Louisa Wilkins

Louisa Wilkins OBE, also known as Mrs Roland Wilkins (born Louisa Jebb; 8 August 1873 – 1929) was a British writer and agricultural administrator. She was involved in the creation and recruitment for the Women's Land Army during World War One. She was an enthusiast for small holdings and after the war she inspired the creation of a small holding co-operative for women who had entered agriculture during the war.

Life Wilkins was born in Ellesmere in 1873. Her parents were Eglantyne Louisa Jebb (née Jebb) and Arthur Trevor Jebb, who were cousins. Her sisters Eglantyne and Dorothy (became Buxton) co-founded the children's international development agency Save the Children. Her brother Richard Jebb was a journalist and she was the niece of the classical scholar and politician, Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb.

Jebb attended Newnham College in Cambridge.

Jebb was a founder member of the Women's Farm and Garden Union which was formed in 1899. For three years up to 1907 she was retained by the Cooperative Small Holdings Association. In 1907 she published The Small Holdings of England which was an attempt to provide a survey of the small holdings of England. She describes the history of small holdings, the philanthropic acts that created them, current experiments and she tells her readers how to establish more.

In February 1916 the Women's Farm and Garden Union sent a deputation to meet Lord Selborne to establish a group in response to the war effort. Selborne's Ministry of Agriculture agreed to fund a Women's National Land Service Corps with a grant of £150

The new organisation was tasked with improving recruitment and providing propaganda about the benefits of women of all classes undertaking agricultural work. the network assisted in the launch of a "Land Army" and by April 1917 they had over 500 replies and 88 joined the new Land Army where they became group leaders and supervisors.

The Women's Land Army would grow to 23,000 women earning about a pound a week. This was a sizeable contribution but it is estimated that the number of women working on the land during the war was 300,000.

After the war Wilkins retained her interest in farming, smallholding and the women who had entered agriculture during the war. With the backing of the Women's Farm and Garden Union, she and Katherine Courtauld established a set of small holdings in 1920 on Wire Mill Lane in Lingfield in Surrey. By Desert Ways to Baghdad, by Louisa Jebb (Mrs Roland Wilkins), 1908 The small holdings controversy: tenancy v. ownership, 1910