D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

Envelope addressed to Miss M Crawshaw, 29 Strethleven Rd etc franked APO 17(?) Sep 14 and London 25 Sep 14 passed by Censor 137

Letter dated 17.8.14 - written in pencil

Dear Till,

Just a few lines in answer to your welcome letter which I thought was never coming and I was very pleased to hear from you. Glad to hear that Aunt got my P Card and that they are all getting on alright and I hope that Uncle Matt sticks his job at the Post Office for Aunt will be much happier. You say you haven’t heard from Tom yet, well you can take it from me that he is alright thats what we have heard, that we have beaten the Germans quite easily as sea. I wish we could say that out here. Well Till mate I am getting on alright up to yet and still in the pink, we have had a rough time of it just lately and I have got a terrible cold. The weather out here has been lovely up to this last week and its been raining night and day and we have got properly drenched. I hope it clears off, for it is proper miserable.

Now Till dear I want you to send me out a parcel of cake and chocolate and also a pair of socks, for our rations are very small and we get them when we can now and then they are very small, so I trust you will do your very best and send me out a parcel now and again, and I will make it right when I come back well I hope too. We haven’t had any pay for seven weeks now and there isn’t any chance of getting any so we can’t buy any and we don’t get much chance either, so I hope you will do you best and send it out soon not a fancy bit of stuff just a bit of you know the sort mate, be sure to do it up strong or else it will get busted up.

Pleased to hear about Doris, I should love to see her for its such a long time since she saw her Biddy give her my love and I hope to see her soon as she left that school. Am surprised to hear about the old man getting married again, but I expected to see that come off and he is getting young again, have you seen her, who told you about it, good old mother (????thises) is that what she said you wasn’t to see Doris you tell Mrs C to what a bit don’t bolt her food, Ginger can please herself who she goes and sees, she must be nearly fourteen now and I expect Aunt has fits what with having to get Mother up so early as that, how does she manage to get up so early as that.

Now Till I hope you are getting on alright at Stewarts and that you are still merry and bright. Don’t forget to send out the Sunday paper every week all of it and don’t leave out the sporting part me old dear. Now I don’t think there is any more news just now, except you can tell Aunt and all off them at home that I am in the pink and I should like a few lines from one of them at home. Now I must conclude trusting to hear from you soon.

I remain

Your loving Brother
Frank xxxx

This is something of a revelation. I think we get snippets of family discord in previous letters so it’s not a total surprise. Frank’s father has, or is, getting married again. Frank’s parents, Frank and Ada, were living together in 1911. Something then went wrong between them. By 1914 Ada and Mabel are living with Walter “Mattie” Webster and his wife Caroline back in Brixton.

Frank Senior may have possibly already got married again in April 1914 to a Gertrude Watson (as a Frank Crawshaw got married in Islington at that time) but I haven’t been able to prove this is him yet. I need to order the marriage certificate.

Divorce in 1914 was supposedly uncommon and, socially, it was frowned upon. In the first decade of the 20th century, there was just one divorce for every 450 marriages. I took the following statistics from the Guardian’s excellent data blog: 2600 couples got divorced between 1911 and 1914. 1397 divorces were instigated by the man and 1203 by the woman. Incidentally this figure rose to an all-time-high of 165,018 divorces in 1993.

A recent Parliamentary article on divorce cites that only men could instigate divorce before 1923 but I can’t understand how this would be when women are listed as the petitioners in 1911-1914. This is also disproved by this story in the Nottingham Evening News in 1914. It makes for depressing reading so be warned. Weirdly, my other great great grand parents, Reginald and Hannah Elliman, were also getting divorced around this time. For something that was supposedly very rare at the time, especially in the working classes, there was a lot of it about.

I love Frank’s spelling of thesis. He is defending Ginger (Doris), their younger sister as she’s obviously seen her father and her mother does not like this at all. Doris was actually 12 – she was born in January 1902. The school he mentions unearths another Crawshaw family mystery. I’ve found Doris in the 1911 Census and she’s boarding at a school in Stroud, Gloucestershire. More of this tomorrow.

The Dorsets spent the day digging trenches between Le Pavillon Farm and Sermoise. At 7.30pm they were ordered to assemble at Sermoise, but the order was immediately cancelled and they returned to their billets in Jury.