‘Gasworks and waterworks all about here,’ explains my friend, the authority on London’s Darkness… Yes, for sheer, Silent Darkness, impossible to surpass certain corners of Fulham, Chelsea and Hammersmith… Round and about the gas and the water works, policemen, Territorials, or proud special constables.
The Embankment – an important bridge – and special constables and armed Territorials once again. Black, the river; extinguished, the blinking, lurid electrical advertisements of patent medicines and whiskies; invisible, the face of Big Ben. In Whitehall and the Haymarket more semi-darkness. The mixed life of Piccadilly Circus only half alive, Regent Street deserted, Portland Place funereal, Regent’s Park enveloped in a pale, ghostly mist – all this chill and darkness depressing me, I persuade my friend to pull up at a small, vulgar coffee-stall.
Two lamps, anyhow. Two lamps of the kitchen description, and the eternal hard-boiled eggs, and slabs of bread and butter, and slices of sallow seed cake, and penny packets of Woodbine cigarettes, and the coffee-stall keeper himself absorbed in a tattered, greasy copy of the very latest ‘extra special’.
No fewer than three eggs and two cups of coffee for my friend, the authority on Darkness. After that, a chilly sardine sandwich. ‘À la guerre, comme à la guerre.’ Which admirable French saying I translate into English for the benefit of the coffee-stall keeper.
‘That’s it, that’s the proper spirit,’ he cordially assents. ‘If we was to start grumbling, wot would ’appen to the war, I should like to know! Business is rotten. On the top of that, prices gone up. Bar a couple of slices and cups of coffee, you’re the only customers I’ve ’ad tonight. But am I down’earted?’
‘N-o-oo,’ respond my friend and myself, raising our cups of bitter coffee, in the mist, chill and darkness.
It was not until yesterday that Church Street and Bell Street – narrow, shabby little turnings off the Edgware Road – were ‘hit’ by the war. Up till then life and business had gone on as usual, and the air reeked with the fumes from the naphtha lamps that violently illuminated the various barrows of fruit, vegetables, skinned rabbits, millinery, crockery and fish. In fact, the favourite cheap shopping centre of the humble housewives of the neighbourhood – stout, garrulous ladies in seedy caps and shawls; whilst their children played about amongst barrows, and unshaven father, leaning against a lamp-post, clay pipe in mouth, lazily and indifferently surveyed the scene. However, war is war, and even the barrows off Edgware Road have now become involved in it. Not that they have been commandeered for service at the front. Nor yet that the dubious fish and ghastly rabbits have been impounded by the Officer of Health. What has happened is this: By order of the police, as a measure against Zeppelins, out and away with the flaming and flaring naphtha lamps.
Now, without naphtha, a street market not only loses its picturesqueness, but finds itself despoiled of its customers. At least, the customers are reluctant to buy goods in the semi-darkness. They want to examine them lengthily and exhaustively, under a strong light. When Mrs Briggs, of Church Street, goes shopping, it takes her at least five minutes to select a cucumber, then another five minutes about a cabbage, and a third over a cauliflower – and all three objects she closely holds up to the lamp, eyeing and sounding and pinching them all over. As for rabbits—
‘Nothing doing, enuf to make yer cry,’ a rabbit merchant informs me. ‘Nice and ’ealthy they are, but you carn’t get the old women to buy ’em. All becos they carn’t ’ave a good look at ’em! Sick of it, I am. Why don’t they turn the lights out altogether and bloomin’ well ’ave done with it!’
Although dark and dejected, Church and Bell streets are by no means deserted. Nor is trade entirely at a standstill. Some of the barrows are dimly lighted by battered old bicycle lamps, and the lamps are being constantly removed from the nail on which they hang and swept across and pointed down upon the food-stuffs. Heavens, the lengthy inspection of this cabbage! In one hand a stout housewife holds a bicycle lamp, and with the other hand she pulls aside every leaf of the cabbage and peers down into the very depths of its heart. Another housewife overhauls at least twenty bananas before she finally selects three at the cost of a penny. And a third carries off a cauliflower for examination under the nearest gas-lamp, some twenty yards away.
‘Don’t forgit to come back,’ the costermonger cries after her. Then, turning to me: ‘Four cabbages I never saw again last night, becos I let ’em be took as far as the gas-lamp.’
‘And wot about me?’ exclaims his neighbour, the rabbit merchant. ‘Up comes an old woman, messes about with the rabbits, carn’t make up ’er mind, so I lets ’er take two of the finest up to the gas-lamp and—’
‘Done a guy, of course,’ his colleague interrupts. ‘That there gas-lamp wants watching by the perlice. A bit of Scotland Yard round it, that’s wot it wants.’ Then, most caustically to a passing constable: ‘Any objection against me lighting a match for my pipe?’
I grieve to relate that, through the darkness, I dimly but positively behold little boys surreptitiously helping themselves to apples and nuts, and it furthermore pains me to announce that a small girl deftly and illegally obtains possession of a banana, which, however, she generously shares in a doorway with two friends. But, on the whole, the people of Church and Bell streets do not take excessive advantage of the darkness. Only a few rabbits and cabbages ‘missing’; the majority of housewives who make the pilgrimage to the gas-lamp return in good time. On the other hand, it has incoherently got into the heads of these ladies that the lowering of London’s lights should be accompanied by a corresponding reduction in prices. A rabbit in the darkness should be worth less than a rabbit in strong naphtha light.
‘Becos,’ one of the housewives confusedly informs me, ‘becos rabbits, like everything else, is tricky and deceptive. You can’t tell the time from the clock when it’s dark: and the same applies to rabbits. So if I buys rabbits in the darkness, I takes a risk: and expects them to go down a penny a pound.’
MRS M. HALL was a munitions worker in London. The following extract, taken from the Sound Archive of the Imperial War Museum, is also reproduced in Forgotten Voices of the Great War.
I’d never been in a factory before, but the crisis made you think. I thought well, my brothers and my friends are in France, so a friend and I thought to ourselves, well, let’s do something. So we wrote to London and asked for war work. And we were directed to a munitions factory at Perivale in London. We had to have a health examination because we had to be very physically fit – perfect eyesight and strong. We had to supply four references, and be British-born of British parents.
We worked ten hours a day, that’s from eight in the morning till quarter to one – no break, an hour for dinner, back again until half-past six – no break. We single girls found it very difficult to eat as well as work because the shops were closed when we got home. We had to do our work and try to get food, which was difficult. I remember going into a shop after not having milk for seven days and they said, ‘If you can produce a baby you can have the milk’ – that was it! I went into a butcher’s shop to get some meat because we were just beginning to be rationed and I said, ‘That looks like cat.’ And he said, ‘It is.’ I couldn’t face that.
It was a perfect factory to work in: everybody seemed unaware of the powder around them, unaware of any danger. Once or twice we heard, ‘Oh, so and so’s gone.’ Perhaps she’d made a mistake and her eye was out, but there wasn’t any big explosion during the three years I was there. We worked at making these little pellets, very innocent-looking little pellets, but had there been the lightest grit in those pellets, it would have been ‘Goodbye’.
We had to do a fortnight on and a fortnight off. It was terribly hard, terribly monotonous, but we had a purpose. There wasn’t a drone in that factory and every girl worked and worked and worked. I didn’t hear one grumble and hardly ever heard of one that stayed home because she had her man in mind, we all had. I was working with sailors’ wives from three ships
that were torpedoed and sank, Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue, on the 22nd of September 1914. It was pitiful to see them, so we had to cheer them up as best we could, so we sang. It was beautiful to listen to.
After each day when we got home we had a lovely good wash. And believe me the water was blood-red and our skin was perfectly yellow, right down through the body, legs and toenails even, perfectly yellow. In some people it caused a rash and a very nasty rash all round the chin. It was a shame because we were a bevy of beauties, you know, and these girls objected very much to that. Yet amazingly even though they could do nothing about it, they still carried on and some of them with rashes about half an inch thick but it didn’t seem to do them any inward harm, just the skin. The hair, if it was fair or brown it went beautiful gold, but if it was any grey, it went grass-green. It was quite a twelve-month after we left the factory that the whole of the yellow came from our bodies. Washing wouldn’t do anything – it only made it worse.
THE STUDENTS OF GIRTON COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE In 1916 and again in 1919, past and present students of Girton College, Cambridge (then an all-female college) were asked to supply information about their contributions to the war effort, by briefly listing their experiences on postcards. Invitations were sent to 1483, and 854 reponded to the request (Katherine Jex-Blake, ‘War Work’ in The Girton Review, 1920). The cards below were received in 1919. Their contents have been transcribed exactly, although the addresses have been omitted.
Name A. F. E. Sanders
War work (a) Arranged for the Massage & Physical Treatment at Tunbridge Wells High School of wounded soldiers.
(b) the war work of the pupils of the above school 1914-1917 & of the Sydenham High School. 1917-18 i.e. prisoners’ parcels – part furnishing of Belgian refugees houses – 1000s of bags for hospitals – collections of nuts – eggs – rags – foxglove leaves &c. Red Cross sales. Entertainments of Belgians & wounded soldiers – concerts at Hospitals – supplies to a military base hospital &c &c.
(This is not personal work. Perhaps I should not send it?)
Name Mrs Howard Priestman (L. D. Pearson Mods Tripos 1905)
War work
The circular accompanying this postcard seemed to imply that a reply was asked for even if ‘war work’ has been an impossibility, owing to a young family, a shortness of maids & too little assistance in a large garden. I am sorry I have done no ‘war work’ – at all.
Yours sincerely. L. D Priestman
Name Helen E. Macklin
War work Ill health has prevented my doing any real work. I have belonged to the Bedford County Folk Visitation Society, for visiting wounded soldiers in hospital; and have acted as marraine to some Belgian soldiers, and done similar things. But I feel none of them can be called work or be worth recording.
Name Muriel E. Jackson
War work I have been Gardening since August 1917 at North Cray Place, Sidcup, Kent. It is a small Boarding School for girls & I am one of several Lady Gardeners who keep the school provided with vegetables. We do not grow flowers. I don’t know whether you consider this ‘War Work’. The Head Gardener had been called up.
Name May S. Gratton
War work
Analytical chemist, at Calico Print Works, Dinking Nr Manchester.
From June 1918 to Jan 31st 1919.
This post was vacant owing to predecessor being called up. They had never had a lady chemist before. My predecessor was demobilised, & took up the work again when I left, so I consider it ‘War Work’.
Name Gertrude Exton
War work
One month ‘on the land’ at the Flanders nurseries.
Four months as Technical Assistant in the Department of Aircraft Production in the Ministry of Munitions.
(This is hardly worth sending but I was teaching for very nearly four years.)
Name Joan Denny
War work – nothing, I fear – beyond helping in the big work Bath High School undertook from our Prisoners of War in Germany. We packed parcels ourselves as long as we were allowed, & then raised about £120 a year to send food etc to the men through their Committees. I fear this is nothing to count, but it is all I can boast of.
J.Denny
Name F. E. Ashwell Cooke. Mrs
War work
The work I have done for the war has been of a very ordinary kind – for the Red Cross, alien English women – & the Belgians. It is not worth chronicling.
April 5th 1919
Name L. E. Blyth
War work
1) Visitor for Soldiers’ & Sailors’ Families Assoc.
2) Sewing for soldiers – joined 2 local centres.
3) Private parcels for Prisoners of War & allied soldiers, known to be needy – through relations at front.
4) Household work – only keeping one maid instead of two. Taking up poultry-keeping etc. seriously.
Name M. R. G. Bell
War work
Have done nothing official. Merely knitted socks, mittens, mufflers etc & made respirators sandbags, splints & bandages.
Name Janet Case
War work None
Aug-Dec 1914 I worked with the women’s coop. guild in their campaign for Maternity centres, who I shd probably not have done except for the war But the programme was drawn up prior to the war and we defended it.
Dec 1914-1919 prevented by illness from doing any outside work, but as a pacifist I shd not in any case have undertaken anything of the nature of actual war work.
J. E. C.
Name Mrs Ayrton
War work Invented a fan to drive back poisonous gases & clear them out of trenches, dug-outs &c both after a gas attack & during shell bombardments. Hundreds of thousands of these fans were sent to the French Front – & the demand was still greater than the supply quite towards the close of the war. I presented the invention [to] the the nation for the period of the war.
Name Edith Helen Pratt
War work
1) Staff Inspector of National Filling Factories, Ministry of Munitions.
Aug. 1915 – March. 1917
(First Woman Inspector appointed at the Ministry)
2) Deputy Chief Controller. W.A.A.C (Overseas)
March 1917 – March 1918
3) Deputy Commandant. Womens’ Royal Air Force
March 1918 – July 1918
Created O.B.E. Sept 1917
Name Lucy Rose Stephen
War work
I have just received information that the above my daughter a former student at Girton died on the 8 April 1918 at Calgary Alberta Canada.
J H Stephen
THE SURVIVORS OF THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA On 1 May 1915 the British Cunard liner, the RMS Lusitania, embarked upon its journey from New York to Liverpool. As the ship approached the Irish Coast on 7 May, she was sunk by a torpedo from a German U-boat. Of 1,962 on board, only 764 survived. Rescue ships brought the dead and the living into Queenstown Harbour; relatives were permitted to identify the missing in temporary morgues. Richard Preston Prichard was aboard the liner; he was returning to Britain having been training in medicine at McGill University in Canada. His mother, living in Ramsgate, received no news about him. Mrs Prichard and her son Mostyn wrote to survivors asking if they had seen Richard.
Ramsgate
June 18th 1915
Dear Sir –
I have heard from one of the survivors that you may be able to tell me something of my son whose photo with description I enclose. His cabin was D. 90. Do you think if he were in his cabin he would have had time to get on Deck – or did the ship list to such an extent as to prevent his getting up the stairs – I believe you were saved on a raft. I suppose amongst the other men with you on it – my son was not amongst them –
Do you remember whether the majority of the men jumped at the last & did most of them have life belts – I should be most grateful to you if you will kindly tell me all you can remember – as I long so to hear something about my dear son – & what he went through at the last…
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br /> Were there many injured by the falling wreckage etc. & did the men seem to realise their danger –
My son was a medical student.
Believe me –
Yrs faithfully –
M. Prichard –
If you know the names of other survivors I should be most grateful if you would kindly send me their address that I may write to them –
My son had a very deep dimple in his chin.
Bayswater
Nov. 26th 1915
Dear Mrs Pritchard [sic]
I received your two letters safely. Am extremely sorry not to have answered before, but I have not yet recovered from the fearful shock and tragedy of that awful affair ‘the sinking of the Lusitania’ and writing about it is still very painful to me. No doubt you have heard of my terrible experience and how when the ship went down it carried my darling baby girl and self with it and how I held her in my arms under the water until I became unconscious and then she was dragged away from me and I have never seen her since. Twice I went under the water and the second time on coming to the surface I held on to a piece of wreckage and drifted around amongst the dead for some considerable time. I cannot say just how long I was in the water it seemed to me an eternity, but when I was rescued I was not taken straight into a life boat, but three men who were sitting on an over-turned boat pulled me out of the water when I happened to drift their way, and it was some time afterwards that a boat load of people came along and took me on to their boat. When I got on board my life was almost gone and I do not remember who was in charge of the boat, but I can say that while I was there I did not see any man who passed away. Two or three were in a state of exhaustion but I think after a time they recovered somewhat. I do not know what happened to them afterwards because a fishing smack the Flying Fish I think by name came along and took us on to her. I wish I could tell you something to comfort you in your great distress but unfortunately I cannot. I do not even remember seeing your dear son and if I did I fear I should not have recognised him. It all happened so swiftly and everybody was more or less insane, but there is one thing I feel you can rest assured about and that is if your son did pass away on a boat his body would not have been left there, but would have been brought into Queenstown with the others.
A Broken World: Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Great War Page 3