by Ian Porter
And with women’s football springing up everywhere, and raising money for war charities into the bargain, it was fast becoming a much loved national treasure. There was now a nationwide Munitionettes Cup competition, and thousands were watching the star team, Dick Kerr’s Ladies, of Preston.
Consequently, even for an inter-factory match the Leyton ground was full to capacity to see the women play. And the players even had changing rooms, nets in the goals, and a fully qualified, uniformed male referee and linesmen.
Ruby’s team ran on to the pitch, resplendent in their green & white hooped mop caps, matching vertical striped shirts with neck tie-ups, long black shorts and socks, plus heavy brown leather boots. They were met by huge deep throated cheers from the mostly male crowd. It reminded Ruby of her Suffragette years when she had to make speeches to a sea of cloth caps. Women then, as in this war, were too busy working, shopping, cleaning the house or caring for children to be in the audience.
Ruby was playing left back. Soon after kick off it was obvious she was the worst player on the pitch. But her team mates were really skilful. So she decided that when the ball came to her she would simply attempt to hoof the ball as hard as she could away from her goal. It was the safest option. But fortunately the ball didn’t come near her very often in the first half as her shells team dominated and pushed forward. They led 4-0 at half time. Everyone in the team was very happy and Ruby was praised for her no nonsense defending. A little old lady came on with a bucket of water and the remnants of a grey flannel that had seen better days, to slosh each woman in the face like a harassed mum unceremoniously wiping crumbs from a baby’s mouth.
The second half was a much more even affair, as the shells team started to visibly tire. And their thirty six year old, less than skilful left back was in the fray rather more than she would have liked. But with about five minutes to go they led by seven goals to three. But then hitherto merely tired legs turned to jelly. And Ruby’s recent fall, allied to the fact that she had never played a proper football match before, had left her almost as vulnerable to exhaustion as her teammates. The physical weakness of the shells team came home to roost as they mounted a Rorke’s Drift defence against wave after wave of forgings attacks. But they were less successful than the British army had been in South Africa. They conceded four goals in little more than five minutes as they were overrun by an opposition not feeling the effects of having been poisoned.
There had not been many stoppages during the match so surely there would not be much injury time. Ruby spotted the referee’s whistle was in his mouth. He was going to blow it to end the game and they would have escaped with a most creditable draw.
But forgings were coming forward with the ball again. Their star player, a big young woman with a donkey’s kick on her, thumped the ball towards goal. It was heading straight at Ruby at head height. The only time she had previously headed the ball in the game she had used the top of her head like a battering ram against the ball rather than use her forehead in the prescribed manner, and had consequently seen stars for a few seconds afterwards. She had not learned her lesson and found her teeth juddering with the impact of mud covered heavy leather on skull. The impact knocked her hat off and through the pain she saw the ball spiral in the opposite direction to the one she had intended, straight back towards her own goal. It was too far from Betty, their goalkeeper to save it. In that split second Ruby saw she was about to score an own goal to lose the match. A moment later the ball flew an inch over the crossbar. No goal. And the referee’s whistle blew for the end of the game. It was a draw. Her team gathered round her shrieking with delight and patting ‘good old Gorgeous’ on the back.
Chapter 7
“I knew that it was my business to protest however futile protest might be. I felt that for the honour of human nature those who were not swept off their feet should show that they stood firm.”
Bertrand Russell, Conscientious Objector
Ruby had been asked by her husband if she would like him to come along to watch her at the football match, but she had put him off, concerned that she might make a fool of herself. This in itself did not worry her, but she had initially thought that there would only be a small crowd standing on the side-line to watch, and was afraid that some wag may shout abuse at her, which might result in the man being thumped by her husband.
But unbeknownst to her, Nash had found out the match was a rather bigger one than Ruby had realised, but kept this to himself lest his wife got stage fright. He had made his way along to the match, paid his contribution to charity, and had easily blended unnoticed into the sizeable crowd.
When the final whistle blew he had felt so proud of his wife, but on seeing the shells team gather round her, he resisted the temptation to run on to the pitch to tell her so. This was a moment for Ruby and her teammates to enjoy exclusively together. He had made his way home and waited for her to walk through the door. She was duly met with a “bleeding good header you did to save the game girl. I saw it. I’m proud of you Rubes,” followed by a kiss.
But that had not stopped him from being highly amused the next morning, when his wife could barely get out of bed. She lit a bedside candle and groaned her way across the room to the kettle like a steam locomotive puffing to its water tower. She saw the smirk on her husband’s face so retaliated by telling him her nickname with the girls, and why she had been given it.
Hours later she was still stiff as a board when she and Sylvia met Nash outside the British Museum underground station. He had spent the morning out in the countryside of Woodford, liaising with others in his cause and helping them put the finishing touches to a farm shed that had been converted into living quarters for objectors. The two women had led a League for the Right of Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Wives & Relations march to the War Office and 10 Downing Street. It was protesting against a new law that had been passed which made it illegal for a woman with venereal disease to have sexual intercourse with a member of the armed forces, even if that man was her husband and it was he who had given the woman the disease in the first place.
With deference to Ruby’s stiff gait, they made their way slowly to Holborn Hall where Ruby and Sylvia were to attend a National Conscription Fellowship meeting where the ex-MP George Lansbury was to make an anti-war speech. Given Nash’s work hiding objectors was tied up closely with the NCF, he needed to keep a low profile. He could not afford to be seen at such a meeting. He was there purely to protect his wife and friend if the inevitable unpleasantness outside the meeting became something a little more dangerous.
Nash left the women well before they reached the hall, and crossed the road to the Princess Louise pub. He bought himself a pint, grimaced first at the high cost and then at the watered down, low sugar nature of the beer.
“Nine-pence for a pint of piss,” he muttered under his breath, as he took his beer on to the pavement to watch the proceedings across the road at the hall.
As expected there was an angry crowd of pro-war men outside. Fortunately the mob were too busy swearing at, and generally trying to intimidate, everyone entering, to recognise the infamous pacifist Sylvia Pankhurst. The two women were managing to slip through the crowd and into the hall suffering only minimal jostling.
But Nash had spotted a man standing at the edge of the swathe, who did not quite fit the surroundings. Nash’s success over the years, first as someone who relieved gentleman of their valuables down dark alleyways, and then as Sylvia’s bodyguard in his Suffragette years, was not based purely on his ability to beat up anyone who got in his way. He had a sixth sense for spotting plain clothes policeman, and any other men who were not quite whom they appeared to be. His antenna led him to keep his focus on this man. And as Sylvia passed by the fellow, Nash saw him react like a cat spotting a bird. The man went quickly to his pocket, fetched out notebook and pencil and started scribbling feverishly, continually glancing back and forth between his notes and Sylvia. He had ob
viously recognised her, and unsurprisingly followed her and Ruby into the hall. Nash did not think he had the stamp of a newspaper man. Whoever he was, Nash decided he better not be seen with Sylvia and Ruby when they came out of the meeting.
He quickly downed his pint and immediately wished he hadn’t. He repeated his previous review of the quality of the beer, popped the empty glass back in the pub, and then went to head home. The women would realise he must have left for good reason.
But as he returned back through the pub’s double doors onto the pavement, a large force of police and a number of soldiers arrived together on foot outside the hall. The men outside turned from jeering to cheering as they parted like the Red Sea to leave an avenue for the government forces to run through into the hall.
Nash could not worry about the weasel with the notebook now. He needed to protect his women. He ran across the road at full tilt. His momentum, along with some lusty thrusts of his elbows, had him crash through the avenue of cheering men just as they were starting to close back into a mass. Several oaths were shouted after him as he followed the police through the entrance area into the main hall. The last two policemen took hold of the large hall doors and started to close them but Nash was already through on their coat tails. One of them shouted “oi, what do you think you’re doing?” after him, but immediately thereafter was too busy ensuring the doors got closed, to worry about a solitary gate-crasher.
Nash looked up to the speaker’s platform to see George Lansbury was already in position. But two military officers and six soldiers jumped up to join him and ordered the ex-MP not to attempt to start speaking. He was then told to procure order on their behalf.
Police officers were now going around demanding to see the identification papers of every man in the place. Men were attempting to leave but the doors were held firmly closed. Nash realised that the police had not shut the doors to keep the public out, but to keep them in.
There was uproar as police shouted to soldiers to come and round up a suspected conscription absentee whom they had caught. Four male peace campaigners were led away. A woman was arrested for attempting to help them. A young man, who had got up on the platform to wave his exemption papers, was then flung head-first several feet down to the hall floor.
Two policeman grabbed Nash from behind. Before he had time to react, a police officer in front of Nash shouted to his colleagues.
“Leave him, he’s too old!”
It was the first time Nash had ever been correctly diagnosed as too old for conscription. A couple of years back, when the conscription age limit had been only forty-one, he had been delighted to be served a white feather by a nice young lady. And now apparently he didn’t even pass for fifty. He had never been so insulted.
Duly released he fought the compulsion to show the policemen that he was not too old to dump the two of them on their backsides. He had other fish to fry. He looked around and eventually spotted Ruby and Sylvia. They were crouched on the floor assisting the young man who had been thrown off the platform. The lad was dazed and had a bloody nose but Nash thought he was no worse off than he would be after a lively Saturday night out in Bow.
Nash was relieved Ruby and Sylvia were out of trouble for once but you wouldn’t have guessed it from his tone.
“Not arrested yet ladies? You two must be getting old!” he said, with a knowing smirk on his face.
Ruby wasn’t going to let him get away with that.
“No policemen beaten to a pulp yet dear husband? You are old!”
Sylvia looked askance at them. It was neither the time nor the place for their silly banter. She had always found it extraordinary that they made fun of each other in the most inopportune circumstances. She put it down to the fact that having met just as the Titanic slid beneath the waves, no situation could seem too terrible after that. Duly chastised by Sylvia’s withering look, the loving couple exchanged a ‘that’s us told’ glance and got on with the serious job of extricating themselves from their predicament.
The two women helped the teenager up, but the three of them immediately gave a good impersonation of dominoes, when a man with a police officer clinging to him in a most unloving embrace, piled into them, causing them to fall to the floor in instalments.
Nash swept the lad up and threw him effortlessly over his right shoulder.
“Pick that tip up from your little firewomen friends did you?” asked Ruby, as she picked herself up stiffly from the floor.
Nash gave his wife a wink, before picking his way through the mayhem to the hall’s door, with the two women following in his wake.
At this point it was Ruby’s turn to take charge, speaking oh so sweetly to the young policemen on the door, explaining that such roughness was no place for the sensibilities of ladies, so would the constables be kind enough to allow them to escape such tortures.
Ruby and Sylvia were each wearing a simple white blouse, ankle length plain skirt, old lace-up boots; and it had clearly been some time since their once fashionable, now battered velvet-trimmed chip hats had passed over the counter of Derry & Toms. They were hardly genteel middle class ladies about town. And Ruby’s attempt to hide her working class Hampshire accent wasn’t fooling anyone. Even wet behind the ears young police officers.
But one of them noticed the stiff way in which Ruby was moving and assumed she had just been injured in the melee. So after some umming & ahhing the young men allowed the women and their injured friend to slip out, and for the second time in five minutes, Nash was also allowed to go on his way on grounds of age.
It was only when they got outside and Nash found himself looking across at the pub, that he remembered the man with the notebook. He had forgotten to look for him in the melee.
Chapter 8
“No person shall by word of mouth or in writing spread reports likely to cause disaffection or alarm among any of His Majesty’s forces or among the civilian population.”
Defence of the Realm Act, 1914
The greater level of security being imposed by the government posed new problems for Nash. He had always taken the utmost care when meeting and transporting his objectors, often choosing to travel when an incident of sizeable proportions was due to take local police off the streets. Best of all was an anti-war peace rally in the East End. During the past year these rallies had become increasingly well attended, but since the losses during the German Spring Offensive people had once again closed ranks behind the war effort. Thus such a rally was now always good to spark a riot.
But the Holborn Hall incident had showed how the police and army were becoming increasingly successful in working together to chase down those who attempted to evade fighting in the war. And Nash suspected that the man who had been spying on Sylvia, had probably seen him with her, and reported back to whatever government agency for which he was working. It was possible they would find out in due course who he was, and then he might find himself under surveillance. He would need to be on his guard.
Ever careful to keep one step ahead of the government, Nash had a novel way of initially meeting his objectors. He had the No Conscription Fellowship drop off his new charges at the Woolwich Free Ferry.
The captains of the ferries had seen at first hand the appalling hardships of the people in the area caused by the explosion in the local Silvertown munitions factory the previous year.
The government had hushed up the largest explosion in history so, to the outside world gleaning their news from the press, there had merely been an explosion down at the docks. People throughout London had been left to ponder what that huge noise and bright light emanating from the East End had been. And just why had their windows rattled or smashed at the same time the very earth seemed to tremble?
But many East Enders were all too aware that much of Silvertown had been razed to the ground and thousands of already poverty stricken people had been left homeless. Local authorities set up tem
porary accommodation for many in local schools, churches and halls. Other people went to live with nearby relatives, returning mere slums to the overcrowded garrets and hovels they had been in a bygone era. And with coal in such short supply, and so expensive even when available, the inhabitants of churches, halls and slums alike lived in cold, damp misery.
The ferry captains responded by allowing as many people as they could to ride in their cavernous engine rooms all day. Such places were as warm as toast. And someone could sit there all day, not only warm, but free from the prying eyes of police and military. So Nash had objectors dropped at the ferry, and they were told to ride it until they were approached.
Nash would make his way to the location by horse & cart. The latter was used to hide the objector. On the journey back to a safe house, the man would lie on the back of it, out of sight, under a pile of coal sacks.
Taking such transport on the ferry from Silvertown to Woolwich, and then immediately returning on the same boat without having alighted, might draw attention. Woolwich was where London’s largest munitions factory was located. Travelling to Woolwich and back for no reason would seem odd to anyone who noticed. The whole population had been warned to look out for any sort of strange behaviour. It was believed they might spot a German spy. So Nash would leave his transportation outside Silvertown’s Railway Hotel, which had survived the great blast.
On his initial reconnaissance of the area weeks earlier, Nash had spotted a one-legged young man with a cut down clothes prop as a crutch, probably a recently maimed soldier, scraping the barest of livings by calling passing cabs for drunks as they stumbled out of the hotel’s saloon bar. Most would toss their unofficial concierge a penny, or if they were very drunk, their lack of coordination might result in them accidentally scattering a few coins over the cobbles for him to pick up with some difficulty.