Picturing the Great WarThe First World War Blog from Mary Evans Picture Library

Jack Cornwell VC - The Boy Hero of Jutland remembered a century on

                                                  

The news that the grave of John Travers Cornwell V.C. in Manor Park Cemetery, East London has been given Grade II listed status by Historic England today has once more drawn attention to a figure whose courage during the Battle of Jutland won him the Victoria Cross posthumously, and, in the public consciousness, transformed him from an ordinary East London delivery boy into a legendary figure embodying the much-lauded qualities of heroism and self-sacrifice.  Paving stones in Cornwell's memory will also be laid in the area while his name will already be familiar to local residents in Manor Park as a street, block of flats and community centre are all named after him.  A nearby pub is called 'The Victoria Cross' in his honour and in 2001 the London Borough of Newham introduced The Jack Cornwell Bravery Award, which has been presented annually in recognition for outstanding acts of bravery by Newham people.  I live less than a mile away from Manor Park Cemetery, so it feels as if his story has a particular significance but in fact, Cornwell's name is well-known way beyond his local area, and his story continues to strike an emotive chord, despite the passage of one hundred years. 

                                          
    

John Travers Cornwell, known as Jack, was born 8 January 1900 in Clyde Cottage, Clyde Place, Leyton. He was the son of working-class parents, Eli and Lily Cornwell (formerly King) and had two brothers: Ernest, born in 1898, George (1901) and a sister Lily (1905). He also had a half-brother named Arthur (1888) and a half-sister named Alice (1890). Their mother was Alice Cornwell (formerly Carpenter). In 1911 Jack was in the care of the West Ham Poor Law Union and living in one of its children's homes in Romford Road, Forest Gate. He later moved with his family to 10 Alverstone Road, Little Ilford, Manor Park. Jack attended Walton Road School in Manor Park and was a keen Boy Scout in the Little Ilford Troop at St Mary's Mission.  When Jack left school he became a delivery boy for Brooke Bond & Co. and then worked as a dray boy with the Whitbread's Brewery Depot in Manor Park.

At the outbreak of war, Jack's father Eli, an ex-soldier, re-enlisted as a Private in the 57th Coy. Royal Defence Corps.  Attracted to the Royal Navy, at the age of 15 Jack took references from his Headmaster and his employer along to a local recruitment office and enlisted.  He was sent to Keyham Naval Barracks in Plymouth for his basic training where he earned sixpence a week as a "Boy Second Class". He passed out as Boy First Class J. T. Cornwell J/42563 and when he left Keyham, he was posted to H.M.S. Lancaster which was moored at Chatham. Jack was later ordered to join the fleet at Rosyth in Scotland and on the 2nd of May 1916 he joined the newly commissioned H.M.S. Chester.

On 31 May 1916, HMS Chester was scouting ahead of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet of 150 British ships.  They had set sail from base the previous day in response to intelligence that the German fleet was putting to sea. Around 5.30pm, Chester was sent to investigate distant gun flashes amid a bank of mist. Suddenly, four German light cruisers appeared and opened fire. A hail of heavy shells fell all around Chester, hitting the ship seventeen times. Extensive damage to the ship's guns meant that she could take no further part in the battle and at dawn on 1 June was ordered back to port. The ship suffered casualties of 35 killed or died of wounds and 42 wounded.

Among them was Jack Cornwell, who had remained at his post as a sight-setter awaiting orders, the sole survivor of his gun turret team who had all fallen, dead or wounded.  Jack suffered numerous shrapnel wounds and when he was relieved of his post, he was found with metal shards penetrating his chest.  He was taken to Grimsby Hospital where he died on 2 June, aged just 16. 

His body was returned to his family in London and buried in a communal grave in June but when the inspirational story of Cornwell's bravery and devotion to duty was taken up by the national newspapers, the strength of public opinion led to a campaign to provide this national hero with a more fitting burial.  The following month, in July 1916, Cornwell was reburied in the same cemetery with full naval honours. The funeral procession included the Mayor of East Ham, the Bishop of Barking as well as  80 boys from Jack's former school, six boy sailors from HMS Chester and local boy scouts.

On 15 September 1916, Jack Cornwell was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for valour in the face of the enemy. The citation for his award recorded how 'mortally wounded early in the action, Boy, First Class, Jack Travers Cornwell remained standing alone at a most exposed post, quietly awaiting orders, until the end of the action, with the gun's crew dead and wounded all around him. His age was under sixteen and a half years'.  A Jack Cornwell Day in the same month sought to honour his memory, while the donations that poured in to the Jack Cornwell Memorial Fund amounted to enough to pay for a new ward at the Star and Garter Hospital for wounded servicemen in Richmond.

                                              

Cornwell's name and image would ever after be synonymous with the qualities of heroism and duty, and his story was an essential inclusion in any 'Boy's Own' style book or magazine celebrating brave deeds and derring do.  Among the images we hold here at the library is an example by Charles Dixon in, 'Deeds that Thrill the Empire' and another by Fortunino Matania in The Sphere.  The iconic photograph of him which appeared in all newspapers at the time is now thought to more likely be one of his brothers, and does look distinctly different to a commemorative VC Cornwell postcard we hold featuring a portrait of Jack. 

Cornwell is the third-youngest recipient of the VC. The epitaph on his gravestone reads: "It is not wealth or ancestry but honourable conduct and a noble disposition that maketh men great."

                                      

Follow this link to see our selection of Jack Cornwell images http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=35781

Luci Gosling

 

Fields of Battle - Lands of Peace: Somme 100 - An interview with battlefield photographer, Mike Sheil

     

        Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont Hamel © WesternFrontPhotography.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10577725)

As the centenary anniversary of the Battle of the Somme approaches, we talk with battlefield photographer and Mary Evans contributor, Mike St Maur Sheil about his extraordinary battlefield photographs, soon to be the subject of a commemorative exhibition at the Guildhall Yard in the City of London.

 

Looking at your photographs, you are obviously very familiar with the battlefields of France and Belgium.  How did you begin photographing them?

In early 2005 I began to realise that carrying kit up vertical ladders and shooting in heavy industry might lose its appeal when I got to be 60+ so started thinking about centenary events for possible books and so on, and realised the First World War Centenary was not far off. I knew nothing about the history so I went and saw a well known British military historian, Professor Richard Holmes.

He liked my idea and so I photographed a couple of battlefields: he liked the results and we started working together.  The concept of the exhibition and its content is something which evolved over many glasses of good red ‘infuriator'.

    

    Unexploded shells unearthed by ploughing near Munich Trench Cemetery © WesternFrontPhotography/Mary Evans (Picture no. 10577582)

What place do you feel has resulted in the most effective photographs?  Do you have a favourite location?

So many places have produced pictures with which I feel really satisfied. I hate the description of ‘lucky’ shots because you have to be in the right place at that instant and really what you are doing is merely taking advantage of the circumstances. My point is that as the photographer you have to create those circumstances, that 'luck', by actually being there, ready and able to shoot.
 

For most people, it’s difficult to imagine what the battlefields looked like 100 years ago.  How do you think your images of them today can help people connect with the past and does this inform the way in which you take pictures? 

Very definitely: everyone takes pictures these days so they relate very swiftly to images of different places. I am very conscious of the history of men and events so I always try a shoot locations which have a story attached that I can then use to further enhance the picture.

    

    Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont Hamel, Somme - aerial view ©WesternFrontPhotography.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10921024)

A lot of your pictures have been shot in the early morning. You also appear to shoot from a low angle. What are your reasons for this?

I like shooting before sunrise as this is a time of day familiar to all the men in the trenches: the pre-dawn light was when they would all be roused and “standing-to” in the expectation that the enemy might attack. The low angle of my photographs comes from the simple fact that the men lived in trenches so their angle of view really was at ground level. I am merely trying to show the landscape as they would have seen it.

What kind of challenges have you encountered while taking your pictures in the area? 

The constant daily challenge was getting up 90 minutes before dawn to ensure that I was actually at the location I wanted to shoot 30 mins before  sun-rise. But the real challenge was creative: because the history of the landscape dictated where I had to shoot, I had no choice when it came to selecting my subject. Most landscape photographers will head for places which are already recognised for their beauty and visual impact - mountains, lakes, seascapes are the usual subject for such work - but I was faced with landscape whose ‘attraction’ was not visual but rather historical.

    

    Lochnagar Crater, blown at 07:28 on 1 July 1916 © WesternFrontPhotograph.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10577720)

Many of your images have a real sense of peace, calm and isolation.  How close to reality is that?  

 Today many of these places are indeed places of real beauty and tranquillity.  It is that contrast with the death and destruction of 100 years ago that I wish to emphasise.  I am always seeking to show that time and nature really have healed the scars of war.

Your pictures are a moving tribute to the people who fought and died in these areas, and we know at Mary Evans that they provoke an emotional reaction in the viewer.  For you, has there been any single place or background story that has particularly moved you?

I suppose that there are two shots which stick in my mind. There is the one of the London Irish ‘Loos Football’ taken on the very ground where men kicked it towards enemy trenches  in September 1915. The other is the photograph of the underground chapel at Confrecourt. This is a place where you really can reach out and touch the men of 14-18 and Richard Holmes told me that whenever he was there, he was always ‘deafened by the silent sound of the French soldiers singing the Marseillaise’. 

     

    Somme munitions in a private garden, recovered by the owner of the property © WesternFrontPhotography.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10809448)

Tell us about the Fields of Battle: Lands of Peace exhibitions.  How did the idea originate?

I saw the exhibition Earth from the Air created by Yyan Arthus-Bertrand and I just loved the way it drew in casual passers-by: probably 90% of people never go to museums or art galleries but this was attracting crowds of people. Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace is intended to act in the same way: it does not seek to teach the history of WWI but rather to entice passers-by to stop and see what it is all about.  After that, hopefully it will arouse their curiosity and maybe even persuade them to visit some of these battlefields.

And how have the exhibitions been received by the public?  

It has been phenomenal: the two exhibitions in Paris and London in 2014 had over 4 million visitors and a recent one in the Champs Elysées had over 600,000. It has been interesting to find out how many people have re-visited several times and the best comment was made by a gentleman on the day we were taking down the exhibition in St James’s Park, London. He asked one of the crew dis-mantling the exhibition whether it was indeed coming down and upon being told that it was exclaimed, ‘Thank God for that! Now I will get to work on time.'

    

     British observation post near Hebuterne on the Somme, built in 1917 and overlooking Gommecourt Wood.  © WesternFrontPhotography.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10809451)

What’s next for Fields of Battle photography?  

We will be opening a Somme exhibition in the Guildhall Yard in the City of London on 1 June. That will be moving to Belfast in July and thereafter to Dublin in late August as part of a cross-border reconciliation project to show both communities how the events of WW1 were a common experience and deserve a common remembrance.

I am talking with the American National World War I Museum about an American exhibition to tour the US in ’17 & ’18 and of course there is the end of the war on 11 November ’18 so obviously I am hoping that we will still be able make a contribution to that event.

After that: fishing, walking my grey-hound and visits to battlefields without having to get up early in the morning :-))

Fields of Battles, Lands of Peace: Somme 100 runs from 1 June to 3 July 2016 at the Guildhall Yard, City of London.  As part of an accompanying lecture programme, Mary Evans' Luci Gosling will be talking about the WWI art of Fortunino Matania at St. Lawrence Jewry church in the City at 6pm on 22 June - free entry.  For more details, visit the Corporation of London's website - http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/visit-the-city/whats-on/Pages/somme.aspx

© Luci Gosling/Mary Evans.  With thanks to Mike for his time.

 

Tea and Tuppence - The Fortune of War Cafes

Our last blog post looked at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Free Buffets, designed to offer men arriving and departing from London’s rail terminals with food and drink to ease their ongoing journey. Remaining on the food theme, this time we look at an enterprise that aimed to offer employment to men disabled or invalided by war – the Fortune of War cafes.

In my book, ‘Great War Britain’ (History Press, 2014), I mention the Fortune of War café on Edgware Road in connection with a brief report in one magazine which mentioned how they were serving experimental rock cakes made from potato during a time when the public were being urged to practice food control.

                                         
                                                                               Illustration by Gladys Peto in The Sketch, 21 November 1917

But recently, flicking through a 1917 volume of The Sketch magazine, I found another reference to the Fortune of War café and discovered that the Edgware Road branch was just one of several dotted around London, and that the chain, which was founded by an invalided officer of the South Staffordshire Territorials, Lieutenant J. E. Latham, was run along enterprising lines in order to offer men who could not return to their old jobs an opportunity to forge a new career working within a sustainable business.  It was, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, ‘an incident that allows disabled soldiers to snap their fingers in the face of charity and earn a living for themselves.’

Latham began the first Fortune of War café, located on Kilburn Road, ‘just outside the North Western railway station’, in February 1917, with his own personal funds along with contributions from four other anonymous investors, though Latham told an interviewer that two were City bankers and another ‘a gentleman of private means’. By September 1917, one of the investors had been tragically killed in action.  Each café cost about £400 to set up, and once a number were established, Latham encouraged the public to invest in shares from £10 upwards.  Those who invested £50 or more could nominate a disabled soldier for employment at one of the cafes. 

On 11 February 1918, a dinner was held at the Lyceum Club in support of the enterprise. It was a chaired by Miss Jessie Dunbar, who seems to have acted as chairperson and consultant for the cafes (she also wrote a book of food economy recipes in collaboration with Lady Glenconner for the Red Cross). Lady Maud Warrender gave a singing recital; the Duchess of Norfolk subscribed £200. The Times reported on a speech given by Latham in which he outlined his motivation:

‘Men returned daily unable to follow their old employment owing to wounds, rheumatism, and other disabilities. In 1915 he (Latham) had as part of his work to be on duty in London at night, and he frequently found men broken in the war – and broken in pocket, also – congregating at coffee stalls, and this suggested the idea that they might be better employed inside.  With the assistance of brother officers the first open-air café was built.’

Latham was quoted in the Detroit Free Press in September 1917, describing his own personal experiences at meeting such men:

‘I used to meet some of these men on the street late at night. They were absolutely penniless and they’d ask me for sixpences for a bed or a bite to eat.  Many of them had lost a leg or had a shoulder blown away, but they were not totally disabled, and were able to do some sort of work if they could find a job.  Some of them wore decorations – but a V.C. doesn’t exactly get you a job when you’ve been discharged from the army.’

As soon as news spread of Latham’s idea, letters poured in to him at his home at 26 Aldridge Road Villas in Notting Hill offering money and sites for free. But he was determined that the Fortune of War cafés would succeed as a business venture rather than a charity, and within a short time, the Kilburn café was making enough profit to invest in a further site in Edgware Road, next to the Metropolitan Music Hall.  Another was opened in Hackney and by February 1918, when The Times was reporting on the Lyceum Club meeting, there was also a branch in Aldwych, occupying the Spotted Dog. 

The majority of men employed by the cafes had been privates in the army, with many having backgrounds as farm or manual workers, though some non-commissioned officers also applied to work there. Most of the cafes were run by a team of ten with the staff hierarchy mirroring that of the army – new employees would begin as privates and would be promoted to corporal while a man in charge of each café would be a sergeant-major with subordinates addressing him as ‘mister’.  Wages were high – between £2 5 shillings and £2 10 shillings a week and breakfast, lunch or dinner were provided depending on shift hours.  Together with the disability pension most men qualified for, it meant they could earn a decent, living wage and take pride in being part of a congenial, thriving workplace. 

                                                                  

                                                             


                                                               Illustration by Samuel Begg in The Illustrated London News, 26 January 1918 

 

The cafes themselves were inspired by the pavement cafes and estaminets of Paris fulfilling, according to the Illustrated London News, ‘a long-felt want’ for an affordable but cosmopolitan style of dining destination. Small tables and chairs allowed customers to enjoy a cup of tea and slice of cake in the sunshine after they had been served from a counter.  On inclement days, canvas curtains could be drawn around to protect customers from the wind or rain.  The cafes sported a smart, dark green livery and had branded tea cups and saucers bearing a lion’s head crest and the words, ‘Fortune of War’.  At the Edgware Road branch, on a mirror forming the backdrop to the counter was the inscription, ‘Licensed to see Tobacco and Stamps – Founded for the Employment of Disabled Soldiers and Sailors.’  To the left of this:

‘The fortune of war, be you so bold, Is a mound of earth or a stripe of gold.’

The stripe of gold was of course the insignia worn by wounded men. The mound of earth needed little explanation.

For the remainder of the war, Latham’s Fortune of War cafes continued to do a roaring trade. Marthe Troly-Curtin, writing in her column, ‘Phrynette’s Letter from London’ in The Sketch, 21 November 1917 gave a glowing summary of their success:

‘The Fortune of War cafes, founded by Lieutenant E. J. Latham, flourish in spite of food problems. The disabled men who man these cafes are very happy in their work, and both officers and men buy their tea and coffee – made from the best materials, look you, as Mr Lloyd George would say.’

The comment was accompanied by a charming illustration by Gladys Peto giving an impression of a Fortune of War café with its pleasant outdoor seating area. A less stylised page of illustrations by Samuel Begg in The Illustrated London News also gives us a wonderfully clear picture.  How long the Fortune of War cafes lasted beyond the war is less clear.  Our digital archive gives us no clues, nor do other newspaper archives consulted, but it would be gratifying to think that Latham’s entrepreneurial spirit had longevity beyond the war years, fulfilling his original vision to provide satisfying employment in a profitable business for men who had sacrificed so much.

                                                                        

© Luci Gosling