Investigations of a Dog

Yesterday I went down to the Public Records Office (call it by its name!). I think I picked the wrong day. As well as the disruption from the building work, the ordering system broke down so I couldn’t order any documents for the first hour.

One consolation of the delay was that I had plenty of spare time to look at the First World War service records on microfilm. This time I was lucky to find a record for Thomas Wenham, my great-grandfather’s older brother (those for William and Charles hadn’t survived, which is exactly the ratio you’d expect from the burnt papers). Tom joined the reserves in 1915 but wasn’t called up for active service until 1916. He was initially in 19th Sherwood Foresters, a reserve battalion recruited in Lincolnshire, but then he was posted to 8th North Staffordshire Regiment, with whom he went to France. On 7th June 1917 he was wounded in the head by a shell at Wytschaete and was sent to hospital in Etaples, then returned to England. He survived but wasn’t fit for combat any more so served at home with the Royal Defence Corps. In 1918 he returned to France with the Labour Corps to guard prisoners of war. So out of three brothers known to have served in the war, all three were wounded in action, one died, and one was captured.

Then on to the real work: SP28 aka the Commonwealth Exchequer Papers. I tried photographing a whole account book to get an idea of how long it would take. The book was about 150 folios with writing on both sides, so about 300 images altogether, which took about an hour and a half. Quality is a bit variable because I didn’t use a camera stand (usually I find they’re all in use; this time there was one free but I then realised I couldn’t attach my camera to it!). Some images are perfect but others are so blurred that I can’t read them. It was also totally exhausting, but not as bad as copying them out by hand. I’m looking into the feasibility of a project which might involve photographing 20 or 30 entire boxes. That looks like it could be long, difficult and expensive.

Like Alan Harris’s marking, the background reading must be done. English Civil War causes and allegiance posts now have their own category, and this is the latest addition. This week I’ve been reading Anthony Fletcher’s The Outbreak of the English Civil War, published in 1981. This is a very detailed look at what happened in England from 1640 to 1642. In some ways it’s a product of its times, as it’s very heavily influenced by the revisionism of Conrad Russell and John Morrill, but Fletcher added a lot of new evidence and some ideas of his own.

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90 years ago today Private Charles Wenham of 10th Lincolnshire Regiment died. He was almost certainly the brother of my great-grandfather William A. Wenham (I’ve posted about William’s experiences in the Great War here and here).

Charles Wenham was born in Grimsby in 1887. In 1901 he was living with his family in Rutland Street and working as an errand boy. In 1912 he married Ethel Lovejoy, who was recorded as living at 24 Neville Street during the war.

Charles served as a private in 10th Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment (Grimsby Chums). His service number 28180 means he is unlikely to have been an original chum, and so probably wasn’t with them at the Somme. He served overseas after the end of 1915, qualifying for the War and Victory medals (see medal card). At some point he was wounded in action, but so far we have no details of when or where. William’s letters imply that he might have been wounded in March or April 1917, possibly at the first battle of the Scarpe. He was brought back to England and died of wounds at Leicester Military Hospital on 17th November 1917. His body was brought home and buried in Cleethorpes cemetery on 21st November. This is how his death was reported in the Grimsby Daily Telegraph on 20th November:

WENHAM. On 17th inst., at Leicester Military Hospital, Pte. C. Wenham, of the Lincolns, the dearly loved husband of Ethel Wenham, 24, Neville Street. Military funeral at Cleethorpes Cemetery, Wednesday afternoon, 2 o’clock. Died of wounds.

The grave is still maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. We have no photos of Charles and no idea what happened to his medals and death plaque. Ethel remarried in 1918 and does not appear to have had any children with Charles.

My seminar paper went really well yesterday, especially considering the fact that I haven’t done one for six years. Below is a version of the paper. This is a draft of what I wrote, but what I actually said came out a bit different – you had to be there. If I was doing it again I’d probably change it even more. The maps here are slightly different from the ones in the presentation as I can’t work out how to link to two or more Google Maps overlaid on each other at the same time. Maybe you can’t. For the presentation I just took screenshots of them. For the other illustrations, click the thumbnails to see full size pictures. And if you’re from Lincoln you might like to try and identify all of the animals. I wonder if Stewart Lee could correctly identify all of them…

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Some people have been overlaying maps and aerial photos from the First World War onto Google Earth. It all looks really cool but the ensuing discussion revealed a technical problem that I hadn’t thought of: present day maps use a different projection from early 20th century maps so they’re not entirely compatible.

Also on the First World War, you can see the BBC4 documentary “How The Edwardians Spoke” on Google Video. The title is quite misleading as it’s actually about phonograph recordings of British prisoners in Germany during the Great War. It gets a bit sentimental in places and they can’t avoid cliches like “the horror” but it’s still fascinating. I’m just wondering how far the descendants’ responses to the recordings were influenced by popular perceptions of the war as a whole. It’s not obvious or inevitable that a recording of a man reading a bible story would be “harrowing”.

I’ve just sent off the final version of my first article, which will be appearing in War In History in April. I’m really pleased with it but I can’t help wondering if I’ve made a terrible mistake somewhere or missed some very important recent publication.

Next week I’m giving a seminar paper for the first time in about 6 years. I’m also using a PowerPoint presentation for the first time ever. Is that tempting fate?

The 8th Military History Carnival is now up. Many thanks to Gary Smailes for hosting it for the second time this year. The next edition will be at Osprey Publishing blog in mid-December. Send submissions to blog at ospreypublishing dot com or use the form.

I’m looking for more hosts for February 2008 onwards. You don’t have to be a  military history specialist. Different perspectives are always welcome.

Over the last week I’ve been exploring the possibilities of Your Archives, the wiki based site set up by the UK National Archives where users can contribute their own knowledge and transcripts of documents. The site has huge possibilities, and so far I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. To start with I’ve been mostly concentrating on First World War records, as the Great War Forum provides both an immediate audience and lots of potential contributors. Getting these people involved could make a very big difference to the project. I think it’s going to take to get a critical mass of GWF regulars using Your Archives regularly, but I’m trying to lead by example. It turns out that I’m not the first forum member to contribute to YA as another member had submitted some information about Labour Corps medal rolls a few months ago. However, that didn’t lead to lots of other people contributing. Can we change that?

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This seems to have been around for a while but I haven’t seen it before.   WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier is a blog of letters from a soldier, posted on the 90th anniversary of the sending of each one, along with other posts giving background information.