Sacrifice of borough’s families to be publicly marked

'Blue Plaques'

From early in the development of the Tynemouth World War One Commemoration project the idea of placing some recognition of the individual loss of the town’s families, by means of a plaque on the house at which men killed or died were resident, before or during the war, has been under consideration. The necessary work to contact property owners and residents of those houses still standing today has been a complex process. Now, as the centenary of the outbreak of the war approaches we are able to announce that the first of the ‘blue plaques’ we have designed and manufactured will be installed on houses in North Shields in the early part of June, 2014. 

Among the first streets to have plaques installed will be Newcastle Street where 5 casualties of the war lived. The plaque to be placed on 22 Newcastle Street will recognise Colin Miller Jamieson a Second Lieutenant in the 15^th Battalion of the London Regiment – known as The Civil Service Rifles. 

Working in London before the war he had enlisted in another of the regiment’s units - the Artist’s Rifles. Both battalions were a part of the Territorial regiment of London into which men of ability were recruited and who were recognised as potential officers for the future. Educated at Western Board School, Queen Victoria state secondary school on Coach Lane and latterly at Tynemouth High School – the town’s newly built grammar school (opened in 1904) providing the opportunity for boys and girls of ability from all social classes to get an education that would qualify them to seek entry to university. One of 10 children, his parents would have struggled to provide for his need for uniforms and extra requirements of a grammar school education. He went on to become a schoolteacher with South Shields education authority before moving to London. He had enlisted in the territorials in December, 1913 and went to France in March, 1915. Twice wounded he was reported as missing in action on May 21^st 1917 and later presumed killed in action. He is named on the Arras memorial which carries the names of 77 local men killed in action in the battle area who have no known grave. He is also remembered on the Tynemouth High School Roll of Honour Boards which are still in place today in what is now the Queen Alexandra Sixth Form college campus of TyneMet College.

Tickets are still available for the next in our very popular series of talks to be held at 730pm on Tuesday, 27^th May in the Low Lights Tavern, Brewhouse Bank, Fish Quay, North Shields. Ian McArdle MA a regular contributor to these events will recount the experiences of a junior medical officer on the Western Front. Charles Wilson (later Lord Moran) survived the war and went on to become Winston Churchill’s personal physician. Tickets (free) must be obtained in advance and can be got from the Low Lights Tavern, Keel Row Bookshop and the Project workroom at Linskill Centre.

Our Information Centre on Front Street, Tynemouth, next door to the library, showing some of our mini-exhibitions, will be open during the holiday week-end and during the school half-term holiday from 1100 – 1600.

The major public commemorative event we are organising in conjunction with North Tyneside Council to take place in Northumberland Square on 3^rd August from 10am-4pm, with a formal service of remembrance at 2pm will make special provision for relatives of the casualties on the Tynemouth Roll of Honour, Any relative of a casualty who has not been in contact with the project over the past three years as we have published casualties details can contact the project office to register interest in reserved seating for the event, or e-mail to our contact address.

Two events focus on history and consequences of the Great War

The project is supporting the Third Tynemouth (Ritson’s Own) Scout group Open Day from 1-5 pm on Saturday 17^th May, 2014 at their base on Billy Mill Lane near Tynemouth Squash Club and the former Cannon Inn on the Coast Road – access from Lynn Road.

The day will have a focus on Fred Greenacre, who died as a POW in Germany in July, 1918 but who had previously been a significant figure in the establishment of the Scout movement in North Shields. The day will feature the role of Fred and Colonel Ritson, a family owner of the Preston Colliery, who was Lieutenant Colonel of the 16^th Northumberland Fusiliers. This battalion of the regiment was raised in on Tyneside by the Newcastle and Gateshead Incorporated Chamber of Commerce and is one of the battalions commemorated on the famous Response war memorial, which stands in the Haymarket in Newcastle in the grounds of St Thomas the Martyr Church – one of the finest memorials of the First World War. That memorial was funded by the Renwick family, another of the important families on Tyneside, who along with the Ritson family were to play a great part in stimulating and organising the upsurge of local support and recruitment of volunteers for the war. The Ritson family owned three collieries in the North East; at Pontop and Burnhope in the Consett area, as well as the Preston Colliery in North Shields. The miners’ families of Preston colliery paid a heavy price for their sons and fathers and husbands enthusiasm to follow their owner to war - 61 miners from Preston were to die in the war.

The final lecture in our highly acclaimed series, organised in conjunction with the University of Northumbria was delivered by Professor Joanna Bourke of Birkbeck College, London University on Tuesday evening 13^th May, on the subject of Armistice and disability. Professor Bourke’s lecture was a thought-provoking and saddening exposition of the reality of the experience of those who survived the fighting but returned broken in body and/or mind, and who, despite the grand promises of the wartime years, found that they were to be reduced to an inconvenient and burdensome expense in the eyes of governments over the next fifty years. The case history of one North east veteran, Lt. Francis Hopkinson, a son of the Vicar of Whitburn , from a comfortable family of the established middle class was a sobering story of one man’s struggle to receive fair treatment and recognition of the extent of his disability, as he lived out a further 57 years of his life with a severe amputation of his leg, which required three unsuccessful amputations leaving him in mental distress and chronic and daily pain for more than half a century. His case involved numerous unsuccessful attempts to convince the military and pension authorities of the true extent of his disability including shell shock. For Hopkinson and many thousands of others the war never ended up to the day of their deaths, often decades after the war had been reduced in the minds of most people to an episode of early 20^th century history.

The reports just days ago of the rapidly rising numbers of referrals of soldiers who have served recently in Afghanistan or Iraq, for counselling and support for the mental distress and effects of service places a duty upon us today to ensure that those men and women do not suffer the neglect and callous treatment of the more than 80,000 cases of mental disability, related by Professor Bourke in her outstanding presentation, who were still recognised in the 1930s but seen then as an uncomfortable burden for the Exchequer rather than a responsibility to make proper provision for the men and women who had in reality ‘lost their lives’ even if they lived on broken in spirit unable to resume a normal life outside mental institutions. Let us ensure that today we do not fall into the same uncaring indifference to the enduring consequences of the horrific experiences of those young men and women who have been sent to carry out the directions of our governments in the recent past.

Project information “shop” opens in Tynemouth village

New Tynemouth 'Shop'

The Project was delighted to be able to speak with many of the Bank Holiday visitors to Tynemouth Front Street as it opened its information centre to callers on Sunday, 4^th May. The shop is next door to the Tynemouth Branch library and has been made available by North Tyneside Council to help the project promote the many commemorative events planned for the coming months.

Many people from across the region and from further away, who were previously unaware of the project were able to talk with project volunteers staffing the shop and gain an insight into our three years researches which have produced the detailed biography of many of the more than 1700 men of the former Borough of Tynemouth who died as a result of the Great War.

The two days of opening produced a number of valuable new contacts for the project and further information to add to our records will be forthcoming in the coming days.

The shop has displays of two of our small exhibitions featuring the story of the loss of the Pilot Cutter Protector on New Year’s Eve 1916-17 together with the story of the Somme Campaign of 1916 and the enormous human cost to the local community.

Information about all of our forthcoming events is available and prominently featured in the windows providing public awareness on a 24 hour basis.

The shop will be open on week-end days from 1100-1600 and we hope to open every day during school holidays through to the end of August.

As well as a number of the project publications, books focussed on the Great War will be available for purchase and volunteers will be on hand to demonstrate our detailed database which will be launched on the internet .

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Tickets for the play specially commissioned by the project and written by North East playwright Peter Mortimer of Cullercoats are now available from the shop, as well as from Linskill Community Centre reception, North Shields Customer First Centre (library) reception and Keel Row Bookshop, Fenwick Terrace, North Shields. Death at Dawn - a soldier’s tale, telling the story of a young lad, William Hunter from Coronation Street, North Shields, who was executed for military offences in February, 1916 will be directed by Jackie fielding an produced by Cloud Nine Theatre Company at Linskill Community centre in their newly- enhanced and furnished theatre space. Tickets can also be bought on-line from Ticketweb through the project website www.tynemouthworldwarone.org

Tickets for the next in our series of talks at 7.30pm on Tuesday, 27^th May at the renowned Low Lights Tavern, Brewhouse Bank, Fish Quay, North Shields are now available from the Keel Row Bookshop and the project workroom at Linskill Centre. Ian McArdle, who has delivered a number of our talks will relate the experiences of a young doctor in the conflict in his talk entitled: Charles Wilson – a young doctor on the Western Front. Wilson went on to become Lord Moran and personal physician to Winston Churchill in later years.

The final lecture in the series organised in conjunction with the University of Northumbria will be delivered by Professor Joanna Bourke of Birkbeck College, London University on the subject of Armistice and disability telling of the outcome of four years of terrible fighting which and consequences for many of the survivors and their families for decades after the fighting ceased. The lecture will be given at 6.15pm on Tuesday, 13^th May at the City Campus East at Northumbria – opposite Manors Metro station – parking available from 5pm (charged).

ANZAC anniversary prompts new contacts across the globe

ANZAC anniversary

The power of modern communications has been an enormous benefit to the work of the Tynemouth project. Recently the nations of Australia and New Zealand marked the 99^th anniversary of the ill-fated landings by the ANZAC Corps on the Dardanelles peninsular, as their contribution to the plans of the Allies to seize the channel giving access to the Black Sea and thus force the Ottoman Turks to withdraw from the war and thus it was believed weaken the Austro-Hungarian and German alliance of which the Turks held the eastern flank.

The experience of that campaign is credited with forging the national identity of both those newly emergent Dominions of the then British Empire. Each year at dawn on the 25^th of April a vast number of the current populations of both countries gather in silent vigils to remember the heavy losses of the fledgling nations and as a collective affirmation of their sense of who they are.

As a part of those national commemorations many of the millions of current day Australians with family connections to the ‘mother country’ are reminded of their own family history and the contribution of grandfathers and others to the combined military effort that was the tragedy of the Great War.

A recent posting on Facebook in Australia by a relative of Rufus Brooksbank who died of his wounds aged only 21 on 7^th July, 1916, having been struck down in the ill-fated advance of the Tyneside Irish Brigade in front of La Boiselle on the opening day of the Somme campaign, has brought together a number of his descendants who were unaware of the work of the project.

Two years ago the News Guardian featured Rufus Brooksbanks’ name as part of the weekly listing of casualties by the paper which was so helpful in making connections today for the project and which was picked up across the world in 2012 by two of his descendants who got in touch. They were able to provide some interesting family memorabilia about Rufus and his only daughter who was born just five days after his death in a military hospital. Now, alerted by a story from a social media posting two more relatives have become aware of the project and the work we have been carrying out. His granddaughter was abroad when her brother made contact with us in 2012 and did not learn of the project until just 6 days ago. We have now received additional information to add to Rufus’ entry in our database and which will be available, with the more 1700 biographies of local casualties we have researched, on the internet from 28^th June, 2014.

The last lecture in our very popular series held in conjunction with Northumbria University will be given by Professor Joanna Bourke of Birkbeck College, London University who will conclude this acclaimed 8 part programme looking at the aftermath of the war in a lecture entitled ‘Armistice and Disability’. The lecture begins at 6.15pm on Tuesday 13^th May, 2014 at the City Campus East site of Northumbria University (opposite manors Metro Station) with parking (charged) available from 5pm).