The Social Impact of the First World War in Pembrokeshire
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The Social Impact of the First World War In Pembrokeshire Simon Hancock June 2015 This thesis is submitted to the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. DECLARATION The work has not been submitted in substance for any other degree or award at this or any other university or place of learning, nor is it submitted concurrently in candidature for any other degree or other award. Signed.............................................................. (candidate) Date............................... STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD. Signed.............................................................. (candidate) Date............................... STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. The views expressed are my own. Signed.............................................................. (candidate) Date............................... STATEMENT 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available online in the University’s Open Access repository and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed.............................................................. (candidate) Date............................... i CONTENTS DECLARATION AND STATEMENT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABSTRACT iv ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I THE GROWTH OF STATE INTERVENTION 21 CHAPTER II WORK, LIVING CONDITIONS AND HEALTH 87 SERVICES CHAPTER III MILITARY RECRUITMENT 155 CHAPTER IV CHANGING IDENTITIES AND PERSONAL 218 EXPRESSIONS OF PATRIOTISM CHAPTER V CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 279 CHAPTER VI CIVILIAN EXPERIENCES OF WAR, REAL AND 322 IMAGINED CONCLUSION 355 BIBLIOGRAPHY 370 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a great debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Keir Waddington for his encouragement and the intellectual challenge which he provided in giving shape, direction and depth to my research. I am also most grateful for the professional assistance of the staff at the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, the staff at the Humanities Library and to the staff at the Pembrokeshire Archive, National Library of Wales and the National Archives. Morag Evans materially assisted with formatting and embedding illustrations and tables into the text and to my wife Christina for her assistance with proof reading this thesis. I trust this thesis will offer a meaningful insight into the lives of the civilian population of Pembrokeshire during the First World War and encourage others to undertake similar localised studies of the conflict to aid our understanding of the conflict at grass roots level. iii ABSTRACT The Social Impact of the First World War in Pembrokeshire This thesis explores the economic, social and political changes in society of the largely rural Welsh county of Pembrokeshire during the First World War to establish to what extent war conditions were a major agency of change and whether that change was of short duration or long lasting. Regional and local studies of particular counties and towns provide for a micro-historical test of national hypotheses. The methodology of this thesis has been to extensively engage with all existing primary sources, for evidence of social change. The potency of a conservative reaction seeing custom, tradition and hankering after pre-war certainties has been identified as a factor successful in limiting the scope of social change. The introduction places the thesis in its historiographical frame and presents the national debate of continuity verses war- generated change. Chapter one investigates state expansion and regulation of everyday life through the Defence of the Realm Act. Chapter two discusses changes to the Pembrokeshire economy and the implications of wartime price rises. Chapter three discusses voluntary military enlistment, the operation of conscription at the local level through Military Service Tribunals, conscientious objection and female paramilitary military service and the gender implications which it raised. Chapter four considers the changing identities of individuals and the rich diversity of expression of patriotic wartime forms. Religious and cultural changes are analysed in chapter five with the effects of carefully choreographed propaganda expressed in public events. The vicarious experiences of war on a distant rural population, including spy and war scares, expressions of the psychology of wartime, are reviewed in chapter six in the iv context of Pembrokeshire being a coastal county. The thesis concludes with an assessment which detects limited social change and greater long-term continuity than war exceptionalism as the Pembrokeshire experience. v ABBREVIATIONS AgHR Agricultural History Review AHR American Historical Review CE County Echo EcHR Economic History Review EHR English History Review H&MHT Haverfordwest & Milford Haven Telegraph HJ Historical Journal HR Historical Research I&M Immigrants & Minorities IHR International History Review JBS Journal of British Studies JCH Journal of Contemporary History JPHS Journal of the Pembrokeshire Historical Society JSH Journal of Social History NM Narberth Museum P&P Past & Present PCG Pembroke County Guardian PH Pembrokeshire Herald PP Parliamentary Papers PRO Pembrokeshire Record Office (Archives) PT Pembrokeshire Telegraph SWDN South Wales Daily News TMAG Tenby Museum and Art Gallery TNA The National Archives TO Tenby Observer TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society TT The Times WHR Welsh Historical Review vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Installing the Pembrokeshire war memorial in August 1921 2 2. Unveiling the war memorial at Narberth in March 1924 3 3. National Registration card issued to George Clarke, 1915 25 4. Sugar registration card issued to William James, 1917 33 5. Tank at a war savings event, Pembroke Dock, June 1918 52 6. Soldier labour on a north Pembrokeshire farm, circa 1917 92 7. Tractor demonstration near Scotchwells, Haverfordwest, 1917 95 8. Pembroke Dockyard, circa 1905 123 9. Local Land Army worker in uniform in 1917 131 10. Red Cross nurses and patients at Cottesmore Hospital 135 11. Pembroke Dock military hospital circa 1915 136 12. Female workers at the Pembroke Dockyard boiler shop in 1918 139 13. Comic postcard linking infancy with military terminology 149 14. Entry form for the Fishguard Baby Show, July 1917 150 15. Troops of the 5th Welsh parade at Haverfordwest in April 1915 159 16. A batch of recruits march to Milford Haven railway station, 1914 161 17. Private Francis of the 4th Welsh, as patriotic citizen and volunteer 168 18. The Lewis family of Fishguard whose seven sons all saw service 170 19. Miss Nellie Dempster of Wiston who joined the WAAF, 1918 209 20. New Moat working party circa 1915 227 21. King Albert Belgian School at Milford Haven 233 22. Children cultivating land at Milford Haven circa 1917 237 23. Red brassard worn by Arthur Bartle of the Haverfordwest VTC 270 vii 24. VTC certificate of service awarded to William Griffiths, 1917-18 272 25. Reception of Private W.H. ‘Stokey’ Lewis VC at Milford Haven, 1917 304 26. Crowds celebrating the Armistice at Milford Haven 307 27. Children from Prendergast Infants school celebrate peace, 1919 307 28. Crested china souvenirs of a tank, Zeppelin, artillery and shell 319 29. Trench art in the form of a letter opener mounted with an Iron Cross 321 30. The German light cruiser SMS Hertha at Milford Haven in August 1912 324 31. Sea Scout airships at RNAS Pembroke, Milton in 1917 334 32. Manorbier coast watchers in 1915 337 33. Royal Navy barracks at Milford Haven 338 34. Grave of a victim of the sinking of the Hirano Maru, 1918 340 35. Dale camp in 1915 342 36. Captured German field gun in Market Square, Narberth in 1918 351 37. Captured U-112 at Milford Docks in December 1918 352 viii Introduction On Saturday 2 September 1921 an immense crowd, numbering many thousands, gathered at Salutation Square, Haverfordwest, the county town of Pembrokeshire, to witness the unveiling of the county war memorial. (Illustration 1), comprising a simple yet striking design, the monument consisted of an obelisk surmounted by a Welsh dragon. It bore four large bronze panels, three of which were inscribed with the names of the fallen whilst the fourth had a simple yet dignified dedication: 1914-1918. In remembrance of the men of the County of Pembroke who at the call of King and country left all that was most dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger and finally passed out of the sight of men in the path of duty and self sacrifice; giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom. Let those who come after see to it that their names be not forgotten.1 The memorial, which commanded the principal thoroughfare in town, listed the names of 1,200 local men who died during the conflict.2 During the following decade, many dozens of smaller memorials were erected across the county as each town, village and hamlet (the Narberth one in Illustration 2 is typical of such ceremonies during the 1920s) sought to remember their dead. Churches and chapels, too, were repositories of community, as well as spiritual association, and they expressed their solidarity with the fallen and all who served, often in the form of a brass plaque, commemorative windows, memorial parks and halls