Book 13: L is for Letters

Letters From the Trenches: A Soldier of the Great War by Bill Lamin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A quick and easy read, this book is a spin off from a blog on which Bill Lamin posted a series of letters sent by his grandfather during World War I in "real time" 90 years after they were first sent. The book combines the letters with extracts from the war diary of Harry Lamin's regiment and biographical details of his grandfather and his family. The letters were written by Harry to his brother Jack and sister Kate and run from early in 1917 when Harry was conscripted through to his final demobilisation in January 1920. Harry fought at Ypres and Passchendaele before being sent to the Italian front where he remained through the end of the war and its aftermath. His letters were simple and often repetitive, but when set in the context of the regimental diary it becomes clear just how understated they were - he described the hell that was Passchendaele as "a bit rough". Overall, a fascinating insight into World War I as seen through the eyes of an ordinary soldier from a Nottinghamshire village.

For more reviews visit 52 Books in 52 Weeks

The Poor Laws

I have had to do quite a bit of research on the Poor Laws lately, first for my archive course and then to give a talk at work, and have found it fascinating. Before this, the little I knew about provision for the poor was that unemployment benefit (in certain circumstances) and old age pensions were introduced in the early 20th century and expanded into more generous payments with the introduction of the Welfare State in the 1940s. I kind of assumed that before that there were workhouses for the most destitute but otherwise the poor were pretty much left to sink or swim. I was wrong. In fact, England has had a formal system of provision for the poor for over 400 years. While it is fresh in my mind, I thought I would jot down the outline of the history of the Poor Laws. If you like history, carry on reading. If not, feel free to skip!

The original English Poor Law (different laws applied in Scotland) was introduced in 1597 and replaced in 1601 with a Poor Law that lasted for over 200 years. Under this "Old" Poor Law parishes were responsible for providing for the poor and needy within their bounds. Each parish appointed overseers of the poor to dispense relief as necessary, and all property holders within the parish had to pay a compulsory Poor Rate to finance it. Most parishes had some sort of poorhouse or workhouse where paupers unable to support themselves (mainly the old, the sick and children) could live - the standard of these varied widely, and could be pretty grim - but most support for the poor was given as cash payments, either to replace earnings for those unable to work or to supplement inadequate earnings. This interesting article about research based on records in the archive where I work estimates that in the late 18th century the elderly could receive pensions from the poor rate amounting to as much as 70% of the typical labourer's income.

By the late 18th and early 19th century the cost of providing for the poor was rising under the pressure of economic changes, bad harvests and the Napoleonic wars, and economic theorists began to argue that providing poor relief undermined the labour market and people's willingness and ability to provide for themselves (the concept of "scroungers" is not a new one!). By 1834 these ideas had become mainstream and triggered the introduction of a New Poor Law, which was intended to deter all but the most destitute from claiming relief. The New Poor Law tried to standardise provision for the poor through a central Poor Law Board that issued instructions to local Poor Law Unions which combined all the parishes in a local area. Each Union was expected to build a workhouse to accommodate all paupers within its boundaries. Workhouses were supposed to be as unappealing as possible, with a bland diet, no luxuries whatsoever, uniform clothing, hard and demeaning work (breaking stones and picking apart old ropes were common tasks), and the separation of families. Cash payments to paupers were supposed to end and those unable to support themselves were supposed to have no option but to enter the workhouse. In practice, this was never the way it worked. Workhouses were generally unpleasant places, though rarely as bad as Charles Dickens painted them (think Oliver Twist!), but payments continued to be made to many paupers living in their own homes. Local Boards of Guardians, who ran the Poor Law Unions, tended to resent central interference and to ignore or only partially implement instructions from the Poor Law Board. Putting a family into the workhouse was far more expensive than simply giving them help to stay in their own home, and in times of high unemployment forcing all paupers into the workhouse would have been impossible. In the end most workhouse inmates were those unable to work - the old, the sick, the incapable and children. The workhouse carried a terrible stigma and for the elderly the idea that they may have to end their days in the workhouse was a matter of dread.

The Poor Law came to an end in 1930 and was replaced first by provision for the poor through County and Borough Councils and after World War II by a centralised Welfare State. Most of the workhouses continued to be used for related purposes, either as hospitals for the poor or old people's homes, and many were eventually taken over by the National Health Service - in fact, I wonder whether the NHS would have been feasible in its existing form without the network of infrastructure it inherited from the Poor Law Unions.

A Letter From Jamaica

I have been meaning to tell this story for a while, and I hope I can still remember it accurately - I think I can, as it is pretty memorable. Among the documents in boxes of assorted "stuff" I am listing at the archive, was a letter sent by an English expatriate living in Jamaica in the 1780s. At some point a typed transcription had been made, which I read through. I forget the name of the correspondent, so I'll call him Mr. Smith. The letter told his life story over the previous several years, beginning when he was living in Philadelphia. Here is the gist of it:

The letter began by asking the recipient to pass on news of him to his mother, should she still be alive. Mr. Smith had had no contact with her for many years, having "taken umbrage" at her refusal to allow a certain Miss Polly Topping to join him in Philadephia. As an Englishman he naturally supported the British during the War of Independence (and wanted it known that he would do the same again, whatever the cost!). When the American army reached Philadelphia he was evacuated with no notice, leaving most of his property behind - though he did manage to take a fair amount of cash and valuables. From Philadelphia he went to New York, where he set up in business as a store owner, with considerable success thanks to an affluent patron.

Yet again, as an Englishman and supporter of the British, Mr. Smith found himself on the wrong end of the war, and left by boat for Newfoundland, Canada. After a hair-raising journey, duirng which the captain was killed standing next to him, and which ended with a near shipwreck and the passengers clinging to the sides of the boat in various states of undress, he started up in business again. He found Newfoundland too cold, however, and moved on again, this time to the more congenial climate of Jamaica - he waxed lyrical about this and about the fruits that grew on the island. Yet again, he got a successful business going, and chartered a boat to collect his family and goods from the other side of the island. Unfortunately a tremendous hurricane arrived along with the boat, and though the captain had tried to wait out the storm some miles from shore, the boat was wrecked along with dozens of others, drowning most of those on board. He listed some of the passengers, including a "good negro woman" and his nine year old natural son, and describes searching through the dead bodies on the shore, but it isn't clear if the woman and boy are among those who died.

The letter ends on a slightly querulous note, telling the recipient not to speak harshly about the illegitimate child, as "for every ten men here that lives with a woman, one does not" (in other words, everybody does it!).

Doesn't it read like a potential film script?

7 Quick Takes: 5th November

Please to remember the Fifth of November,
Gunpowder Treason and Plot.
We know no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

As today is November 5th and I have been reading Gunpowder Plots: a Celebration of 400 Years of Bonfire Night (various authors) this week, I'm going to make this seven quick Bonfire Night takes:

1. Bonfire Night commemorates the failure in 1605 of a plot by Catholic conspirators to blow up the House of Lords during the opening of parliament, when the King and Queen, their oldest son, and the entire membership of parliament (lords and commons) would have been present.

2. The conspirators hid 36 barrels of gunpowder in a cellar underneath the House of Lords. Estimates of the amount of gunpowder range from 2,000 pounds to 10,000 pounds, but as Antonia Fraser puts it: "no one has ever disputed that this was more than enough to blow the House of Lords and its wretched denizens sky-high". This was would-be terrorism on a grand scale, which would have killed hundreds (or thousands if the fire spread) and would have wiped out the entire English government in one stroke.

3. Guy Fawkes (or Guido, as he was known after living in Spain for many years) was caught in the act of laying a slow fuse which would have allowed him to time to escape between lighting the fuse and the subsequent explosion. His capture earned him a fame (or infamy?) that has lasted to the present day, and made him one of the best known names in English history. The custom of burning an effigy of "the Guy" on bonfires appeared in the eighteenth century and still continues.

4. The plot was discovered after Lord Monteagle, who had Catholic connections, showed the king's chief minister Robert Cecil a letter he had been sent warning him not to attend the opening of parliament. Conspiracy theorists have suggested that Cecil was aware of the plot from early on, but there is no good historical evidence for this. It is considered likely, however, that Lord Monteagle had been told about the plot, and actually wrote the letter himself as a way of winning favour at court.

5. Perhaps the most unfortunate figure of the whole sorry episode was Henry Garnet, a Catholic priest and leader of the Jesuits in England. Father Garnet became aware of the plot when he was consulted by a priest who heard the confession of one of the conspirators. Horrified by what he heard, he tried to make clear his disapproval of the treason that was being planned, but bound by the seal of confession he could not disclose the plot to the authorities. In the aftermath he was arrested and sentenced to death by hanging, drawing and quartering.

6. Dramatic as the events were at the time, it is odd on the face of it that "Gunpowder Treason Day" has survived so long as a public celebration, when other equally dramatic events did not (why no Armada Day celebrations, for instance?). In the book David Cressy argues that it has survived because it has adapted to changing political and cultural needs. At various times it has been a celebration of the survival of the Stuart monarchy, a justification of the Church of England, an outlet for anti-Catholicism, a worthy communal celebration, an opportunity to vent political feeling, an excuse for a riot, and an opportunity for boys to play with fireworks.

7. The Yeoman of the Guard (the Queen's ceremonial bodyguard) still carry out a search of the cellars of the Palace of Westminster before the State Opening of Parliament, a duty dating back to the late seventeenth century when there were rumours of a second gunpowder plot.

From the Records: Deaf and Dumb

I thought I'd start a series of "from the records" posts to pass on any interesting snippets I find as I trawl through the archives. Before I start, I had better give my village a name - I don't want to use the real name as it is a little too close to home, so I think I'll call it "Bucksbury" to denote a random village in Buckinghamshire. Not very imaginative, but it will do.

The 19th century census records have space to indicate whether an individual is deaf and dumb, blind, an imbecile, or insane. Today I noticed a young family living in Bucksbury in 1871 - mother, father, and two boys aged three and one, both deaf and dumb from birth. I wondered about the prognosis for a child born deaf in those days. I guessed it wasn't good.

As it turned out, I was too pessimistic. When I searched later census records for the boys I found that they both did fine. In 1881 the older boy, Arthur, was being educated at an asylum for poor deaf and dumb children at Margate in Kent - a new branch of the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, the first English charitable institution for the deaf, dating back to 1792. It is still in existence as the Royal School for Deaf Children, Margate. By 1891 Arthur was back in Bucksbury with his family and working for his father, who at that time was combining the trades of baker and carpenter.  By 1901 Arthur was a carpenter and wheelwright in a town close to Bucksbury. He was married and had a two year old son, Bernard. Like Arthur, his wife Alice was deaf and dumb; Bernard was not.

I couldn't find the second brother, William, on the 1881 census. He wasn't living at home, so my guess he was also receiving special education for the deaf. In 1891 he was lodging with a middle aged widow and her children and working as a farm labourer. By 1901 he was married with three young children, living in the same town as his brother, and working for a coach painter. His wife and children were all able to hear.

Arthur and William's parents went on to have at least eight more children, all hearing apart from the youngest, Percy, born twenty-seven years after his eldest brother and like him deaf and dumb from birth. Presumably there was a genetic reason for the three boys' deafness, though whether it appeared in other generations of the family, I don't know. None of their father William's siblings were deaf, but I couldn't trace their mother's family.

Historical Research

Realising how excited I felt about the idea of getting back to teaching history got me all enthusiastic about doing some historical research again - something I haven't done since I finished my doctoral thesis, back before Star was born. I wanted a project. Something big enough to get my teeth into, but not so big it would be overwhelming.

My background is medieval history, and my doctoral research was a study of twelfth and thirteenth century knights. When I finished I planned on starting more work in the same field, and decided to translate and edit a thirteenth century cartulary (book of charters). I even had it photocopied, at some expense. The copy has sat gathering dust, untouched for the past ten years. I thought rather guiltily about picking that up again, but decided against on two grounds: to produce an academic edition I would need to spend a fair amount of time doing research in London or Oxford-based libraries and archives, which isn't practical; and even if it was, I can't summon up the enthusiasm to immerse myself in medieval Latin.

So, back to the drawing board and a change of direction. Another interest of mine is local history, which has the advantage of being ... well ... local. Doing research in either the local library or the county records office twenty minutes away is far more manageable.  Rural history interests me more than the towns, as that is my family background - lots of Victorian farm labourers in my family tree - and I have a fair idea of what information is available from doing genealogy research. Once I started to thinking along these lines I realised I had an obvious subject - the parish where I lived in as a child, just a couple of miles away from our home. 

A few years ago I dabbled a little in house history, trying to find out what I could about the seventeenth century farmhouse where I grew up. I wasn't very successful, but in digging around at the record office I found an unusually detailed map of the area dating from the late eighteenth century. This thing is huge, measuring around six feet by four feet - table sized - and shows who farmed every single strip of land before the common fields were enclosed.  Add this map (and some other estate papers) to the more commonly available records like censuses and parish registers, and there is a lot of material to work with.

My plan is to put together a "prosopographical" study of the parish, starting in the mid-eighteenth century and ending after the First World War. Prosopography is a historical technique best explained as "group biography". It is a way of looking at the mass of people from the past for whom there simply isn't enough information to put together an individual biography. Collecting and analysing data about a defined group makes it possible to piece together a kind of collective biography that can then be used to answer particular historical questions. Similar methods can be used to look at very different groups, and it should work just as well for nineteenth century villagers as for medieval knights.

Although I am going to look at a specific local area, it isn't really local history as such, as the point of this type of study is eventually to be able to put the results into a wider historical context and answer - or at least help to answer - bigger questions. That means a ton of background reading to really understand the context. To start with, though, it means lots of nitty-gritty data collecting and organising. Which is why I have spent the past couple of weeks copying census records into spreadsheets. Although my family suspect borderline insanity, it makes me happy, in a slightly masochistic sort of way (2,500 entries down, another 1,000 to go, and that's just for starters).

70 Years Ago

Seventy years ago today Britain and France declared war on Germany, two days after Hitler invaded Poland. The first shots of World War II were fired in Danzig (now Gdansk), the home city of Tevye's father, who managed to leave just a few months earlier, followed by his brother barely a month before the outbreak of war.

Listen to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's radio broadcast announcing the declaration of war here.

Churchill's Astrologer

This is kind of old news, as it was reported in the press a year ago when the relevant files were made public, but I only just discovered it ... did you know that during World War II MI5 (the internal intelligence agency in the UK) employed an astrologer? Partly to pass on intelligence about certain clients who were under investigation, but also to try to predict Hitler's plans on the assumption that he was following astrological advice.

Weird, but if you are into Catholic literature it gets stranger, as there is a high chance you will have come across books written by MI5's official astrologer. So who was he?

Louis de Wohl.

I read and enjoyed a couple of his books a while ago - fictionalised biographies of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo - and was searching for the title of his book on St. Helena, thinking it would be an interesting follow up to Evelyn Waugh's book about her ... and what did Google throw up? A whole series of articles about de Wohl's wartime career.

Oh. My. Goodness. Not what I was expecting at all!

Now, I'm not posting this to put anyone off reading his books, but purely out of interest in a rather extraordinary story. So far as I can discern, de Wohl "got religion" after the war, dropped out of astrology (if, in fact, he was ever genuinely into it in the first place) and into writing Catholic fiction. From what I found, he would be a fascinating subject for a full scale biography. I dug around a bit, and patched together this potted version ...

Louis de Wohl was born Ludwig von Wohl in 1903 in Berlin to a Hungarian father from a minor aristocratic family and an Austrian mother. He claimed his family were Catholic, but there is some suspicion that he was Jewish, or part-Jewish, and that his origins were the real reason he left Germany for Britain in 1935. He himself said he left because he could no longer stand Hitler and living in a country whose laws he could not respect. He had a brief career in banking before becoming a writer of popular novels and serials.

When the war broke out in 1939, he volunteered to serve in the British forces, but as a German national was declined. In 1940 he managed to coax MI5 into employing him as an astrologer, with the rank of Captain. His handler described him as "extraordinarily clever" and a "brilliant propagandist"In 1941 he was sent to America by the Special Operations Executive in an attempt to undermine the feeling that Hitler was invincible and to encourage pro-war sentiment. MI5 agents had very mixed feelings about de Wohl and some suspected he was a fake. An MI5 minute written in February 1942 says: "De Wohl is somewhat of a thorn in my side…a complete charlatan with a mysterious, if not murky past…struts about in the uniform of a British Army Captain and gives every reason for believing that he is in some secret employment…he is likely to be guided solely by his vanity…there is no case for interning him…if…left at large it is essential that we should keep a close tag on him…". Another described him as a "bumptious seeker after notoriety". Despite de Wohl's claims that Hitler was receiving astrological advice, it is now known that he was not.

Louis de Wohl's wartime experiences led him to rediscover his early faith. He became a committed Catholic and decided his writing career must change direction. In his own words:

Another seven years would pass before the late Cardinal of Milan, Ildefonso Schuster, would tell me: "Let your writings be good. For your writings you will one day be judged." But already then I knew that I had to undergo a radical change as a writer, and I knew that I had to make up for many years of time lost. I did not vow, like Franz Werfel, to write the life of some special saint if I would get out of the war alive. I just decided to serve God.

He began to write biographies of saints. His claimed his book on St. Thomas Aquinas was written at the direction of Pope Pius XII, who later told him to write about "the history and mission of the Church in the world". Is this true, I wonder? In the 1950s he lived for some time in the United States, married a German novelist, and moved to Switzerland where he died in 1961.

Fellow astrologer Felix Jay knew Louis de Wohl for twenty years and his recollections paint a picture of a charismatic man who combined self-aggrandisement and fantasy with real likeability. Jay strongly doubted that de Wohl was ever a real astrologer, although books he wrote on the subject are still quoted in astrological texts. He also thought his autobiographical snippets were suspect. This is his description of de Wohl in 1938, when they first met:

He occupied a large room in the hotel littered with books, papers in complete confusion, a large desk covered with all sorts of mementoes and framed and signed photographs and the inevitable leather cases of big cigars. Most objects of daily use were engraved with a baronial coat of arms. He was a man of medium height, but appeared to be much taller when sitting like an archduke in a high chair. More often than not he wore a flowing robe or a silken dressing gown. Everything around him oozed baroque or rococo opulence: he loved luxury of the peculiar Michael Arlen brand, and was surrounded by a Sydney Greenstreet aura of questionable taste, this serving not only to impress the visitor but most likely to generate in his own mind an illusion of grandeur ... He behaved initially like a duke giving audience to a petitioner. This attitude underwent a gradual change and another Louis began to emerge: smiling, humourous, sometimes puckish, sparkling. One felt happy in his company. His mind seemed to be receptive to any new fact or idea, and while giving the impression of dispensing his graces freely, he, in fact, drew from others all the time for information, ideas, facts, and useful items.

He was apparently genuinely affluent, with his writer's income supplemented by wealthy astrological clients (he charged 30 guineas for a horoscope, the equivalent of £800 today) and gambling. He had a talent for making a little knowledge go a long way, and for making full use of his contacts ... he didn't invent the myth that Hitler had an astrologer, but he certainly exploited it in his own interests. Interestingly, Jay thought that de Wohl's claim that his wartime role was as an astrologer was false - "I found it increasingly difficult to believe that the British High Command would consult an enemy-alien astrologer" - but the MI5 files show de Wohl was telling the truth. Jay clearly liked de Wohl as a man, but his verdict on him as an astrologer was damning:

Did Louis de Wohl believe in astrology? Did he regard it as an esoteric or scientific discipline? I must confess that after the end of the War, I began to doubt it: he could talk of his practice in the same superficial and often brilliant manner as of any other matter, be it women, card games, a new fashion or the shortage of cigars. I came to the conclusion that Louis, after his conversion to astrology, had seen in it quite early certain definite material advantages: in the first place it enlarged the already substantial impression he made upon his prospective rich and titled clientele whose company gave an added prop to his ego, and in the second place he saw endless opportunities for, 'selling' expensive horoscopes.

On the other hand, he seems in no doubt that Louis underwent a genuine religious conversion. When he first visited him after the war:

To my surprise, instead of an astrological conversation ... I was submitted to a religious homily, and looking around the room I saw crucifixes and religious prints and other objects. Louis had either been converted to, or had returned to, Roman Catholicism, and his monologues, which in the past had been spiced with the names of the worldly high and mighty, now contained references to bishops, abbots and saints.

Fascinating stuff!

Sources
Independent and Guardian articles describing de Wohl's wartime career
Brief autobiography at CatholicAuthors.com
National Archives
The Louis de Wohl I Knew by astrologer Felix Jay.

On Writing History

I have often come across people wanting to know whether a particular history book is accurate, or wondering whether a book is "Catholic", with the implication that if it is not, then it must be faulty.

Reality is not so simple. Very few history books (if any!) are 100% factually correct - however much a historian checks references they are likely to miss something, and survey texts based on the writings of other historians are particularly tricky as errors can easily be perpetuated. Moving beyond the facts, history is subjective. It is the historian's attempt to interpret the past, weaving the facts into a credible story of how things might have been. Different stories of the same time and place are not mutually exclusive, and two very different interpretations can both give an accurate picture because they are looking through a different lens. Both are true, as far as they go.

I am reading Yiddish Civilisation by Paul Kriwaczek, who summarises this beautifully in an explanation of why he has chosen to write about the positive history of the Yiddish nation and to largely gloss over the more commonly told story of persecution and catastrophe ...

Being neither a learned Jew nor a professional historian, I do believe that there is another story to tell. Not an exclusive story, for no story has a monopoly on the truth and many different narratives can be picked out of the same materials. None contain all, but all contain some, of the almost overwhelming, confusing, apparently random profligacy of fact and conjecture, evidence and guesswork. Picking a narrative out of history is like choosing a path through the woods. To decide on any one route between the trees means abandoning all others, to tell one story is to leave all others untold.

I wish I had written that!

Window Tax

I should have explained my throw away comment in the post below.

A tax on windows (effectively a glass tax) was introduced at the end of the 17th century and lasted through to the 19th. The amount payable depended on the number of windows in a house. As a result, windows were sometimes blocked up in order to reduce the amount of tax payable.

Lest We Forget

Today is Remembrance Sunday - the nearest Sunday to November 11th (Armistice Day, when the First World War ended) and the day on which Britain remembers its war dead. Every city, town and village in the country has its war memorial, listing the names of those who died in the First and Second World Wars. The lists of names are long, particularly for the First World War. Today wreaths of poppies were laid at them all, and a two minute silence kept.


My father and all his family came from the village of Stewkley, Buckinghamshire. Courtesy of the Roll of Honour website, here are the names of those from the village who lost their lives. The population in the early 20th century was a little over 1,000. In the First World War thirty young men were killed, and a further six in the Second. Heartbreaking.

First World War

• Albert Ashpool, killed in action May 1915 (aged 21)
• Arthur Beasley, killed in action November 1917
• W.J.Beasley (no information)
• George Russell Cannings, killed in action September 1916 (aged 30)
• Fred E. Cheshire, died of wounds December 1917
  
• William John Cheshire, killed in action June 1917 (aged 35)
• Harry Dickens, died in United Kingdom January 1915 (aged 18)
• Albert Richard Hall, died 14 November 1918 - three days after Armistice (aged 38)
• William Hogston, died in United Kingdom September 1917 (aged 20)
• Claude Cressy Horsley, died of wounds November 1917 (aged 35)
• William George Illing, killed in action July 1916 (aged 21)
• Leonard Keen, killed in action November 1914 (aged 31)
• Sidney Keen, killed in action July 1916
• Chester Winterbon Kilby, killed in action March 1918 (aged 35)
• Henry Knight, killed in action August 1915
  
• Arthur William Mead, died September 1916 (aged 20)
• Bertram Frederick Mead, killed in action August 1917 (aged 21)
• John Mead, killed in action April 1918 (aged 26)
• Albert Edward Moxon, killed in action February 1918 (aged 19)
• Frederick Pitkin, died in South Africa, November 1916
• George Roadknight, killed in action, October 1915
• J. Smith (no information)
• Bruce Swinton Smith-Masters M.C., killed in action July 1916 (aged 24)
• George Arthur Smith-Masters, killed in action, August 1915 (aged 20) - brother of Bruce
• Frederick Thomas Stonhill, killed in action, March 1917 (aged 29)
• George Syrett, died July 1919 (aged 24)
• William Syrett, died September 1918
• William H.Syrett, died June 1920 (aged 27)
• Percy William Tofield, killed in action August 1916 (aged 24)
• John Henry Willis, killed in action April 1918

Second World War

• Raymond Ivor Brewer, died September 1940 (aged 25)
• Theodore Frederick Faulkner, died March 1943 (aged 42)
• Edward James Jones, died July 1944 (aged 22)
• Leonard James Mead, died June 1943 (aged 23)
• Eric Ernest Robinson, died October 1944 (aged 23)
• F.A.Wilson (no information)

Three of the First World War casualties died after the end of the war. George and William Syrett, who died in 1919 an 1920, both originally served in the Royal Army Service Corps and subsequently transferred to the Northumberland Fusiliers. I wonder why and where they died?

For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon

Historical Ponderings

I have been pondering the attraction of history ... more specifically, the attraction certain aspects of history hold for individuals. Why does one person obsess on Egyptology, or become fascinated by the American Civil War, or spend their weekends living as an Anglo-Saxon, or read everything they can about the French Revolution? Why that time and place and not another? I took a sample of two: myself and Tevye.

I love history. There are few aspects of history - any time or place - that I wouldn't find at least somewhat interesting, but there are two that particularly catch my imagination: the middle ages (specifically the twelfth and thirteenth centuries), and the early twentieth century (Edwardian England and the First World War). I spent ten years as a student and teacher of medieval history. Why? Initially my interest was piqued by an inspirational history teacher when I was a teenager. She taught an A-level course on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but began with a lively survey of medieval England to give us some background. I remember enjoying visits to medieval castles and cathedrals. I read historical fiction set in the period, and gradually the interest crystalised. When I had the opportunity to go to university in my late twenties I chose a history course that allowed me to concentrate almost entirely on the middle ages. The British university system goes for depth rather than breadth, and most students study a single subject for their entire three years at university - I took this to an extreme. As I learned more, I focused on the twelth and thirteenth centuries, the "high middle ages". I love the way this period combines both familiarity and difference to someone looking back from our modern perspective. The roots of parliament, universities and our legal system are all found in the high middle ages, and was a sense of religious, intellectual and social confidence. In the fourteenth century everything went bad. Wars, famines, pestilence (the Black Death and further outbreaks of plague wiped out a third or more of the population of Europe), economic collapse ... it had the lot. I'm a natural optimist, so the optimistic, expansive centuries before interest me more.

The interest in the Edwardians and the First World War is a more recent one, though again the initial trigger came in my teens when I watched a TV dramatisation of Vera Brittain's autobiography, Testament of Youth. I read the book, and have re-read it a couple of times since. Although it is more distant, in some ways the First World War is more "real" to me than the Second, because it is more connected to my family history. My parents were lucky enough to be just the wrong age for World War II - they were only seventeen when the war finished, so not old enough to fight. My paternal grandfather fought in the trenches of World War I and was gassed; I also have a great-great-uncle's war issue New Testament, dated 1916. Perhaps surprisingly for an optimist the pathos of the war grips me, all the more so since becoming a mother ... all those young men lost. In every village and town there is a war memorial as a visible reminder, with lists of names - far more from the First War than the Second, often with several sharing the same surname. There is the sense of an innocence lost and the ending of era ... which is where I go back to the Edwardians, fascinated by that last flowering of another self-confident society, before it collapsed in the mud and blood if the trenches.

Tevye is a different matter. History really is not his thing. Yet even he found an aspect of history that caught his imagination: Martin Luther King and the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. In his case a couple of things gelled together: snippets he picked up on a coast-to-coast trip across the States in his early twenties, and his personal experience of apartheid when visiting relatives in South Africa. "Whites only" beaches and waiting rooms horrified him, and he was also touched by his father's anger and frustration after witnessing a Rosa Parkes type incident on a bus in Cape Town.

I'd be very interested to learn what times and places touch you, and why. If you want to share, please leave a comment, or better still a blog post!

More Cornish History

Writing about the Jewish history of Penzance sent my thoughts off on a Cornish rabbit trail. I have been doing some more internet research and plan to bore you with the details share the results with you over the next few days. (This is a random, eclectic sort of blog, right? You enjoy the element of surprise, yes?)

During my pre- and early-teens my great-uncle was the Methodist minister at St. Just in Cornwall. (Look on a map, find the most westerly point of England - Lands End - and work up the coast a few miles). We spent many holidays there, and the area made a deep impression on me - so much so that I have had a hankering to live there ever since. When we were there we always attended Uncle's church, and being a very visual person who struggles dreadfully with aural learning I spent a lot of time reading the memorial plaques on the wall while the sermon washed over me. One particularly poignant one was a memorial to a mine disaster in the area, with substantial loss of life. For some reason this came back to me while I was thinking about Cornwall, and I decided to see if I could find out the background - what happened, and when.

I could find no record of the actual plaque on the internet, and concluded that it must have referred to one of two calamitous mining accidents that took place in the locality. The St. Just area has a long history of tin mining, and the area around St. Just is dotted with old engine houses and air shafts, all now in disrepair. It was a precarious industry, both economically, with periods of boom and bust (it is now irretrievably bust), and physically, with a high risk of accidents. In addition to the normal risks of mining, the proximity to the sea added another. The picture below shows the Botallack mine, perched on the cliffs over the Atlantic.

Picture: PZNow

The first accident took place at Wheal Owles mine near Botallack in 1893. Forty-one men and boys were working underground when there was an accidental breakthrough into a flooded, adjacent mine. Twenty were drowned. This report on one man's heroism was included in The Cornishman:

Five miners were saved by the efforts of one “Farmer” Hall who had been working with two boys at a stope in the 55 level. When he saw the sides shaking and gravel falling he realised the water had broken through from the old workings he called to the 2 boys to follow him and shouted a warning to two men working a short distance away. Hall found a tram-wagon, put one of the boys in it & told the others to hold on to him and each other and headed off at speed into the darkness. They overhauled another miner on the way and Hall told him to run on before them. To make matters worse, the boy jumped out of the wagon and fell down an 18ft cavity. He climbed up the side and when within reach was grabbed by one of the other miners, James Williams and pulled out. With the others scaling the shaft- side ladders , Hall went to see if he could find anyone else. He briefly spoke to others some distance away and below him. But then there was silence from their direction. “Farmer” Hall was the last man to leave Wheal Owles. (Source: West Penwith Resources)

A contemporary dialect poem The Flooding of Wheal Owles describes the disaster:

..Tellee about Wheal Owles, sir—the flooded Cornish mine!
’Ow the waters chuck’d the levels where the sun don’t never shine;
’Ow the twenty men are lyin’—stark, lifeless, lumps of clay,
Where the rushin’ torrent wash’d thum when the rock-wall brawk away ...

My hunch is that this was the disaster commemorated in the Methodist Chapel as a centenary memorial service was held there in 1993 and it was geographically nearer to St. Just.

The other possibility is the Levant Mine disaster of 1919, when 31 men were killed by the collapse of a "man engine", a kind of primitive lift (elevator). This extract from a full report in The Cornishman and Cornish Telegraph describes the contraption and the effect of its failure:

"The tragedy was the work of an instance. Something snapped - perhaps an iron cap or bolt - and what as been described as a living pillar of men, dropped down the man engine shaft, crushing many to death, mangling more with debris of breaking wood and metal - the beam of the man engine, the ladder ways in the side of the main shaft, and the platforms cut in the side of the shaft. Imagine square wood beams 40 feet long, braced together in long stems and held perpendicularly 1,800 feet in height in a mine shaft. Jutting out of this beam which moves up twelve feet and then down twelve feet like the Cornish pump which raises the water and drains the mine, are steps. On each step was a man, and from 130 to 150 were standing as a human pillar on this structure, or waiting on the side platforms to take the next step, as they ascended from their work. About twelve had stepped off in safety on reaching the surface. When the man engine ascends and is at the top of the stroke as on Monday (the men having completed their day's work about 2-30 p.m.), the machine was practically full of men, each one, as it were standing above the head of the other on the projecting step. An instant later all these miners would have stepped off and paused on the side platforms, or sollors, for the next up lift of the engine. That instant meant life or death to thirty or more men. The scene was indescribable. The rod released from its top cracked in several places, and the structure crashed down in a mass of debris. As its foot was at the bottom of the shaft it could only have dropped the twelve feet if it had not snapped in other places. The worst chokage was in the upper part of the shaft."

This disaster was still in living memory in the days of mass TV. These extracts from a 1969 BBC documentary are available online: a description of life at the mine (including a visual showing how the man engine worked), and a widowed mother recalling the day her husband did not return home. The Cornishman article includes a list of those killed and injured. The dead included many men with dependents; saddest of all was the widower whose wife had died a few months earlier leaving eleven children orphaned.

The Levant Mine is now owned by the National Trust, and a restored steam engine can be seen in operation there.

The Jews of Penzance

While I am on a Jewish history roll ...

I have loved Cornwall since I was a child, and Tevye and I have been talking seriously about eventually retiring there, probably to the town of Penzance (if you want to know why, take a look at the view in my blog header. Also, who could resist a place with a name meaning "Holy Headland"?). It is important to us that wherever we live there must be a synagogue within reasonable driving distance, so we did a bit of internet searching to check out the local Jewish community. We found that there is indeed a small but active community in Cornwall, but rather to our surprise we also discovered that Penzance itself has a Jewish history.

The Jewish community of Penzance dated back to the eighteenth century, attracted despite the town's remote location by the commercial life of its port. The community's heyday was the first half of the nineteenth century, and a synagogue was built in 1807. By the middle of the century membership was declining, and for some time the synagogue was kept viable only by the large family of the rabbi. It became increasingly difficult to form a minyan (the ten adult men necessary for a full service to take place), and often only scaled down services could be held. The last AGM and the last wedding both took place in 1892. For many years a single congregant - the son of the former rabbi - kept the synagogue open, praying there alone on the High Holy Days. He finally left in 1913 and the building was sold to the Plymouth Brethren. Today, all that is left as a physical reminder of the Jewish past of Penzance is its unusually well preserved Jewish cemetery.

Picture: Gravestone of Jacob James Hart (English Heritage)

A couple of nice snippets of information ... the Jews of Cornwall referred colloquially to London as Makom Lamed - the "L-place"! Also, a Jewish trader from Penzance with the wonderful name of Lemon Hart produced his own brand of rum, which is still available today. You can even buy it online. (Not that I would want to. Loathesome, vile tasting stuff!)

Source of information: JCR-UK

A Little Jewish History

A colleague of Tevye's recently spent a few days in Budapest, where she discovered an unusual tourist attraction - the Great Synagogue, reputed to be the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest in the world. Anticipating Tevye's interest, she brought him back a postcard, and I have been meaning to find out more about it ever since.


Built in the nineteenth century, it is an extraordinary mix of architectural styles (Moorish, Byzantine and Gothic), and is impressive both inside and out. It was badly damaged by bombing in World War II and was restored in the 1990s, with the restoration largely funded by the cosmetics queen, Estée Lauder, herself a Hungarian Jew.


In the early 1940s the Jewish population of Budapest was 246,000, or whom nearly half died in the holocaust. The number of survivors was much higher than elsewhere in Europe because Hungary sided with Germany and was not occupied until March 1944. It was only after this that the Jews of Budapest were forced into a ghetto and subjected to the murderous attentions of the Nazis. Many were protected by the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who issued them with Swedish identity documents. Today the Jewish population of Budapest is around 80,000, the largest Jewish community in eastern Europe.

Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was born in a house next door to the synagogue. The house no longer exists, but the plot is now the site of a Jewish Museum.

Counterknowledge

I have just finished reading Counterknowledge by Damian Thompson, a leading British Catholic journalist and author of the Holy Smoke blog at the Daily Telegraph. The muddling of fact with fiction and the sloppy confusion of science and philosophy bug me, so I enjoyed the book. He examines why and how ideas that would once have been the province of cultists and fringe eccentrics have become mainstream, and debunks various aspects of pseudohistory (the "marriage" of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, China's "discovery" of America, the origins of western civilisation in "black Egypt", conspiracy theories), and pseudoscience ("creation science", alternative medicine, nutritionism). His debunking of individual topics is sketchy as it is a short book and his aim is an overview of the whole "counterknowledge" phenomenon, but I have seen enough of pseudohistory up close to need very little convincing. As a medieval historian I have no doubt whatsoever that the "Holy Blood and Holy Grail" genre is utter tosh, and any "science" that fails to back its claims with solid evidence raises instant red flags for me.

Thompson ends by making the point that while we generally do ourselves little or no damage by believing counterknowledge, there are areas in it can be very dangerous - for example Islamic "creationism" is making scientific discovery and progress virtually impossible in the Muslim world, and "nutritionism" has encouraged AIDS denial and the refusal of the South African government to use antiretroviral drugs, for example.

If you want a thorough debunking of The Da Vinci Code, or a reasoned discussion of the arguments for theistic evolution (to give just two examples), this is not the place to look, but as an overview of the rise of subjective opinion at the expense of objective fact it is an interesting read.

Salford Hall

I mentioned that the hotel we stayed at last weekend was a historian's paradise. As is the internet, which allowed me to pad out the information I found out at the time.

The oldest part of Salford Hall was built c.1470 as a guesthouse for Evesham Abbey. (Given its name I assume the village where it stands - Abbot's Salford - was originally a manor owned by the abbots of Evesham.) After the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the property passed into the king's hands and was sold for private use. In the later years of the sixteenth century the owners, the Stanford family, built a large stone extension. Looking at the plan below (from the Victoria County History, at British History Online), the row of rooms on the right including the kitchen are the oldest section of the building, and the centre and left the Tudor part. The medieval chapel on the east side of the original house was replaced by one in the new section.


I couldn't find much information about the Stanfords, but they were obviously a Catholic family during penal times (the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). Interestingly, the Stanfords built part of their hall in the shape of an "E" - the chapel and rooms behind it, with the shape more obvious in reality than on the plan. This was a common feature of Tudor buildings, in honour of the Queen. Did the family become Catholic later? Or were they loyal to the Queen despite her anti-Catholic policies? They certainly found themselves at the sharp end of persecution at some point as the hall contains a priest's hole, where priests could hide from the authorities. Any Catholic priest captured was automatically considered to be guilty of treason.

I managed to find the cupboard supposed to contain the hidey hole, but wasn't at all convinced I was in the right place, as it was so clearly just a shallow cupboard.

I am, apparently, easily fooled. If a hidden peg is removed, the shelves swing back and reveal the hiding place.


I was thrilled to find the pictures above and this description online. Without them I would still be puzzling over whether there really was a priest's hole, or whether it was just a piece of historical fiction.

Up in the garret is the "priest's hole", ready, it would seem, for some present emergency, so well is it concealed and in such perfect working order; and even when it's position is pointed out, nothing is to be seen but the most innocent-looking of cupboards. By removing a hidden peg, however, the whole back of it, shelves and all, swings backwards into a dismal recess some four feet in depth. This deceitful swing door may be secured on the inside by a stout wooden bolt provided for that purpose. (from Secret Chambers and Hiding Places by Allan Fea)

The Catholic history of Salford Hall doesn't end there. During the early seventeenth century, a Catholic convent was founded in Flanders for a group of English nuns (including a direct descendant of St. Thomas More). The nuns were imprisoned during the French Revolution, but eventually managed to escape to England where they were housed at Salford Hall. They lived at the hall for over thirty years until they had enough money to buy Stanbrook Abbey.

After the nuns left in 1838, Salford Hall was left empty apart from caretakers and short term leases for 150 years, until it was renovated and turned into a hotel. The former chapel is now part of the dining room. Looking at the plan, I can see that the table where we ate dinner was where the altar once stood.

The Turin Shroud

I have been using iPlayer to catch up with various TV programmes I missed over Easter. One was a new BBC documentary about the Shroud of Turin, the cloth impregnated with markings indicating it was the burial cloth of a crucified man, and long believed to be the burial cloth of Christ. It was pretty interesting, so I thought I'd share the programme's findings.

You may know that back in the 1980s radio carbon dating seemed to identify the Shroud as a medieval fake, dating the fabric to the early fourteenth century. This programme pursued mainly historical rather than scientific evidence, which convincingly dates the Shroud much earlier. Here is the gist of the evidence ...

• Documentary evidence shows that there was a Shroud believed to be the Shroud of Jesus in Constantinople in the twelfth century. It disappeared during the sack of Constinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Shroud of Turin is known to have appeared in the mid fourteenth century in a French village. The knight who owned the Shroud was the descendent of a crusader who took part in the Fourth Crusade.
• The Shroud of Turin can be shown to have fold marks consistent with being kept in a display mechanism that would tally with the way in which the Constantinople Shroud was displayed.
  
• Scientific evidence shows that the Shroud bears real blood stains, of blood shed in both life and death. These blood stains are Group AB, the rarest of the main blood types.
  
• There is another relic believed to have covered the face of Christ after the Crucifixion: the Sudarium of Oviedo. The blood stains on this cloth are also Group AB, and when placed alongside the Shroud, the stains in the head area can be matched up. The evidence strongly indicates that the two cloths were used to wrap the same body. (There is an article on this here.) The Sudarium is definitely known to have been brought to Spain from the Holy Land in the 600s.
• The markings on the Shroud indicate that the nails used during the crucifixion where placed in the man's wrists and heels. Archaeological evidence shows this was the method used by the Romans. However, medieval art always shows the nails in palms and feet. A forger would presumably have followed the convention of his time, and would have had no means of knowing that this was inaccurate.

Why does the historical evidence and the radio carbon dating clash? Nobody knows, but the suspicion is now that there must be some error in the scientific dating. The scientists who carried out the test are now reviewing their methods to see if they are flawed.

Interesting stuff!

Cattern's Day

A snippet I discovered at the museum yesterday, where there is a section on the history of Buckinghamshire lace ...

Saint Catherine is the patron saint of spinners and lacemakers. Her feast of November 25th was known as Cattern's Day, and marked the point of the year at which lacemakers in Buckinghamshire began to work by candlelight. The day was celebrated with "Cattern cakes" and the custom of jumping over a lighted candlestick. This was the origin of the rhyme:

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack jump over the candlestick

The candlestick on display in the museum was considerably higher than I would want to jump over, particularly wearing long skirts!

I love the way saints' days continued to influence the calendar of ordinary people in England long, long after the Reformation. There is lots more about the lacemaker's year here.

It seems to me that St. Catherine would also make a good patron saint for knitters, who are pretty close on the spectrum to spinners and lacemakers. I can't find anything definitive about a knitting patron - a quick Google suggested St. Clare (patron of embroiderers), St. Fiacre (patron of cap makers and associated with a knitting guild in sixteenth century Paris), St. Dymphna (why??) and an unofficial patron, St. Rafqa of Lebanon. I'm rather fond of St. Rafqa, so I'm happy with this choice, but as St. Catherine is my name saint I have a definite bias towards adding her.

Book Review: Great Tales from English History

A couple of weeks ago I promised a review of Great Tales from English History by Robert Lacey. Originally inspired to love history by the "storybook" style histories of H.E.Marshall, he sets out in this three volume series to tell the great stories of English history in similar fashion. If you want an easy to read introduction to the outline of English history, these books would do nicely. With short chapter and lots of anecdotes, they are easy to pick up and read in odd moments. Obviously they are limited by the format - there is very little historical analysis, though he does put the stories into context. They are written for adults and although Lacey is not overly graphic for that audience, there are sections that are not suitable for children (Edward II's relationship with Piers Gaveston and the assumed manner of his subsequent death for example). Despite this, they could be read aloud to older children with a bit of editing. The best description I can give of Lacey's books is to say that they are the adult, non-illustrated equivalent to Geraldine McCaughrean's Britannia - which admittedly is not helpful if you have not seen Britannia, but if you have then you will understand what I mean!

The author has his own website, where he helpfully includes some sample chapters.