To celebrate International Women’s Day, we remember one of our strongest women members.

Amabel Sollas, née Jeffreys (1855?-1928) was president of our chess club and British Ladies’ Chess Champion in 1913.

Sadly typical of the time, her obituary says more about her husbands’ achievements than her own.

Times, 1 May 1928

The Times published more information in a later edition.

Times, 9 May 1928

British Chess Magazine published her self-deprecating account of how she took up chess:

We supplement our brief notice last month of the late Mrs Sollas with some details which she herself supplied two years ago:

She was [she wrote] the youngest daughter of John Gwynn Jeffreys, of Ware Priory, Herts, and learnt the moves of chess on her eighth birthday. Chess was only a childish amusement until quite late in life when, as Mrs Moseley (widow of H.N. Moseley, Linacre Professor of Zoology at Oxford, famous for his original researches and work on the “Challenger” Expedition in 1876) she joined the Oxford City Club in 1906. Finding herself badly beaten by a friend, Mrs Conybeare, she concluded it would be amusing to learn an opening or two. … She was not at all a good player, although by luck she gained the Women’s Championship in 1913. After that came the War, and she went to France to help in Canteens and the French Red Cross, and lost what little skill was ever hers at chess. She gained the Oxford C.C.C. championship in 1924 because there were no good players, and among the blind the one-eyed is king! … She played in the Oxfordshire county team in 1923-26, with varying success. If given a board low down, she occasionally manages to win.

Mrs Sollas’s estimate of her skill, we many remark, was unduly modest; and her love of the game was sincere and pleasing to witness.

British Chess Magazine (May 1928), p.278