again for sharing it.