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

One Family's War - the Patricia Aubrey Collection

         

A fascinating collection from one of our contributors, Patricia Aubrey, offers a unique insight into the First World War and how it affected the members of one particular family. Patricia's collection, consisting mainly of the Auerbach family’s photo albums and related items, dates from the late 19th century through to the mid-20th century, and the early 20th century material is of particular interest.

Arthur Auerbach (above) was born in London in 1862: his parents, Albert and Amelia, were German emigrants from Stuttgart. As young men, Arthur and his elder brother Julius went to South Africa to work for their uncle's import/export company, Dreyfus and Co. It was there, in King William's Town, that Arthur met and married Ellen Peters (born in Bristol in 1861); a daughter, Lucy (nicknamed Boo) was born in 1890, and a son, Albert, in 1894. In 1895, perhaps for a combination of personal and business reasons, they decided to return to the UK, and went to live in Ealing, West London, near Arthur's widowed mother, who passed away at the end of that year. Over the next few years two more children were born: Patricia's father, Harold, in 1897, and Violet, in 1903. Not long after Harold's birth, the family settled into a large house at 1 Carlton Road, Ealing: early photos show them at home, mostly in the front or back garden, where hoops set up for croquet can be seen, as well as one amusing snap of the paterfamilias in the morning room.

There are some atmospheric images of the front garden in the snow, as well as evidence of how rural-looking Ealing was in Edwardian days, with a long, tree-lined road, Longfield Avenue, seen in summer and winter. Summer holiday photos outside London show the family, together with friends, at various English seaside places, such as Scarborough and Saltburn, both on the North Yorkshire coast, but more often than not in Southwold, Suffolk, where the Auerbachs had a holiday home at 25 North Parade which they visited regularly over the years.

 

As the children grow up, there are photos of them in school uniform, practising cricket, relaxing at a local tennis club, Lucy in fancy dress, Violet with her dolls, and a good number of teachers, pupils and buildings at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, where Albert went to school and took part in Officers' Training Corps activities as early as 1910. Harold and Lucy were both artistic, and went on sketching holidays to Switzerland in around 1910.

Harold (who ten years later studied at the Slade School of Art) recorded visits to various Swiss locations in his sketchbook, while Lucy can be seen in a 'finishing school' group of young women, sketching outdoors with their tutor, George J Flemwell, some of whose Swiss scenery from that same period we also hold in the Library in the form of book illustrations.

After these scenes of seemingly idyllic Edwardian family life, it’s very sad to see signs of war approaching, with the two sons getting into uniform and going off to various places for training.

(Below) Harold (left) and Albert (right) in uniform posed in the garden with their mother, Ellen.

As mentioned, Albert was already involved in military training through his school, which probably made it all the easier for him to join the UOTC (University Officers' Training Corps) on 1 September 1914, the very first day of the war, as a private in the 20th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers. We see him with colleagues at training camps in Woodcote Park, Epsom, and relaxing in the grass during a route march from Clipstone Camp near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. On 20 July 1915 he received his commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st London Regiment, Royal Fusiliers, and there are photos of him marching through a street in Peckham Rye, south-east London, at the head of a column of men. Later we see him overseas in Egypt and France.

Harold, for his part, was held back by a knee injury received during a rugby match at his prep school, Durston House in Ealing, which explains his presence in a bathchair in earlier holiday photos. Despite his Officers' Training Corps activities through St Paul's School, Hammersmith, he found it difficult to enlist at first, as confirmed by two letters, one from the Artists' Rifles in October 1915, the other from the London Rifle Brigade in September 1916, both declaring him unfit for service. But, like his elder brother, he was determined to serve, and he can be seen in Royal Engineers uniform in one or two photos.

He was eventually accepted by the Royal Flying Corps, and sent to Oxford for training in the spring of 1917; he received his graduation certificate, complete with ‘wings’ badge, in November 1917. He was then posted to the Western Front to work in air reconnaissance, using both observation balloons and aeroplanes. There are some detailed official aerial shots of locations in Belgium (Abele and Hollebeke) and Northern France (Villeselve and Clairmarais), dating from 1917 and 1918, showing the local landscape with bomb damage and trenches. Two particularly striking photos show the French town of Bailleul at different stages in 1918, before and after German bombing.

                                                            Harold picture far right (below)

While the two brothers were away fighting, mother Ellen and sister Lucy were making their own contributions to the war effort on the Home Front. There are photos of Ellen in her volunteer Red Cross nurse's uniform: she may well have been connected to one of Ealing's many war hospitals, helping with wounded and convalescent soldiers. Lucy was working at the War Office in London, but occasionally went off to the village of Madresfield, near Malvern in Worcestershire, to help with agricultural and dairy work, and perhaps to give herself a welcome rural break from the stresses of wartime London life. Lucy adored her brother Albert, and the two of them corresponded throughout his wartime absences.

 

Albert & his fiancée, Molly Bowie (above)

Albert's war took him to a variety of places. His first posting was to Gallipoli in November 1915, which seems to have begun in luxury, judging by a menu card from his voyage on board the RMS Olympic, used at the time as a troop transport ship. Once at Gallipoli, however, the real work began, and he was involved in the evacuation of Suvla Bay and Cape Helles. From there he went on to Egypt, then to France, until he was invalided home with shell shock and dysentery on 3 December 1916. He spent some time in hospital, and photos from this extended period of sick leave, for example with his fiancée Molly Bowie in Cheam, Surrey, give an indication of how much his illness had aged him. But eventually he returned to France on 20 June 1918, and here his luck ran out. He was killed by a shell at Bouchavesnes, Péronne, on the Somme, in the early morning of 1 September 1918, exactly four years to the day of his joining up. Albert was posthumously awarded the Military Cross, which was presented to his mother at Wellington Barracks, London, on 10 July 1919. His sister Lucy made her own personal pilgrimage to the Somme area in September 1920 to see where her brother had fought and died.

Despite the constant dangers of his air reconnaissance work, Harold survived the war, and in due course was awarded his Campaign Medal. The medal itself was missing for years, but Harold's daughter recently came across it, up for sale on an internet auction site – it had only just been listed there, after being discovered at the back of a drawer in a piece of furniture in Plymouth. It's a complete mystery how it came to be there, and a miracle that Patricia found the medal by googling at just the right time, before anyone else had had a chance to buy it. It's even possible that Harold, not wishing to be reminded of the war, had never even claimed his medal, as Patricia has no memories of seeing it in the family home. Two photographs of the medal have now been added to the collection on our website, to round off a fascinating, touching, and sometimes sobering tour of one family's experiences before, during and after the First World War.

To see more images from this fascinating collection, follow the link here:

http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=38847

 

 

 

© Gill Stoker/Mary Evans Picture Library

Chariots of the Brave - YMCA cars give a helping hand to soldiers lost in London

Our last blog post profiled the Eagle Hut in Aldwych, which provided accommodation, food and friendship for American soldiers and sailors who found themselves on leave in the capital.  But the Eagle Hut was by no means the only one of its type.  Huts of all kinds, many of them affiliated to the Y.M.C.A.,  proliferated around London during the Great War to the extent that The Tatler magazine's gossip columnist, Eve, commented on the phenomenon.  Bemoaning the changes to beautiful St. James's Park she wrote of, 'huts, huts all the way,' suggesting that the most recent addition, a hut for the Ministry of Shipping, 'almost vies with Buckingham Palace itself.'  

Almost every available square foot of greenery in central London was comandeered for war purposes, often in some of the most prestigious locations.  In Sloane Square, the Bibesco Hut provided meals for many of the men stationed at the nearby barracks in Chelsea; a hut for American officers, in London, named the Washington Inn, was quickly erected in the leafy shade of St. James's Square and in exclusive Grosvenor Square, the Victoria Rifles, a Territorial regiment, took up residence.  'I suppose you don’t bargain for a perpetual smell of onioned stew when you scheme – and pay – for a Grosvenor Square residence,’ wrote Eve mischievously.  In the nearby Grosvenor Gardens, there was the Bryant and May hut, presented by the famous match-manufacturing firm and opened by Queen Alexandra.  At Victoria, a brewery was taken over to provide shelter for the men coming by train into the station from the Continent, and other huts were funded by a wide-ranging body of charities and companies including the Bank of England and the Variety Artistes' Fund (a hut in Rouen in France was even provided by the 'Dogs and Cats of Great Britain,' in a scheme masterminded by one lady, Miss Maud Field of West Berkshire). 

  Margaret Chute, a journalist writing for The Graphic magazine on various aspects of London at war, described in an article entitled, 'Chariots of the Brave,' on 30 December 1916, the impressive operation carried out daily by the Y.M.C.A., which endeavoured to find a space to lay one's head for every one of the estimated 1,600 soldiers arriving daily in London.

As London's after-theatre traffic had ebbed away, and the city was sleeping or supping, Miss Chute reported on, 'the Y.M.C.A. Night Motor Transport Column, rolling away to carry out its nightly duties.'  The drivers, many of them women volunteers, had a two-fold purpose.   Some of them headed to various London stations to meet soldiers and sailors arriving on late trains, driving them, free of charge to the nearest hut - or at least the nearest one with available space.  Drivers would enquire to see if a hut could accommodate the latest arrival and if not, would take them on to some other resting place.  Another branch of the Transport Column, would patrol London's streets, along prescribed routes, in order to scout for lost of strayed soldiers, 'chiefly Colonials, who find themselves far at sea in the sleeping metropolis.'  Offering help and guidance, they again, would take anyone without a place to stay to the nearest hut. 

The article was accompanied by a map, issued in January 1916 by the Civic Survey of Greater London for use by the City of London National Guard who would also help and guide lost soldiers (though the paper noted that since its publication many more huts had been built).  The paper also carried two illustrations by the artist Edgar Wright, one showing a female driver and her co-driver, picking up a soldier, laden down with his bags and great coat.  The second image gives an impression of the interior of a Y.M.C.A. hut and shows men sleeping in any available space.  While some early arrivals were lucky enough to secure a bed, others make do with chairs and many huddle up together on the floor.  Margaret Chute's description of the hut at Waterloo, notoriously the most busy, is incredibly vivid:

'Two steps lead to the door, and even here men are assembled.  Pushing open the door, it is necessary to step over a figure stretched on the floor to get inside the hut at all.  Once inside, behold a scene of unimagined strangeness.  Like a battlefield, the hut stands with dimmed lights, and everywhere men stretched out, asleep.  Here one knows they will wake again, to work and hope.

But the sight of those still figures conjures up a vision of other scenes, where the sleepers will never wake...Under the billiard table they lie like flies, and even on it; while many have secured long tables, and lie with their caps as pillows.  Round the stove a ring of sleeping men, in chairs or on the floor, with one man, head in hands, staring into the Unknown...

Armed with blankets, four Australians pick their way over the figure-furrowed floor, looking for vacant spaces - and the looking takes long.'

It was a routine that repeated itself across London night after night during the war, as huge numbers of men passed through the capital, on their way to or from the Front, for what was often an all-too-brief period of leave.

Accommodation may have been a little Spartan and basic, but the camaraderie of the huts and the support offered by the Y.M.C.A. infrastructure ensured that it was rare to find soldiers in London sleeping rough.  And of course, there were other delights on offer across the city - nightclubs, theatre and restaurants (for those who could afford them).

Moving back to the famous Eagle Hut, we have recently scanned this postcard  showing a view of the hut, with the Church of St. Clement Danes clearly visible behind the complex.  The postcard was sent by an American soldier to an address in Cherry Chase, Massachussetts in January 1919 when many Americans still remained in London.  The message was brief, but to the point.   

'Leaving "Blighty" on the 8:20 tonight but surely don't like to go for this is SOME town and I have been having SOME time.'

Clearly, for this 'Doughboy' and many others who spent time there during the Great War, London and its Y.M.C.A. huts offered everything a soldier might possibly need.

 

http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=22910

 Luci Gosling

 

 

 

 

The Wartime Tattoo Parlour at Waterloo

While browsing a 1917 volume of The Graphic magazine yesterday, this blogger came across a fascinating article introducing readers to the day in the life of a wartime tattoo artist, along with this lovely illustration.  Mr Burchett, the artist in question, occupied a small studio just a hundred yards from Waterloo Station, a propitious location considering the constant stream of soldiers and sailors leaving for and returning to the Front via the terminal. 

'Quite an unpretentious place,' writes the author, Margaret Chute, 'full of weird pictures and simply furnished with a big clean table, a few chairs and a shelf full of colours in small boxes, cotton wool in big rolls, a jar of vaseline, several cakes of soap and small white china palettes for the ink which is used to decorate human flesh.'  Of the designs and photographs lining the wall (a patriotic British lion, and maple leaf are visible in the accompanying illustration), the writer describes one photograph of a lady, 'gorgeously clad in a series of brilliant figures, flowers, birds and flags, which in reality are pricked onto her skin never to be erased.'  Intriguingly, the lady in question was apparently the wife of one of the most popular military artists of the day, though there is no indication of who exactly it was.  Certainly, it was no unknown for society ladies, particularly those with a bohemian streak, to have tattoos.

Mr. Burchett recounted the changing trends to the interviewer.  Before the war, he was much in demand to tattoo the English aristocracy with crests and monograms, and even carried out cosmetic work; his own wife had her eyebrows and lips tattooed seventeen years previously.  'But the war has changed that,' says the tattooist rather wistfully.  'It's a busy life now - one long rush; but the customers chiefly wear khaki or blue - except a few ladies, who come to have "his" regimental badge put on their arm for keeps.'  Among his stranger requests was a man who asked for a portrait of the King to be tattooed onto his bald head and a small girl of nine, brought to 72, Waterloo Road by her father who was departing for the Front, who received a shamrock and thistle on each arm according to his instructions.  'Without a flicker that child put her little arms on the table,' says the tattoo-man, 'and never even winced.'  Proud as Punch she was when it was all over, because "daddy wanted it done".'

I am told by tattoo historian, Dr Matt Lodder, that George Burchett went on to become the country's most famous and in-demand tattoo artist.  On further investigation, the 'King of Tattooists,' could boast a client roster that included European royalty and travelled the world gathering inspiration for new and exotic designs.  His autobiography, 'Memoirs of a Tattooist,' was published in 1958.   Here, dapper and business-like in a starched collar and waistcoat Burchett is pictured in his modest shop, at work on the forearm of a burly Tommy, while a female customer stands admiring his handiwork on her own arm.   You can almost hear the hum of his electrical brass needle and smell the tobacco smoke curling up from the soldier's cigarette.  The artist (who has initialled the work A.G.) has portrayed an unusual, but everyday occurrence, drawing us in to Mr Burchett's cosy looking studio to the point where it almost tempting to choose a design, take a seat and offer one's own arm for inking.

Read more about George Burchett here http://www.tattooarchive.com/tattoo_history/burchett_george_charles.html

Luci Gosling