The League for the Marrying of Wounded Heroes

Today's "Times" newspaper in England carries a story reprinted from their edition of the same day one hundred years ago, during the First World War.   It deals with the creation of "The League for the Marrying of Wounded Heroes", which was set up by The Rev. Ernest Houghton, an Anglican clergyman who was Rector of St. Stephen's church in Bristol.

There may be speculation as to whether or not this would have been a good idea but it was not allowed to go ahead.  As reported in an American newspaper on 19th November 1915, the idea was short-lived because the Bishop soon scuppered the plan and forced the Rev. Houghton to resign from the League. The Rev. Houghton had received many letters from 'noble-minded, patriotic women' hoping to marry a wounded hero but those letters had to be returned to the, presumably very disappointed, senders.

Does anyone know whether the League continued without the Rev. Houghton and whether any such marriages took place?

Sources:  

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19151119&id=UqRRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HQoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4111,7836581&hl=en

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nDr0CAAAQBAJ&pg=PT58&lpg=PT58&dq=League+for+the+marrying+of+wounded+heroes&source=bl&ots=7Va-8bwpW0&sig=WDxEbsCYJAQ2uGvni8VniCmQO6A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMI-uq0-ozCyAIVxtYUCh18HAFP#v=onepage&q=League%20for%20the%20marrying%20of%20wounded%20heroes&f=false

Searchlights in The First World War

While watching an ice hockey match yesterday between Coventry Blaze and Widnes Wild, the word 'Coventry-Climax' popped into my head.  Research threw up the fact that the firm had a connection with WW1.

The company was formed as Lee Stroyer in 1903 by Henry Pelham Lee from Putney, a former Coventry-based Daimler employee, and Jens Stroyer from Denmark.  By 1905, the company was called Coventry-Simplex and they manufactured engines. Ernest Shackleton chose their engines for the tractors used in his Antarctic Expedition from 1914 to 1917. 

During the First World War, Coventry-Simplex supplied the engines used to power the searchlights needed to spot enemy plans and Zeppelins, thus helping to keep the night skies safe over Britain.  The company's name was changed to Coventry-Climax in 1917.  

The concept of 'artificial moonlight' - using searchlights to light up the night sky - was invented by Major-General J.F.C. Fuller (1878 - 1966), A British soldier veteran of the Boer War who served in several regiments during the First World War.

Some of you may remember the name from motor racing as the engine was used to power sports cars first in the 1954 Le Mans.  Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham and Jim Clark also had successes with cars powered by Coventry-Climax engines.  The company was sold to Jaguar Cars in 1963.

Sources:  Wikipedia and Google Images

And the Ice Hockey match?  Well Widnes Wild won but Coventry Blaze put up a very, very good fight and were the first to score, holding Widnes to 1 : 0 throughout the first session.  They show great potential.

Book: 'Rough Riders The City of London Yeomanry during the First World War' by Stuart Latham

I have just discovered another fascinating book about the First World War.  Stuart Latham's Great-Grandfather, Fred Latham, served with the City of London Yeomanry during the conflict and Stuart has put together a detailed history of the Regiment.   

From my point of view, for the 'Fascinating Facts' section of my exhibition project, the first thing I learnt from the book is that the word 'chat' meaning an informal discussion, comes from when soldiers were together to perform the task of killing the lice in their uniforms - 'chat' being the sound made when a lice is popped.  With photographs, anecdotes written by the soldiers of the Regiment and more, this is definitely a 'couldn't put it down' book.

"Rough Riders The City of London Yeomanry during the First World War" by Stuart Latham, published by S and T Marketing Ltd, Swindon.  Further details from enquiries@sandtsales.co.uk  

Belgian Refugees in the UK during The First World War

I have just found an exciting venture commemorating Belgian Refugees in the First World War. Here is the link to the website

https://refugeesinrhyl.wordpress.com/author/tonivitti/

More than 265,000 refugees came to the UK during WW1.   Many of the records were lost during the Blitz so it is difficult to be certain.  A Belgian Refugee Committee was set up but each area that took in refugees had its own Committee through which help was channelled.

Two of our best known poets of the era - May Sinclair and Beatrix Brice Miller - travelled to France and Belgium in 1914 to help and wrote about what they witnessed.   May's account of serving coffee and "two slices of black bread per person" to over 3,000 people is particularly moving.  As indeed is the account written by Charlotte Kellogg, the only woman member of the Commission for Relief to visit Belgium in July 1916.    According to Charlotte in "Women of Belgium Turning Tragedy into Triumph", there were three million people who were destitute and one quarter of a million dependent for their existence upon soup kitchens. 

Bertha (Betty) Stevenson, a YMCA volunteer who was killed in May 1918 during an air raid while working near Etaples, also mentioned Belgian refugees in her diaries which were published after the war by Betty's Mother and Aunt.

The Belgian poet Marguerite Coppin was evacuated to the UK during the First World War.  She stayed on after the war and worked as a French teacher.

Perhaps the most famous of all the Belgian Refugees of WW1 is the fictitious character of Agatha Christie - the detective Hercule Poirot.   

http://www.wolverham...gration_ww1.htm
http://belgium.rootsweb.com/gbr/

http://www.bbc.co.uk...t6_prog1b.shtml 

The Order of the White Feather in The First World War

I am reading Dr. Vivien Newman’s book ‘We also served The Forgotten Women of the First World War’ (published by Pen and Sword, Barnsley, 2014).  On page 13, is the story of The White Feather Brigade.  I did not realise that was an official movement called The Order of the White Feather founded in August 1914 by Admiral Charles Cooper-Penrose (1841 – 1921) with the support of the government.  Admiral Cooper-Penrose was helped by the prominent writer Mrs Mary Augusta Humphrey Ward (1851 – 1920).   Starting with a group of 30 women in Folkestone, the idea was to shame men into joining the forces.  According to Dr. Newman, would be adherents had to complete a form, and, if they included stamps to the value of two pence (just over £1 in 2015), they would receive a badge and a place on the Active Service League’s Roll of Honour.  The idea was picked up by the press and quickly spread with special songs being commissioned and written to encourage men to enlist. These were sung by women in music halls.

The original supposition that a white feather represented cowardice appears to come from cock fighting, in which it was believed that a cock with white feathers in his tail would not be a very good fighter.  In America in 1775, an incident occurred in New York when a group of Quakers in a Meeting House were confronted by a hostile group of indigenous Indians.  The Quakers remained silent and the Chief of the Indians, realising the Quakers had no weapons, took a white feather from his quiver and attached it to the door of their church as a sign that the building was to be left alone. 

We have been speculating as to where the white feathers would have come from.  Could they have been goose or duck feathers?  At that time people raised geese in their gardens and back yards for Christmas.  If anyone knows more please get in touch and enlighten us. Photo Admiral Charles Cooper Penrose-Fitzgerald.

Women's Football in WW1

According to an Italian, saying ‘cows and wives should come from the same village’ which would appear to illustrate an old fashioned attitude towards women and could go some way to explaining why the Italian women’s football team is currently under threat.

Women’s football was played in public for the first time during the First World War.  A fascinating book called “In a League of their Own” written by Gail Newsham tells the story of the women factory workers who played that historic game on Christmas Day 1917.  The Dick Kerr’s Ladies Football Team played the match at Deepdale Football Stadium in Preston, Lancashire.  The match was seen by 10,000 people and the girls raised the equivalent of almost £50,000 in today’s currency for the war effort.

Teams of women from munitions factories and other establishments played against each other during WW1 for silverware. The Dick Kerr’s team went on to travel to play against teams in France and America, taking the idea of women’s football out into the world at large.

Women’s football became so popular that after the war it was banned by the Football Association in the UK and did not start up again until the 1970s.   Germany also banned women’s football until 1970.

Gail Newsham also has an excellent website where you can find out more about The Dick Kerr’s Ladies Football Team in the First World War http://www.dickkerrladies.com/

Book Review: "Images of the Great War" by Lawrence Dunn, published by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd., London, 2015

Lawrence Dunn, an artist from Sunderland, guides us through a brief history of the First World War featuring a selection of images by some of the British and Empire artists, cartoonists, poets, photographers and sculptors of the time -  paintings, drawings, illustrations and photographs, some of which are from the author's own collection.  With the skill that only an artist has, Lawrence encourages us to have a closer look at some of those works and in so doing brings the conflict to life as never before. In many instances, Lawrence also invites the reader to compare the styles of artists who have painted the same view or person.  

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.  I already knew some of the names that Lawrence has included but there were many that were new to me.  I was interested to see that Lawrence has dedicated the book to his second cousin, Corporal Michael Davison of the Northumberland Fusiliers (1st Tyneside Irish).  Michael was an underground putter at Ryhope Colliery when he enlisted in 1914 and was killed on the first day of the Battle of Arras - Easter Monday, 9th April 1917.  My great-uncle James Yule was a Private in the Northumberland Fusiliers, 23rd (Tyneside Scottish) Battalion and he too was killed on 9th April 1917, as were the poets R.E. Vernède and Edward Thomas,  

Beginning with Lady Elizabeth Butler, both male and female WW1 artists of all disciplines are represented in the book - Sir David Muirhead Bone, Francis Edgar Dodd, Sir William Orpen, Charles Sergeant Jagger, Christopher R.W. Nevinson, Paul and John Nash, Bruce Bairnsfather, Arthur Leonard Smith, Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg, William Patrick Roberts, Colin Unwin Gill, Harold Sandys Williamson, Augustus Edwin John, John Singer Sargent, Henry Tonks, James Francis Hurley OBE, Olive Edis, Eric Henri Kennington, George Clausen, Sir John Lavery, Austin Osman Spare, Gilbert Rogers MBE, Adrian Keith Graham Hill, Sir Jacob Epstein, Mark Gertler, Joyce Dennys, Olive Mudie-Cooke, Flora Lion, Anna Airy, Lucy Kemp-Welch, Norah Neilson-Gray, Clare Atwood, Dorothy Josephine Coke, Frederick Horseman Varley, Stanley Spencer, David Michael Jones, Robert Douglas Strachan.

But this book is not just about the artists and the pictures of WW1, Lawrence goes into detail about some of the battles and includes personal stories about the artists and the areas and subjects depicted.   On page 137 you will find paintings by the artist William Patrick Roberts, who was at the Battle of Arras on 9th April 1917 and is therefore of special interest to me.

Lawrence has also included poems by both male and female poets - Laurence Binyon, Rupert Brooke, Beatrix Brice Miller, Jessie Pope, John McCrae, Lucy Foster Whitmell, Charles Sorley, Alan Seeger, Vera Brittain, Thomas Kettle, Lady Margaret Sackville, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, Francis Ledwidge, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Iris Tree, Winifred Mabel Letts, May Wedderburn Cannan, Anna Gordon Keown, Alice Meynell, Katharine Tynan, Elinor Jenkins, Muriel Elsie Graham, Edmund Blunden, May Hershel-Clarke, Mary H.J. Henderson, Eileen Newton, Emily Orr, Dorothy Una Ratcliffe and Edward Thomas.

I also very much enjoyed reading about the photographs taken during the First World War in the section about James Francis Hurley OBE, a photographer from Sydney, Australia.   Lawrence explains that many of the photographs taken during the 1914 - 1919 period were not fake but 'composites', as photographers were still experimenting with the medium.

With a map of the Western Front showing some of the worst battles of the war, a comprehensive Index and Bibliography and a final poem written by the UK's current Poet Laureate, Dame Carol Ann Duffy, this is a superb book which I would highly recommend.