Stories From History And More

  Fred’s thoughts turned from disbelief to sadness and quite quickly to anger. He couldn’t believe what he was being told at first. He couldn’t understand why she would do such a thing, and become well known for it! They hadn’t been married much longer than a year in September 1917. Fred had been away in the army for a year, but so had most young men in that time period. Beatrice had grown up in the Paddock area of Huddersfield and was well known around Luck Lane which linked to the Marsh district and then on to her new marital home in Birkby. Luck Lane was where he was told Beatrice had been seen committing adultery, on many occasions. The ultimate indignity and horror for Fred was for this to culminate in her having a miscarriage at their house in Corby street. The fact that the potential father of the child was unknown only compounded the sordid nature of this event. The actual cause of the miscarriage was not known but with the doctor having been called to attend meant it c...

  A Normal Life. At the beginning of 1917 Percy Blackburn was thirty four years old and gainfully employed in Huddersfield as a Tailor’s Cutter , which he had been for the previous twenty years. He was also the head of a young and expanding family. His wife Nora was expecting to give birth to their third child in March and his growing responsibilities were uppermost in his mind. { Percy & family late 1917 - L to R Lawrence, Percy, Annie, Nora & Marjorie} The growing demands of the war, which had been raging in Europe since 1914, was, however, making demands on the wider population. Throughout 1914/15 the armed services had relied on volunteers to fight the " Great War ". The sheer scale of the conflict and weight of casualties meant that this method of recruitment was no longer enough to maintain the effort required. In an effort to satisfy this need, compulsory conscription was introduced by the government on 4 th  January 1916 for all males aged 18 to 41. ...