The Spirit World

Spiritualism first found a receptive audience during the Victorian era, at the same time that magic shows were popular, and the gothic and supernatural featured in literature. The First World War sparked a resurgence of spiritualism. Whilst the Victorians perhaps saw it as a means of entertainment, this time, it was family trying to find out what had become of their husbands, sons, brothers, on the battlefield.

Two names are often associated with this period of spiritualism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sir Oliver Lodge. The former is the most well-known, having been the writer of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Conan Doyle was already interested before his son, Kingsley, died of Spanish Flu in 1918 while serving in the army. However, after this event, Conan Doyle tried contacting his son in the spirit world. Sir Oliver Lodge was a scientist working in the fields of electromagnetism and radio. However, he also undertook psychical research and spiritualism. Lodge lost his son Raymond in the First World War, and in 1916 published the book, Raymond, Life or Death. In this, he gives an account of the occasions he and his wife contacted their son, and of Raymond’s supposed accounts of the spirit world.

The Strand Magazine, July 1917, via archive.org

A controversial subject, it could come between friends (Conan Doyle and Houdini) and family. The following article is from the Newcastle Journal of 19 January 1917:

Local Divorce Case

Wife who left home to “take up spiritualism”

In the Divorce Court yesterday, Mr Justice Low granted a decree nisi to Mr George Edward Waterson, electrical engineer, of Newcastle, for divorce from Mrs Nora Waterson (formerly Miss Davidson) on the ground of misconduct with a Mr EG Castell. The suit was not defended.

Mr Waterson said they were married at a registration office in Newcastle, on 8th August 1903; they lived at Heaton, and at other places in the district, and two children were born. In 1910 Mr Waterson had to go to London to do electrical work, and they lived in Pimlico for a time, until Mrs Waterson wanted to go back to the North. Then they went to live in Prince Consort Road, Gateshead, and after being there a fortnight, Mr Waterson came home one night and found the children at the door. They said their mother had not been home all day, and on the table inside was a letter from her saying “I am going away to London to take up Spiritualism. I am too tired of housekeeping, so don’t look for me, and I will not come back”.

Thereupon Mr Waterson obtained work in London again, and spent many nights looking for her. Eventually he met her at a spiritualistic meeting, and discovered she was living with the correspondent in Stockwell Park Road, SE. She voluntarily confessed misconduct.

Doctor Constance Robertson part 2

Last week, I wrote about Doctor Constance Robertson who worked in Darlington during the First World War and after. I have been contacted by Constance's great niece who read the blog and has provided a bit more information. It is wonderful when things like this happen.

On the 1911 census, Constance was working with John Hern, also a doctor. The practice operated out of his family home, and Constance also lived there. I now know that after John retired, the house, Semmercote, was split into two, with Constance in one half, where she set up her own practice. She named her house Waleric, after the name of the house in Alnmouth where one of her brothers was born.

During the war, Constance used her medical training to care for injured family members who she took in, including her brother who had been a prisoner of war, then contracted Spanish Flu.

We hope to find out more about Constance’s brother and his war service soon.

Doctor Constance Robertson

According to Historic England, there were nearly 1000 female doctors by 1914. One of these doctors was living on Stanhope Road in Darlington. Constance Charlotte Robertson was born in Alnmouth around 1883 to William and Ann. William’s occupation on the 1901 census is given as a timber merchant, house furnisher, and auctioneer and valuer. Constance is listed as a medical student.

Advert from the UK Medical Directory 1910, via Ancestry

The Durham University Calendar for 1903-4 shows Constance as a student at the Medical College based in Newcastle. She is one of only 12 female students in a body of nearly 200. One of her peers, Aleen Cust, went on to become the first female veterinarian. For that year of her studies, her final year, Constance was able to benefit from ‘A new college building [that] has been erected on a site, an acre in extent, situated in Northumberland Road… at the cost of about £31,000. Every modern improvement has been adopted by which the Medical Education and well-being of the Students of the College may be furthered. The Electric Light has recently been installed through the whole of the College, including Lecture Theatres, Laboratories, and Dissecting Room’.

Ancestry has medical directories available to view online. The 1910 directory shows Doctor Constance Robertson living at Semmercote, [Stanhope Road], Darlington, having attained an MBBS with honours from Durham University in 1904. This qualification is a Bachelor Medicine Bachelor of Surgery. The directory also shows that she is a member of the Medico-Psychological Association, and where she has worked:

Assistant anaesthetist at the Royal Infirmary, Newcastle

Clinical assistant in Gynaecology at a hospital in Newcastle and at Northumberland County Asylum [Morpeth]

Assistant Medical Officer at Tue Brook Villa Asylum, Liverpool

The 1911 Census has her at the same address, of which John Hern is the head. His wife and daughter are also listed as is a cook and a page. Both John and Constance are listed as medical practitioners and Constance’s relationship to head looks like ‘Assist. Med.’ From the medical directories, it appears she stays in the same work over the next several years. The directories do show that she moved to a property named Waleric, also on Stanhope Road, which is where I initially found her in the 1917-18 Ward’s Directory [Hern remained at Semmercote].

There is no indication that Constance Robertson undertook any war service (John Hern was too old for service). In researching her, I have found it very difficult to find out about medical provision for civilians during the First World War. 

In the 1925 and 1929 Kelly’s Directories, Constance Robertson is listed as a physician and honorary anaesthetist to the Darlington General Hospital. On the 1939 register she is still on Stanhope Road as a medical practitioner. A Newcastle Journal article dated 21 September 1940 reported ‘As no suitable applicants had applied for the post of Assistant Medical Officer… it was decided by the [Darlington Corporation Health] Committee that Dr Girgis be asked to undertake the work at the Maternity Hospital, and that Dr Constance C Robertson be asked to carry out the work of the Maternity and Child Welfare Clinics’. This position is the last I have been able to find about Doctor Robertson until her death in 1974 in Bournemouth.

Do you suffer from optimism?

On Wednesday 4 October, I went to see The Wipers Time at Northern Stage in Newcastle. Written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, it tells the story of the trench newspaper through Captain Fred Roberts of the 12th Battalion (Pioneers) Sherwood Foresters. He was the real life editor of the paper after his company found a printing press in a bombed out building in Ypres. The paper, first printed in February 1916 and running for 23 issues until just after the armistice, was a satirical look at the war from the boots on the ground. In the play's programme, the writers say 'history had a very different view of the war from of the editors of The Wipers Times, who celebrated the camaraderie, absurdity, and tragedy of life in the trenches, often on the same page'.

Hislop and Newman's story of the paper was initially brought to the public on television. First aired on BBC 2 in September 2013, this version starred Ben Chaplin, Julian Rhind-Tutt, and Michael Palin.

The play is bookended by Captain Roberts trying to get a job at a newspaper after the war. The main story is told in chronological order, interspersed with skits and spoof adverts as appeared in the newspaper itself. The skits took place at the front of the stage with a cabaret style curtain dropped down behind. The adverts were enacted at the back of the stage, above the 'trench', framed by barbed wire lit with fairy lights. To modern eyes, it's not hard to spoof the adverts of the day (and of course the writers' Private Eye magazine means they themselves are not strangers to it), one was a cure for optimism, and another was for a duckboard that would spring your commanding officer away. 

Advert for Sloan's Liniment from the Durham Advertiser, 1916

Within the dialogue of the play, as much taken from the words of the men themselves, the voice of Ian Hislop also comes across, and a Lieutenant Colonel has a hint of Blackadder Goes Forth about him. But the play is in the spirit of the paper, the laughter occasionally punctuated by poignancy: the captain is gassed, a friend killed, a wife back home. The lieutenant colonel, not happy about The Wipers Times, says to his commanding officer 'The war is not funny sir', to which the general replies 'I have a feeling that may be the point'. We've all experienced a moment where if you don't laugh, you'll cry, though hopefully in less enduring circumstances than the men at the front.

Of course, it wouldn't be a piece of entertainment about the First World War if it didn't show the men 'going over the top', but 12th Battalion, as a divisional unit of the 24th Division were on the Somme during the Battle of Delville Wood. An effective moment in the play came when the men went over for a second time, to find the Germans already out of action, overcome by their own gas when the wind changed, as smoke drifted away from the stage and over the audience. 

The play certainly drew laughs from the audience, including myself and my Durham at War colleague. I felt it was good to see a different aspect of the war (the same view the Head of History at the BBC held when he commissioned the TV film), one that we on the project knew existed from the letters and diaries we have read. There is no denying by anyone that the war was a horrific, the men suffered, but they also laughed.

Captain TB Heslop of 6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, left in a photograph taken at Kemmel, 1915 (D/DLI 2/6/10(379)), and right as drawn in The Whizz-Bang, January 1916 (D/DLI 2/6/32) 

The Wipers Times was not the only, nor indeed the first trench newspaper. The first issue of the Dead Horse Corner Gazette was published by the 4th Battalion of the Canadian Contingent of the British Expeditionary Force in October 1915. In fact, 6th Battalion Durham Light Infantry had their own trench newspaper The Whizz-Bang, the first issue of which came out a month before The Wipers Times. It ran from January 1916 for eight issues until November that year. The following is from the first editorial:

Cheer-Oh!
The Editor has put his foot down, and we, the Sub-editor, quelled by that last shout of his, “Write the ---- thing yourself,” slowly and regretfully suck our indelible pencil and wonder how to spell ‘Editorial’, even as the last recruit comes sluggishly to ‘shun’ at the bell-like tones of the sergeant-major.

It is notoriously the aim of all first editorials to answer the question “What are you there for?” which the suspicious public hurls at all who rush hot-headed into print. But it is not our intention to attempt to justify our existence, or to apologise for it. Like our namesake, here we are, without reason or warning…

The contributions which are collected here are the work of spare time, of which the dirty weather and dirtier Bosch do not give us a very large allowance, and they are thrust upon the world with no pretensions to literary merit… To all we bring greetings, and our work is done if we can but remind them that, even in the greatest of shadows, we can still, by the grace of Heaven, face the future with a smile.