A little souvenir of the Great War

Now somewhere there will be the definitive book on the production of crested china during the Great War.

And before any one says anything I am well aware that in most books on the conflict crested china will not rate much more than a foot note.

But that is to ignore their importance for both morale and jobs during the period 1914-18.

Before the war the porcelain companies had turned out a host of different china figures many of which were linked to the seaside resorts and carried the coats of arms and names of the holiday towns.

And with the outbreak of war it just made economic sense to focus on war themes.

So there were tanks, ambulances, battleships and even a bull dog and recently I came across porcelain Red Cross Nurse.

Over the years I have written several stories showing off the variety that were on offer.*

When I first came across them I was intrigued that in the depths of a long grim war people should want to keep a reminder of the fighting.

But then if you had a son, husband, or sweet heart in the navy or on the Western Front driving a tank, the porcelain model of a battleship might be comforting.

And at a time when travel restrictions meant holidays were a thing of the past a souvenir porcelain ambulance at least kept someone in a job.

The surprise is just how many have survived the century.

Location; the Great War

Picture; from the collection of David Harrop

*Dusting down that china souvenir of the Great War.............. stories behind the book nu 4, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/dusting-down-that-china-souvenir-of.html

A Tale of Two Countries ...... stories of British Home Children by Norma Davis Cook ... .... part one

The life of a British Child Migrant, or Home Child, was often one of poverty, cruelty, and uncertainty. The homes to which they were sent were not always an improvement on their previous circumstances.
In many cases, the immigrant children were treated no better than slaves.   Being removed from everything familiar and placed into a foreign and hostile environment created a sense of not really belonging anywhere, or to anyone.Such was the life of my grandfather, Albert Davis.

Grandmother, Edward,Albert and Helen (Aunt Nell)

Albert and his twin brother, Edward, were born on February 2, 1901 in Birmingham, England, to an unmarried servant girl named Jane Davis.

Her family name was originally Davies, but she seems to have altered it slightly when the boys were born.

No father is named on their birth certificate, nor on any other known record.

Jane was the eldest in a family of nine children, having one brother and seven sisters.  She entered domestic service as a teenager, eventually becoming a cook at an estate in Yorkshire.

Helen (Aunt Nell)

While Jane worked to support her family, the boys stayed with her widowed mother and younger sister, Helen, at a modest home in Haseley, on the outskirts of Birmingham.

The boys carried fond memories of their “Aunt Nell” all through their lives. By all accounts, they were well cared for and had a happy childhood, even though they were not part of a traditional two-parent family.
                                           
                                                                     
As time went on, Jane’s mother grew too old to continue caring for the twins and made plans to move in with her married son.

Edward and Albert

On the advice of a local physician, Dr. John Berlyn , who was familiar with the family’s situation, Jane admitted Edward and Albert to the Children’s Emigration Home in Birmingham, founded by John T. Middlemore.

The admission record, dated March 8, 1912, states the following:   “Nice children, above the average of our class, clean and tidy.  

Children are twins and mother has struggled bravely for them for eleven years.”

The record goes on to explain:   “She has been receiving on and off money from the father but he has not kept up his payments at all regularly as stated in the agreement drawn up by a firm of solicitors.  

Grandmother

He has recently been married so there will be a greater difficulty now in his keeping up his payments.”

Jane was to contribute a portion of her earnings to the Middlemore Home for the support of her sons.  She had been led to believe that the boys would be returned to her when her situation improved.

 In May, 1912, barely a month after the Titanic sunk to a watery grave in the North Atlantic, Edward and Albert Davis boarded the Carthaginian in Liverpool, along with a large group of Middlemore children and journeyed across that same ocean to Canada, leaving behind all they held dear.

They would never return to their mother or their homeland again.

© Norma Davis Cook, 2017


Picture ; courtesy of Norma Davis Cook

Miss Violet Sedgwick just 21 years old and busy in a munitions factory ......... stories behind the book nu 16

An occasional series on the stories behind the new book on Manchester and the Great War*

Miss Violet Sedgwick, 1918

Now Miss Violet celebrated her 21st birthday on January 8 1918 and later the following month posed for this photograph at Gales Studios which had branches across the country from Glasgow to Manchester, Leeds to Sheffield and down as far as Bristol and Portsmouth.

I can’t be exactly clear that this is Miss Violet but her name appears on the back with the date of her birthday and the day the picture was taken along with her address.

I do know that she went on to marry William L Thompson in 1920 and she died in 1959.

It is just possible that when the picture was taken she was engaged to William and it may also be likely that she is wearing his regimental badge on her coat which was what wives and sweethearts did during the Great War.

I can’t quite make out the details of the badge but William was in the Pioneer Corps of the Royal Engineers and worked on the roads and quarries.

So maybe it is not too fanciful to suppose that back in the February of 1918 this very posed picture was meant for him.

Two from the munitions factory, date unknown

And I am guessing that she was a munitions worker mainly because the picture came with a batch from my friend David Harrop all of which were of munition girls and all from roughly the same period of the war.

Munition work was both hard and dangerous with the ever present threat from explosions and the real danger of being poisoned by the chemicals in the cordite and TNT.

So much so that women working with munitions ran the risk of discoloured hair and skin and were recommended seaside breaks to clear their systems.

In 1914 the Government had assumed that they would need to employ 10,000-15,000 women in factories which were to be ready in three months, but by the June of 1915 the number enrolled for munition work actually stood at 78,946.**

But despite the dangers and the very real need for women workers their pay was well below that of men engaged in similar work.

In March 1916 the Secretary of the Woman’s Interests Committee revealed that the average weekly wage in Manchester for an adult women working on munitions was under 14s which was third of what a man was paid. ***

That's the stuff to give 'm, date unknown

Not that this deterred women from working in the factories and many faced the dangers with a mix of bravado and stoicism as their contribution to winning the war.

So iit is fitting to pause and remember the work done by munition workers in factories across the country from Trafford Park down to the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich and pretty much everywhere in between.











Pictures; Miss Violet Sedgwick, 1918,  two munition workers, date unknown and picture postcard  from the collection of David Harrop 

*A new book on Manchester and the Great War, was published in Febrary, 2017http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

** Supply of Armament Labour , the Official History of the Ministry of Munitions Vol 1 Industrial Mobilisation, Naval and Military Press & the Imperial War Museum, 2009, Page 17

*** Correspondence, Manchester Guardian, January 21, 1916

Reflecting on the forthcoming Canada Day and its significance for Southern Cemetery

We are just a week away from Canada Day.

Major Charron

It is day which has grown in significance for me as I have uncovered more of my Canadian family history and can count on a growing number of Canadian friends and colleagues.

Two of my direct family migrated to Canada, one in 1914 who was taken over by the MIddlemore charity on behalf of the Derby Workhouse and a great aunt who made the same journey nine years later on an Empire assisted scheme.

In the case of my great uncle having arrived in Canada in 1914, he volunteered for the Canadian Expeditionary Force the following year and in the summer of 1916 was back in Britain before going on to the Western Front.

He like the other six men of my family who went off to war came back, but many others didn’t and it is of the 26 Canadian soldiers buried in Southern Cemetery along with others from Australia and New Zealand which today are exercising my thoughts.

Honouring those who participated in two world wars

All died of complications to wounds they had sustained in the fighting or from illnesses they contracted, and most died in the nearby hospital.

Last year to mark their deaths on what was the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme as well as Canada Day a special service attended by Major Charron of the Canadian army took place in the cemetery.

He was accompanied by parties of school students, civic signatories including the local MP and veterans organisations.

Many of whom then visited the permanent exhibition in the Remembrance Lodge which features memorabilia from the Great War.

The exhibition is run by David Harrop and this year like last there will be items directly related to the Canadian armed forces.

Location; Southern Cemetery

Pictures; the service of Remembrance, July 1, 1916 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Sitting at the edge of the pavement playing with the melted tar ........ Lausanne Road in 1959 .....during the heatwave

Memories can be deceptive, but sometime in the summer of 1959 on a very hot day with little to do me and a mate sat on the pavement in front of the Swiss tavern playing with the meting tar.

The Swiss Tavern, Lausanne Road, 2007

Now I fully accept that this will not rank with the great moments in history, but on an equally hot day I think I am allowed to share it.

I can’t be sure of the year but I know 1959 was a hot one, so much so that some Londoners took to sleeping in the parks.

But it could have been another summer, what is important is that I remember just what I was doing.

I suppose it was too hot to want to stray far from the house but by the same token I didn’t fancy being indoors.

Our house on Lausanne Road, 2017

So there we were idly playing with the melting tar using old discarded lolly sticks to draw the stuff back and forth.

And of course on that heavy hot day there was little in the way of traffic to worry us, thinking back there was not much else.

The day if it was just the one I remember as very hot, and very quiet with nothing to disturb the stillness.

What puzzles me is why today, the same doesn’t happen on very hot days.

Do the authorities use different tar?  Or is it that we just don’t get as many hot days?  Which given the current heat wave seems odd.

Or at 67 am I just too old to sit at the pavements edge with a lolly stick and some melting tar?

Location; Lausanne Road circa 1959

Pictures; our house on Lausanne Road and  the Swiss Tavern, 2017, from the collection of Elizabth and Colin Fitzpatrick

A ghost sign, Mr Clayton the grocer and a new business on Wilbraham Road

Now I have Chorlton Book Shop to thank for the picture which they sent over a few hours ago.

512 Wilbraham Road, 2017

It is a fine example of what we call a ghost sign, which advertised either a product or business which has long since vanished.

Lyons Tea was sold by J. Lyons and Co, famous for their Corner Houses which for a big chunk of the 20th century were place to meet, enjoy a cup of tea and a range of cakes in impressive surroundings.

Long before the modern coffee shops Lyon’s Corner Houses were an essential part of many people’s daily routine.

My favourite was close to Charing Cross Station.

Wilbraham Road, 1959

But despite having a presence in most cities Lyons were finally taken over becoming Allied Lyons and later still the business was broken up with the various divisions becoming part of Nestlé and RHM.

Our sign was part of the shop front of Mr Clayton the grocer and as luck would have it there is a photograph of the shop as it was in 1959 clearly showing our ghost sign.

A decade later Mr Clayton was still dispensing smiles, butter, tea and biscuits and when he finally sold up, the signs were hidden under wooden cladding.

And now that the shop is about to change its use again these signs have come back out into the daylight.

Wilbraham Road 2016

It hope the new business will retains them in much the same way as another shop further along the row has done.

They are after all not only a bit or retail history but also of Chorlton’s past.

And those who want a bit of that history, in 1969, running back from Oswald Road to Manchester Road, the businesses, included a travels agents, butchers, a fruit shop, a DIY business, along with a baker, our grocer, Elizabeth Wool Shop, a sweet shop and newsagents, and M E Coupe (Furnishers) Ltd.

A little under sixty years earlier and the list ran a tobaconist,the Singer Sewing Machine shop, a milliner, a grocer, watch maker, along with Miss Gertrude Cartledge, fancy draper, a shoe maker, butcher and a chandler.

Our ghost sign, 1959

I will leave you to complete the the present row of businesses and just say that the lists from 1911, 1969 and today pretty much tell their own story.

Location; Chorlton








Picture, Ghost sign at 510 Wilbraham Road courtesy of Chorlton Book Shop,,Wilbraham Road north side, Shops 510-512, A E Landers, May 24 1959, m18272, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and 510,January 2016  courtesy of Tiny's Tipple, http://www.tinystipple.co.uk/

Views from a tram window ........... Manchester ..... June 2017

Now the coming of the railways brought many new things.

And a list would include faster, easier and in time cheaper travel, summed up best by John Ruskin in 1856 when he said "Your railroad, when you come to understand it, is only a device for making the world smaller"*

A world then made even smaller by the introduction of standard railway time, based on Greenwich Mean Time.

But it also allowed people to look across at the level of the skyline and down on to the streets and rooftops below.

For many this was a new experience and would have occupied many passengers as their railway train pulled out of the main line railway stations through the densely packed inner city streets.

So with that in mind here are three of a short series based on the photographs of Andy Robertson, who last week set himself the task of recording what he could see from the window of the tram as it passed through Deansgate Castlefield on its way to St Peter’s Square.

And with the speed of change along the line, some of what he saw on that June day will be gone within six months while those tall cranes will deliver even more high rise blocks which dot the approach from Cornbrook.

At which point I shall fall back on the writer Edwin Muir who in the winter of 1857, travelled from the heart of the city to Stretford by train along a railway which was just eight years old.  It was a journey of contrasts.

Leaving “the huge manufacturies, and the miserable chimney tops of Little Ireland, down by the dirty Medlock; we ran over a web of dingy streets, swarming with dingy people............  left the black stagnant canal, coiled in the hollow, stretching its dark length into the distance , like some slimy  snake.”**

And that is all for now.  Andy has entitled his series, “Dodging the Trams”.

Location; Deansgate Castlefield

Pictures; Deansgate Castlefield, 2017 from the series, Dodging the Trams by Andy Robertson

*John Ruskin, Landscape, Mimesis and Morality,   1856

** Muir, Edwin, Lancashire Sketches, Alexander Ireland & Co  Manchester, 1869, pages 74 & 75