Pearls before Poppies

by Rachel Trethewey

  Three of Robert’s nephews, Hanbury, George and John, were among the mourners at the funeral that day. They were also soon to lose their lives doing their duty. Less than a year after his uncle’s death, on 26 September 1915, John was killed near Loos. A captain in the Buffs, he was involved in heavy fighting and was hit in the thigh and disabled, but he refused to let his brother officers try to get him back to the British lines because he believed it would needlessly jeopardise their lives. Later, a sergeant found him, but he again refused help and sent the man on, only asking that a stretcher might be sent out for him at night when the heavy firing had decreased. The night-time rescue proved impossible and he was declared missing but presumed dead.11

  The next to die was George. In September 1914, he joined the City of London Yeomanry. A brave soldier, who was mentioned in Despatches, he was serving in Palestine when he died on 20 October 1917, from wounds received the previous day on the Gaza Front. Just a few weeks later, the Kekewichs’ eldest son, Captain Hanbury Lewis, who had served seven years in the Sussex Yeomanry and was also in Palestine, was killed in action near Sheria on 6 November 1917.

  Of Lilian’s four sons, only the youngest, Sydney, survived the war. He had been badly wounded in a frontier fight in India in September 1915. It seems that the authorities recognised that the Kekewichs had sacrificed enough as, for the rest of the war, Sydney continued to serve the army but in a desk job at the War Office headquarters.

  After seeing so many of the next generation killed in the war, owning such a large house as Kidbrooke Park seemed meaningless to Lilian and Lewis. Leaving behind their memories of happier times, they moved into a house in Hove and sold Kidbrooke. Unlike Mary Wemyss and Ettie Desborough, there is no written record of Lilian’s reaction to her losses but an insight into the family’s attitude is provided in a speech given by her brother-in-law, the head of the family, Trehawke Kekewich, in 1915. He recognised that Britain was fighting in ‘the most horrible, the most terrible, and most atrocious war’ that had ever been waged, but his tone was defiant. For his family, like the Grenfells, it was a matter of honour. He said:

  Many wars had been fought and many brave men had fallen sometimes in a cause which was not exactly holy. This was a holy cause. They were fighting for the civilisation of the world; they were fighting to make treaties respected; they were fighting to teach the German that it was not in his power to say: ‘I am super-man. I stand over the laws of the universe, I stand above everything.’12

  Mr Kekewich’s attitude was shared by the vast majority of the British people at the start of the war. Fighting the Germans was about more than opposing the violation of Belgian neutrality; they believed that the choice was between going to war and allowing the German domination of Europe, which they thought would be a disaster.13 For many patriotic people, including some who had previously been pacifists, the war was about enforcing acceptable behaviour in the international sphere and maintaining the belief in lawful behaviour among nations. Germany was seen as a bully that ignored values of peace and negotiation.14

  Mr Kekewich was proud of his family’s military record. In 1915 he was involved in a recruiting tour which went around the Devon villages encouraging local men to sign up. He told a rally in Exminster that he had thirty-two nephews and first cousins serving, and sixteen were fighting on the front line. He added that he would be ashamed of himself if he had a single relative who was eligible but not serving his king.

  After conscription was introduced in 1916, Trehawke Kekewich sat on tribunals that were held to make judgements on who should be exempt from military service. Clergymen, teachers, doctors, coal miners, those working in the iron and steel industries or in specialist manufacturing were among those not required to join up. Their jobs were described as ‘Scheduled (or Reserved) Occupations’. Other men who felt they should not have to fight due to poor health, potential damage to their business, family hardship or conscientious objection had to plead their case in front of a tribunal, which then made the decision whether they should be exempted.

  About 1,800 local tribunals were set up across the country and it is estimated that between 20,000 and 40,000 citizens served on them.15 Tribunals were usually made up of a member of the military, eight or nine local dignitaries, such as Justices of the Peace, councillors and mayors, and ideally a representative of labour, usually a trade union official, also served on the board. They were supposed to be impartial. However, their judgements were often inconsistent, varying from one locality to another.

  In 1916, tribunals were inundated with work as many people decided to appeal. Although the majority of cases had a serious foundation, there were some bizarre attempts to avoid conscription. One man appealed in Leeds for a three-month delay in order to complete a course of hair restoration – understandably, his plea was rejected. Across the country, success rates varied but ranged between 20 and 50 per cent, usually for a temporary exemption.16 Those who won their case were provided with papers and badges to prove that they were involved in war work, they needed this official recognition to avoid the social stigma attached to not fighting.

  At the tribunals, Mr Kekewich always took a draconian line with any man he considered to be shirking his duty to king and country. In November 1916 he was particularly scathing about a Bratton Clovelly farming family where seven brothers had not gone to the war because they argued they were needed on the farm. Mr Kekewich felt that to have so many able-bodied men at home was wrong. He told the boys’ father, ‘It is a scandalous case – seven sons.’ The chairman of the tribunal said that it was hoped that the family would not go through the war without a single member fighting for their country. The farmer should go home and think over what the opinion of his neighbours would be after the war if none of his sons went.17

  However, Mr Kekewich and his colleague’s attitudes were soon outpaced by events. In fact, the government did not want too many farm labourers going off to fight. During the second half of the war food imports were squeezed. In spring 1917 there was a wheat crisis due to U-boat attacks and the bad American and British harvests of 1916. In response, ministers tried to stimulate agriculture. From 1917 a Food Production Department was created in the Board of Agriculture with a mission to boost arable farming, as this was seen as the most efficient means of feeding the population. From this time, most agricultural workers were protected from conscription.18

  While sitting on the Devon tribunal, Trehawke Kekewich was never afraid to show his prejudices, particularly when conscientious objectors came before him. During the war there were between 16,000 and 20,000 conscientious objectors on the grounds of political, humanitarian or religious beliefs.19 However, whether or not a man’s plea was accepted often depended on who was sitting in judgement. In April 1916, Charles Baker of Highweek appealed to the Devon tribunal on conscientious grounds to be exempted from military service. The 30-year-old animal skin curer and sorter was the Newton Abbot chairman of the No-Conscription Fellowship, district secretary of the Trades & Labour Council and treasurer of the local Independent Labour Party. He told the panel that he was an International Socialist who saw the war as the greatest hindrance to human progress.

  Charles Baker’s beliefs were anathema to Trehawke Kekewich. While Mr Kekewich and his friends were trying to encourage new recruits, Mr Baker and his colleagues in the No-Conscription Fellowship were distributing leaflets and holding meetings claiming that they intended to ‘deny the right of any government to make the slaughter of our fellows a bounden duty’. No doubt, Mr Kekewich agreed with the Daily Express, which claimed that these ‘anti-conscriptionists’ were fighting against their country ‘as much as if at this moment they were trying to poison gas the British Army in the trenches’.20

  Like many of his class, Mr Kekewich also harboured a deep distrust of the Labour Party and the working class which Charles Baker so vocally represented. Although the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress had declared an ‘industrial truce’ and supported an all-party recruitment ca
mpaign at the beginning of the war, the Independent Labour Party maintained an anti-war position.21 For the first two years of the war there was minimal industrial unrest, but there were exceptions with strikes in the South Wales coalfields, which provided essential coal to the Royal Navy, and in the shipbuilding industries on the Clyde. Any strikes inflamed middle and upper-class fears.

  David Lloyd George believed that industrial unrest was a more serious menace to Britain’s chance of ultimate victory than even the military strength of Germany because the contentment and co-operation of the workforce was essential if Britain was to win the war.22 He was careful to keep the powerful unions happy, although his own suspicions of some of the most militant strikers’ motivation were aroused when he addressed a mass meeting of shop stewards in Glasgow in December 1915. The meeting got completely out of hand and there were fears for his safety as he was shouted down by the angry audience. Lloyd George told his mistress, Frances Stevenson, that he believed that there was German money behind the unrest and the men had been misled into believing that the war had been engineered by capitalists to keep the working class in their place. For them, the war was not against Germany but against capitalism.23

  It seems Charles Baker held similar sentiments to some of the Scottish shop stewards. As a trade unionist, an International Socialist and an anti-war campaigner, he threatened everything Church, king and country Conservatives like Mr Kekewich stood for. This clash of cultures was played out in the tribunal. When the young man admitted that he did not come to the tribunal on religious grounds as he was an agnostic, but rather his conscientious objection was to war, Mr Kekewich scathingly asked him, ‘How can an Agnostic have a conscience?’ Refusing to be intimidated by the question, Baker showed that he was no coward by saying that he was willing to spend the remainder of his life in prison or face a firing squad rather than take part in the war. His speech was not hyperbole, members of the No-Conscription Fellowship, who refused to do war work only narrowly escaped execution by the military authorities. At least 1,540 conscientious objectors were condemned to two years’ forced labour and seventy-one died as a result of their ill treatment by the military or prison authorities.24

  The tribunal was not impressed with Charles Baker’s arguments; it decided it was not satisfied that he had sincere conscientious objections so they put him into a combatant force and gave him ‘the privilege of defending’ his country. Using his closing comment to make a political point, Baker replied, ‘I have no country. The country does not belong to me or to any of my class.’25 Although his principles were the opposite of the Kekewichs and Grenfells, he too was willing to make a personal sacrifice for his beliefs. A week later, Private Baker was court-martialled and imprisoned for six months for refusing to obey army orders or to undergo a medical examination.26 He joined the 6,000 so-called ‘absolutists’ among the conscientious objectors who refused to accept conscription and were jailed, often repeatedly, for their convictions.27

  To see the battle of ideas between Charles Baker and Trehawke Kekewich purely in terms of class, however, is to oversimplify the situation. No doubt Baker did see the conflict in terms of class war, but that was because he was part of a politicised minority which was not typical of the working class as a whole. As the war progressed some of the early idealism about sacrifice for the country was replaced by class antagonism on the home front, but the majority of workers did remain patriotic.28 In 1917 and 1918 there were more strikes, but to put this in perspective, the number of days lost in the entire war was fewer than had been lost in 1912.29 Reflecting the underlying loyalty of the workforce, strikes drastically decreased when Britain was most under threat in April 1918 and only increased again in the second half of the year as a British victory became likely. A recent historian claims that, although a few of the strikes had an ideological element, they were less an indication of revolutionary defeatism than a protest by the working class about their living standards. To calm the situation the government usually responded to these disputes by making concessions to the unions.30

  It is clear that on both the home front and the battlefields no one class had a monopoly on patriotism. Although the middle class was keener to fight, in their different ways men and women from all sections of society showed their sense of duty and willingness to do their best for their country.31 For many, ‘love of country’ was a nebulous concept, nor did they see themselves as fighting for the king. However, they wanted to protect their families and prevent Germany invading Britain.32 Other young men treated the war as an adventure and a change from the humdrum existence of their daily lives. However, after the slaughter of the Somme, the war ceased to be seen as an adventure and, increasingly, new recruits were not enthusiastic about the prospect of serving ‘king and country’.33 They continued to fight, but few had any illusions, and by 1918 their attitude was ‘we’re here because we’re here because we’re here’.34

  Not every war hero or heroine came from a family wealthy enough to donate a pearl, but the public showed a determination that their sacrifice should also be recognised in the Red Cross necklaces. Wealthy women who had not suffered personal losses but wished to show solidarity with those who had been bereaved gave on their behalf. One of these generous women was Ada Bey. In May she donated her jewel for ‘the fallen men of Otley’. Her first husband was William Henry Dawson, the well-known printing machine manufacturer whose firm was one of the biggest employers in the West Yorkshire industrial town. The daughter of a butler, Ada was a local girl from Wharfedale whose life changed dramatically when she married one of the wealthiest men in the area. She enjoyed the privileges of her new role, collecting an extensive jewellery collection which included a diamond tiara, a brooch with a spray of diamonds representing a waterfall and, of course, a pearl necklace. However, as well as her glamour she was also known for her generosity and warm sympathy for the poor people in Otley.

  After her husband’s death in 1905, Ada was left a wealthy widow and ‘sole governing director’ of the family firm. Two years later, she caused a minor scandal by marrying Henry Bey, an attaché at the Turkish Embassy who was six years her junior. Although Ada kept her mansion, Maple Grange in Otley, the couple spent much of their time in her London flat or travelling on the Continent. After 1914 their marriage became even more controversial since Britain was at war with Turkey. Perhaps giving a pearl was Ada’s way of demonstrating her patriotism and showing she had not forgotten her roots. Ada’s donation was in memory of the 187 men listed on Otley’s war memorial – a large number of the fallen had worked at William Dawson & Sons.

  As soon as war was declared, many of the workforce rushed to volunteer.35 Ada and other local employers rewarded their patriotism by paying a war bonus of between 3–5s a week to the soldiers’ wives.36 Many of the Otley men joined the 4th West Riding Howitzer Brigade, which was made up of the 10th (Otley) and 11th (Ilkley) Batteries, the Burley Ammunition Column and No. 4 Section of the Divisional Ammunition Column and Brigade Headquarters. On 14 August 1914, crowds lined the streets to see the brigade leave Otley to begin their training at Doncaster.

  The first casualty occurred on 20 January 1915 during manoeuvres. A wagon limber carrying four men hit a hidden tree stump. The wagon overturned, trapping Gunner George Lawson underneath, he died almost immediately. Fortunately, his two brothers, who were also serving with the 10th Battery, did not see what happened.37

  In April 1915, the Otley men sailed from Southampton to Le Havre on the Anglo-Canadian. Once across the Channel they were soon moved to the front line. The officers and men worked very well together because they came from such a close community where people both worked and socialised together. Their commander, Major Kenneth Duncan, wrote to his father in December 1916, ‘The men are keeping wonderfully well and marvellously cheery. They really are a top-hole lot and Wharfedale has need to be proud of her sons.’38 However, as the unit was so interconnected any losses were particularly painful. The most devastating disaster occurred on 3 November 19
17 during the attack on Passchendaele. A German shell exploded an ammunition dump near to the right flank of the battery position killing ten non-commissioned officers and men and severely wounding seven.

  With many of Otley’s men away fighting, the women played an important part on the home front. At William Dawson’s almost half the men employed at the firm in August 1914 had gone to war by January 1915. At first Britain had been slower than France and Germany to employ women and there had been reluctance from some employers and the trade unions to engage female workers. However, after the ‘shell scandal’ in the spring of 1915, it was clear that female labour was needed.

  From April, Ada’s firm was one of the local businesses that took women into the workforce to fill the gaps. Instead of peacetime production, Dawson’s was converted into a war-work factory where women worked night and day to produce the small lathes needed for turning shells and shell cases. By 1918, women made up nearly a third of the work force at William Dawson’s.39

  The contribution that women munitions workers were making to the war was recognised by Winston Churchill, who, as munitions minister, told the House of Commons in 1918 that the 750,000 women working for the munitions ministry produced more than nine-tenths of its shells. He described their contribution as beyond praise and added that without their labour the war effort could not carry on. However, the women at Dawson’s received a lower wage of, on average, 10–15s less each week than the men. This was largely due to an agreement negotiated between employers, the unions and the government in March 1915, which stated that women undertaking skilled men’s work would receive equal piece rate payments, although not the same time rates if men were still required to do the setting up.40 The combination of a decreased wage bill and the award of lucrative government contracts meant that Ada could certainly afford to give a pearl to the Red Cross appeal. Her firm’s profit increased from £3,340 in 1913 to £6,054 in 1916.41 Knowing that many of the war widows in Otley would never own a pearl themselves, she made the donation on their behalf.