Great War Britain Kidderminster: Remembering 1914-18 E-Book

Sally Dickson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 228

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The First World War claimed over 995,000 British lives, and its legacy continues to be remembered today. Great War Britain: Kidderminster offers an intimate portrayal of the town and its people living in the shadow of the 'war to end all wars'. A beautifully illustrated and highly accessible volume, it describes local reaction to the outbreak of war; charts the experience of individuals who enlisted; the changing face of industry; the work of the town's hospitals; the effect of the conflict on local children; the women who played a vital role on the home front; and concludes with a chapter dedicated to how the town and its people coped with the transition to life in peacetime once more. The Great War story of Kidderminster is told through the voices of those who were there and is vividly illustrated through evocative images from the archives of local families, the Museum of Carpet and the Kidderminster Shuttle.

Leseprobe

To all the people of

Kidderminster

who lived or died during the Great War,

in appreciation of

the disruption they endured

and the efforts and sacrifices they made

on behalf of the nation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Although this book has been compiled from a wide variety of sources, the researchers’ special thanks are due to the Trustees, staff (past and present), and volunteers of the Museum of Carpet in Kidderminster who have made their archives freely available to us and whose help and support has been far in excess of what we might reasonably have expected.

In addition, we would like to thank the members, staff and volunteers (as appropriate) of the following organisations for facilitating the use of archives and books, for allowing us to make use of their researches and for publicising our own project: the Library of Birmingham, Library of Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Kidderminster Civic Society, Kidderminster Library, Kidderminster Shuttle, St Mary’s Parish Church in Kidderminster, Warwick University Modern Records Centre, Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology, and Worcestershire Regimental Museum.

We also want to express our sincere appreciation of the way so many people have freely given of their knowledge and precious family archives for us to use in this book, including: Graeme Anton, Robert Barber, Graham Birley, Nigel Gilbert, Nicky Griffiths, Peggy Guest, Jacqueline Hartwell, Ruby Henderson, Kathryn Hughes, Mrs James, Andra Kleanthous, Francesca Llewellyn, Roger Matthews, Beryl Millichap, Bob and Phill Millward, Shirley Morgan, Francis Rainsford, Tom Roy, Peter, Judith and Karen Rawlins, John Roach, Melvyn Thompson, Mark Thursfield, Bryan Tolley, and Barbara Wilkinson (who we thank for her additional help).

In my capacity as author I would like to add a personal thank you to everyone, especially my family, friends and fellow members of KDAHS, who expressed interest and enthusiasm for the project and thereby nudged it towards completion.

If anyone has been omitted above it is a most regrettable error rather than a lack of appreciation of their contribution.

Note: Numbers in brackets refer to illustrations.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Timeline

Introduction: Kidderminster on the Eve of War

1 Outbreak of War

2 Going to War

3 Work of War

4 News from the Front Line

5 Life at Home

6 Coming Home

Postscript : Legacy

Bibliography

Copyright

TIMELINE

INTRODUCTION

KIDDERMINSTER ON THE EVE OF WAR

Although it lasted only four and a quarter years the 1914–18 Great War had a catastrophic effect on the nations involved, and still elicits a shudder of horror when it is mentioned 100 years later. The deaths and injuries caused by the fighting were beyond all imagining, and, for that reason, subsequent histories of the conflict have concentrated on the combatant forces.

However, this was ‘total war’, involving all sections of society. The young men went to fight. The non-combatant population provided the weapons, food, materials, care and moral support needed to keep the forces in the field. Nor were they immune to the fighting as their sons, husbands, brothers and sweethearts joined the lengthening casualty lists. In Britain, refugees from the combat zones were an ever-present reminder of what might happen if the fighting reached her shores. Preparations were made to defend them to the last. This book looks at the part Kidderminster played in this ‘total war’ and what it meant in practice for the people of this small north Worcestershire town.

Fact box 1

THE POPULATION OF KIDDERMINSTER IN 1911

Male

0–14 years

3,720

15–69 years

8,504

70 and over

405

Total

12,629

Female

0–14 years

3,933

15–69 years

10,792

70 and over

572

Total

15,297

Total population

27,926

In 1911, Kidderminster had a population approaching 28,000, most of whom (24,333) lived in the borough. This was a young population, with 80 per cent under 50 years old (Fact box 1). Some 20,000 people were of working age, including 8,500 men. About half the total male population of Kidderminster at this time was eligible to fight before the war had ended (1).

Whilst the town was the centre of a road network stretching across neighbouring countryside to the towns of the Midlands and Welsh Borders, cars were not yet numerous and mainly the preserve of those who could afford chauffeurs. Nevertheless, a car manufacturer, the Castle Motor Company, was already established in the town, together with motor engineers, Leonard Wyer & Company. For the rest, buses, trams and trains were the main form of transport. The railway station, on the east side of the town, provided good links to Worcester, along the Severn Valley via Bewdley, and to Birmingham, where many local people worked. Trains were as important for the carriage of goods as they were for people. Trams went from the station to Stourport and the town’s cabs were still horse drawn.

Other commercial transport ranged from horse drawn carts, through bicycles, motorcycles and steam-powered vehicles, to motor vans, and still included the canal. Businesses in the town catered for most of them; saddlers, blacksmiths, shoeing smiths and horse breakers could all be found. There were also wheelwrights and coach and carriage builders. Motorcycle agents, John Wright & Sons and Rhodes Brothers, both made motorcycles (2), while the Co-operative Engineering Company in Cherry Orchard dealt with steam traction.

1.Age structure of male population of Kidderminster in 1911. The dark bars indicate age groups eligible to fight at some time during the Great War.

On the eve of war Kidderminster was both an industrial town, dominated by the carpet industry, and a market town serving a substantial rural hinterland.

2. Fred Wright, no.56, from John Wright & Sons, motorcycle agents in Blackwell Street. Here as part of the Abingdon Ecco Team for the 1914 Senior Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man. He was to die in November 1918 from war wounds. (Carpet Museum Trust)

The carpet industry was the dominant employer in Kidderminster. There were over twenty manufacturing firms in the town, some specialised in yarn spinning or carpet making, and a few did both (Fact box 2). The owners and directors of these firms were the richest and most influential men of the town. Reginald Seymour Brinton, educated at Winchester and Oxford, succeeded his father as chairman of Brinton’s Carpets in 1914 (3). Already on the local council, he was mayor of Kidderminster for the first two years of the war and took a leading role in the governance of the town throughout the war.

Michael Tomkinson, a locally educated man, and William Adam, from Paisley, went into partnership in 1869, making rugs. In 1878 they developed and patented the first powered Chenille Setting loom and purchased the British rights to the American Spool Axminster loom. They held the rights to both processes and controlled the licences. Tomkinson lived at Franche; he was an alderman on the town council and mayor of Kidderminster in the last two years of peace, and continued to be active in town governance and patronage during the war, even though he was then in his seventies. Other members of his family also made unselfish contributions to the war effort.

By 1914 Peter Adam, as head designer, had inherited his father’s interest in the firm. He too had been mayor of the town for two years. He lived at ‘Cairndhu’ on the Birmingham Road, and opened the grounds for a variety of fundraising events during the war.

William Henry Stewart-Smith, a younger man in his thirties, was in charge of R. Smith & Sons, founded by his grandfather. Educated at Malvern College and Cambridge, he was elected to the town council in 1911 and became president of the local Chamber of Commerce in 1916. He used his extensive energy for the war effort on the home front, and later saw active service.

3. Brinton’s town centre carpet factory in 1911. The main office, built in 1876, is in the foreground. The factory was powered by a coal-fired stationary steam engine; the engine house projects above the north light weaving sheds towards the back of the factory. Brinton’s Bull (see Chapter 5) was situated on top of the four-storey building between the engine house and the main office. Coal and bales of wool were delivered along the adjacent canal. (Kidderminster Library)

The carpet firms provided about 40 per cent of the jobs in the town – in July 1914 Tomkinson & Adam employed nearly 1,500 and Brinton’s employed well over 1,000. About three quarters of these employees were women, however it was the men who held the key weaving jobs. They started as ‘creelers’, maintaining the continuous supply of yarn into the backs of the looms, becoming weavers with their own looms at the age of 21. Women were also creelers, but in most factories they had no opportunity for promotion to weaver, although they were employed on other preparation and finishing processes. Only at Tomkinson & Adam were women employed as weavers on the lighter Axminster looms which were, arguably, outside the agreement with the Carpet Weavers’ Association. After a visit from Mary Macarthur in 1912, a branch of her National Federation of Women Workers was established in the town.

Fact box 2

THE CARPET INDUSTRY IN KIDDERMINSTER

Yarn Spinners:

Edward Alfred Broome & Son, Castle Mills, New Road.

Greatwich, New Road.

Hoobrook Spinning Co., Hoobrook.

Kidderminster Spinning Co., Park Mills, New Road.

Lea, Slingfield Mills & The Sling.

Watson Brothers, Pike Mills, Green Street.

Yarn Spinners and Carpet Manufacturers:

Brinton’s, Exchange Street.

T&A Naylor, Pike Mills, Green Street.

Carpet Manufacturers:

Broome & Brookes, Mill Street.

Chlidema, Green Street.

Carpet Manufacturing Company:

Morton & Sons, New Road.

Richard Smith & Sons, Mill Street, Brussell Street, Imperial

Works & Park Wharf Mills.

Cooke Brothers, Worcester Cross Works, Oxford Street.

Empire, Foley Park Works.

Edward Hughes & Sons, Town Carpet Mills, Mill Street.

Jelleyman & Sons, Townshend Works, Puxton Lane.

Carpet Trades (Herbert Smith):

Charles Harrison & Son, Long Meadow Mills, Dixon Street.

James Humphries & Sons, Mill Street.

Jason Skin & Rug, Dixon Street.

Frank Stone, Exchange Street.

Tomkinson & Adam, Church Street & Mount Pleasant.

Victoria, Green Street.

Woodward Grosvenor, Stour Vale Mills,

Green Street & Worcester Cross.

There was a much smaller, but highly significant, iron industry in Kidderminster. The Stour Vale Ironworks, to the north of the town, was owned by Baldwin’s Ltd iron and steel business. An amalgamation of five companies in 1902, Baldwin’s was flourishing by the outbreak of war. Stanley Baldwin, MP for his native town of Bewdley, was a director and deputy chairman of the company. His position, wealth, energy and social conscience all contributed to the war effort in Kidderminster as well as further afield. Other iron founders in the town were Herbert Bale at the Albion Foundry in Pitts Lane, John Russell whose foundry was in Oxford Street, and Bradley & Turton who had foundries at Clensmore and Caldwell. Prunell, Lamb & Co., engineers on Station Hill, did a lot of work on the looms and other machinery used in the carpet industry.

Kidderminster’s MP, Eric Ayshford Knight, also came from a family that had originally made its money in the iron industry. His uncle, Sir Frederick Knight, had been lieutenant colonel of the Worcestershire Yeomanry, and he was major and commander of the same Territorial corps in 1912. He had been the town’s MP since 1906.

Before the war there was one retail outlet in Kidderminster for every thirty people in its population, while nationally there was one outlet to fifty-nine people. The doubling of this density in Kidderminster reflects its position as a market town and suggests that its hinterland population equalled its own. The key shopping streets formed a rough cross (4). Shops ran in a line from the railway station down Comberton Hill, along Oxford Street and Vicar Street, through the Bull Ring and up Mill Street to the north-west of the town. High Street and Swan Street, occupying the historic market place and crowded with shops, led north-eastward off the main shopping axis and joined Blackwell Street and Coventry Street, also full of shops. On the opposite side of the main axis was another shopping street, Park Butts, continued by Bewdley Hill. Almost 390 shops were to be found in these streets. Thursdays and Saturdays were market days, when the town was especially crowded.

Most of the town’s retail outlets were small specialist businesses, often sole traders (Fact box 3). Many were scattered through the suburbs of the town, convenient when most people walked to the shops and carried their purchases home, and when weekly wages and a lack of home refrigeration meant shopping frequently. The numerous ‘shopkeepers’ particularly catered for this local trade, selling anything their customers might want rather than specialising in one type of product

4.Map of Kidderminster in 1902 – see here for additional enlargement of the town centre. (Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology)

Details of one of these small business emerged when the proprietor, Henry Joseph Pretty, a butcher, was sued for breach of promise of marriage in March 1916. He was a butcher’s assistant when, in 1912, his mother left him £75. He started his own butchery business with a mortgage and bought premises in Mill Street, including living accommodation, a slaughterhouse and shop, for £465. In 1915, his stock of meat cost him £3,500 which he sold at a mark-up of 10 per cent, giving him a gross profit of about £350. Out of this he had weekly shop expenses of about £5, including wages of £1 to his assistant and 13s 6d to a boy. He had developed a high-class business dealing with at least 150 pre-booked orders every Saturday. The £1 per week that Pretty claimed he was earning from the business was not enough to support a wife. The prosecution’s estimate of £2 per week would have been sufficient.

Nearly a quarter of the retail outlets in the town had female proprietors. As independent retailers they had the opportunity to earn the same as men, something they were rarely able to do as employees. They dominated the women’s clothing trades, especially the dressmakers, milliners and wardrobe dealers. Many were shopkeepers, pub licensees and food retailers. There were no female hairdressers. Many were married, possibly widows who had taken over their husbands’ businesses (5).

Shops stayed open late for the factory workers, and they offered another valuable service – credit. Customers’ purchases were recorded in a book and the balances settled on paydays or when they could afford it. This was a major risk for the small shopkeeper.

Fact box 3

RETAILERS IN KIDDERMINSTER ON THE EVE OF WAR

Food

Butchers

44

Bakers & confectioners

51

Fried fish dealers

20

Greengrocers & fruiterers

30

Grocers

40

Milk dealers

10

Shopkeepers

123

Industrial Co-op branches

4

Other food

22

Public houses & beer retailers

126

Coal merchants & dealers

23

Clothing

Tailors

22

Dressmakers

27

Milliners

20

Other clothing

32

Drapers

41

Newsagents

20

Tobacconists

16

Footwear

67

Hairdressers

35

Jewellers, clock & watchmakers/repairers

11

Refreshment rooms, etc.

12

Other

144

Total retailers

940

A threat came from the shop chains that were beginning to find their way into Kidderminster. They bought in bulk, undercut the prices of the independent retailers and took prime positions in the town’s main shopping streets. In the High Street were branches of the Maypole Dairy Company, Boots Cash Chemists, Freeman Hardy and Willis, two other boot makers, and three grocers’ chains. The smaller independent retailers included a watchmaker and jeweller, an art needlework depot, drapers, a baker, a saddler, a stationer, and a tailor. The small chemists, boot and shoe makers and most of the grocers had to go elsewhere for their business, although Meredith Brothers were an exception, their grocery store in High Street successfully competed with these larger firms.

Boots, and other large retailers included the word ‘cash’ in their names to indicate that they only accepted cash payments. Those who could not afford to pay by cash could not take advantage of their reduced prices and for this reason, the chains tended to take the more affluent and reliable customers from the local shops, adding to their vulnerability.

5.Kidderminster shopkeeper, John ‘Tiny’ Watkins, standing in the doorway of his shop at 24 Hurcott Road. When he died in 1916 his widow, Emma, took over the shop. Their son, Jack, writing from France in late 1916 hoped she was ‘doing good in the shop’. (Bob and Phill Millward)

The meat trade in Kidderminster demonstrates the state of retailing in 1914. Britain imported 40 per cent of its meat, some chilled but mostly frozen, and just under half was beef, mainly from South America. Independent butchers would not sell meat that had already been slaughtered and cut. F.G. Boswell, an independent butcher in Park Butts, advertised ‘all home killed meat’. They bought their meat on the hoof, and slaughtered and cut it on their own premises. They relied on the Cattle Market, established in 1871 by Nock and Joseland, auctioneers, of Bank Buildings in Kidderminster. For example, a sale in 1916 included 821 separate lots, valued from 20s to £100 per lot, with 274 vendors and 225 purchasers of fat and store cattle, fat and store sheep, lambs, pigs and calves. Vendors came from a considerable distance, and when measures were taken to combat the spread of swine fever forty-nine pens were reserved for pigs from outside the scheduled counties of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire.

Therefore, importers established their own chains of shops, where the meat was cheap but only cash was accepted. They flourished in textile towns like Kidderminster where extensive female employment meant families had enough cash to buy their products. On the eve of war they included Eastman’s in Coventry Street, one of 1,400 shops, and the British & Argentine Meat Co. Ltd in the Bull Ring and Vicar Street. There was not the same hostility to the imports of cured bacon and hams, mainly from Denmark, which was leaner than home produced bacon. The meat was sold through specialist pork butchers, grocers and provision dealers, including the Danish Dairy Company in Worcester Street.

The threats from imports, and the damage to incomes caused by local price wars led independent butchers to band together to defend their trade, especially by setting local prices, and Percy Hanglin, who was to die at Katia in 1916 (see Chapter 4), was secretary of the Kidderminster and District Master Butchers’ Association before the war.

There was one other bulk buyer that tradespeople feared – the Kidderminster Industrial Co-operative Society, founded in 1866. In 1912 there were four branches in the town, in Oxford Street, Worcester Street, the Horsefair, and Bewdley Road. One member of the original pioneer committee, Major Mills, was still a member of the board of management fifty years later, in February 1916, when the manager, George Allbut, organised a celebration for the sixty-five employees (6).

6.A pub and small shops in the Horsefair, including a branch of the Co-op. On the left are: the Rifleman Public House (nearest the camera); Howell Brothers, bakers and Post Office; Mrs Alice Auty, milliner; Joseph Highfield, stationer (with awning); Mrs Ada K. Cartwright, hardware dealer (with awning); Henry Sprague, grocer, and James Ernest Monk, butcher (sharing); and Industrial Co-operative Society branch (with its name board angled forward). (Kidderminster Library)

The Co-op sold food, clothing and household goods; it did not give credit, and it undercut the prices of the smaller shops. It paid a quarterly dividend to its regular customers or ‘members’ – a proportion of what they had spent – effectively undercutting their competitors still further. Small traders’ hostility to the Co-op was still evident during the war years (see Chapter 5).

Not only was meat imported, but about 80 per cent of the grain consumed in Britain was also imported. Three millers in the town turned wheat into flour: D.W. Goodwin & Co. at the Town Mills in Mill Street; J.P. Harvey & Co. in Mill Street and Oxford Street; and Clement Dalley & Co. in Park Butts and the Horsefair. The town’s numerous bakers produced the bread that was the staple food, in standard 4lb loaves – double the weight of the current ‘large loaf’.

7.Oxford Street,c. 1913, with the Green Man and Still on the left describing itself as a ‘Commercial Market House’. On the right is the Roebuck Hotel, and in the distance the Swan Hotel. The only motorised transport is the electric tram. (Kidderminster Library)

Barley was mostly used to make the alcoholic drinks sold by the numerous public houses and beer retailers scattered throughout the town. There was one pub in the town for every 200–250 people. Many also served visitors to the town. The Green Man and Still in Oxford Street was a market house run by Miss Elizabeth Bytheway, who employed an ostler, Arthur Millman, to assist her with the fifty or more farmers’ horses and carts that were put up in the yard on market days (7).

Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries owned eighty of the town’s pubs. The Angel Inn in Worcester Street and the Parkers Arms in Park Lane still did their own brewing, and there were four local brewers to supply the rest: Robert Allen & Co. in Orchard Street; Radcliffe & Co. at the Cross Brewery on Comberton Hill; the Kidderminster Brewery Co. in Blackwell Street; and Hopkins, Garlick & Co. at the Town Brewery in Mill Street.

On the eve of war, Kidderminster had a strong agricultural presence alongside its industry. There were about fifty farms, market gardens, nurseries, dairies, and cattle keepers encircling the town (Fact box 4). They included the Corporation Sewage Farm, of 760 acres, towards Stourport, which had a livestock of horses, one cow and calf, sheep and pigs. It was managed by George Stones for a salary of £200 p.a. together with a house, coal, lighting and transport, for which he was paid £26 in lieu of a horse. Some concerns were much smaller than this: Wilfred Weaver, market gardener of Stourbridge Road, worked 5 acres of land, kept pigs, had several hundred fruit trees and was also a greengrocer.

Dairymen and milk dealers often kept their own dairy cows, and Alice Wellings had been the proprietor of the Lark Hill Dairy for twelve years, helped by her son, Alfred, the cowman and stockman, and her daughter. They had twelve cows and nearly 40 acres. William Alfred Coates, dairyman, delivered 26 gallons of milk a day, while Howarth Brothers were milk contractors in Blackwell Street.

Fact box 4

AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITY IN KIDDERMINSTER

Number of farms, market gardens, nurseries, and dairy farms:

Stourbridge Rd

1

Wannerton

1

Hurcott

3

Birmingham Rd

1

Offmore

1

Comberton

7

Hoo Road

1

Reservoir Rd

1

Park Lane

1

Sutton

4

Bewdley Hill

1

Lea Bank Ave

1

Blakebrook

1

Habberley

6

Trimpley

9

Franche

9

Coal was the main fuel for cooking and heating. Coal merchants and dealers in Kidderminster were concentrated in or near Station Yard, convenient for receiving their stock by rail. Some, in the vicinity of Clensmore, received their stock by canal. Others were in the town’s suburbs near to their customers, who could collect the small quantities they wanted when they could afford them. Coal was also required for the railways and industry, both still powered by coal-fired steam engines.

Alternatives to coal were beginning to make an appearance, however, with the Gas Company in Pitts Lane enabling street lighting. The Kidderminster & District Electric Lighting & Traction Company generated electricity and operated the trams, whilst lighting in houses and workplaces was achieved by a variety of means – candle, oil, gas and electricity.

Hospital provision had become very important. Kidderminster Infirmary and Children’s Hospital in Mill Street, erected in 1870 at a cost of £10,700, was run by a management committee formed of the honorary medical staff and people elected by subscribers. The president, T.H. Charles, was a wealthy farmer at Park Attwood, and Albert D. Chambers, a practising chartered accountant, was the secretary and collector. On the eve of war there were three consulting surgeons – Samuel Stretton, Walter Moore and Edward Homfray Addenbrooke – and four other surgeons. These surgeons were all in private practice, from which they made their living, and gave their time and skills free to the infirmary. Some of them also held other medical posts in the town. E.H. Addenbrooke was medical officer of health to the rural district council, medical officer and public vaccinator for the Wolverley district of the Kidderminster Poor Law Union, and certifying factory surgeon. His son, Bertram, was also a surgeon captain in the local Territorial regiment. The honorary dental surgeon to the infirmary was Arthur L. Bostock, who had his own dental practice. Anne McFarlane, the matron, was the most senior person employed by the infirmary. It was a training hospital for nurses, and during the war nurses were trained for a month. Christine Tomkinson trained there between 11 August and 15 September 1915.

The main source of funding for the infirmary was the advance purchase of patient notes. Outpatient notes were 5s 3d, and inpatient notes cost one guinea (£1 1s). Before the war these bought two weeks’ treatment at the hospital but, in February 1915, this was reduced to one week.

A bed reserved for a child from Hopton Wafers with tonsillitis cost one inpatient note. Groups of people raised money to buy them, and in 1915/16 Naylor’s workers purchased eight inpatient and nine outpatient notes, while Lea’s workers purchased three inpatient and eight outpatient notes for £5 5s. The parish churches of St Mary’s, St Barnabus, Holy Trinity and St James pooled their collections to buy twenty-two inpatient and twenty-four outpatient notes. They could be used by any contributor who needed them.

The hospital served a wide geographical area, and Clee Hill Quarry Men’s Union, Bewdley and Wribbenhall Mutual Help Society, Stourport Church Children’s Service, and the parishioners of Elmbridge, Hopton Wafers and Doddington all purchased several notes. There were also many individual subscribers. In January 1916, Miss Pulley of Tunbridge Wells returned unused notes which the management proposed to ‘give away to deserving cases’.

Another source of income for the infirmary, Saturday Collections among employees, was pioneered at Kidderminster. Established in the 1870s, the collections continued through the war. In 1915, among others, the employees of Victoria Carpets raised £10 10s, Woodward Grosvenor, £10, and Kidderminster Laundry, £1 1s. Those subscribing over £5 sent representatives to the Saturday Fund Committee which then nominated delegates to the management committee.

The doors of the infirmary were always open to accidents or emergencies. On 12 July 1916, Joseph Mole, aged 57 of Franchise Street, and employed at Naylor’s, was sweeping waste from under a carding machine with a broom when a spike caught his elbow. He was taken to the infirmary, his elbow was bandaged and he was sent home. After two sleepless nights in pain, he returned to the infirmary and was kept in. The wound had been infected with tetanus (or ‘lockjaw’) and he eventually died. At the inquest, William Bird, described as a ‘youth of Orchard Street’ and ‘hopper feed minder’, explained that Mole was a card dresser who had been employed at the work for forty years. The man who usually pulled waste out with a rake was away ill and, therefore, Mole was doing the work himself. The verdict was accidental death.

As the bacillus causing tetanus lives in the soil injured soldiers were routinely given anti-tetanus injections from 1915 onwards, but it was not yet standard for non-combatants.

These institutions, large firms, small traders, and individuals would all play their part in the coming war (Profile 1).