Stories of the Great War ...... from Manchester

 This is my uncle George in the last years of the Great War.

George Bradford Simpson, 1918

Now I suspect it cannot be before 1917 given that he was born in 1899.

And it is an image that will be familiar to us all. 

Similar pictures appear all the time in books and programmes about the First World War and most families will have one photograph of a young man ready to leave for the Front or at home on leave.

Young Clara, date unknown

These young men stare back at us in their ill fitting uniforms in individual poses or with friends and family and along with those images of the battlefields they pretty much shape our idea of that war.

More recently we have come to see that generation and those who fought in the Second World War as frail men and women with faltering voices and walking sticks who were venerated as the last of their generation.

We forget the majority of them lived full productive lives, contributed to their community getting on with the daily demands of work family and holidays.

This I know because I grew up with them, and when I was growing up they were still just in their 50s and early 60s, and were younger than I am now, still vital, still working and many as yet still waiting to be grandparents.

So, when I was given the chance to write about them I jumped at the opportunity.

The book was commissioned by the History Press in 2013 and told the story of the men, women and children of Manchester who lived through the Great War and it drew on official reports and newspaper accounts as well as letters and photographs and a multitude of other personal items.

Mr and Mrs Davison and their son, 1916 Ireland

Much of this material had never been seen before and some of it was unique in that it allowed us to follow families through the whole conflict challenging many of those easy and preconceived views of the war.

So here was the story of George and Nellie Davison of Harpurhey and Hulme, including his years at night school while living in Chorton before they married, her regular trips to stay with him in London and Ireland and his final letters home before his death in the June of 1918.

Across the city and over the river we learn of Miss Rebecca Chapman’s first week as a Salford tram clippie, and Mrs Fannie Jane Barlow’s juggling act of bringing up two young children while working long houses in a Red Cross Voluntary Hospital.

George Davison's letter of June 15 1918

Along with these are the stories of the thousands of children on “part time education” because their schools had been taken over to look after wounded soldiers, as well as those who opposed the war, the campaigns against profiteering and the unequal status of women in the workplace.

And because all books end up with a personal reflection, there are the stories of six of my own family who served and came through and my connection with George Davison, who for a short time was billeted just three minutes walk from where I grew up.

Many of the stories behind the book are available by following the  link.

Pictures; Clara in the uniform of the East Lancs, date unknown,  the Davison's 1916,  and George's letter home, 1918, courtesy of David Harrop, and George Bradford Simpson, 1918 the collection of Andrew Simpson

Location; Manchester

*Manchester Remembering 1914-18 by Andrew Simpson, 2017, History Press 

**A new book on the Together Trust, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20Together%20Trust