The Gang and the National Trust: what we knew
Ferguson’s Gang was formed in 1927 with five core members – all women. Their aim was to raise awareness of the need to protect rural areas and they supported the organisation they considered to be the most dedicated to preserving England’s heritage: the National Trust.
Over the years, they raised huge sums to protect and preserve buildings and land that could otherwise have been destroyed. The ‘swag’ was delivered in delightfully strange ways: Victorian coins inside a fake pineapple, a one-hundred pound note stuffed inside a cigar; five hundred pounds delivered with a bottle of homemade sloe gin. Their stunts were avidly reported in the press, and when they made a national radio appeal for the National Trust, the response was overwhelming.
Causing a scare
One of our favourite anecdotes dates back to 1939, when the Gang unwittingly caused a bomb scare at the National Trust’s annual general meeting. They'd hired a messenger to present their latest donation, a £100 note hidden inside a suspicious looking metallic pineapple.
In a kind of anxious game of ‘pass the parcel’, it was handed from James Lees-Milne, Secretary of the Country Houses Committee, to the Chairman, Lord Zetland, who was convinced it was an IRA bomb. Then he read the label: ‘Open this fruit and you will find a kernel greatly to your mind.’ The Gang had struck again and a flurry of newspaper headlines meant more publicity for the cause.