Mansfield in the Great War

CHAPTER 1

1914

Eager for a Fight

Like every other town, village and city in the United Kingdom, during 1914–1918, Mansfield sent thousands of men to join the war effort. Mansfield also played host to several thousand soldiers who were trained at Clipstone Camp just outside the town. Up to 30,000 men were housed in the camp at its peak and their impact on the town was enormous. All aspects of local life were affected – from Sunday church services, to trade and transport. And, of course, there were some who managed to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them by this dramatic increase to the town’s population.

At the outbreak of war, Mansfield was a thriving market town as well as a mining community and industrial centre. Many miners were torn between the desire to join up and do their bit as soldiers and the knowledge that by staying in the pit they were helping to provide the thousands of tons of coal needed to keep Britain and its army going in wartime.

Welbeck Abbey, the seat of the Duke of Portland, was situated near Mansfield. The Duke and Duchess often held house parties on the estate to which British and European royals were invited, including King George V and Queen Mary, as well as dignitaries such as Lord Kitchener.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife, Sophie Duchess of Hohenberg, visited Welbeck Abbey in November 1913. They had just spent a week with King George V and Queen Mary at Windsor and on 22 November they arrived at Warsop Station, where they were met by limousines for the drive to Welbeck Abbey. A large crowd had also gathered to cheer the motorcade along.

Other guests at Welbeck that weekend included the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire; Count Mensdorff, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador; Lord and Lady Salisbury; and Arthur Balfour, a former Conservative Prime Minister. The main reason for their visit was the shooting, which they experienced at Clowne Hills, Gleadthorpe and Clipstone, where the Archduke narrowly avoided being injured by an accidental stray bullet during the day’s shooting.

Less than one year later Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be dead and several members of the shooting party would be on opposite sides of a brutal war.

Royal Visit.

The Royal Daimler.

In June 1914 King George V and Queen Mary made a return visit. The royal couple arrived at Welbeck Abbey on 24 June for an overnight stay during their Royal Tour of the Midlands. On the following day, the King officially opened the new wing of the Mansfield Hospital. This was followed by a visit to one of Mansfield’s largest employers, the tin makers Messrs Barringer, Wallace, and Manners. The King and Queen had a tour of the factory before making a surprise visit to the cottage home of miner Elijah Mottishaw and his wife Sarah. The Duke and Duchess of Portland accompanied the King and Queen inside the Mottishaws’ house and Queen Mary was said to be particularly interested in seeing the kitchen.

The local newspapers were full of pictures and stories about the royal visit for several days afterwards, contrasting sharply with the growing tensions in Europe and the possibility of war growing more certain every day.

Domestic Life

There was not much evidence of the war that was being fought overseas in Mansfield during August 1914. Local people were aware of the war but it did not affect daily life too much in those first few weeks. The only visible signs were the soldiers heading out from the railway station, to join their regiments for training at various camps around the country.

One of the first batches to sign up.

Despite the rumblings of war, the town’s annual flower show was still held that summer, although the Mansfield Chronicle reported that the cut flowers were not up to the standard set in previous years. However, visitors to the show could be cheered up by a ‘capital collection of music’ from the Mansfield Colliery Band, the sight of the sack race, or even the ham slashing competition. Similarly, the Fanciers’ show, a traditional event in mining areas, also went ahead that summer. It encompassed not just pigeons, but poultry, rabbits, and caged birds, all displayed by their owners in the hope of achieving a rosette.

The Welbeck Tenants’ Agricultural Society annual show was hit by rain in August. Heavy downpours on the afternoon of the show reduced the attendance from 8,500 the previous year to 6,000. As part of the festivities, on the same day the Duke of Portland held a house party. One of the usual guests, Lord Kitchener, was kept away by the momentous events of the previous few weeks. The guests, said to number around 1,000, marked the occasion by singing the National Anthem and drinking a toast to the King.

Shows and competitions distracted the town’s population from the struggles of their everyday lives, from their work and home lives and from the war overseas. At this time working class people often lived in cramped, substandard accommodation and over-crowding was common. To add insult to injury, residents could be prosecuted for housing too many people under one roof. Joseph Rodgers of Pleasley Hill was charged under the Public Health Act with allowing his house to become so overcrowded as to be ‘injurious to the health’ of the inhabitants. The two-bedroomed house accommodated Mr Rodgers and his wife, and their five children. Some of the elder children were working, but with low wages and a shortage of housing at the time, and like many others in the town, they had few options.

So many people living in confined spaces often led to trouble between neighbours. Florence Minnie Perry charged her neighbour Annie Hulme with common assault, claiming that when Mrs Perry’s daughter had swept a brick into the yard belonging to Mrs Hulme, she then called the child a cat. The two older women started fighting: Hulme pushed a tea cup in Perry’s face and Perry pulled Hulme’s hair. Annie Hulme was fined seven shillings and sixpence.

In addition to anti-social behaviour, the removal of night soil from shared privies was troubling the Forest Town area in August 1914. Although the contractor charged with waste collection was working between 8.00 pm and 8.00 am, his contracted hours, local residents complained that they were being disturbed by him. His hours were changed to 10.00 pm to 6.00 am and he was asked to make as little noise as possible while going about his work.

Reporting the War

Mansfield Town Hall Newsroom,¹ where newspapers and periodicals from all over the country were made available to the town, added the Illustrated War News to their list of titles in October 1914. Up until that point, townspeople had been reading such items as the Illustrated London News; Financial Times; Westminster Gazette; London Telegraph; Punch and the Yorkshire Post. The newsroom was closed in 1915, however, when the use of the room was required by Mansfield Town Council, many of whom were members. The move meant that, with nowhere else to go, the books and periodicals had to be sold and the remainder were donated to local institutions, including Mansfield Accident Hospital, Mansfield Union Workhouse and Ransom Sanatorium.

Newspapers also became the subject of anti-social behaviour in the town, when paper seller Hannah Mason was brought before the police court, charged with shouting in Layton Avenue and annoying the residents on a Sunday. A PC Earle confirmed that he had seen Hannah on Sunday, 23 October shouting ‘War special’. No one had complained about her behaviour at that time, but complaints had been received about similar occasions from local residents.

Hannah testified that if she could not shout, then she could not sell her papers, and that she needed to do something to earn money as she had eight children and her husband had gone to war. The judge told Hannah that it was an offence to call out in the street on a Sunday, but there was no evidence against her on this occasion and she was acquitted. He warned her not to shout on the Sabbath in future.

Health and Welfare

The health of the town was very much a concern of the Town Council in 1914. At the Mansfield Health Committee² meeting of 1 September 1914, the medical officer reported seventeen deaths from diphtheria and sixteen from scarlet fever during July and August. The lady sanitary inspector reported 208 births during those same two months, when overcrowding amongst the working classes was already a problem. The committee also noted that 255 tons of refuse had been collected from privies and closet pans and ninety tons from trades and markets.

The local authority sanitary report for the year³ was produced on 31 December 1914. An isolation hospital had been built and an additional sanitary inspector employed. A baby clinic was sanctioned and the provision of a public abattoir discussed. Infant deaths (of children aged under one year) were down from 152 the previous year to 141 in 1914. Other deaths in the area included 108 cases of diphtheria and seventy-nine cases of tuberculosis.

The local Health Committee also recorded the amount of food destroyed in Mansfield. During July and August 1914 alone, food waste included:

2 carcases and offals – cow

502 ½ lb beef

411 lb mutton

161 lb pork

35 ½ lbs fish

101 lb liver

38 boxes kippered herrings

There was clearly a problem with storing perishable food. The problem would become even more severe over the next few years, as food supplies ran short and certain goods became severely restricted.

Regular supplies of food were hard to obtain in the early days of the war, as many delivery horses had been commandeered by the armed forces, creating a huge problem for delivery companies and consumers alike. In Mansfield the Co-operative, the laundry, and the local brewery all surrendered their best animals to the war effort.

The Co-op Society Committee urged their managers to buy and sell carefully⁴ so that profiteering and hoarding could be avoided and Coop members could continue to be served a range of products. The Society even lowered prices in 1914 to meet the immediate needs of their members, most of whom were from the less affluent families of the town. This strategy resulted in an increase in membership, from 10,538 in 1914 to 13,588 in 1918 and trade almost doubled in that time.

The Effects of War

In early December 1914 a group of wounded soldiers arrived in Mansfield. Ten men whose injuries were not life threatening were taken to local hospitals, including Private Philip Swatton, who told the local press of being accidentally shot in the leg by his comrade. He described how the bullet had passed through one of his legs and then the other, blowing the francs out of his pocket.

Mansfield was also dealing with an influx of Belgian refugees. The war had already devastated the lives of many Belgian people, who made their way to Britain in the first months of the war. The first Belgian family arrived in Mansfield at the beginning of October 1914. Mrs Von Avond, her father Frans de Vodder, and Mrs Von Avond’s six children, aged between eight months to eleven years, were the guests of local colliery owner JP Houfton at a house he owned in Ollerton. When the Belgian party first reached Mansfield, the Mayor and Mayoress were at the head of a crowd that had gathered to meet them. Baby Napoleon was described as possessing a smile that delighted them all. The family were taken to tea, by the Mayor, at the Swan Hotel, Mansfield’s leading establishment, before being shown to their new home.

A few days later, on 13 October, another eleven Belgians arrived at Mansfield Station, including a judge, M Dirieq, from Charleroi, and a merchant from Geuappe, M Leandre. Beds, furniture, and places to stay were donated. Countess Manvers sent a large supply of provisions and coal from Thoresby for the refugees. The families had managed to leave their homes just an hour before the Germans arrived, and they said that they had heard the guns moving ever closer as they left.

Letters were sent in November 1914 to the Gas Committee from the secretary of the Belgian Refugees Committee, requesting the committee to supply free gas to the Belgian refugees. The Water Committee and Electricity Committee received similar letters. In true local government style they passed these letters on to the General Purposes Committee for a decision.

At a special monthly meeting of the Highways Committee, convened on 18 December 1914, concern was shown over the level of traffic in the town, described as ‘extraordinary’ and caused by contractors for the new camp being built at Clipstone, just outside Mansfield. Considerable damage had been caused to the roadway between Mansfield Station and Clipstone Road.

At a council meeting⁵ on 12 November, Alderman Singleton announced that he thought the incumbent mayor, Mayor Maltby, might have the ‘unspeakable joy of proclaiming peace’ during his term in office. Bearing in mind that the Mayor’s term of office was one year Alderman Singleton was being very optimistic.

The war began to have an impact on the lives of some Mansfield inhabitants quite early on in August 1914. At Mansfield Police Court on 7 August, just three days after war was declared,⁶ three local boys were charged with damaging a wall. The case had to be adjourned, as the police officer who should have given evidence at the hearing had already joined up, along with seventy other Nottinghamshire Constabulary officers.

August Bank Holiday was described as a ‘curious’ period. Although local people outwardly seemed to be having a good time, an