For some of course it can be explained away by bad parenting, or the influence of peers, or perhaps a combination of things including low social esteem, poverty or maybe just that they were born bad.
Now I don’t have the answers other than saying the idea that you are born bad is just tosh. But it is a topic that is close to me. My own great uncle went off the rails and despite a number of chances to set out a fresh he seems to have stubbornly ignored them.
At the age of 14 he was destined for a placement on the Training Ship Exmouth which was a sort of naval boot camp designed to sort out troublesome youths with a mix of military style discipline away from the old haunts and temptations. Later he was sent to Canada as a British Home Child, a scheme which transported 100,000 young people to new lives in a new country on the other side of the Atlantic. Not that he could settle here either.
In the space of one year he was placed on three different farms across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick before running away, and joining the army in 1915. Even here he showed a blatant disregard for truth and honesty. He lied about his age, and falsified the record of his next of kin. Nor did the army prove to be his life line. Despite being in the front line and seeing active service, he kicked against authority and underwent four court-martials.
The reports from the placement farms speak of a troubled young man, who on one occasion was suspected of trying to burn down the farmer’s barn. This was disputed by the Middlemore organization which was responsible for him, but other reports reveal that he was not happy. In the June of 1915, the farmer Mrs Moffat reported that he was “fairly good for three weeks since then it seems impossible to get him to do anything. He is heart and soul lazy.” She couldn’t “depend on him for when he is left alone to work he sleeps under the trees.”*
But Mrs Moffatt was a fair woman and so despite asking for him to removed she did report that he was “even tempered, good to the children, kind to animals, a great reader, does not run around and is quiet and usually good which is a great item.”
His army record shows a similar pattern of someone who would rather be somewhere else and while one of the court-martials involved him being absent while the unit was in the front line, the other three show him kicking against authority and refusing to do as he was told.
Now there are plenty of young people who would fit that description.
In the case of my great uncle maybe there was more. Certainly the early years of his life were chaotic, uncertain and eventful. He was born in Birmingham, grew up in Kent and at the age of four his parents separated and his pregnant mother and two brothers moved back north to Derby where his sister was born in the Derby Workhouse. During the next twelve years he was in care. His mother was briefly recorded as working away in service. For a short period he was reunited with his siblings and his mother during 1913 she was deemed unfit to care for them and one by one they were all placed back in care.
So this was not the most auspicious start to a life and one that didn’t get any better. At the age of 15 in the December of 1913 it was decided he should be sent to the Training Ship Exmouth. Training ships existed to give young boys a fresh start.
“Training ships were used to train poor boys in all aspects of seamanship, preparing them for a career at sea. Boys were able to join the ship from the age of 12. Their first task was to learn how to mend and patch their own clothes, they also had to learn how to wash their clothes and keep their lockers and contents in good order. Each boy had his own hammock, which was stowed during the day, leaving the decks clear of bedding. As well as learning the skills of sailing, rowing, sail and rope making, gunnery and signalling, they continued ordinary school work and such physical activities such as swimming and gymnastics. The ship had its own band and bugle band.
The Exmouth was run on strict military grounds and with up to 700 boys on board discipline was strict, with misdemeanours punished by forfeiting shore leave and spending the afternoon marching and drilling instead, or scrubbing the deck. Caning, in front of the entire ships company, was also used as a warning to others. Sunday morning was Captain’s inspection with the Captain making his rounds below decks to inspect all the messes. He would wear white gloves for this inspection, rubbing his fingers under the edges of tables, forms and lockers to find hidden dirt. The mess that was considered to be the best was rewarded with extra rations,” from http://www.workhouses.org.uk/trainingships/
My grandfather had already been sent to Exmouth, and stuck it out, spending a year on board before being sent to sea in 1914. Not so my great uncle. Perhaps that rebellious side asserted itself, but the records show he ever attended and instead was placed with the Middlemore organisation and sent to Canada. Middlemore was one of the charitable groups which organised sending young people from poor and disadvantaged back grounds Canada.
And I suppose that is part of the answer to the way his life went. His early years had not been very stable. He last saw his father when he was four and he was separated from his brothers and sister. When he came up against any form of authority it tended to be impersonal or draconian. I doubt that there was much loving care in the institutions he found himself in, nor could he expect any in the Training Ship. Likewise his period with Middlemore would have been Spartan and fairly impersonal.
So is it any wonder that he felt uncomfortable in Canada in a life chosen for him which bore no relation to what he was used to? After all he was an urban boy pitched into rural Canada with only a few months training in how to work on a farm.
Nor can I be surprised that when he decided to run away and join the army in the August of 1915 he falsified the records of his age and next of kin and changed his name.. He was after all under age and there seemed little point in recording the name of his father who he could barely remember or his mother whose own bouts of stability seem limited. And he had run away so need a new name.
But he did seem to cling to some family links and after inventing a factious brother as next of kin settled on his aunt who had recently married. And he retained elements of his given name. He was born Roger James Hall which he shortened to James Rogers. Not you might think the most original name change but perhaps another link with his past.
I remain saddened when I think of what might have been, and how his early life had such a false start, even more so because parts of that early life seem forever closed to him. When asked his place of birth on joining up he gave Derby not Birmingham, but then I doubt that he even knew that simple fact about his early life.
Picture; detail from his Attestation Papers August 1915 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*letter from Mrs Lottie Moffatt, June 24th 1915
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