Category: Letters

Mabel and her John Willie

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5th November 1914

Letter to Miss M Crawshaw, 29 Strathleven – date 11 – 14 envelope franked 5 No 14 (censor no 137 still at it)

Dear Till

Many thanks for your welcome and interesting letter which I received on the 31st. I am pleased to hear that you are getting on alright and still mucking in. What’s the idea of asking me to write to your John Willie, for I don’t know him, you get him to send me out some chocolates, do you know Till that chocolate is as good as anything out here, and every one is after it.

You say what do I want for Xmas wait and see how things go for its a long way off yet, and goodness knows what will happen. Yes mate I could do with some Tooth Powder, for you should see them now they are proper gone, no I never got the toothbrush thats the only thing I never received, and I can account for that, one of our fellows took the Companies mail in the firing line and he got killed, and of course they got lost.

It is Sunday and its a fine day too and no cold tea roll on a long time. Glad to hear Tom is safe remember me to him, lets have his address and I will drop him a few lines, for thats what you look forward to more than anything else, is a letter.

Till I have forgot to tell you before, and that is that all my clothes are at Jessies home, two lots that basket and a box, I was going to send them home but we never had time wasn’t allowed out and we had to get rid of them at once. I had just bought another suit a navy blue a lovely one it cost 55/- and I only put it on twice, bowler shirts ties, socks collars watch Bank Book with 5/- in it, your hair brushes, overcoat, in fact every think. Yes I hear from Jess she sent me out a parcel not long ago, and her brother dropped me a few lines, as well, yes poor Jessies getting on alright, just as the War started I was getting on alright, at her home for I used to go round for dinner and Tea on Sundays, and supper in the week, only the old lady didn’t drink she hates the sight of it.

Well Till I am getting on alright and still in the pink, you say the war can’t last much longer don’t you believe it, for it will last longer than people think worse luck. I am still waiting to hear from your (Friend) and I have wrote to your impersonator, I mean your Johnnie. Glad to hear that Matties leg is better and that he is working, you still mucking in at Stewarts glad to hear that Ciss got my letter, I have dropped her a card since.

Remember me to all at home and I hope you are still mucking in, what time are you getting to bed,  now that the pubs close at 10 o’clock. Now I think this is all the news at present trusting this finds you all in the best of health and hope to hear from you soon.

P.S. Don’t forget the tooth powder Glad Eye

I remain

your loving Brother

Bid
xxxxx

Frank wrote this letter on the 1st November, the previous Sunday, but it didn’t get posted until the 5th November. I am not sure he is in the position to be writing letters at the moment. He most probably wrote it in the morning as I would have thought he would have mentioned the bus journey if he had written it in the evening.

Mabel has presumably asked Frank to write to her boyfriend. Frank taunts her and indignantly asks for payment in chocolate. Later on in the letter he reveals that he has already written to her “John Willie”. Frank might pull a leg or two but he’s very kind at heart.

John Willie is a phrase that later became associated with John Thomas. I don’t need to explain the meaning of that, but I don’t think he’s being that crude here. In fact, there were a few songs from the time with the name John Willie in. I stumbled upon this thread of enquiry looking through the Routledge Dictionary of Slang. There was “Fetch John Willie” from 1910 and “Have you seen my John Willie” from 1914. I cannot find the lyrics to these songs but what I did find was this song by George Formby Senior. Yes, that one’s dad. He was a popular Music Hall entertainer and he played a character called “John Willie” who was “the archetypal gormless Lancashire lad … hen-pecked, accident-prone, but muddling through” (according to historian Jeffrey Richards).

Here is the 1908 song in sterophonic technicolor:

This “John Willie” is most probably the first mention of my Great Grandfather, Carl Robert Debnam. He was also in the army, a Gunner in the 41st Company, Royal Garrison Artillery. He had returned to the UK in July, after a tour of duty in Sierra Leone. He was yet to be posted to war. In fact he didn’t make it to France until late the following year. And, yes, he didn’t use his first name; everyone called him Robert (or Bob).

I’ll return to the letter tomorrow.

Meanwhile the Dorsets were still nervous about being next to the French, who were regularly announcing their intention to attack Messines. Further up the line they had regained a toehold in Wytschaete. In fact the 11th Brigade War Diary records that Colonel Butler reported the French were in front of the Dorsets’ trenches during the early morning of the 5th. Throughout the day different reports come in about the French preparing to attack.

Most worrying was the 8:15pm report that the Dorsets’ line had been broken, prompting Butler to send reinforcements. The Germans had attacked the Dorsets very suddenly at 7pm. The Dorsets diary reports that C Company was ordered to counter attack. After this point no indication is given of whether they regained the trench at all. It just reports that rifle fire slackened and they settled down to an eerie but quiet Guy Fawkes night shrouded in thick fog.

Elsewhere all the signs of impending trench warfare continued. The Germans were reported throwing up barricades in front of their positions opposite the Rifle Brigade who were also stationed in Ploegsteert Wood.

Men at work

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24th October 1914

Postcard to Miss M Crawshaw, 29 Strathleven Road – dated 26-10-14 but stamped 24 Oc 14

Dear Till

Just a PC to thank you for handkerchiefs which I was glad to get. We are still having a busy time of it and also plenty of work. As Aunt got my letter which I wrote her. Glad to hear that you are getting on alright and still doing the stammering Sam. I have answered Muff’s letter , which she wrote me. Now I think this is all this time trusting this finds you all in the best of health and hope to hear from you soon.

I remain

Your loving Brother

BID xx

This is one of those postcards you might give a cursory glance at and move on from. It doesn’t contain any news, nor does Frank try to converse with Mabel. However, I think this postcard carries much more weight, once you know what Frank has just experienced over the last ten days, and the two months before that.

I think that it is the postcard equivalent of a big hug. He doesn’t describe anything about what’s been happening. I think he just wants to connect with someone he loves deeply – and writing is the only way he can do this at this time. He tries a little repeated joke at the expense of his father, “stammering Sam”, but other than that, the tone is loving and the sign off is very formal which just adds to the postcard’s poignancy.

The Dorsets spent another day in billets with the Cheshires. The Germans sent over a lot of high explosive shells that afternoon directed at Festubert. At 6:30pm they were sent into Festubert to repair the damaged roads. An hour later they were sent back to their billets and told to remain on high alert.

 

I demand to have some booze

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10th October 1914

After more waiting, and much to-ing and fro-ing, the buses finally arrived at about 2:30pm and took them via the town of Saint-Pol-sur-Termoise and dropped them off at their billets in La Thieuloye.

The BEF was hurtling towards the west now as fast as they could go. It was hoped they could reach Lille in time, which was about 40 miles off to the north east, but Gleichen wasn’t so sure. He had witnessed thousands of young men streaming to the west away from the possibility of being interned by the advancing Germans.

Frank was known as Biddy or Bid. Nicknames are cryptic, often born from the language a group of friends or family form through familiarity. Sometimes they came from acronyms of initials (see my theory about the origins of Auntie Muff yesterday). Biddie certainly isn’t that. His initials are AFC. So where did it come from?

Biddy is an old 16th Century name for baby chicken. The origin is suggested as perhaps imitative of the chicken, so perhaps it was used as a calling sound when feeding them. A chickabiddy is an affectionate term for a small child. I think this is the most likely origin of Frank’s nickname.

Strangely enough, Biddy came up again when I was looking up references to Frank’s mention of the word “lizzie”.

“No cold tea out here or little drops of lizzie (?), could do with a drop of cold tea now.”

I’ve previously opined that cold tea was beer. I’ve subsequently read that it referred to brandy. I must opine less. But I think it’s a pretty interchangeable phrase.  Here, Frank’s probably referring to the hard stuff. I initially thought that lizzie was some kind of Babycham. But I am pretty sure it’s a reference to Lisbon wine, which was some kind of very cheap fortified wine or at least a collective noun for any cheap wine. Empire Wine is often mentioned. Wine of such unconscionable filth that they could only sell it back in Britain. It’s fair to say that cheap wine was popular in Edwardian times. It was perfect for getting drunk really quickly, which tends to be a good property for booze. Britain in the early 1900s is no different from today when it comes to drunkenness.

The quality of Lisbon wine was debatable and its reputation for potency didn’t stop here. Not strong enough for the real diehards, it was often mixed with cheap alcohol like methylated spirits to produce a truly lethal drink called “Red Lizzie”. Yes, that’s the stuff you clean your brushes with. When produced from red wine it was know as, wait for it, “red biddy”. Was Biddy a massive booze hound and that’s how he got his nickname? Had he accidentally signed up after a weekend of  too many red biddies?

Red biddy was a drink of legend that by the Second World War had largely vanished from pubs and was made at home. It rendered the drinker blind drunk and often mad. It wasn’t surprisingly compared to absinthe that so afflicted Parisians in the 19th Century. Government laws like the 1937 Methylated Spirits Bill tried to control this dangerous substance, and this report by the Medical Officer of Health for Wandsworth in 1936 highlighted the concerns that many social organisations, such as the Salvation Army, lobbied the Government with.

The Government are still struggling today with adulterated alcohol. A 2008 Guardian article highlights the rise in theft of alcoholic sanitisers from some London hospitals. It is used as a base for “the street drinkers’ favourite ‘red biddy'”. Delicious and health conscious too!

The great Kingsley Amis recommends red biddy as part of a decent breakfast in his booze-befuddled novel Lucky Jim.

The three pints of bitter he’d drunk last night with Bill Atkinson and Beesley might, by means of some garbaged alley through the space-time continuum, have been preceded by a bottle of British sherry and followed by half a dozen breakfast-cups of red biddy.

I prefer Alpen.

Let’s leave this subject with this fine English gentleman describing the appeal of pure alcohol very eloquently.

Dial M for Muff

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9th October 1914

The confusion continued for the Dorsets. At 5pm. leaving behind their transport, they marched to Haravesnes, about 5 miles to the north east. They were supposed to then be picked up at 7pm by motor buses, or omnibuses as the Dorset war diary calls them. But they never arrived. Here the war diary and the official history of the Dorsets differ for the first time. Going by the other regiments’ war diaries and Gleichen’s account, it seems that the Brigade either billeted or bivouacked in Haravesnes overnight.

It would have been easier for them to march to their destination. They were losing precious time as we’ll see tomorrow.

Gleichen is not happy with the buses, and narrowly avoids being flattened by one of them.

I had, by the way, an extremely narrow escape from being killed that night. I had been lying down just off the road, when it struck me that I should find out more of what was happening and going to happen if I went to the head of the camion column and interviewed the officer in charge. It was a tramp of a mile or more through the 14th Brigade, and I found out something of what I wanted; but when I returned to the bivouac I heard that, not two minutes after I had started, a motor-bus had swerved off the road and passed exactly over the place where my head had been. It very nearly went over St André and Moulton-Barrett, who were lying a few feet away, as it was.

Today I have been looking at Lilian M Webster and tried to find out if she is the mysterious Muff from Frank’s letters.

In the 1911 census, Lilian Webster is listed as daughter of Matthew and Phoebe Webster. Lilian is 22. Matthew is 72 and Phoebe is 69. Did Phoebe have a later baby at the age of 47, nine years after their last baby Herbert Arthur? It’s certainly possible but also highly unlikely. Looking further back at the 1901 census Matthew and Phoebe are living at 60 Mordaunt Street with their granddaughter, Lilian M Pearson, aged 12. Is this the same person? Is she their daughter or their grandchild. What’s going on here?

Matthew and Lilian’s first child, Lilian “Lily” Emily Webster, was born in 1865. She married William James Charles Pearson in 1885. They are listed as living in Mordaunt Street in Brixton, presumably with her parents at number 60. In 1889 along came Lilian May Florence Pearson. I had her written down as Lilian Maud but that now appears to be wrong. Today I found her marriage certificate from 1915 and her name is listed in full there, as well on her husband’s next of kin form when he joined up with the Army. Unfortunately, the trail goes cold for both her parents at this point and I cannot find any mention of them after her birth. I haven’t done nearly enough research yet but is their disappearance connected to the fact that she move in with her Grandparents? Why does she change her name in the 1911 Census, or is that just a clerical error? Where did they go to? Did they die or emigrate, or am I just missing them in the records? As ever, turning these stones leaves more questions than answers.

I have one idea though. Look at her name: Lilian M F Pearson. The middle initials are MF. Is this Muff? This is what I guessed at yesterday. My doubts remain though. She could also be May, a character as yet unidentified in the letters to his sister if you look back through the archives. But May seems to be a friend of Mabel’s rather than a cousin. And May and Muff are often referred to separately in the same letter. Meanwhile, I shall just keep turning those stones.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the possible origins of Frank’s nickname and his favourite tipples.

Do the Oakley-Kokey

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8th October 1914

The Dorsets finally detrained at 2am. They then marched into Abbeville and onto billets in Neuilly-L’Hôpital. Major Roper left them to find billets up ahead.

Again, they waited until the evening before moving out, to avoid enemy planes I suppose. At 6pm they marched north east through Agenvillers, Noyelles-en-Chausée, crossing the Somme at Boufflers, before arriving Gennes-Ivergny at 11pm. I make that about 26 miles. I bet Frank was loving his new socks. If they’d survived that journey that is.

Somewhere in the tone of the letters and in Geoff’s notes in my transcript there is the opinion that trouble simmered between certain sections of the Webster and the Crawshaw clans. Geoff (or Carl) writes “no love lost between the Crawshaws and the Websters?”.

If we think back to the trouble between Frank Senior and Ada then a divorce would certainly put a strain on a family. Especially if some members of the Websters were Roman Catholic. This would certainly explain the reason Doris was in a Roman Catholic School in Stroud. It also explains why there is R.C. written under Religion on Frank’s Conduct Sheet. But the mystery is that he and Mabel were both christened at C of E churches: Frank in 1893 at Brixton St Matthew and Mabel in 1894 at Stockwell Green St Andrew. Did Frank convert to Roman Catholicism? For his girlfriend, Jess, as my mother suggested? Is it a mistake on the Conduct Sheet? It needs further investigation but I am not sure where to turn to.

The other root cause of family strife is money. Was there some kind of battle going on over inheritance? I’ve been trying  to work out what number 60 refers to in his letter to his Aunt Caroline: “Have heard from 60”. At first I had a look at 60 Strathleven Road in Brixton, the same road they were living in 1914 along with Mabel and her mother. But the Websters weren’t living there at the time of the 1911 census. Then I thought about looking at the grandparents, Matthew and Phoebe Webster. They are living in Tottenham in 1911. No dice. I nearly gave up at this point. But I had in the back of my mind a nagging feeling that I had seen a number 60 before. So I persevered. I went back another census to 1901. And there were Matthew and Phoebe Webster living at 60 Mordaunt Street in Brixton, along with their 11 year old granddaughter Lilian M Pearson.

So here was a little silver thread of a trail. A very tenuous one, but one certainly worth pulling at. Could this be the number 60 in his letter? If the grandparents weren’t living at number 60 then were any other relatives? Now I had to find the address in the 1911 Census. Finding the address took longer than I thought because Ancestry has a great habit of misfiling street names in the Census reports. Tip here – use the Census summary sheets first. However, late last night I found it. Living at the address was a James Oakley and his strangely named (but brilliant for genealogy purposes) wife, Lovey. James was a pattern maker. As was Matthew Webster. A pattern emerges. Was I onto something here? Or was it just a cheap gag?

Well now I knew that coincidence was looking more and more like fact. Because I already knew that Phoebe’s maiden name was Oakley. Now all I had to do was tie her family tree to James’. I had not got anywhere with her family tree in the past, so I decided to work back with James.

James’ father was called William Oakley. He was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Phoebe was born in Bristol. Not a million miles away from each other. They were both a similar age. William was born in 1837 and Phoebe in 1841. On I plodded through the records and then suddenly, bingo!  There in the 1851 census. living in Northfleet, Kent was Elizabeth Oakley and her three children: George, William and nine year old Phoebe – written as Phebe Oakley. And that spelling is why I never found the record of her.

So now I am certain that Phoebe’s nephew was living in the Grandparent Webster’s old house in 1914. What I am not certain of is why. Had the house been left to them? It could well have just been rented after they moved. Had James inherited the family business? Was there even a family business? Were the Webster children at war with their parents over inheritance? The answers to all these questions is, I fear, lost in time. But it certainly opens up a brand new line of the family in Brixton.

One answer we might be able to work at is Lilian M Pearson. Does that M stand for Muff? There’s another mystery there ready to try to unravel tomorrow.