School hols

The school holidays are nearly over, but there's still a bank holiday and a last week or so to get through, so what tips are there from 100 years ago? Margaret Osborne had some ideas in the Durham Chronicle edition of 24 August 1918:

D/CL 27/277/346 Horden Railway c.1915

While grown-up people find their holidays growing shorter or vanishing altogether as war goes on, school-children’s vacations get longer, and how to occupy their children for six or seven weeks has become somewhat of a problem to many mothers. It is not often possible to take the whole family to the seaside as we did in peace-time. Fathers are in the army or doing work they cannot leave; mothers find it hard to interrupt their war-work, travelling is dear and difficult, and the food problem is more troublesome in lodgings than at home. 

Day-excursions are hampered by a restricted train service and lack of petrol, and though bicycling is pleasanter now that the roads are comparatively clear of motor-traffic, most bicycles bought four or five years ago are now liable to require repair if a whole day’s run is attempted. The ‘restful holiday’ soon palls upon strong young people or small children intent on exploring a world that is new to them, especially when it is not punctuated with holiday treats in the way of food.

D/DLI 2/4/383(1) Photograph of people fixing a bicycle, pre-1914

A Little Ingenuity

There would seem to be little left, but the ingenious mother of a family, or the mother of an ingenious family, will arrange a holiday nevertheless. The first requisite of a holiday is change, and those of us who cannot have a change of scene may well try a change of hours. Most people’s enterprise in this direction goes no further than taking breakfast an hour later than usual, a proceeding that reminds us more of Sunday morning or convalescence from an illness than of holidays. To remove this, practise getting up at five o’clock, having an early crust of bread or cup of tea, and walking or bicycling from six to nine meets the case much better.

Personally, I should begin an hour earlier than this, starting when the towns and villages are just waking up, the field labourers going to their work, all the wild birds and animals much more in evidence than later in the day. A picnic breakfast at nine o’clock can generally be managed by means of coffee in a thermos flask if everyone will carry his own mug. To breakfast with friends at the end of your three hours’ journey is also pleasant, but this cannot, of course be a “surprise” party and would entail carrying one’s rations. If all that can be done in an hour and a half’s journey out and then home to a picnic breakfast in one’s own garden, it is quite worth doing, and most people will find that their own neighbourhood looks surprisingly unfamiliar three hours before breakfast.

D/DLI 2/4/383(3) Photograph of people messing about fixing a bicycle, pre-1914

The Holiday of Usefulness

Every school-boy and girl who lives in the country or within reach of the country will, of course, be making collections this autumn. Blackberries and whortleberries for jams, nuts for winter consumption, acorns and beech – mash for pigs, acorns again for the neighbour’s rabbits or the village rabbit club, hay made from wayside grass and weeds for rabbits. Nuts are specially important because if they are gathered when ripe they can be shelled and stored in tins and the shells sent to the national collectors. They will then be used to make charcoal for anti-gas masks for our soldiers, if there is no collecting depot near, they can be sent carriage forward to the Gas Works, Southend. No child will have had a good holiday who has not done some war-work, whether by means of collections or other personal service, and this is a way in which a whole family of different ages may work together. Looked at in this way, it can give points to cricket. For anyone now is a little bit ashamed to play unless he has been fighting or working.

The Merchant Navy

D/DLI 13/2/170 Embroidered postcard with Red Ensign and anchor

On 3 September, Durham County Council flew the Red Ensign above County Hall for Merchant Navy Day. This day of remembrance began in 2000 to honour those that served during the two world wars, and to celebrate those who served during peacetime, and continue to serve.

As an island nation, shipping has always been an important part of trade and transport for Britain. At the outbreak of war, more than half the food consumed in this country was carried by merchant shipping. During the war, the Merchant Navy were responsible for ‘supplying the nation and the armed forces with food, transporting raw materials for the manufacture of munitions, maintaining ordinary cargo and passenger trade, and transporting troops and materiel to theatres of war’. (http://media.cwgc.org/media/231265/the_merchant_navy_memorial__tower_hilll__ww1_.pdf)

It didn’t matter that these men were civilians, they were still exposed to the same dangers as the military. The sea became rife with mines from the early days of the war, then the German U-boat campaign began. This increased each year until its most devastating period of 1917. Over 17000 Merchant Navy men lost their lives during the First World War, around 13000 of these were British, with the other 4000 being made up of a wide variety of nationalities from both within, and outside of the Commonwealth.

The Mercantile Marine Medal, with thanks to Football and the First World War, used under the Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License 

One of our Durham at War volunteers, David D, put together the story of John Alfred Roch, who was born in Sunderland in 1903. His father, who was born in Russia but became a naturalised Brit in 1909, worked as a mariner, and as a crane driver when ashore. John’s mother was the daughter of a mariner, so it is no surprise that he followed in their footsteps. 1917 saw John, aged only 14, serving as a deck boy on the SS Lady Ann. On 16 February of that year, the ship left Sunderland for Kent, laden with coal. As the SS Lady Ann passed Scarborough, she is thought to have been torpedoed by a German U-boat. Eleven of the crew, including John, lost their lives. He was awarded the Mercantile Marine Medal, and the British War Medal for his service.

John’s body was never found, but he is remembered on the Tower Hill memorial, across the road from the Tower of London. This memorial recognises the men and women of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets who died during the two world wars, and have no known grave. 

Researching merchant seamen of this period is not easy, there was no official registration, and some other records didn’t survive. What do exist are ships’ crew lists. The National Maritime Museum, with the National Archives, have digitised and indexed the lists for 1915, and these can be searched here:

http://1915crewlists.rmg.co.uk/

Royal Museums Greenwich website has a detailed research guide available here:
http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/researchers/research-guides/research-guide-c9-merchant-navy-first-world-war

Touching Base

This week Jo writes about some of Durham at War's supporting items you might not be so aware of.

E/HB 2/768 Photograph of Bede Territorials (8th DLI) at Scarborough Camp, [1913], most of these men are on the Bede Database

When the Durham at War website was designed it was envisaged that it would broadly consist of stories about people, places, events and organisations. Attached to the stories are “supporting materials”, which might be the transcripts of documents that our volunteers have been working on, photographs, newspaper articles, books or objects. Of the 600 or so supporting materials that have now been published on the website, a handful have surprised us by not sitting easily within the definition of supporting materials that we applied at the beginning of the project: the databases.

At the time of writing we have five databases on Durham at War (or more properly; they are spreadsheets that we have turned into PDF documents). The first that was published was the “Bede College in the Great War database”. 

http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/494/

This is the work of our colleague, David Butler, who trawled through the Bede College archives here at Durham County Record Office, in order to create a list of Bede men who served during the First World War. As well as service details, David has recorded references from the archives to each of the men that he has identified. So, it is now possible to look them up in the administrative records of the College or find mentions of them in the Bede Magazine.

When using the Bede database, please note that in order to get all of the rows of information onto the screen, we have had to reduce the size of the page. You can very easily zoom in by using the plus and minus buttons that appear in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen with Chrome or the same on the bar at the bottom of the screen with Internet Explorer.

The largest database that appears on the site is Peter Hoy’s amazing work on over 4000 service men and women for South Tyneside. His database is so extensive that we had to divide it in to chunks to get it on the website! As well as looking at the usual family history sources (1911 census, BMD indexes) and military documents (medal cards and 'Burnt Documents'), Peter has used local newspaper sources to develop profiles on the individuals he has researched:

http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/634/
http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/638/
http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/639/
http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/645/
http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/647/

D/DLI 7/805/73 Soldiers from 'D' Company, 14th Battalion DLI, c.1916 

Colin Alsbury contacted us after we included the story of a man who started out with the Derbyshire Yeomanry and transferred to 14th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry. He very kindly gave us permission to use his research findings, allowing us to shine a light on another aspect of DLI history. We hadn’t realised that quite a number of men transferred from that regiment in October 1916, probably as reorganisation to bump up numbers lost during the Battle of the Somme.

http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/651/

Another small(ish) but perfectly formed database is that created by our own Victoria. She is particularly interested in Prisoners of War both Germans in County Durham and County Durham men in Germany and Switzerland. While researching the prisoner of war camp at Harperley, she found a list of German prisoners who died of Spanish Flu right at the end of the war, in John Ruttley’s book ‘Prisoners in the North’. She used a combination of sources, including the International Red Cross records, to build up a picture of each man:

http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/530/

The most recent database that we have published on the site is the work of Mavis Dixon. She collaborated with historian Cyril Pearce, who has created a national database of conscientious objectors. They shared information about men from Country Durham and the resulting database is now available to search. As well as the usual sources, Mavis undertook archival research in other repositories, most notably the Cumbria Archives Centre in Carlisle. Cumbria Archives hold the Catherine Marshall collection which reflects her involvement in the suffragette and pacifist movements.

http://www.durhamatwar.org.uk/material/664/

The databases on our site are not something that we had necessarily planned for, but they allow us to include a lot of information that we might not have had the time to pursue as full stories. There are a few other databases in the pipeline that we’ll publish in due course. Watch this space!

Transcription errers

This week we have a blog post from our volunteer, Jean, who researches Canadian soldiers.

Not Middle Earth or Westeros

Many of you will have transcribed handwritten documents, and know how it can sometimes be impossible to decipher the handwriting. In a document it is usually possible to work out the word from the context, but trying to decipher place names is another matter completely, unless, of course you are familiar with the area.

Spare a thought for those who transcribed the 619,000 plus attestation papers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force to prepare them for digitisation, which included of course, the records of the nearly 3,000 men from County Durham who had enlisted. They couldn’t just go to a gazetteer to check on a place name because they weren’t able to decipher it let alone spell it correctly.

It was whilst looking at my list of names and places of birth for our men who joined the CEF that made me consider these problems ... I hadn’t for a start realised that there were so many ways to write Hartlepool. There’s Martlepel , Hurtlepool, Hortiport, Hortlepool, Hartley Hill, Hartleypal, Nortlepool, Hattlepant, Martlopool and more.

In most cases you can tell straight away what the place name should be, but occasionally I have to go back to the original attestation paper to see if I have better luck than the original transcriber in deciphering the writing. Sometimes just a quick look gives the right place and I think how did they get that wrong, but that is so easy for people with local knowledge to say. Occasionally I need to go a bit further and check birth or census records, but in the end most are decipherable.

Examples from the Canadian records

Some of my favourites are Leaham Herbert and Scaham Harbon for Seaham Harbour; Noughland Spring and Hootenay Spring for Houghton-le-Spring; Walton Port for Witton Park; that well known Scottish island Splluy Mora for Spennymoor; Westeonfith for West Cornforth, and how they made Daibrighton, Dedenfon and Durlinjlos out of Darlington I am not quite sure. But the two that stick out as unbelievable transcriptions are Wookson On Quebec (Stockton On Tees) and Jecce Ireland (Sunderland).

Try these ones and see if you can work out where our men were born: Loaf Hill; Camdon; Creek; Southsfield; Paocban; Hamituly; Buttley; Taw Haw; Lediefield; Onfield Place; Durshopel Codery; Sammerland and finally Southampton, and I don’t mean the port on the south coast!

Highlight the text below to reveal the answers:

Low Fell; Coundon; Crook; South Shields; Page Bank; Hamsterley; Birtley; Tow Law; Sedgefield; Annfield Plain; Burnhope Colliery; Sunderland; South Hetton.

“Polish Germans” or “German Poles”: Polish German soldiers in POW camps

The list of German soldiers who died of Spanish flu at Harperley prisoner of war camp caught the eye of one of my Record Office colleagues. Gabriel asked if he could write a blog post about why he was so interested.

Looking at the surnames of the 27 men who died, it is notable that some of their names look very Polish, for example: Walkowiak and Wloczyk. It is not commonly known that some of the so called “German prisoners” were in fact Polish, as many Polish men were conscripted into the German army during the First World War. 

In the German military records on Ancestry, it says that Felix Wloczyk was from Kattowitz, which is now known as Katowice and is in Poland, and served in either a Prussian or Wurttemberg Infantry regiment.

Felix Wloczyk, listed as missing in the German casualty lists 1914-1917, available on Ancestry 

Poland was invaded and partitioned in 1795 between three great European powers at the time: Prussia, Russia and Austria-Hungary. As a result Poles were forced to serve in foreign armies and fight against each other until their independence was regained in 1918.

Poles never accepted having to be called Germans or Russians and they always believed that their nation never ceased to exist despite the fact that Poland was no longer recognised under international law. There are many examples of Poles trying to desert the ranks of the foreign armies and abandon the hated uniforms in order to join the Allies and fight Germans. 

We did not have to look far to find one. Among the records of the Edleston family of Gainford (ref. D/Ed), are letters written by a Pole, Pawel Zbawca Riedelski (also known as Paul Salvator Riedelski Piast), who came to the UK and wanted to join the British army to fight against Germans after the war broke out. In his letters he complains to Robert Edleston that the British authorities refused his application every time, as for them - and according to the law - he was a German subject. 

For many Poles it was a time of personal turmoil not to be able to fight for the country they loved. It is estimated that over 3 million Poles were conscripted into the armies of the three aggressors and over a million died fighting for a cause that was not theirs.

Don't Panic!

Did you know that you might be able to find some First World War service information in Second World War records? A lot of the First World War service records were destroyed during the bombing of the Second World War so it can be difficult to find out what our ancestors did. 

D/DLI 5/1/1 Home Guard Regulations

In 2012, The National Archives undertook a pilot project to digitise some of their home guard records.   The good news for us is that the group of records selected were those for County Durham.  The press release from the time says ‘The County of Durham was selected as a representative sample to digitise for this project, as it contains a number of different patterns of settlement; urban, rural, mining and coastal, and can therefore be considered a microcosm of the whole collection.’

The reason this is great is because one of the questions on the enrolment form is about previous military service:

“Do you now belong to, or have you ever served in, the Armed Forces of the Crown?  If so, state particulars of all engagements.”

The National Archives WO 409/27/50/959 extract from Home Guard enrolment form

Now this won’t contain the same amount of information as a service record might, and it was also up to the man enrolling to put what he thought was relevant.  However, in the absence of any other information, this is a source worth checking.  In the case of William Francis Corner, who I was looking at, it gave me the reason why the solider had only received the British War Medal despite enlisting with his brother in the Durham Pals and training with them.  He was transferred to munitions, likely due to his civilian work as a chemical analyst. 

As mentioned earlier, the man you are researching must have served with the Durham Home Guard during the Second World War period.  The records can be downloaded for £3.30 and searched here: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C12483430