In the January of 1918, in churches across the country, there will have been many sermons that ended with the appeal “Lord we implore thee to bring Victory to the Allies”.
But these words were written not by a vicar but by young Alice Morris, who added “Please ask this for nine days” and sent in a chain postcard.
I thought at first that the woman on the front of the picture postcard was Alice, but in the January of 1918, she would have been just eleven years old.
And this I know because I tracked her from the address on the reverse of the card, which was 92 Heights Lane in Rochdale.
The house is still there today, and it was where she was living with her parents in 1911, when she was aged just four.
Her father was 48 years old from Ireland and was a “Cotton Warp Dresser”, and his wife Sarah was twelve years younger and was from Rochdale.
They had been married for five years, during which time Sarah had given birth to three children of which Alice was the only one to have survived.
At the outbreak of the war her father would have been in his early 50s and so unlikely to have been accepted by the army, but there was a nephew who was living with them and who at 27 years of age, may well have volunteered in that first patriotic rush to the Colours or been conscripted in 1916.
A trawl of the military records shows several possible candidates, so just maybe the presence of her nephew in the armed forces may have bee the catalyst for the chain postcard.
Or perhaps just the weariness of four years of war.
Location; Rochdale
Picture; picture postcard sent, January 14th, 1918, from the collection of David Harrop
I thought at first that the woman on the front of the picture postcard was Alice, but in the January of 1918, she would have been just eleven years old.
And this I know because I tracked her from the address on the reverse of the card, which was 92 Heights Lane in Rochdale.
The house is still there today, and it was where she was living with her parents in 1911, when she was aged just four.
Her father was 48 years old from Ireland and was a “Cotton Warp Dresser”, and his wife Sarah was twelve years younger and was from Rochdale.
They had been married for five years, during which time Sarah had given birth to three children of which Alice was the only one to have survived.
At the outbreak of the war her father would have been in his early 50s and so unlikely to have been accepted by the army, but there was a nephew who was living with them and who at 27 years of age, may well have volunteered in that first patriotic rush to the Colours or been conscripted in 1916.
Or perhaps just the weariness of four years of war.
Location; Rochdale
Picture; picture postcard sent, January 14th, 1918, from the collection of David Harrop
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