Last year of peace was far from harmonious at home.

99 years ago, on the 28^th June, 1914 an event that would change the world forever, and alter the balance of power and influence across the globe, was recorded as just another example of disaffection in Austria-Hungary, in a small part of the former Ottoman Empire – at Sarajevo, in Bosnia.

In a month the world would be plunged into the most terrible conflict yet seen. However, the common view over many years of a Britain at that time set in a serene position of peace and harmony at home with a dutiful collection of Dominions and colonies overseas is far from the truth of the immediate pre-war years.

In reality, the notion of a long period of Edwardian prosperity and social peace is not supported by the facts of the period. The government of the Liberal Party had to force through legislation to contain the power of the House of Lords to frustrate the Commons (1911). Trades Unions had engaged in some of the most bitter and protracted industrial disputes between 1910 and 1913, while constitutional issues of Irish Home Rule and a possible insurrection in Ireland (formation of the UVF and Ulster Covenant), were troubling the government of HH Asquith. He also had to contend with insistent campaigns for Women’s Votes in Parliamentary elections. So when the crisis in Europe loomed, ending in the declaration of war by Britain against Germany for her invasion and breach of Belgian neutrality, the government and population diverted their attention from some very intractable issues at home and plunged headlong into a war many had long foreseen as inevitable at some point.

The incident in a faraway corner of SE Europe developed into a stand-off between the great power blocs of Europe, with little Serbia on one side supported by Russia and therefore involving France as Russia’s treaty ally, set against Austria- Hungary and Germany (the Central powers – with Italy, who did not join in the conflict immediately and then later only on the Allied side).

By 28^th July, 1914 Serbia had acceded to all but one of Austria’s demands in response to the assassination of the heir to the Austrian Empire, Arch Duke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo a month before, by Bosnian nationalists and allegedly supported by Serbia.

Austria, encouraged by a militarist administration and army in Germany saw this as the lever to begin a long-planned war to counter perceived threats from the Russian and French power in Europe. War was declared by Austria against Serbia and within days the main nations of Europe were mobilising for war. Britain followed on the 4^th August, after German troops entered Belgium and thus began the greatest conflict to affect the British nation and her colonies.

The Tynemouth Project will mark the forthcoming centenary of the start of that war [2014] and its effects on the population in the coming year in a series of public events and the launch on the internet of the database recording the history of many of the local victims researched over the past three years.

Letter of comfort tells of Jutland disaster

The flow of information to the Tynemouth project continues, with items of interest brought in by relatives of casualties of a conflict 100 years ago. One item produced at the Project workroom recently is a remarkable document which may turn out to be of great significance.

A letter sent to the family of every victim of the loss of HMS Invincible in the crucial naval action at Jutland on 31^st May- 1^st June, 1916, was intended to comfort the more than 1000 families who lost a member in that great engagement which was marked by greater losses in our navy than were inflicted upon the enemy.

HMS Invincible, one of the most powerful ships in the Royal Navy of the time suffered instantaneous destruction when a shell penetrated her armour and set off a fatal explosion in the magazine containing the high explosive charges used to fire her own massive array of guns.

All but 6 of her more than 1000 crew were lost, including Admiral Horace Hood. Some days later a Captain Dannreuther visited Lady Hood and told her of the loss of the ship and his own remarkable escape along with only 5 other men. Thrown from high in one of Invincible’s masts by the fearsome explosion which sent the ship to the bottom in only 10 seconds, Dannreuther’s story was related in a letter sent by Admiral Hood’s widow to the family of every victim; each letter being individually addressed and signed by her. In it she said ‘-and I only hope that this short account will help you as it has helped me’.

15 men on the Tynemouth Roll of Honour were lost at the Jutland battle including

Albert Hold . Only 17 years old, from Eston in the North Riding of Yorkshire, he had been sent to the Training Ship Wellesley moored off North Shields Fish Quay in 1911 aged only 11. He entered the Navy at just 15 in March 1915. The navy did not have restrictions on service at sea in active operations so this young man was one of the victims of the loss of the Invincible after only 13 months as a sailor. His period of forced separation from his family from the age of 11, because he was’ non-compliant’, and short naval career brought a sudden end to what had clearly been a difficult childhood.

We can only wonder what comfort the letter from Lady Hood brought to his mother Martha Hold, a widow in the 1911 census and living at Peel Street in South Bank in1916 at the time of his death - four weeks short of Albert’s 17^th birthday.

Although the letter brought to us relates to William Davey of Byker Bank in Newcastle, we hope to have it available for display at the project exhibition planned for 2014, in the meantime we have alerted the Royal Navy Museum to its existence and are keen to learn whether this is yet one more remarkable and perhaps unique find brought to light by the project’s work.

Alan Fidler

‘Votes for women’ in post-War Britain did not pay the bills

One problem of the aftermath of Great War was how to accommodate the vast ‘army’ of war widows in a rudimentary system of social security; still framed within the concepts of middle class Victorian values.

That war widows were to be held in high esteem was beyond question – they had lost their husbands fighting in a noble cause. Many were left with a number of dependent children and were in need of support – unable to work. The single widows however posed a particular problem as the end of the war approached. With the imposition of the ‘Pre-war measures Act’ – designed by agreement with the male dominated trades unions to force women out of the employment they had enjoyed temporarily whilst men were at the front – it became clear that single widows with a state pension posed a number of threats to the economy.

It had been hoped that the many pre-war domestic servants (dismissed as a luxury) would be re-employed and take up some of the surplus. But the war had changed attitudes irrevocably. The drudgery, long hours and pitiful rewards of domestic service did not attract women who had enjoyed high earnings and consequent freedoms of the booming wartime economy.

The solution was the imposition of a mean-minded system of monitoring to obtain evidence that single widows had forfeited the right to support by behaviour deemed unbecoming of their ‘honoured’ position.

Special committees of the fledgling Ministry of Pensions were established to review the cases of women who came to their attention. Faced by confiscation of their meagre allowances, for ‘immoral or delinquent behaviour’ the situation of these single widows was not comfortable.

Here was a vast group of younger women with years of life ahead of them. Fortunately for the government and a society still dominated by patriarchal middle class values the difficulties of general unemployment meant that many of these young widows found few opportunities open to them – given the restriction of so many occupations to men returning from their ‘heroic’ service at the front.

So, many women, faced with falling foul of the puritanical surveillance of the ‘Boards of Guardians’ opted for re-marriage, often into loveless relationships but acceptance as ‘normal’ members of a society built around a ‘woman’s place in a domestic setting’.

Mary Jane Stagg (formerly Philips) was perhaps one of those who forfeited her widow’s pension on re-marriage (with a gratuity of a lump sum payment) for her re-integration into the norms of a pre-war Edwardian society. Research by the project shows that in June 1919, she was still seeking information about her husband – officially reported killed at Messines Ridge in 1917 but his death not yet confirmed by any witness. With two young children of school age she opted to forego her £1.45 per week widow’s allowance and re-married.

The grant of a vote in the Electoral Reform Act of 1918 was probably of little comfort to her in a society which was busy reasserting male domination of the workplace and relegating women to the home.  

Alan Fidler

Sad demise of the Collingwood Battalions in Belgium and Dardanelles fighting

The Naval Brigades were formed in August, 1914 by Winston Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty. Faced with a surplus of naval reservists both former seamen and RNVR volunteers he decided that a body of men trained to fight on land would be the best use of these willing or committed men - in the absence of any requirement for additional crews.

Two battalions of Royal Marines and six battalions of reservists were formed into two Naval Brigades and transferred to Crystal Palace in London for training and equipping.

The battalions were given names with strong naval associations and maintained naval rank structures but were led by seconded Army commanders. Not held in very high regard by the army, they were first employed on Churchill’s orders in a last ditch effort to reinforce the Belgian army in front of Antwerp, to prevent its falling in to enemy hands. That action was short lived and the only option when Belgian resistance failed was to retreat back towards the North Sea coast. Unfortunately, whether by accident or deliberately (to avoid becoming prisoners of war), the bulk of the Collingwood Battalion –all but 22 men – either crossed over the Dutch border and were interned as aliens for the rest of the war or fell prisoners to the advancing German army.

Withdrawn back to Britain the remnant of Collingwood was augmented back to battalion strength and embodied as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force sent east to exploit a hoped for naval forcing of the Dardanelles straits. An attempt in March, 1915, to force the straits by sea and capture the coast on either side up to Istanbul and the Bosporus, thus knocking Turkey out of the war, failed.

Those members of the War Cabinet intent on a perceived alternative to the now obvious deadlock on the Western front in France and Belgium determined to press on and appointed Sir Ian Hamilton to head a land invasion of the Gallipoli peninsular. After bloody landings on the west side of the barren and rocky neck of the Dardanelles, on 25^th April, 1915, the allies found themselves fighting against well-positioned and courageous defenders. All attempts to advance up the peninsular towards the town of Gallipoli foundered. One such attack, on the 4^th June, led to the almost total annihilation of the officers and many men of the Collingwood Battalion. Badly mauled, the battalion was withdrawn and disbanded - its survivors allocated to other battalions.

Among those killed that day were several men from Tynemouth and a man from South Shields, Wallace Moir Annand, a former student of Armstrong College, Newcastle – then a part of Durham University. Annand had a son Richard born on 4^th November, 1914 who would follow in his father’s footsteps and earn the first VC awarded to a member of the army in the Second World War.

One can only speculate whether if the Nelson battalion had been similarly damaged to the Collingwood it’s illustrious name would have been allowed to disappear from the ranks of the Naval Division.

Alan Fidler