Wakefield in the Great War, page 18
Trades Unions and leftist politicians had opposed the war from the outset but had largely muted their objections once the war started, but an active anti-war movement continued. They held protests and meetings and even set up an escape route for those attempting to avoid military service by fleeing to Ireland where the political situation meant that Conscription would not be enforced. Huddersfield and the surrounding area was considered by the government as ‘a hotbed of pacifism’ and Wakefield had its own share of dissenters. In July 1916, Normanton miner George Sharp was brought to Wakefield Court and charged under DORA with ‘making a statement likely to prejudice recruiting, discipline or the administration of His Majesty’s Forces.’ Superintendent Jackson explained how George Madley, a soldier who had enlisted in 1914 but who had later been discharged after losing an arm, had returned home from hospital recently. Sharp had asked how he was going on and when Madley told him ‘I’m all right, I only lost a wing’. Sharp ‘thereupon said, “What ******* good are you now? What do married men want to go for?” at the same time pointing to the empty sleeve. Madley replied, “to fight for single ones”. Sharp then said “You were not forced to go” and on Madley remarking “No, I went to fight for my King and country”, Sharp said “**** the King and country. What will the King and country do for you now?” A man named McHale came up and told Sharp he ought to be ashamed of himself and defendant and McHale then got to fighting.’ Admitting he was the worse for beer, Sharp said he ‘might have said a few words that were not right, but he was not a pro-German. He would have been willing to fight himself but he had a father and mother and two young brothers to keep’. With no fewer than nineteen previous convictions, Sharp was sentenced to a month’s hard labour and ordered to pay £2-2s-6d or face a further month in jail. The bench, it was noted, ‘thought he had been playing the game very low.’
With their fathers away, moral guardians worried about the growing levels of juvenile crime. A conference in Liverpool expressed concerns about the influence of cinema on young minds, leading cinema owners to argue that the issue should be taken up with the makers of ‘questionable pictures’ rather than blaming those who showed them. Censorship was considered but left to local authorities to decide what could or could not be shown in local picture houses. The rise in juvenile crime, cinema owners said, was ‘solely to war conditions’ and that cinemas had, in fact, done more to ‘help the cause of temperance than all the restrictions of the Control Board.’ In Huddersfield, a notorious group of youngsters formed themselves into the ‘Clutching Hand Gang’ and Wakefield, determined to clamp down on young offenders, began to hand out severe sentences. In November 1917, 13-year-old Willie Scarfe, of New Street, was hauled before the court. His father was away in Egypt and the court heard that young Willie was ‘out of control’. After stealing 8s-4d from his mother, Willie went on a spree in Leeds, spending some of the money on ‘pies and chocolates and finished up at a picture show’. He was found about midnight halfway between Leeds and Wakefield. He was committed to an Industrial School (a juvenile offender unit) until he was 16.
Child-related offences of a different kind were also increasingly common. It was an open secret that any woman finding herself ‘in trouble’ could find help at certain addresses in Leeds, but the help was illegal and potentially dangerous. In October 1915, an inquest opened on the death of Fanny Hill, the 36-year-old wife of boot repairer Abraham, of Streethouse. In the court was Jane Seggar from New Wortley in Leeds, arrested on suspicion ‘of having performed an illegal operation’. Sarah Alton admitted she had given Fanny Seggar’s name and address and was under the impression that Seggar was ‘a lady doctor and that her husband was a medical man’. A verdict of ‘wilful murder’ was returned. Fortunately for Seggar, the murder charge was later reduced and, when the evidence was unclear when Mrs Hill actually developed the blood poisoning that killed her, she was acquitted.
Despite the number of men going overseas, violent crime continued to be a problem, sometimes for strange reasons. In June 1918, Harry Norton of Providence Street was fined £10 or told to face two months’ custody for assaulting Roland Haigh, a mechanic working at the Vickers plant in Sheffield, and visiting his home on Albion Street for the weekend. On Saturday night, Haigh was walking home from Fieldhead when Norton suddenly accused him of being a German who had escaped from Lofthouse Camp. Despite Haigh’s denial, Norton set about attacking him with his walking stick and breaking his glasses. Appearing in court, Norton pleaded guilty and his solicitor explained that ‘he was under the impression that complainant was a German … he had served in France, where he had lost an eye, and had been discharged from the army with a good character.’ Exactly why he decided Haigh might be an escaped prisoner was never explained.
With ever more trivial crimes filling the courts and papers, from time to time serious crimes grabbed the headlines. On 10 August 1915, 24-year-old Barnsley miner Walter Marriott was hanged at Wakefield prison for the murder of his wife in June of that year. In December, hangman Henry Pierrepoint (father of the famous Albert Pierrepoint) returned for the executions of Harry Thompson on 22 December for the Honley murder of soldier’s wife Alice Kaye, and again a week later for former army cook John McCartney for the murder of a woman in Pocklington. McCartney had the dubious distinction of being the last man to be executed in Wakefield gaol. Shortly afterwards, the prison was emptied to make room for the establishment of the Wakefield Work Centre for Conscientious Objectors. It was argued that Wakefield prison could be used because there was now room because the crime rate had fallen.
Despite the national crisis, people carried on as they always had. Some good, some bad. As historian Gordon Corrigan has pointed out, the war may have taken the brightest and the best, but alongside them it also took wife beaters, child molesters, drug abusers and petty crooks. Crimes great and small were as much part of life in wartime Wakefield as they are today. No doubt some of those whose names appear in the court listings of the Express in the twenty-first century are the descendants of those whose names were there a hundred years ago, maintaining a family tradition of sorts. Finally, on the very last day of the war, Wakefield Court were sitting to hear the case of Emma Jane Parsons, of Normanton, who had refused to leave the grounds of Woodhouse Council School and used ‘violent and abusive language’. In September, a teacher had ‘chastised’ her child for disobedience and Mrs Parsons went to the school saying she would ‘wipe the floor with the thing that had struck her child’ and shouted abuse at school staff. She was sentenced to a fine of 15s or seven days in jail. Life in Wakefield was getting back to normal …
CHAPTER 8
Keep the Home Fires Burning
The Great War was a war of attrition. Put simply, whoever could outlast the other would win. For centuries, Britain had used its powerful Royal Navy to blockade its enemies, preventing food and war materials reaching them until they could no longer maintain their armies in the field but this time things would be different. Germany, too, had a powerful navy and in particular a fleet of submarines capable of roaming the seas almost at will. The English Channel, which had acted as a protective moat against invasion, was no barrier to Germany’s airships or later to its ‘Gotha’ bombers, and British homes were no longer safe. For the first time, total war would create a new battlefield – the Home Front.
News of the outbreak of war was met with a nationwide spate of frantic buying. Prices rocketed as supplies dwindled and Leeds was reported to be gripped by what was almost a panic caused by the sudden rise in food prices. Alarmed by the thought of possible shortages, many people rushed heedlessly to buy more than they required of flour, bacon and other provisions. Thus a complete dislocation of supplies threatened until, after a day or two, the government regulated the position. There were the fears of unemployment, too; there were doubts as to the instant effect on commerce and industry; there were difficulties foreshadowed by the calling-up of men in the police force and in the various municipal services.
By the end of Wednesday, 5 August, the local shops had sold all their stocks of flour and some were still filled with shoppers 2 hours after normal closing time. Flour prices rose from 1s-11d to 2s-6d per stone in two days and bakers quickly passed on the price rise to their customers. Elsewhere, all other goods saw similar rises, with sugar leaping up by as much as 7d per pound in a few days (equivalent to a rise of over £2.20 in 2016). ‘This rise’, noted Sir John Hammerton, editor of the Great War periodical published throughout the war, ‘fell most heavily on small and struggling retailers in poor districts, who could not afford to keep large stocks. As a result they had to increase prices for their customers, and the poorer classes were made to pay.’ Soon, rumours of food riots and the looting of shops spread and the growing panic was only stopped by government intervention. After meeting with representatives of the large grocery firms and the Grocer’s Federation, maximum retail prices were set for certain foods and a huge supply of sugar was compulsorily purchased by the government for sale at a fixed price.
Banks closed immediately to prevent a run on gold reserves and only re-opened on Friday to allow wages to be paid. Hasty legislation had been put in place to prevent individuals making large withdrawals and the papers all carried an announcement that ‘banks reopened and there was nothing in the nature of a panic … The issue by the government of the £1 and 10s notes will be a big relief to the gold. The notes were issued in London yesterday and some were received by the Yorkshire Penny Bank from their head offices in London … The alteration from coins to paper money will make no difference. The notes will be offered and accepted in payment just the same as gold and should be treated by the public with the same confidence. Wages paid in paper will have exactly the same purchasing power as if paid in gold and workers need have no hesitation in accepting them … The new £1 notes are printed on small slips of paper 2½in by 5in. They bear the following wording printed in Old English type:
These notes are a legal tender for a payment of any amount. Issued by the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury under authority of Act of Parliament
ONE POUND
(Sd) John Bradbury
Secretary to the Treasury
On the left hand side they bear the King’s portrait amid ornamentation encircled by the inscription “Georgius V DG Britt Om Rex FD Ind Imp”. The notes are printed on white paper, watermarked with the royal cipher.’
Businesses went on to short-time working and export orders were abandoned. Slowly, though, the situation settled and life began to get back to some sort of normality, but things would never be the same again. The early years of the twentieth century had seen a growing anti-immigrant feeling as thousands of people fled the oppressive regimes in eastern Europe. Those who could afford to had made the journey to a new life in America but many had settled in Britain. Very few towns were without at least one German pork butcher’s shop and most had several. Mr Joynson-Hicks, MP for Brentford, already had something of a reputation for being anti-semitic, telling his Jewish hosts after his election to Parliament that he ‘had beaten them all thoroughly and soundly and was no longer their servant.’ In response to the outbreak of war, he turned his attention to the issue of how to deal with foreigners living in Britain: ‘I do not move my Amendment with any hostility to the Germans in our midst. For many years England has been the home of foreigners, but I think they should be the first to realise that our first duty is to protect ourselves, and I would rather that irreparable damage should be done to any individual or individuals rather than our country should be placed in danger even for a moment. There are a very large number of aliens registered in this country at the present time. On the 9th September the Home Secretary gave us some figures, and he told us that there were 50,633 alien Germans registered in this country, and 16,014 Austrians. If we were to add 10 per cent. for non-registration up to that date, then we should get a total of over 73,000 alien enemies. I know it is a very difficult matter to say that A or B is a spy, nor could the German or the French say that A or B was a spy before they found him out. I think we are entitled to consider here what happened in the case of France and Belgium. There they have found a complete system of espionage. Soldiers, sailors, policemen, telephonists, tram drivers, professional men of every kind, and men of every class in the working life of France and, Belgium have turned out to be spies. Any officer or soldier who has returned from the front will tell you that those countries have been infested with spies. Now England is a greater enemy to Germany than either France or Belgium. The enmity of Germany is more directed against us at the present time and has been for some years past, than against Belgium or France … On the other hand, England has been the easiest country to enter, and therefore it is fair to assume that as we are considered the greatest enemy of Germany and as ours is the easiest country to enter, we have a larger number of spies than either Belgium or France. You may say that this does not matter unless Germany invades us, but we must prepare for eventualities. Personally, I am not one of those who think that we shall be invaded, but we must prepare for eventualities. If there is no possibility of invasion, why is the Government providing against it? Why are trenches, wire entanglements and other reasonable precautions which sane men would take to protect us being prepared by our military advisers? I think those who are responsible for dealing with the spy question should take the same steps to protect the country against the possibility of trouble from spies as the military authorities are doing … I have a return here, not of Germans who are registered to-day, but of Germans who were registered in the Census returns three years ago, and it shows a very small proportion of people registered then as Germans compared with the number of Germans we now find to be in the country. I think I am right in saying that in England and Wales alone there were only about 13,800 as given in the Census returns, whereas now we know that there are something like 56,000. Of that number an enormous proportion were in Kent, Sussex, Essex particularly, and Yorkshire – all those counties along the East Coast of England. Hon. Members may laugh, but why did those men go and settle there, unless it was with some intention of being useful to their own friends if and when the day came, possibly even of an invasion of Great Britain. The Home Secretary has always been an optimist. He dealt with this matter last Session in the most optimistic spirit. He told us that nobody had been shot.’
Newspapers encouraged their readers to check the papers of anyone claiming to be Swiss or whose accent sounded vaguely Germanic with the Daily Mail claiming that German agent waiters might poison soup or barbers might slit their customers throats. As the hysteria reached its peak, German Shepherd dogs became ‘Alsatians’ and German Measles was renamed ‘Belgian Flush’. Assistants at Boots the chemist explained to customers that the eau de Cologne they sold was made in Britain and had nothing to do with the city. Dachshunds were attacked in the streets and allegedly even killed when mobs cited them as ‘proof’ that someone was a German agent. Lord Haldane, whose efforts to modernise the British army had done much to make it ready for war, came under a barrage of abuse in the press as a German sympathiser because his dog was named Kaiser.
Just a week after the outbreak of war, Bernard Desser, of Brook Street, was brought before magistrates for having failed to register. He had been living in England for twenty-eight years, six of them in Wakefield but found himself remanded in jail with bail refused. In October, 23-year-old Carlisle man Hermann William Otto was sent to prison for three months for failing to register when the court decided that despite being born in England and ‘having always considered himself an Englishman’, he was, in fact, German. Under the terms of the 1870 Naturalization Act, any woman marrying a foreign national took on his nationality, as did their children. Overnight, hundreds of British-born people who had never travelled far beyond their own county found themselves foreigners in their own homes – or as rabble rousers called them, ‘hunwives’. The situation was rectified by the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914 which became law in January 1915 and removed the automatic loss of status, but for a time even the children of naturalised British subjects might not be legally classified as British if they had not been included in the father’s application for citizenship.
An editorial in The Times of 25 August told readers that ‘many Germans still in London are unquestionably agents of the German government, however loose the tie may be … They had in their possession arms, wireless telegraph apparatus, aeroplane equipment, motor-cars, carrier pigeons and other material that might be useful to the belligerent … It has been remarked by the observant that German tradesmen’s shops are frequently to be found in close proximity to vulnerable points in the chain of London’s communications such as railway bridges … The German barber seems to have little time for sabotage. He is chiefly engaged in removing the “Kaiser” moustaches of his compatriots. They cannot, however, part with the evidences of their nationality altogether, for the tell-tale hair of the Teuton will show the world that new Smith is but old Schmidt writ small.’ The issue was further complicated when Belgian refugees fleeing the fighting began arriving in Britain. Forced out of their homes, thousands of refugees had flooded westward and by the end of 1914 an estimated 250,000 had arrived at the port of Folkestone with around 16,000 arriving on 14 October 1914 alone. Soon, housing Belgian refugees became not just a valuable service, but in some areas almost a competitive sport as various committees and local worthies threw themselves into helping the ‘plucky Belgians’.
