Tommy's War: A First World War Diary 1913-1918
Page 30
19 Thomas’ exemption from being called up was conditional on him continuing to be employed in work of national importance. It was up to him, or his employer’s lawyer, to argue that Thomas’ job met this definition.
20 Mrs Carmichael is evidently working in a munitions factory.
21 The food ticket, or ration card, allowed each household to buy small amounts of meat, sugar, butter and eggs each week. Bread was not rationed.
22 Thomas was not a ‘one’, he was a CIII (or C3), at the bottom of the medical scale.
23 Paul Bolo, a career criminal, was found guilty of obtaining funds from Germany to set up a pacifist movement in France.
24 The Prince of Wales was to become Edward VIII.
25 The City Hall in Candleriggs, central Glasgow, was composed of a large hall that was used for public meetings and concerts and a number of smaller halls. The halls stood above the city’s fruit and vegetable market.
26 John Redmond (1856-1918) was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, Westminster MP and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 until his death. He was regarded as a moderate and conciliatory politician.
27 Paisley Road Toll.
28 St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. His feast day is on 17 March.
29 The Cormack family has begun renting an allotment, possibly in Queen’s Park.
30 The barber.
31 The boats were painted in camouflage patterns.
32 The Board of Trade introduced a Curfew Order to reduce fuel use. Under the order, restaurants had to put out their lights at 10 p.m., theatres had to be dark after 10.30 p.m. and shop fronts should show no lights. The order lasted until December 1918.
33 The Military Service Bill proposed that the Director-General of National Service would have the power to cancel any certificates of exemption granted on occupational grounds.
34 Most office workers wore shirts with detachable collars. Stiff collars were cleaned and starched outside of the house, while soft collars could be cleaned at home.
35 War Weapons Week was held throughout Britain from 8 to 13 April and people were encouraged to buy National War Bonds (sold in denominations from £5 to £5,000) or War Savings Certificates (15/6).
36 George Square.
37 The Aviatik was a reconnaissance aircraft built in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War. It was captured and displayed in George Square.
38 Haig’s Special Order of the Day, issued in response to the German Spring offensives, urged the British Army to ‘fight it out’ and insisted that ‘Victory will belong to the side which holds out the longest’.
39 A ‘peary’, usually spelled ‘peery’, was a spinning top, set in motion with a whip or cord. See illustration on page 11.
40 The Theatre Royal, in Hope Street, central Glasgow, offered both comedy and drama. It is now the home of Scottish Opera.
41 K-class submarines were steam-propelled, and were intended to operate with the battle fleet. K.7 was built by HM Dockyard in Devonport and commissioned in July 1917.
42 Four pounds of sugar.
43 The sausages had gone off. Always a problem for people in the days before domestic fridges.
44 ‘Game’, pronounced ‘gammy’, means crooked, broken or dislocated.
45 Only men attended the burial part of the funeral at this time.
46 In other words, Agnes began spring-cleaning the parlour..
47 A gamp is an umbrella.
48 Thomas means that he and his family travelled home by tramcar.
49 WAAC was the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, established in January 1917 as a new voluntary service, in which women served as clerks, telephonists, waitresses, cooks and gas-mask instructors.
50 The West End Park is now known as Kelvingrove Park. The park played host to the 1888 International Exhibition, the 1901 International Exhibition and the 1911 Scottish Exhibition. Like Queen’s Park, it was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton.
51 The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19 was one of the most devastating epidemics in recorded history. Roughly a third of the world’s population was infected by the virus, which killed an estimated 50 million people. The disease progressed extremely rapidly and, unusually, was particularly fatal among young adults.
52 Neuritis is the general inflammation of the peripheral nervous system.
53 La Musique du Premier Zouave, the leading Zouave band of the French Army, visited London on 12 July 1918. The 80 Zouaves, described as being fresh from the battle front, may also have played in other cities. The Zouaves were French light infantrymen, recruited from the Algerian Kabyle tribe of Zouaoua.
54 Quinine was a popular remedy for sore throats, mouth ulcers, influenza and headaches.
55 After the munitions workers of Coventry and Birmingham went on strike, the National Engineering and Allied Trades’ Council decided to extend the strike if there was no settlement before 30 July.
56 On 26 July, the government warned the striking workers that after 29 July, they must either return to work or go into military service.
57 A ‘doughboy’ was slang for an American infantryman.
58 The Paris Gun, also known as the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz’ (Emperor William Gun), was the largest piece of artillery used during the war. It was an oversized railway gun made by Krupp. The gun could propel a 210lb shell 81 miles.
59 A Scottish blessing: long may his chimney smoke.
60 The passenger steamer Iona, operated by David MacBrayne, was built on the Clyde in 1864 by J. & G. Thomson.
61 The Empire was a theatre in Rothesay.
62 The Palace cinema stood near the pier in the centre of Rothesay. From 1913, it was owned by James Gillespie Snr, who made and showed films of local events, such as Highland games.
63 The deep waters of the Clyde estuary were used for ship and submarine tests and exercises.
64 Thomas’ and his family’s accommodation was unlikely to have been in the Hotel de Luxe category.
65 Canada Hill, according to local legend, got its name because locals used to gather there to watch emigrant ships travelling from the Clyde to North America.
66 The Rothesay Tramways Company ran electric trams from Rothesay to Port Bannatyne and on to Ettrick Bay.
67 Before council tax, people paid ‘rates’ to a local authority. These were based on the ‘rateable’ value of a person’s house, which was calculated by the district assessor as the annual rent that the property could be let for in the open market on a particular date. The council set rates as a certain number of pence for each pound of value, so if one’s house was assessed as having a rateable value of £20, and the local rate was set at 5/- to the pound, one would pay £5 a year to the council in return for local services. After the council added a penny to the rate, in this instance one would have paid an extra 20d (1/8d).
68 The passenger steamer Benmore was operated by John Williamson. It was built by T. Seath of Rutherglen in 1876.
69 Kilcreggan is a village on the north side of the Clyde estuary.
70 Thomas is playing with words here: ‘smitted’ is an invented form of ‘smite’, and the sense is that Tommy has smitten him with the cold germs.
71 Agnes has captured in a few words three of Thomas’ diary-writing obsessions: the weather, his family and the illnesses they endured.
72 William Power, ‘Glasgow To-Day’, The Book of Glasgow (Glasgow: Alex Macdougall, 1922), p. 81.
73 G.B. Primrose, ‘Business Life in Glasgow’, The Book of Glasgow (Glasgow: Alex Macdougall), 1922, p. 210.
74 All these synonymous terms indicate the same thing: that Agnes is utterly exhausted and unable to take part in daily life.
75 On 21 November 1918, the Parliamentary Qualification of Women Act received Royal Assent. This allowed women over the age of 30 to stand for the Westminster parliament.
76 Dooking (or bobbing) for apples is a traditional Hallowe’en game. A tub is filled with water and apples put into it. Players try to catch one
of the floating apples in their teeth, without using their hands. Thomas and his family may not have played this game because there were no apples to be had.
77 It’s the war.
78 This is the opening verse of the hymn ‘The Christian’s Good Night’ written by Ira Sankey and Sarah Doudney. It has passed into the modern folk repertoire and been recorded by, among others, the Incredible String Band and the Grateful Dead.
79 ‘Sorrow, without relief’ is a phrase from the poem ‘The Debt’ by African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.
80 The Latin phrase ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’ means: ‘And so passes the glory of the world.’
81 The ‘first standard’ was the best-performing class in each school year.
82 An Irish phrase, literally ‘it’s queer’, meaning odd or puzzling.
83 Supplies of wheat were restored after the U-boat menace was banished, and bread could once again be made with processed white flour.
84 Possibly from the chorus of the spiritual song ‘This Little Light of Mine’.
85 Thomas is referring to the military’s scale of medical fitness. He, of course, was graded as CIII.
86 Following the armistice, the Marxist educator John Maclean was freed from jail, where he was serving a five-year sentence for sedition. He was given a hero’s welcome. The event was celebrated in the song ‘The Ballad of John Maclean’ by Glaswegian singer Matt McGinn, and in a poem, ‘The John Maclean March’, by Hamish Henderson.
87 John Maclean contested the Gorbals seat as the official Labour candidate in December 1918.
88 Whisky.
89 These were small, gold-coloured, vertical stripes sewn on to the lower left sleeve.
90 Notices in shops, bars etc. proclaiming ‘no tick’ indicated that goods and services would not be offered on credit. Thomas is aiming for a pun here.
91 The Latin phrase ‘pro tem’ means ‘for the time being’. Thomas may mean ‘temporarily’.
92 Poem or song not identified.
1933 AND 1950
Wee Tommy the sailor aged around two or three years at a Glasgow photographers studio.
Not so Wee Tommy in his usual attire of kilt, possibly in the grounds of Glasgow University.
The diaries
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©The Estate of Thomas Cairns Livingstone 2008
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First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2008
Diary extracts and illustrations abridged and selected from The Diaries of Thomas Cairns Livingstone
© The Estate of Thomas Cairns Livingstone 2008, under licence to Shaun Sewell Introduction and ‘People and places’
© Shaun Sewell Footnotes and historical background text
© Ronnie Scott 2008 Foreword copyright
© Andrew Marr Maps
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