2014 Reporting Local Life in 1914

This report was mentioned in Social Snapshot articles by Joan West

click Wars for local details of the Boer War, WW1, WW2, & The Cold War

The Local History Group sent the following report to Hallmark in 2014 to accompany the advertisement for their exhibition commemorating the outbreak of WW1 :-

YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU    from the Local History Group

It was just a poster with the prime minister pointing straight at them, and they volunteered in their thousands.  Now in 2014 you wonder why it had such an effect.   But this was 1914, and one reason might have been that life was not good at home.

It was a rural parish, most people worked in agriculture.  When there was work to do!! No work meant no pay.   Between 1870 and 1889 a series of wet summers began the agricultural depression.   Then 1890- 1894 five years of droughts made the depression much deeper. In 1891 a great blizzard in May with snow hail and frost caused many deaths.  In1893 a drought dried up pastures, vegetables, fruit and arable crops.  Ponds dried up. (no tap water till 1934). 1903 was very wet and crops were ruined. In June 1912 a massive volcano in Alaska and others in Central America and the Caribbean, including ‘Pelee’ in Martinique filled the sky with ash, blocking out the sun, making the summer cold grey and stormy.  Thus from 1870 agricultural work had been uncertain. Some years whole crops had been ruined, so no harvest. Those years hit people the hardest as their gardens would have suffered likewise. So then no pay and no produce.  It continued wet and WW1 is reknowned for the mud. THE POSTER MEANT WORK AND PAY.

The cottages were not large, they were damp and dark.  Cooking more often than not in a pot hung over the fire. To combat the damp the fire would be kept in all the time, banking it up at night.   In the 1850s there had been many acres of woodland from which the people could gather fallen wood. By late 1890s there only remained the roots (shucks). By 1911 there were no woods left. Now how to keep the cottage dry and to cook?

At Hampden the private estate had woods which occasionally they thinned or felled, selling the trees by auction.  Some would be bought by ‘bodgers’ who turned legs and arms for Windsor chair makers in High Wycombe.  These were for sale. They also sold bundles of faggotts (kindling). Maybe they did take some home and certainly the shavings (also saleable ie.for butchers’ shop floors) and sawdust would bank a fire up at night.  

HOW DID THOSE WHO WERE NOT BODGERS MANAGE?  THE POSTER MEANT WORK AND PAY.

When the war began to take such a heavy toll on life the poster disappeared and call-up began. First only single men aged 14-30, then married men added.  Lastly it was extended up to 40 years  

37 MEN DIED FROM THIS PARISH.    Countless others came home suffering from shell shock, survival guilt, mustard gas and depression.   Very few ever talked about it.