Wakefield in the Great War, page 17
For the beleaguered police force, war brought a huge increase in workload at a time when trained officers were in short supply. As early as 6 August, the Yorkshire Post complained of panic buying of everything, including petrol, adding ‘more than likely that the police will have something to say to motorists selfish enough to lay in stocks beyond their requirements.’ The police, though, had more than enough on their hands without measuring the contents of petrol tanks. To the fears of German spies poisoning water supplies was added an order that all stackyards where harvested crops were stored were to be patrolled by a constable at night to prevent damage. According to the West Riding Standing Committee at County Hall, ‘It was quite possible that a stack fire might be caused by some of the King’s enemies who were unfortunately still allowed to reside in the United Kingdom’.
All police leave in August 1914 was cancelled as they struggled to keep control of the usual run of the mill pre-war offences and the sudden increase in criminal behaviour as more and more every day activities fell foul of a new piece of legislation which was passed almost unnoticed as an emergency measure a few days after the declaration of war. It began as a simple paragraph published in the London Gazette:
(1) His Majesty in Council has power during the continuance of the present war to issue regulations as to the powers and duties of the Admiralty and Army Council, and of the members of His Majesty’s forces, and other persons acting in His behalf, for securing the public safety and the defence of the realm; and may, by such regulations, authorise the trial by courts martial and punishment of persons contravening any of the provisions of such regulations designed -
(a) To prevent persons communicating with the enemy or obtaining information for that purpose or any purpose calculated to jeopardise the success of the operations of any of His Majesty’s forces or to assist the enemy; or
(b) To secure the safety of any means of communication, or of railways, docks or harbours; in like manner as if such persons were subject to military law and had on active service committed an offence under section 5 of the Army Act.
(2) This Act may be cited as the Defence of the Realm Act, 1914.
The Defence of the Realm Act – or DORA as it was generally known – was to govern the lives of every man, woman and child in the country for the next four years, granting draconian powers to control virtually all aspects of daily life. As Sir John Hammerton, editor of the wartime periodical The Great War: The Standard History of the All-Europe Conflict, explained:
In other words, the military authorities could arrest any persons they pleased and, after court martial, inflict any sentence on them short of death. In addition, the military authorities were allowed to demand the whole or part of the output of any factory or workshop they required. They were also allowed to take any land they needed. This, in effect, made the civil administration of the country entirely subservient to the military administration.
In the coming years, DORA would come to dominate British life. People could be arrested and even imprisoned for setting off fireworks, speaking in a foreign language on the telephone, owning pigeons without a licence or harming a pigeon that didn’t belong to them. A man went to prison for sending a box of matches by post, another for buying his wife a drink. Whistling in the street meant a trip to court, as would feeding a slice of bread to the ducks in the park. DORA had, for example, made loitering near a railway bridge a criminal offence and a potentially dangerous one. At the end of the first week of war, the Yorkshire Post reported an incident in Newcastle when a man carrying an attache case approached a bridge and was challenged by an armed soldier. The man ran to a nearby boat and got in. The military patrol got into another and gave chase, eventually shooting the man who died from his wounds. In October, Mr J.S. Sanderson, of Clifton House, Ossett, wrote to the Ossett Observer claiming to have seen strange flashes in the sky over two nights. ‘Are they,’ he wondered, ‘pre-arranged signals between members of the German Secret Service Corps?’ The police were asked to investigate. Almost as a foretaste of anti-immigrant claims a century later, the West Riding Standing Joint Committee heard from the Distress Committee about the risk of German spies hiding among the refugees flooding into the country and asked the police to take precautions. The Chairman replied that he thought that ‘under existing war conditions the police had as much as they could do.’ Having the police interrogate all refugees was going beyond their powers. The police, already struggling to put enough men on the beat to cover everything, politely pointed out that even if they did manage to intercept a group of plotters, armed with nothing more than truncheons there was not much they could do against armed agents. Meeting in Wakefield on 16 September, the Standing Committee for the West Riding agreed and put aside £1,255 for the purchase of revolvers, holsters and ammunition for the police. As Reverend L.B. Morris explained, this would help the police guard waterworks and other property from German agents, arguing it would be impossible for the police to defend themselves armed with ‘nothing but walking sticks’.
Most annoying of all DORA’s many rules for Wakefield folk were the ones governing where, when and with whom a man could drink. Concerns about alcoholism on a national level had been growing for years and were a particular problem in the industrial towns of the north. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, had led the campaign against what he saw as a national dependence on alcohol, claiming that Britain was ‘fighting Germans, Austrians and Drink, and as far as I can see the greatest of these foes is Drink.’ As a result, DORA immediately allowed for restrictions to be put in place to curb drinking by placing all pubs near naval dockyards, barracks and arms factories under the control of the military commander of the area. Before the war, pubs had been open for over 19 hours a day, from around 5.00am until half past midnight. Many men were used to going for a pint on the way to work but that was not always a good idea for munitions workers. DORA reduced opening hours to just twice a day at 12.00 noon to 2.30pm and 6.30 to 9.30pm. Over the next four years, Wakefield police would fight a cat and mouse battle with local landlords to enforce DORA’s many alcohol related offences.
Regular reports of out of hours drinking appeared in the local papers, usually leading to hefty fines for offenders. Former Wakefield Trinity player Thomas Newbould, landlord of the Spotted Leopard, in January 1916 was summonsed after Inspector Dakin heard noise coming from the pub in the early hours of the morning. Climbing on the window so he could see inside, Dakin watched Newbould serve three men with drinks. ‘Newbould at first denied having served beer, later he claimed them as lodgers and finally he said he had been a fool.’ He was fined a massive £50 or faced three months in prison and each of the drinkers £10 or one month. In another incident later in the year, police went into the Cardigan Arms in West Ardsley. ‘Two police officers in plain clothes entered the “best room” of the house about about 10.20. [Arthur Bedford, from Batley] was playing the piano, and behind an advertisement card on top of the instrument the police found two glasses of beer. One of the officers picked up a glass, and Bedford jumped up, saying “heigh, hold hard, that’s mine”. Then, turning around and recognising to whom he was speaking, he at once bolted through the door.’ Bedford was fined £2 and pub landlord Walter Lammas £10. It was not just publicans. Joseph Stones, owner of an off licence in Normanton, was fined £2 or the option of a month in prison for ‘selling beer to an amount exceeding the measure asked for.’ He had served a customer with a ‘long pull’ pint that gave almost an extra 3 ounces of beer in what the magistrate condemned as ‘a deliberate offence’.
DORA also put an end to the buying of rounds by making it illegal to order a drink for anyone else – the infamous ‘no treating’ rule. Under the rule, a man taking his wife out for the evening was not allowed to buy her a sherry under penalty of a fine, and questions were asked by delivery drivers about whether the ban extended to their mules, who had sometimes become used to having a pint as a treat during their rounds. As one driver put it, ‘I’ve never seen one the worse for drink.’ Undercover police officers regularly patrolled pubs to ensure that no-one ever bought a pint for someone else. In one case, a man was challenged at the bar when he was seen with three pints in front of him. Having claimed they were all his, the officer accepted his excuse – but stood alongside him until he had drunk all three of them.
Coming out of the pub at closing time, refreshed drinkers faced darkened streets and the occasional accident was reported. Fear of Zeppelin raids had led to the introduction of a blackout and the police were tasked to enforce it. The problem was that exactly what was expected was unclear. In April 1915, a motorist checked with a Barnsley police inspector that his headlights were properly covered before he set out on a journey to Leeds. Arriving in Wakefield, he was pulled over by a policeman who told him that his lights needed to be dimmed and actually turned out when passing through the city. A short time later he was pulled over by another officer who told him ‘your lights are out’ and watched the driver relight his headlamps. Checking the policeman was happy, the motorist set off again only to be flagged down by a police inspector a few streets later because he thought the lights were now too bright. After explaining what had happened, the inspector decided the lights were ‘passable’. Unfortunately, Wakefield policeman number four didn’t agree, stopping the car again and telling him ‘you can’t pass me and go through to Leeds with lights like them there.’ In desperation, the driver bought some gummed paper and used it to shield the lamps and finally made it to Leeds without further problems. His frustration was shared later in the year by a Sheffield cutlery manufacturer who was summonsed at Wakefield for having powerful headlights on his car. In a letter to the court, Percy Potter complained about ‘the variation in the lighting orders in force in different districts, and went on to say “had we travelled without lights and run over the constable, who stepped in front of the car, nobody would have been to blame; it would have been simply a verdict of “accidental death”. But as it would have cost more to bury the constable than to pay, I prefer to pay.’ He was fined £5 including costs.
Chasing drinkers who lingered too long after closing, motorists who tried to drive at night, householders who showed lights at night, monitoring foreigners, protecting food and water supplies and a multitude of other wartime tasks had been added to a job that had been difficult enough to start with. It was about to get worse.
By 1917, German submarines were preying on merchant ships bringing food supplies to Britain and the campaign was being highly successful, especially in cutting off imports of such staples as wheat from America and Canada. As a result, food shortages became severe and, once again, DORA was invoked to bring in rationing and to prevent food waste. Allowing a slice of bread to go mouldy became a criminal offence and feeding bread to pets or livestock could land the offender in court for a severe fine or even imprisonment. A widely reported case highlighted how seriously food was taken and was watched with interest by the Yorkshire press: When Mrs Hobson of Sheffield died in 1918, her son William decided, apparently against his late mother’s wishes, to throw what the Court later called ‘the usual party’ after the funeral and asked his brother-in-law, Albert Kramer, a local pork butcher, to cater for it. The party ended and everyone went home. A week later, William and Albert were arrested and charged under the Defence of the Realm Act with wasting bread. The story emerged in court: William’s sister, Sarah Day, lived a few doors away from her mother and had refused to attend the party. There was what was described as ‘a lot of bad blood’ between them and, a week after the party, Mrs Day had gone to her mother’s old home and allegedly found a loaf of bread that had gone mouldy. She immediately reported this to Inspector Thomas Toye of the Food Control Committee who visited the house and declared the loaf inedible and therefore wasted. It was enough to have both William and Albert arrested and potentially facing imprisonment but when the matter reached Sheffield Police Court in February, the case against Kramer was quickly dropped and the argument centred on whose bread it actually was. William insisted that when he left the house, he had looked around and there was no bread on the table. He also claimed that he did not know that his sister had a key. Unable to prove that Sarah had not placed the loaf in the house in order to get back at her brother, the magistrates gave up and dismissed the case, but trials for food wasting and hoarding were increasingly common as neighbour watched neighbour for signs that they had more than their fair share.
Often following reports from jealous fellow citizens, food hoarders were dragged before the courts by the police on behalf of the Food Control Committee. Wakefield seems to have managed better than many areas by not having its first case brought to court until December 1917 when Alice Wood, of Doncaster Road, was found to have over 27lbs of tea stored in her home along with 17lbs of sugar. It was, the magistrates decided, an amount ‘exceeding the quantity required for ordinary use and consumption’ by Mrs Wood, her husband and their daughter. Further prosecutions followed as the war dragged on with Carl Andrassy, a former pork butcher who had been forced out of his business at Keighley early in the war being fined £20 and costs for hoarding 17lbs of beef dripping. Elsewhere, John Preston, of Northgate, was charged under the Rabbit (Prices) Order for selling rabbits at 2s-3d instead of the 1s-9d fixed price allowed by law. He was sentenced to a fine of £10 or face two months in prison. Cases were brought over ‘adulterated milk’ that had been watered down and for sales of meat that was perhaps politely described as past its best. Even when not selling poor quality food or overcharging customers, shopkeepers needed to take care. George Mercer, of Horbury, was fined 19s-6d for selling a pie at 9.20pm in breach of a new ‘Early Closing Order’ introduced in October 1916, forcing shops to close at 8.00pm unless they were selling ‘newly cooked’ food. George’s pies, although cooked that day, were deemed not to be ‘provisions in a hot or nearly hot state’ and meant ‘for immediate consumption’. A test case in Bradford argued about whether tripe was ‘newly cooked’ after a judge bought some on his way home one evening. Another argued that cold cooked meats should be exempted. In Todmorden a shopkeeper argued that his pies had been cooked that day and so were ‘newly cooked’ but had a harder time convincing the court that his ‘ice cake’ counted as ‘hot or nearly hot’.
As shopkeepers found their opening hours forcibly reduced, the law was also used to try to make others work harder since one of the problems facing production was absenteeism, common across all industries before and during the war. It was claimed that refitting naval ships actually slowed down once war was declared because there was plenty of overtime available and men could earn the equivalent of their weekly wage by working a few days over the weekend. Many then took advantage of the fact and took the rest of the week off. In response, the Ministry of Munitions set up special ‘Munitions Courts’ to try cases of absenteeism or poor discipline among essential war workers. Leeds and Sheffield both set up specific courts but Wakefield’s cases were dealt with alongside criminal cases in the city courts.
In June 1915, Frank Townend and John Dale, both from Stanley, appeared to answer a charge of absenteeism from Kilner & Sons bottle manufacturers. It was said that the two men failed to arrive for work, leaving ‘a man and two boys to play’ as 173 dozen bottles were spoilt. Their employer wanted £4-8s from each of them to cover the losses they had caused. The bottles, it was argued, were needed to supply the army and the prosecution said that although the two men only worked five days a week and earned good money, they frequently failed to show up for work and went drinking instead. Both men claimed to have been ill but the court refused to accept their excuse, awarding compensation and 9s-6d in costs. The director of the firm said that he was already losing £100 a week because of the number of employees who had enlisted and the defendants knew it but ‘yet they insisted on absenting themselves from work in order to go drinking.’ Another case in October 1915, saw five men from Glasshoughton in Castleford summonsed to court for absenteeism and fined 32s each – the cost of the wages they would have earned. The court heard that in the first year of war alone Glasshoughton pit had already lost almost 1,000 men to the army and that production was badly affected. Since April, it was reported, of the 1,062 men employed at the pit, 375 had worked no more than four shifts per week and the mine had lost 37,363 working days through absenteeism running at 23 per cent of the workforce as opposed to the 5 per cent agreed as being a reasonable rate for all reasons. April saw shortages of coal in London and by the end of the year, domestic coal became rationed. The comments of the Yorkshire Miners Association were that the local men did not realise the national situation. Those who did were extremely worried.
By 1917, all charges such as ‘Using Abusive Language’ at work, ‘Interfering with Other Workmen’ and ‘Losing Time’ could attract a £1 fine as week after week the Munitions Court sat alongside the police courts and anyone deemed to not be pulling their weight could find themselves turned into a convicted criminal. Usually, these matters were dealt with at a local level but any offence under DORA could be tried by court martial and, in theory at least, if it was deemed that they were committed with the intention of helping the enemy, the penalty could be death. In reality, no cases ever went that far and few people believed they ever would, but the draconian measures of DORA allowed for it. DORA also attempted to determine how people should think. For a variety of reasons, not everyone fully supported the war. Strikes were as widespread as the offers to work over holidays to maintain production. For those with family serving overseas the behaviour of some trade unions was seen as self serving in the extreme. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, for example, were openly mocked during their many strikes and it was claimed that sometimes not even those striking knew why they were out.
