GWB Kidderminster: Remembering 1914-18

To all the people of

Kidderminster

who lived or died during the Great War,

in appreciation of

the disruption they endured

and the efforts and sacrifices they made

on behalf of the nation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Although this book has been compiled from a wide variety of sources, the researchers’ special thanks are due to the Trustees, staff (past and present), and volunteers of the Museum of Carpet in Kidderminster who have made their archives freely available to us and whose help and support has been far in excess of what we might reasonably have expected.

In addition, we would like to thank the members, staff and volunteers (as appropriate) of the following organisations for facilitating the use of archives and books, for allowing us to make use of their researches and for publicising our own project: the Library of Birmingham, Library of Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Kidderminster Civic Society, Kidderminster Library, Kidderminster Shuttle, St Mary’s Parish Church in Kidderminster, Warwick University Modern Records Centre, Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology, and Worcestershire Regimental Museum.

We also want to express our sincere appreciation of the way so many people have freely given of their knowledge and precious family archives for us to use in this book, including: Graeme Anton, Robert Barber, Graham Birley, Nigel Gilbert, Nicky Griffiths, Peggy Guest, Jacqueline Hartwell, Ruby Henderson, Kathryn Hughes, Mrs James, Andra Kleanthous, Francesca Llewellyn, Roger Matthews, Beryl Millichap, Bob and Phill Millward, Shirley Morgan, Francis Rainsford, Tom Roy, Peter, Judith and Karen Rawlins, John Roach, Melvyn Thompson, Mark Thursfield, Bryan Tolley, and Barbara Wilkinson (who we thank for her additional help).

In my capacity as author I would like to add a personal thank you to everyone, especially my family, friends and fellow members of KDAHS, who expressed interest and enthusiasm for the project and thereby nudged it towards completion.

If anyone has been omitted above it is a most regrettable error rather than a lack of appreciation of their contribution.

Note: Numbers in brackets refer to illustrations.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Timeline

Introduction: Kidderminster on the Eve of War

1  Outbreak of War

2  Going to War

3  Work of War

4  News from the Front Line

5  Life at Home

6  Coming Home

Postscript : Legacy

Bibliography

Copyright

TIMELINE

INTRODUCTION

KIDDERMINSTER ON

THE EVE OF WAR

Although it lasted only four and a quarter years the 1914–18 Great War had a catastrophic effect on the nations involved, and still elicits a shudder of horror when it is mentioned 100 years later. The deaths and injuries caused by the fighting were beyond all imagining, and, for that reason, subsequent histories of the conflict have concentrated on the combatant forces.

However, this was ‘total war’, involving all sections of society. The young men went to fight. The non-combatant population provided the weapons, food, materials, care and moral support needed to keep the forces in the field. Nor were they immune to the fighting as their sons, husbands, brothers and sweethearts joined the lengthening casualty lists. In Britain, refugees from the combat zones were an ever-present reminder of what might happen if the fighting reached her shores. Preparations were made to defend them to the last. This book looks at the part Kidderminster played in this ‘total war’ and what it meant in practice for the people of this small north Worcestershire town.

Fact box 1

THE POPULATION OF KIDDERMINSTER IN 1911

In 1911, Kidderminster had a population approaching 28,000, most of whom (24,333) lived in the borough. This was a young population, with 80 per cent under 50 years old (Fact box 1). Some 20,000 people were of working age, including 8,500 men. About half the total male population of Kidderminster at this time was eligible to fight before the war had ended (1).

Whilst the town was the centre of a road network stretching across neighbouring countryside to the towns of the Midlands and Welsh Borders, cars were not yet numerous and mainly the preserve of those who could afford chauffeurs. Nevertheless, a car manufacturer, the Castle Motor Company, was already established in the town, together with motor engineers, Leonard Wyer & Company. For the rest, buses, trams and trains were the main form of transport. The railway station, on the east side of the town, provided good links to Worcester, along the Severn Valley via Bewdley, and to Birmingham, where many local people worked. Trains were as important for the carriage of goods as they were for people. Trams went from the station to Stourport and the town’s cabs were still horse drawn.

Other commercial transport ranged from horse drawn carts, through bicycles, motorcycles and steam-powered vehicles, to motor vans, and still included the canal. Businesses in the town catered for most of them; saddlers, blacksmiths, shoeing smiths and horse breakers could all be found. There were also wheelwrights and coach and carriage builders. Motorcycle agents, John Wright & Sons and Rhodes Brothers, both made motorcycles (2), while the Co-operative Engineering Company in Cherry Orchard dealt with steam traction.

1. Age structure of male population of Kidderminster in 1911. The dark bars indicate age groups eligible to fight at some time during the Great War.

On the eve of war Kidderminster was both an industrial town, dominated by the carpet industry, and a market town serving a substantial rural hinterland.

2. Fred Wright, no.56, from John Wright & Sons, motorcycle agents in Blackwell Street. Here as part of the Abingdon Ecco Team for the 1914 Senior Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man. He was to die in November 1918 from war wounds. (Carpet Museum Trust)

The carpet industry was the dominant employer in Kidderminster. There were over twenty manufacturing firms in the town, some specialised in yarn spinning or carpet making, and a few did both (Fact box 2). The owners and directors of these firms were the richest and most influential men of the town. Reginald Seymour Brinton, educated at Winchester and Oxford, succeeded his father as chairman of Brinton’s Carpets in 1914 (3). Already on the local council, he was mayor of Kidderminster for the first two years of the war and took a leading role in the governance of the town throughout the war.

Michael Tomkinson, a locally educated man, and William Adam, from Paisley, went into partnership in 1869, making rugs. In 1878 they developed and patented the first powered Chenille Setting loom and purchased the British rights to the American Spool Axminster loom. They held the rights to both processes and controlled the licences. Tomkinson lived at Franche; he was an alderman on the town council and mayor of Kidderminster in the last two years of peace, and continued to be active in town governance and patronage during the war, even though he was then in his seventies. Other members of his family also made unselfish contributions to the war effort.

By 1914 Peter Adam, as head designer, had inherited his father’s interest in the firm. He too had been mayor of the town for two years. He lived at ‘Cairndhu’ on the Birmingham Road, and opened the grounds for a variety of fundraising events during the war.

William Henry Stewart-Smith, a younger man in his thirties, was in charge of R. Smith & Sons, founded by his grandfather. Educated at Malvern College and Cambridge, he was elected to the town council in 1911 and became president of the local Chamber of Commerce in 1916. He used his extensive energy for the war effort on the home front, and later saw active service.

3. Brinton’s town centre carpet factory in 1911. The main office, built in 1876, is in the foreground. The factory was powered by a coal-fired stationary steam engine; the engine house projects above the north light weaving sheds towards the back of the factory. Brinton’s Bull (see Chapter 5) was situated on top of the four-storey building between the engine house and the main office. Coal and bales of wool were delivered along the adjacent canal. (Kidderminster Library)

The carpet firms provided about 40 per cent of the jobs in the town – in July 1914 Tomkinson & Adam employed nearly 1,500 and Brinton’s employed well over 1,000. About three quarters of these employees were women, however it was the men who held the key weaving jobs. They started as ‘creelers’, maintaining the continuous supply of yarn into the backs of the looms, becoming weavers with their own looms at the age of 21. Women were also creelers, but in most factories they had no opportunity for promotion to weaver, although they were employed on other preparation and finishing processes. Only at Tomkinson & Adam were women employed as weavers on the lighter Axminster looms which were, arguably, outside the agreement with the Carpet Weavers’ Association. After a visit from Mary Macarthur in 1912, a branch of her National Federation of Women Workers was established in the town.

Fact box 2

THE CARPET INDUSTRY IN KIDDERMINSTER

Yarn Spinners:

Edward Alfred Broome & Son, Castle Mills, New Road.

Greatwich, New Road.

Hoobrook Spinning Co., Hoobrook.

Kidderminster Spinning Co., Park Mills, New Road.

Lea, Slingfield Mills & The Sling.

Watson Brothers, Pike Mills, Green Street.

Yarn Spinners and Carpet Manufacturers:

Brinton’s, Exchange Street.

T&A Naylor, Pike Mills, Green Street.

Carpet Manufacturers:

Broome & Brookes, Mill Street.

Chlidema, Green Street.

Carpet Manufacturing Company:

    Morton & Sons, New Road.

    Richard Smith & Sons, Mill Street, Brussell Street, Imperial

    Works & Park Wharf Mills.

Cooke Brothers, Worcester Cross Works, Oxford Street.

Empire, Foley Park Works.

Edward Hughes & Sons, Town Carpet Mills, Mill Street.

Jelleyman & Sons, Townshend Works, Puxton Lane.

Carpet Trades (Herbert Smith):

    Charles Harrison & Son, Long Meadow Mills, Dixon Street.

    James Humphries & Sons, Mill Street.

    Jason Skin & Rug, Dixon Street.

Frank Stone, Exchange Street.

Tomkinson & Adam, Church Street & Mount Pleasant.

Victoria, Green Street.

Woodward Grosvenor, Stour Vale Mills,

    Green Street & Worcester Cross.

There was a much smaller, but highly significant, iron industry in Kidderminster. The Stour Vale Ironworks, to the north of the town, was owned by Baldwin’s Ltd iron and steel business. An amalgamation of five companies in 1902, Baldwin’s was flourishing by the outbreak of war. Stanley Baldwin, MP for his native town of Bewdley, was a director and deputy chairman of the company. His position, wealth, energy and social conscience all contributed to the war effort in Kidderminster as well as further afield. Other iron founders in the town were Herbert Bale at the Albion Foundry in Pitts Lane, John Russell whose foundry was in Oxford Street, and Bradley & Turton who had foundries at Clensmore and Caldwell. Prunell, Lamb & Co., engineers on Station Hill, did a lot of work on the looms and other machinery used in the carpet industry.

Kidderminster’s MP, Eric Ayshford Knight, also came from a family that had originally made its money in the iron industry. His uncle, Sir Frederick Knight, had been lieutenant colonel of the Worcestershire Yeomanry, and he was major and commander of the same Territorial corps in 1912. He had been the town’s MP since 1906.

Before the war there was one retail outlet in Kidderminster for every thirty people in its population, while nationally there was one outlet to fifty-nine people. The doubling of this density in Kidderminster reflects its position as a market town and suggests that its hinterland population equalled its own. The key shopping streets formed a rough cross (4). Shops ran in a line from the railway station down Comberton Hill, along Oxford Street and Vicar Street, through the Bull Ring and up Mill Street to the north-west of the town. High Street and Swan Street, occupying the historic market place and crowded with shops, led north-eastward off the main shopping axis and joined Blackwell Street and Coventry Street, also full of shops. On the opposite side of the main axis was another shopping street, Park Butts, continued by Bewdley Hill. Almost 390 shops were to be found in these streets. Thursdays and Saturdays were market days, when the town was especially crowded.

Most of the town’s retail outlets were small specialist businesses, often sole traders (Fact box 3). Many were scattered through the suburbs of the town, convenient when most people walked to the shops and carried their purchases home, and when weekly wages and a lack of home refrigeration meant shopping frequently. The numerous ‘shopkeepers’ particularly catered for this local trade, selling anything their customers might want rather than specialising in one type of product

4. Map of Kidderminster in 1902 – see here for additional enlargement of the town centre. (Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology)

Details of one of these small business emerged when the proprietor, Henry Joseph Pretty, a butcher, was sued for breach of promise of marriage in March 1916. He was a butcher’s assistant when, in 1912, his mother left him £75. He started his own butchery business