Stories From History And More

  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. ...