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= Madeline Ida Bedford = Madeline Ida Bedford (1884-1956) was an English war poet during World War I. Her most famous poet is 'Munitions Wages' (1917).

Early Life
Bedford was born in 1884 to parents Sarah (née Dinah) and Edward Bedford, a middle-class family in Woolwich, London. Her father was Irish, born in Waterford, and her parents had married in India in 1876. The 1911 census records that at the age of 26 she lived with her single sister and two servants and was funded privately, suggesting her affluence continued into her adult life.

'Munitions Wages' Poem
'Munitions Wages' was first published in HM Factory Greta's Souvenir Farewell magazine. Written in working-class Cockney dialect, Bedford takes on the voice of the women workers and 'parodies' their extravagant lifestyles which persist in the precarious context of life in wartime Britain. Given Bedford's positionality as a middle-class poet, George Robb has argued that her poem "embodies a middle-class snobbery and condescension toward an 'uppity' munitions worker", reflecting the rise in class tension provoked by the increased importance of working class women's labour contributions. Meanwhile, those at the charity Female Poets of The First World War, have speculated that Madeline may have worked at a munitions factory because the poem was first published in HM Factory Greta's Souvenir Farewell magazine.

Other Works
Bedford also penned a collection of poems entitled 'The Young Captain, and Other Poems: Fragments of War and Love'. This was first published by Erskine Macdonald Ltd. in 1917.

Personal life and Death
Madeline married Ernest Bolton Morris in 1919 at St Martins-in-the-Fields, London. They had one child - Madeline B. Morris - who was born in 1922. Madeline Ida Bedford died in 1956.