Escaped German Lehmann POW 1917

It reminded me of the scene in the film “ Whistle down the wind” when the escaped prisoner is found by the children in a remote barn in lonely countryside. The event that reminded me of the 1960 film happened 43 years before in February 1917 during the depths of winter in the remote Moorland village of Upper Elkstone. It certainly caused a commotion in Leek where crowds turned out to see the prisoner appeared at the local court. It even made newspapers the other side of the world. Some months later the Wairarapa Daily Times in New Zealand reported that a German Naval Sub Lieutenant Emil Lehmann was arrested following his escape from Manchester and charged with sacrilege. It was alleged that he broke into a Methodist chapel and used bibles to make a fire. The account made it out to be a typical “Hunnish” trick

 The chapel in question was a Primitive Methodist chapel at Upper Elkstones where Lehmann must have stayed some time before being discovered by a group of children who saw smoke coming out of the building. The leader of the children Sarah Ann Bricklebank of Royal Farm ,Upper Elkstones was a chapel member and had keys to the building. The German officer was 24 and described in court as having dark hair and was wearing an overcoat with naval waistcoat and a grey soft cap. He had escaped from an escort at Central Railway station in Manchester while being transferred from Knockaloo Internment camp on Isle of Man to Kegworth in the East Midlands. He had somehow had made his way on to the hills above Leek. The Imperial German Navy officer was courteous to the children, one of whom had the presence of mind to run to a local policeman. A chase ensued involving a number of police and locals who pursued Lehmann. He was caught and in a very British way was taken to Onecote Police Station and given a mug of tea and toast.

 Lehmann was taken to Leek and charged with the unusual charge of sacrilege for burning bibles in the Primitive Methodist chapel stove ( understandably as it was February). In court he spoke through an interpreter he said that he did not know that the building was a chapel and that he had previously served on a battleship. The report tried to suggest that he attempted to entice the young girl which Lehmann denied. One gets the impression with Lehmann that he was someone who did not give in and some months later he and a number of other German Prisoners of War attempted a mass breakout from Sutton Bonington Prisoner of War camp in Nottinghamshire. He seems to have been a repeat offender as he also attempted another escape from Chelmsford prison.

Lehmann’s story is just of the hidden stories of the First World War in Leek as is the stories of the Belgian refugees in Bath Street, the raids on the Hippodrome for deserters, the parrot that helped the war effort, the young sailor who went down on the Hampshire with Lord Kitchener and the party for returned prisoners in the Red Lion in February 1919.

Why Rudyard's war memorial has 1921 as the end of First World War

It has always occurred to me as odd that the war memorial in Rudyard should have the date August 31^st 1921 as the date signifying the end of the First World War. Why should this be so? Most people, if asked, would automatically pick November 11^th 1918 as the end of the War. Perhaps others might suggest June 1919 when the Treaty of Versailles between the belligerent powers was signed in the Hall of Mirrors. But again this seems not to be the case. The facetious side of me thinks that no one bothered to tell the people of Rudyard that the war was over. There is a precedent for official oversight as the people of Berwick on Tweed were left out of the peace treaty concluded between Britain and Russia in 1855 at the end of the Crimean War- Berwick was always included as a separate entity as it was a disputed border town between England and Scotland.

 There is also a Laurel and Hardy film “Blockheads” when Stan is asked to defend a trench. The Armistice is declared and Mr Laurel is overlooked and stays on the Western Front. Years later he is found, a huge pile of empty bean cans behind him and a furrow that Stan has ploughed constantly marching up and down are evidence of his steadfastness.

More seriously, I wondered if the continuing fighting in Soviet Union and in Ireland might offer a clue. After 1918 the Allies came to the assistance of the “White” pro Czarist forces who were fighting the Communist Government that had seized power the year previously. About 40,000 British troops were sent to the Soviet Union. The 7^th Battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment, my grandfathers unit, were sent to the oil fields of Baku in the Caucasus to fight with Armenians against the Soviets. I did know an old comrade of my grandfather Bill Daniels who took part in the campaign which ended in 1920. The other possibility is the Irish War of Independence involving British troops which at the time was at a crucial stage.  In 1921 a truce was being negotiated between the IRA and the British Government. However this does not seem to enter into the Rudyard case.

The answer lies in a report made in the official Government mouth piece British Gazette of the 12^th August 1921 which announced the official end of the First World War following the signing of a peace treaty with Hungary. As part of the old Austro Hungarian Empire it was an element of the alliance that Britain went to war with in 1914. Therefore agreement with the Hungarians over territory and reparations triggered the official ending of the war and the rather pedantic date carved into the war memorial in Rudyard.

Do you remember April 1986?

The event of April 1986 happened about 1400 miles from Leek at 1.23am local time on the 26th April when a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union exploded releasing into the atmosphere 120 million curies of radioactive material- more than one hundred times the radiation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. The plume of atomic fallout was carried north west into Western Europe reaching the UK and exposing several million people to its effects. In addition to the 30 emergency workers killed on the spot , some 30,000 people would later die from  complications caused by exposure to radiation. The first reports that something was wrong were of aircraft landing in Manchester displaying high levels of radiation . The weekend that the cloud passed over the area was a rainy one. Precipitation landed on the hills and  days after locals were advised by Environmental Agencies not to drink rainwater as it would have contained fall out. Some locals still obtained their drinking water from local wells. A press release in an attempt to reassure holiday makers  went on to say 

“ People who are camping and drinking rainwater should not worry it is only those who are drinking rainwater all the time should take precautions”

On the subject of additions to the water there was news that the fluoride debate was coming to a head with demands from the Health Authority that the chemical be added to the water supply through reservoirs at Deep Hayes and Tittersworth. The reasoning being that North Staffordshire was the third worst district in the West Midlands for tooth decay and use of fluoride was an effective way of improving dental health. It would cost the authority £500,000.

The weather in the spring of 1986 was cold and wet which caused  concern at the National Garden Festival site at the former steel works at Etruria.  Officials were also worried that frogmen who were checking the water feature at the Moorlands Display on the site prior to the Queen opening the Festival in early May might damage the artificial lake. The bad weather had effected the shrubs that had been planted. A number had withered and were replaced. Pupils from Westwood High had worked on a Golden Pagoda on the site.

On the 14th August 1914 the Old Leek Battery left town heading for the front in the opening days of the First World War. They were the first territorial division to go into action. In  four years of war 27 members of the battery were killed. The survivors of the 3rd Battery, 231 Brigade, 46th North Midland Division chose to remember their  dead by holding an annual dinner from 1920 onward. On Saturday 19th April 1986 their were only 5 veterans left- Ernie Taylor, Jack Robey, Walter Serrell, Charlie Spratt and Harry Goldstraw who met at the Izaak Walton Hotel, Ilam for the 66th time to raise glasses to fallen comrades.

A previous conflict was recognised in Leek when members of the Sealed Knot the English Civil War re-enactment society came to the town to drum up- literally- interest in 17th century History. They bought with them examples of medicines herbal preparation that would have been used in the war. The aim of the society was to raise funds so that a Civil War Museum could be built in Worcester.

Two brothers met after a gap of 53 years when Franciszek Szmuniewski 77 welcomed his brother Kazik to his Staffordshire Moorlands home. Their wives Janina and Zosia also met. After the Second World war over 1.6 million Poles preferred to stay in resettlement camps in Western Europe than return to a Communist homeland. Western European states short of labour and in the midst of economic and material reconstruction were initially open to importing certain categories of stateless person. Britain especially needed coal miners and took in 86,000 people in this way. Franciszek had settled at the Blackshaw Moor and had run a Polish school at the camp. His daughter Barbara told the local paper that his level of English despite all the years was lamentably poor

On stress-past and present

During the Christmas period I over heard two young women complaining on how hard life was compared with the past. It is a source of puzzlement to me that we are living in an age where most people live longer and healthier lives with access to modern health care and social services and yet seem to be unhappy. The number of prescriptions for antidepressants, as one indicator, increased by 28% from 34m in 2007-08 to 43.4m in 2010-11, according to the NHS information centre. For a majority though standards of living are better than they were 50 years. Work now does not have the physical dangers of a century ago in industries like coal mining. Even the shopping experience is superior to that encountered by people in the past. Greater choice, goods always in season in one place is to be expected and obtained today. In short for many the lives they live are far better and less hazardous than their ancestors lives.

The picture that heads this article is that of my grand mother Hannah Sherwin born in 1890. The picture was taken in 1918. Her history serves as a crushing rejoinder to those today who bemoan their lot. By her teens both her parents were dead and she was left to bring up 4 siblings. A brother and a sister died in a typhoid outbreak after playing in a polluted area in Hanley in 1912. Four relatives including a beloved brother- George Mitchell- were killed in the trenches of the First World War. Her first husband Harry Cartwright who she married at Milton Church in 1917 died of wounds the year later in France two weeks before the end of the war. Afterwards she met and married my grandfather whose illnesses and wounds received serving in the 7th North Staffs in Mesopotamia shortened his life. Both lived through the dangers of the Second War including bombing of the steelworks close to where they lived. Their sons served in the forces, safely returning.  I barely knew my grandparents who both died in 1958 when I was 3.

I suppose the strains of modern life are exacerbated by the loss of community and the needs for individuals to succeed, but no one can convince me that queuing up in a supermarket is as stressful as charging across a muddy field against German machine guns.

Homes fit for heroes- 1920s in N Staffs

When Prime Minister Lloyd George announced at the end of the First World War the hope that victory in 1918 would result in making Britain a “land fit for heroes”. There was a expectation born in many people of North Staffordshire that the titanic struggles of the war were not in vain. The 1920s has therefore to be seen in the light of that pledge to the returning veterans that the blood shed by the 750,000 UK servicemen had worthwhile.

The history of North Staffordshire in the 1920s has to be framed in the light of the Great War. The pages of the local papers especially during Remembrance Sunday each November bear testimony to the pain endured by many in the area. Thousands of men returned home with some disability, blind, deaf or limbless. Thousands of women who lost fiancées or husbands and were to remain single for the rest of their lives. Many children would be fatherless Scores of men resident in local asylums the consequence of psychological trauma. And there were the dead always to be remembered at the building of the Great War memorials testifies. The Nicholson War memorial in Leek was constructed and dedicated by 1925 as just one example of many in the area.

The mid date of the decade- 1925- was also an important one for Stoke on Trent which received its City status by King George V whilst visiting the area and laying a foundation stone at NSRI. The title of Lord Mayor was granted by royal patent three years later on the first citizen of the City. But the City in terms of size and prestige had received a tremendous boost at the beginning of the decade when it increased in area in 1922 when large swathes of land were acquired from Chell in the north to Meir and Lightwood in the south.

It was an important decade politically as throughout the period the Labour party grew to be the principal political force in the area both in Council and parliamentary terms a pre-eminence it has rarely ceded in the last 80 years.

The City expanded in size and population growing from 240,000 in 1921 to 276,000 in 1931. Its growth and the condition of the housing stock were a priority for the City Council in the 20s and it was a test that it tried to deal with robustly. Linked with the problem of over crowding and poor housing stock in the City was the question of public health. Stoke on Trent in the early 20th century had an appalling public health record, for instance it was considered the scarlet fever capital of the UK. Many inhabitants fell ill and died from a variety of illness associated with poor living conditions such as typhus, smallpox and TB which was a major killer and which accounted for my grandfather at an early age in 1932.

The state of the housing stock can therefore be described as dire. By the 1920s 25,000 houses had no inside toilet and 19,000 were simply ashpits. A major public works scheme using local unemployed labour virtually solved this problem by the end of the decade. I cannot help but think from the position of 2011 that the same drive and vision directed at addressing adequate insulation of homes and fuel poverty could equally provide work for local unemployed 80 years later.

An issue facing the City Council was a problem caused by smoke from pottery manufacture, which accounted for high levels of respiratory illness. The bottle ovens being low, unlike the tall chimney associated with the textile industries of Lancashire and Yorkshire, meant that pollution blew over nearby housing causing health problems. Acquiring land after 1922 enabled the Council to begin building estates aided by progressive housing legislation passed by the first Labour Government in 1924. During the decade Stoke was building 550 houses a year in areas such as Stansfields, Chell, Abbey Hulton and Meir.

The private sector had a role as well and the activities of Sutton Housing Trust should be mentioned. Over 300 houses were built in the Trent Vale area by 1929.

One evident benefit from the improved sanitation, housing and living conditions especially an awareness of hygiene was a dramatic reduction in infant death rates, which halved from 1900 to 1940

Services followed the new estates The Hardman Institute in Milton housed the first community library during the decade and others were to follow during the 1930s.

The same development was occurring in Newcastle as 2,700 houses were built during the decade. The 20s also saw the growth of private estates in the Westlands and Clayton

But what about jobs?


Coal, Pottery, Iron and Steel and Textiles dominated the local economy.

 In the early 20s nearly 54,000 people or half the work force were employed in the pottery industry. A significant proportion of the labour force were women. A local trade directory of 1920 identified 250 firms that were associated with pottery production. Yet it was an industry that was trying to re establish its pre war dominance and was under threat from foreign competition most notably from East and Central Europe. However it was an industry that understood the need to adapt and during the 20s pottery manufacturers were beginning to install gas and electrically fired kilns. Another development especially with the growth of the new electricity industry was the expansion of ceramic insulators at a new factory in Milton.

The local tile manufacturers in Etruria also benefitted from the boom in house building in the inter war period.

Coal was mined at about 70 pits in North Staffordshire at the start of the decade with the largest mines owned by companies such as Shelton Iron and Steel and Florence Coal and Iron. The geologists were finding new and deeper seams and pits were being developed at Wolstanton, Hem heath and Chesterton. 37,000 men were employed in local pits at the start of the decade, which fell to 30,000 as the slump began to bite, Of course the work was always hazardous and shortly before the decade proof of the dangers of mining was demonstrated by the Minnie Pit disaster of 1918 at Halmerend which killed 156 men and boys.

 Given the nature of the work relationships between the men and mine owners were always fraught and it was the coal mining industry which was the front line of the struggle between the forces of capital and labour which culminated in the General Strike of 1926. The roots of the strike were the increasingly acrimonious series of disputes. 1921 saw a lengthy strike over pay and conditions, but following a report that recommended cutting miners pay and conditions coupled with an increasingly hard line taken by the owners and Government the Trade Union Congress agreed to support the Miners. A General Strike was called for the 9th May 1926. In reality both the TUC and the Government did not want a prolonged strike and the General Strike only last 9 days.

But the Miners continued with the strike for months before hardship forced the men back to work. The local writer Fred Leigh in a collection of essays on local history recounted the story of a miner called Archer living in Hanley who endured the misfortune of the dispute. In 1926 Archer was 30 years old and the father of 4. He was a veteran of the First World War having served on the Somme. As the strike went on the union strike pay ceased and the family were forced to pawn what little possession they had at the pawnshop in Hanley as well as relying on a little relief from the council. Archer also engaged in the illegal act of picking coal from a tip near Hanley Deep Mine to supplement his income. Eventually he was forced to pawn the war medals he had from the Great War. The manager of the shop did not want them and showed him a draw of medals proffered by other striking miners who were in the same predicament as Archer. The miner sold his medals for 4 shillings remarking in Leigh’s account.

“And those buggers said it would be a country fit for heroes”

Archer was caught taking coal from the waste tip near Hanley Deep Pit and was given 21 days in prison. The family’s humiliation is complete.

 Other big employer in the area were the iron and steel industry, which employed about 3,000 during the 20s and the silk industry based in Leek which continued to flourish during the period employing 4,500 in the town over half the working population of the town a majority women. The industry kept abreast of new technology with the company Wardle and Davenport pioneering artificial silk thread.

There were also new industries coming into the area and the most successful was Michelin allegedly resisted by local pottery manufacturers alarmed by the higher wages the French based company were paying their staff. Nevertheless attempts to block the tyre manufacturer failed and Michelin opened by 1927, it was employing 1550 by 1939.

Unemployment badly hit the area after the collapse of the economy after 1929. Kidsgrove was a particular black spot having an unemployment rate of 22% by 1929.

But what of activities to take the mind of the locals from a collapsing economy? Well, there was always football.

Port Vale had a good 1920s. It including beating rivals Stoke City in the 1925-6 season 3-0 on both occasions when both teams were in the Second Division. Vale after Stoke’s relegation from that division were the areas premier club. Vale was no doubt helped by one of the most prolific scorers in the clubs history Wilf Kirkham a local teacher and Methodist preacher. In three seasons in the 20s Kirkham scored a total of 109 goals.

Stoke City on the other hand hardly achieved their potential during the decade. Their promotion to the First Division proved short lived in 1922. They stayed anchored to the bottom of the division although and perhaps inevitably they did beat West Brom at the Hawthorns. They spent the decade bouncing between the divisions. A long term stalwart of the club who joined in the 20s was Bob McGrory and was to remain as player and manager for another 31 years despite the local legend that he so detested the industrial scenery of the area that he wanted to return to Scotland instantly

By the end of the 20s great emphasis was being placed on the younger players coming up. Stanley Matthews was given his debut for the club in March 1932.

Getting around the area was an important factor of life in the 20s. Trams, buses and trains presented the means by which locals moved around the conurbation at that time. The Potteries Electrical Traction expanded its bus service at the expense of trams, which it finally dispensed with in during the 20s. Stoke on Trent was unusual as it was one of the few manager cities that did not have its own passenger service unlike Liverpool, Manchester or Leeds. The period saw much competition for routes amongst many bus companies although PET emerged as the strongest of the companies and amalgamations occurred leading to PET, which eventually changed its name to PMT by the outbreak of the Second World War.

Incidentally the trams of Stoke on Trent received a type of literary immortality in their final year of existence in 1928 of being featured in Evelyn Waugh’s comic novel “Decline and Fall”. The” war hero” Captain Grimes admits that he really lost his leg, not in the trenches but falling over drunk and being run over by a tram in Stoke on Trent.

The times saw the demise of the fiercely independent local railway the North Staffordshire Railway known affectionately as the “Knotty” because of the use of the county symbol on the company crest. It had resisted attempts on a number of occasions of being taken over but in 1923 it became part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway. During the summer holidays throughout this period the distinctive red livery of the NSR could still be seen as far away as Llandudno taking Potters on holidays to the North Wales coast.

It would be wrong not to include some of the activities that people of the decade would have enjoyed. The 1920s saw people taking advantage of good public transport to discover the surrounding countryside especially in such new organisations as the Scouts.

Scouting continued to thrive in North Staffordshire during this period and the local papers carried regular reports on the health of the movement. The founder Robert Baden Powell visited Leek in 1920 and his connections with the area have been well documented. His book “Scouting for Boys” was partly written in the Staffordshire Peak District before the Great War. In May 1924 an anonymous correspondent “Scouter” in the Leek Times rhapsodised on the coming of summer. One could look forward to the smell of the campfire and the early morning dip in the river and the pleasures of living the natural life as opposed to the artificiality of the modern town dweller.  Scouter however was troubled

“ A number of privileges are given to scouts are now be taken away owing to the careless habits of people who preceded them and who fail to see that there careless habits are spoiling the ground for others. Scouts do not do this and the object of the scout camper is to leave as little trace as possible and he usually manages to do this. To learn to fend for yourself should be the object of every youth”.

Not all youth or adults were as hale or hearty. Local cinemas pioneered by George Barber continued to attract huge audiences at this time. The Regent in Hanley opened in 1929 in time for the first talkies in the area with capacity to take over 2000 people. And for the home stayers radio began to establish itself although it was an expensive medium. The BBC was established during this time

But if I was to name one person who perhaps the essential positive and dynamic view the North Staffordshire had of itself during the 20s that person would be Clarice Cliff the Tunstall based working class woman who took the world of art deco pottery by storm. Her attractive designs and bright colours could for some encapsulate the Jazz Age. By the late 20s following a visit to Paris she was leading the way in innovative patterns demonstrated in her Bizarre range. The success of Bizarre was phenominal and stylish patterns and ware flowed from her studios. The paradox being that Clarice born in 1899 would not have been able to vote until 1929 as the vote did not include women under 30. It was only in the 20s did Britain eventually become a democracy.

TE Hulme- the warrior poet from Endon

Between November 1915 and March 1916 a number of articles appeared in the national press under the pen name of “North Staffs”. “North Staffs” was a serving soldier in the army who used the articles to attack the direction of the war, the stupidity of the officer class as well as the necessity for the First World War in the wake of a growing pacifist movement.

The author of these articles was Thomas Ernest Hulme born in Gratton Hall a brick built mansion on a hill which commanded good views of the North Staffordshire countryside. A few miles away to the south west lay Dunwood Hall the home of his paternal grandparents. It is a prominent 19th century building which still stands today beside the A53 just outside Leek.

Thomas Ernest Hulme was born on the 16th September 1883. He was born to a moderately prosperous family who had made their money from ceramic transfers used to create large amounts of pottery and incidentally the same business that Vera Brittan’s family were engaged. Although in the First World War the views of the University educated scions of North Staffordshire on the war would take different directions. His privileged upbringing ensured that he was able to go on to the local public school in Newcastle under Lyme and then on to Cambridge.

His career at Cambridge was not a success and he was expelled for riotous behaviour in 1904. He gained a reputation for womanising- a reputation that remained with him throughout his life. One of the features of life at this time was his unwillingness to settle to a direction in life he was given to walking the countryside and  on one occasion walked from London to the family home in Endon. To the frustration of his family for a few years he continued to drift around including a period of living in Canada. After 1907 he went on to teach English in Brussels while also learning German and French. It was here that he finally decided to become a writer and a poet.

 He was fortunate in that he was financially supported in this objective by an elderly North Staffordshire based aunt who believed in his abilities. His father was less convinced believing that there was no need for a philosopher or poet in Endon. He returned to London and began to write and read poetry. Hulme was very proud of his North Staffordshire accent and it was so strong as to make it difficult for refined members of the audiences he lectured to understand him. For the next years up to the outbreak of the First World war Hulme established a reputation as one of the developing thinkers on the direction of poetry in the early years of the 20th century. He was closely associated with the magazine New Age where his articles became a powerful influence on modern poetry and criticism. His admirers included Rupert Brooke, although Hulme felt that he was precious, the American poet Ezra Pound and his compatriot TS Eliot who was introduced to his work in the 1920s after Hulme’s death. He also was briefly associated with DH Lawrence although he had a long term association with the sculptor Jacob Epstein.

In August 1914 war broke out and Hulme volunteered for the Honorary Artillery Company although initially he did not apply for a commission as he was rather ambivalent to authority. He went to France with his regiment in January 1915 describing the war in a series of lengthy letters to his father as trench war began in earnest. On the 14th April 1915 Hulme was wounded in the elbow by a bullet that killed the man behind him.

 He wrote to a friend that the dead man was a good footballer and his colleagues in the trench would have preferred it that a poet had been killed and the footballer slightly wounded.

When he returned to Britain for treatment medical staff were shocked that he read books by German philosophers. He returned to the war quickly and sought a commission in the Royal Marine Artillery. The death in the war of a close friend the French sculptor Henri Gaudier Brzeska- whose life was made into a film by Ken Russell hardened him to the war when previous he had an indifferent attitude to the fate of his comrade. It also convinced him of the need to become an officer as the quality of officer that he observed in the early months of the war did not fill him with any confidence. The idea of being killed merely because the man in charge was a complete fool struck him with particular force.

In 1916 a bill was passed in the House of Commons making all men between 18 and 40 liable to military service with single men being conscripted first. The morality of this hit him hard. He recognised the argument that conscription was an intolerable attack on civil liberties but felt that the war was just and had to be fought. He recognised that given that this was now a total war that political and military authority had a responsibility to ensure that lives were not needlessly sacrificed in the prosecution of the war. This attitude brought the Cambridge educated Hulme into conflict with the Cambridge educated Bertrand Russell who in early 1916 took issue with the arguments that Hulme was advancing.

 Russell the grandson of a 19th century Prime Minister was the most passionate of advocates of the pacifist cause. He was well known to Hulme from their Cambridge days. The differences between the two men were complete both in terms of personality and belief. For Russell liberty was an inherent right- for Hulme it was something that had to be fought for. For Russell, a German victory in Europe if it led to a preserved peace was to be welcomed, for Hulme, such a victory meant the disappearance of democracy and the emergence of tyranny. Hulme believed that there were certain values than were more important than life itself and which were worth dying for. He realised that such opinions were easily mocked in the pacifist circles that Russell moved in. An exchange of published letters took place between the two men throughout 1916.

 A problem for Russell in countering Hulme’s arguments was that the sentiments expressed by “North Staffs” were not simply of the warmongering or militaristic type. The view of the soldier poet was that war was stupid a necessary stupidity but still a stupidity. A refusal to fight and adopting the Russell position of pacifism would lead if the Germans won to a loss of the liberal tradition of this country and its replacement with Prussian militarism.

During 1916 Russell began a lecture tour of the north to propound his views on the war a number of the meetings were banned by the Government fearful that Russell’s views might have an impact upon morale. Russell did find time to conduct an affair with an actress Constance Malleson an opportunity arose to consummate the affair after a lecture in Manchester in November 1916 when they stayed at the “Cat and Fiddle” pub on the Derbyshire/ Staffordshire border.

Russell recalled that,” it was bitterly cold and the water in my jug was frozen in the morning. But the bleak moors suited our mood. They were stark but gave a sense of vast freedom. We spent our days in long walks and our nights in an emotion that held all the pain of the world in solution”

 However, during this time of conflict in print the two men never met. Russell confirmed Hulme’s view of his pacifist opponents that they could never take seriously any view except their own. Years later Russell believed Hulme was an “evil man who created nothing but evil” and that he would have ended up a fascist like Oswald Mosley

In the last year of his life Hulme spent a period training in Northern Scotland before rejoining his unit in Belgium in command of 9.2 inch gun shelling German costal positions near Ostend.

He travelled back to Endon to see his family a last time on leave in September 1917. His sister noted that he seemed older and realised that this might be his last leave. He was blown to pieces by a German shell 4 days after his 34th birthday. What was left of him was buried in a Military Cemetery at Koksijde in Belgium.

A window to his memory exists in St Luke’s Church in Endon there is a text from the Book of Common Prayer which was found on a piece of paper in the pocket of his uniform at the time of his death