Wakefield in the Great War Read online

  For the last twenty years, the people of Britain had been bombarded with stories of invasion by foreign powers ranging from France and Russia to H.G. Wells’ ‘Martians’ but the prime candidate in over 300 novels alone had been Germany as the country most likely to try to destroy Britain and its empire. In March 1913, an audience at the Wakefield Empire had been addressed by Colonel Hind of the local Territorial battalion who told them that Germany’s army was growing and that it had a fleet of thirty Zeppelin airships, each capable of carrying twenty-five men or five tons of explosives. Men were urged to come forward to join the Territorials to protect their homes and families from an invasion that could come at any time. In military displays, films, plays, books and short stories, the people of Britain were warned over and over that an attack by Germany was inevitable and it was only a matter of time before jack-booted soldiers would march on British streets. In one of the best selling invasion novels, William Le Queux’s Invasion of 1910, a German force landed at Goole and Wakefield was identified as one of their first targets as they overran the industrial heartland of the country. At the turn of the century, German support for the Boers had been seen as part of a wider strategy to undermine the British Empire overseas but its latest activity was seen as direct evidence of its intention to destroy Britain itself – all the weapons landed in Ireland by both sides as the nation teetered on the brink of a civil war that could spill over into England had been supplied to them by Germany.

  By 1914, strikes and lockouts were commonplace across the whole country as the ever strengthening unions prepared to take on the government but whilst industrial actions might make life more difficult for ordinary people, they still gained popular support. In late June, 584 men from Wrenthorpe Colliery were summonsed for leaving work to attend a demonstration linked to their ongoing strike against the Low Laithes Colliery Company without giving the required fourteen days notice. On the day of their appearance the men had gathered outside their pit and, led by a brass band and with wives and children in tow, marched together into town to attend court. By the time they reached Wood Street there were thousands of well wishers lining the route and gathered outside the courthouse. After a week’s adjournment, on 3 July, each man was fined £3 under the Employer and Workmen Act for losses caused by the walkout. Another 200 men were fined in Ossett for the same offence.

  At the end of July, a gruesome discovery was reported when Normanton bricklayer William Stones and three workmates began work on the pump of a well at Park Lodge Farm in Stanley on behalf of new tenants who were moving in. Lifting two large flagstones, Stones climbed down a ladder and found the body of a baby girl floating on a plank. The head and part of the shoulders were missing and the rest of the body badly decomposed. The police were called and, to the surprise of the coroner, Stones reported that having found the body, he had then calmly gone to have his dinner. Giving evidence to the court, Stones described how George Wilcock, the previous tenant, had told them that he saw no reason to ‘meddle with the well’ and that it was ‘a bit of a conceit’ that the new owners could not drink water that Wilcock’s family had been using for over thirty years. After bringing the body out of the well in a basket, Stones called Wilcock over to see what they had found in his drinking supply. Wilcock seemed unsurprised, but when told the police had been called asked ‘why didn’t you go and bury it in the field and there would have been nothing more about it?’ Police Sergeant Woolley went to the home of Wilcock’s daughter, Kate Jewson, at Garden Street in Wakefield, who immediately confessed to having put the child into the well, saying she thought ‘it’ was dead. A post mortem found a cord around the stump of the neck and the court proceedings were adjourned so the well could be drained in the search for the head. Jewson was later tried for ‘concealment of a birth’.

  Brighter news came in the last week of peace when the great and the good descended on the area to celebrate the 21st birthday of Rowland George Winn, eldest son of Lord St Oswald, at Nostell Priory. Rowland’s birthday, on Wednesday, 29 July, marked the start of a four-day celebration, as men and officials of Frodingham Ironstone Mines presented him with ‘an illuminated address’ – a finely carved oak casket contained a book illustrated with drawings linked to his family and life, including pictures of men at work in the family’s mines and scenes from around their estates and holdings in Lincolnshire. The villages of Foulby and Wragby were decked with bunting and the terraced colliers houses of Nostell Long Row festooned with flags to welcome Rowland home from his posting with the Coldstream Guards. On the first day of the celebrations members of the Lincolnshire Iron Masters Association along with tradespeople from Wakefield and Pontefract and tenants and employees of the Nostell estate were all treated to lunch in the grounds. The next day, 1,300 employees of Nostell Colliery were invited for tea and on Friday, another 1,300 employees of the family’s Lincolnshire estate were brought by special trains for another celebratory tea. Saturday was reserved for special guests including Russian aristocracy in the form of Count Michael de Torby and his wife, the Countess Nada to celebrate not only Rowland’s majority, but also Lord St Oswald’s own 58th birthday, with dancing to the music of the band of the Scots Greys. Proposing a toast, family friend Jonathan Shaw explained how he had known the whole family since the present Lord’s grandfather and found them all to be ‘true gentlemen’; and said, ‘Surely with such examples before him the young gentleman … ought not to go astray’. A year later, though, some began to wonder if he had …

  Rowland Winn, seen here as a cadet.

  CHAPTER 2

  Your Country Needs You

  Meanwhile, in Europe, the crisis continued to deepen. In response to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had humiliated Serbia with demands that could not be met, and finally, on 28 July, they declared war. The next day Russia began to mobilize its forces in support of its Serbian ally. Germany, siding with Austro-Hungary, demanded that the Russians stop and when the Tsar refused, declared war on 1 August. An agreement between Russia and France to try to contain Germany’s plans to expand its empire in Europe meant that the French now began to mobilise their forces. A large-scale war on the continent was seemingly inevitable but not really seen as Britain’s problem as newspapers began to consider what the immediate future might bring. Coming after years of unrest, The Worker of 1 August 1914 felt that war would be an opportunity for class action, telling its readers that ‘the war is no concern of the working class and their duty is to take every advantage of such lapses into insanity by the capitalist class’. Elsewhere, others considered how Britain might be kept out of the war and, at a local level, what the impact of a European war might have on business. The Huddersfield Daily Examiner’s editorial of 31 July 1914 explained what war might mean to the West Riding:

  True it is that a general Continental war would in the end injure the prosperity of this country by greatly impairing the purchasing power of many countries which are now very good customers for the products of our manufactories. This calculation … loses some of its effect from the fact that the extra production which immediate demands from France and Germany in case of war between those countries would occasion in many classes of goods, would go far to counterbalance the loss already mentioned. In the first instance, therefore, Britain has no immediate concern in the strife which is taking place or might take place if Russia, Germany and France should be drawn into the struggle … Therefore Britain may continue to work for peace without any suspicion of selfish or improperly interested motives.

  So, although Europe teetered on the brink of war, the people of Wakefield prepared for their Bank Holiday weekend more or less as normal. The Wakefield City Tradesmen’s Association was preparing for its annual fete to be held in Wakefield Park on Bank Holiday Monday, 3 August. The band of the Irish Guards would play throughout the day from the bandstand at the top of the hill and there would be a display of that most obvious of holiday entertainments – bayonet fighting while contrasting the military them
e would be a troupe of pierrot clowns and an evening firework display. For those able to afford a holiday away, the Midland Railway Company was offering deals on excursions to Yarmouth and Lowestoft, the south coast and the Isle of Wight, or to south Wales. Some could look even further afield as the choir of St Helen’s Church, Sandal, set out for a holiday in Belgium on the day that Germany declared war on Russia, travelling from Hull to Zeebrugge to begin a tour which was designed to take them to Blankenberghe, Bruges, Haeyat and Brussels. Even as the choir arrived in Belgium, though, Wakefield became aware of the imminence of war on Sunday, 2 August, when, in an unprecedented event, paper-boys ran through the streets at 7.00am shouting ‘War special!’ and carrying Sunday editions of the Yorkshire Post as national newspapers announced that Germany had declared war on Russia.

  As they did every summer, the men of the local territorial forces had set out for their annual training camp, this year to be based at Whitby. Alongside the Wakefield-based 4th Battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (4 KOYLI) were local men serving with the Yorkshire Dragoons and the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) as well as the other units of the West Riding Division. The camp officially began on 26 July but employers were often reluctant to allow workers a full two-weeks holiday so many men did not arrive until Saturday, 1 August, followed in many cases by their families, who planned to take the opportunity for a week at the seaside whilst their menfolk camped nearby. Even as they arrived, though, rumours of mobilization were rife. The Territorials, it was said, were to be used to guard the docks at Immingham. Others said those wearing the badge of men who had signed the Imperial Service Obligation had agreed to serve outside the UK would be sent to overseas garrisons in far flung reaches of the Empire to relieve the regulars guarding them now. The less excitable expected to be sent back to Wakefield to await events.

  Territorials returning from summer camp.

  As the men gathered, the situation in Europe escalated even further. On Friday, the Kaiser had complained that he no longer had ‘any doubt that England, Russia and France have agreed among themselves – knowing that our treaty obligations compel us to support Austria-Hungary – to use the Austro-Serb conflict as a pretext for waging a war of annihilation against us … Our dilemma over keeping faith with the old and honourable Emperor has been exploited to create a situation which gives England the excuse she has been seeking to annihilate us with a spurious appearance of justice on the pretext that she is helping France and maintaining the well-known Balance of Power in Europe, i.e. playing off all European States for her own benefit against us.’

  In an effort to control the threat of German expansion, France and Russia had each agreed a pact to come to the aid of the other if attacked, ensuring that if Germany attempted to invade either country it would be forced to fight wars on two fronts – the Western Front against France and the Eastern Front against Russia. So when, on 1 August, Britain agreed to guarantee French neutrality, which would mean that the war could be limited to the dispute between Austro-Hungary and its German ally on the one hand and Serbia and its Russian support on the other, the Kaiser immediately accepted.

  He then ordered German forces to be used against Russia alone, leading his senior commander, General Moltke, to point out that it wasn’t possible for Germany to do that, given that the bulk of their forces were already advancing towards Luxembourg and Belgium, as the opening moves of an invasion of France. Their plan had been to invade France first in a knockout attack before the Russians could finish mobilizing their army so that both enemies could be dealt with quickly. Putting a halt on the invasion of France, the Kaiser told Moltke that ‘it only remains for Russia to back out, too’. Unfortunately, it was already too late. In Berlin, unaware of the new agreement, German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg had already announced that Germany had mobilized and had delivered an ultimatum to France ordering it to renounce its alliance with Russia or face a German attack. Reports of the German forces on the borders of Luxembourg and Belgium had led France to begin making its army ready and at 7.00pm on Saturday, 1 August, Germany invaded Luxembourg and declared war on Russia. The extent to which Germany was determined to go to war is evident from the incident in which the German ambassador accidentally gave the Russians both copies of the declaration of war – one which claimed that Russia refused to reply to Germany’s ultimatum – and the other that said Russia’s replies were unacceptable.

  In 1839, Britain had been instrumental in establishing the country of Belgium and had signed a treaty guaranteeing its neutrality – a treaty also signed by Germany and France. Honouring that agreement, the British government announced that if Germany invaded Belgium in violation of international law, Britain would have no choice but to go to war. The British Empire, after all, depended on such treaties to guarantee its control of small countries around the world and allowing the Germans to do whatever they wanted would set a very dangerous precedent. The Germans, unable to believe that the British would carry out their threat, ignored it. On 2 August, the British Cabinet met and recognised that an invasion of Belgium and France was inevitable. This would put German forces on the shores of the English Channel and the German navy in ports that threatened Britain’s own national security. In response, they promised that the Royal Navy would protect France’s coast from German attack. That day, a German ultimatum was delivered to Belgium requiring free passage through the country for the German army on its way to France. Unsurprisingly, King Albert of Belgium refused. On Sunday, 2 August, congregations in churches and chapels across the country were urged to pray for peace and in London alone 15,000 people attended an anti-war rally in Trafalgar Square with many similar rallies held in other cities throughout the day. Special Sunday editions of newspapers appeared on the streets filled with stories of a naval battle being fought in the North Sea. Facts were hard to come by but the German ultimatums to Russia and France were confirmed and the first signs of British mobilization began.

  On 3 August, Germany declared war on France. The Wakefield Express later reported that holiday excursions had gone ahead but ‘with no zest’, and although the City Tradesmen’s fete had gone ahead in the park there had been a considerably lower attendance than in previous years. An editorial struck a sombre note when, with remarkable prescience, it declared that the coming war ‘would put into the shade everything in the recorded history of the world both in regards to the sacrifice of human lives and the outpouring of treasure’. A War Office telegram had gone out to all railway station-masters: ‘Naval Reserves mobilised. Honour warrants, and give every facility for transit’. In Whitby, the Territorials began to break camp and 4 KOYLI reached Wakefield late on Monday before being sent home for the night with orders to return to the Drill Hall in the morning. Clerks were already at work preparing joining instruction letters for men who had not been at the camp.

  On 4 August, Germany invaded Belgium. A full-page advert placed by the Neutrality League appeared in the Yorkshire Post with an appeal to the population to ‘keep your country out of this wicked and stupid war’. Trade unions, the Labour Party and others condemned the ‘murderous gang of warmongers responsible for the present European crisis’ and ‘the efforts that are being made to involve this country in the bloody outrage on humanity’ whilst the Worker newspaper called openly for any outbreak of war to be the catalyst for revolution against the government. By now it was too late. Even the German Chancellor admitted that the invasions of Belgium and Luxembourg were a violation of international law but claimed Germany was ‘in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law’. Faced with such a flagrant breach of international treaties, at 7.00pm the British Ambassador to Berlin delivered an ultimatum to the German Secretary of State to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs demanding a commitment by midnight that evening to go no further with Germany’s violation of Belgium. Convinced that Britain would not honour its promise to Belgium on what was dismissed as merely ‘a scrap of paper’, Germany assumed the risk of war with a powerful European nation wo
uld force Britain to back down. It was wrong. At midnight German time, 11.00pm in Britain, the ultimatum expired and war was declared.

  Coming at the end of a Bank Holiday Monday when many thousands had spent a good part of the day in pubs, cheering crowds gathered but there were many reactions to the outbreak of war. Michael Macdonagh, parliamentary correspondent for The Times, later described having passed through Trafalgar Square on the evening of the 4th, where ‘I found two rival demonstrations in progress under Nelson’s Pillar – on one side of the plinth for war, and on the other against!’ As the deadline approached, he joined a crowd outside Buckingham Palace as they waited:

  No-one came out of 10 Downing Street. No statement was made. There was no public proclamation that we were at war by a herald to the sound of trumpets and the beating of drums. [After hearing Big Ben strike 11.00pm.] The great crowd rapidly dispersed in all directions, most of them running to get home quickly, and as they ran they cried aloud rather hysterically ‘War!’ ‘War!’ ‘War!’ They were eager, no doubt, to spread the dread news …

  Halifax MP James Parker noted that: