First World War and connections

The Imperial War Museum is asking people to contribute family memories of the First World War. Next August sees the 100^th anniversary of Britain declaring war on Germany leading to this country’s participation in a struggle that would kill over 800,000 Britons. The “Great War” continues to exert a powerful hold on our collective imagination and anyone like me in their 50s will also most have known one who had direct experience of the war. I met several people who were involved. Horace Barks from Ipstones who I knew at the end of his life of public service as an Alderman on Stoke Council when I was a young Councillor. Horace who died in 1984 left a vivid memoir of his time on the Western Front which is currently in the archive of Hanley Library. He was wounded at Loos in 1915. An old man I had a conversation with on a bus in York in 1977 was in the “ Sheffield Pals” and luckily avoided the First Day of the Somme by catching pneumonia “ the best days work I ever did” he told me. The ancient I talked to in Cromer church in the late 80s who achieved absurdly early promotion to the Deputy Town of the town at 16 because all the men were at the front. He recalled looking out of his office window one day in 1917 to see the harbour crammed with ships of all size during the height of the war. Mr Stafford born in 1900 had the misfortune to have been involved in both World Wars as a young officer in the Australian forces in 1918 and then as a Colonel captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore. One should also not forget the contribution that women made; my Great Aunt Betsy who worked in Hanley at a factory cleaning out the toxic substances from gas shells, the effect of this war work had a catastrophic impact on her health for the rest of her life. My grandmother Cawley witnessed a Zeppelin raid over Shelton in 1916.

And then there were the people who did not come back. Five relatives were killed between 1914-18 in the Sherwin family- my mother’s side.  Sgt Harry Cartwright, Pt Hamlet Nixon, Pt George Mitchell, Sgt Albert Reece and Sgt James Sherwin.

The picture is of my grandfather Bill Sherwin who is seated. His brother Jim Sherwin standing was a Sergeant in the East Yorkshire Regiment and was killed in July 1915 in Belgium. One thing I know about him was that was he was an excellent guitarist, note his big hands, who earned extra money from his day job as a telephone engineer by playing in the pubs of Hanley and Shelton. His brother Bill was in the Middle East in what is modern day Iraq. He claimed to have seen Lawrence of Arabia and gave a cigarette to a dying Turk. He was later badly wounded and caught Malaria which shortened is life. He died in 1958 when I was three.

Sybil Leek- Queen of witches

Cheddleton born Sybil Leek, the self proclaimed “Queen of the Witches” was a contentious figure and a colourful one as well: her trademarks were a loose fitting cloak, hoods a pet jackdaw called Mr Hotfoot Jackson and a snake named Sashima. Even Sybil’s birth date was the subject of some argument. She gave the date as 22^nd February 1922, while others set the date at 5 years earlier. She also claimed to be the reincarnation of the Burslem witch Molly Leigh. Sybil maintained many things in her life for example that she had a friendship as a child with HG Wells and Lawrence of Arabia.

She was interested in paganism from an early age and was on good terms with Aleister Crowley- the self-proclaimed most evil man in the World and a great fraud. There is a story that Crowley and Leek visited Burslem to seek out Molly Leigh’s grave- a jackdaw perched on Leek’s shoulders. After the war Leek went to the United States and became a media star appearing on TV shows. She met and married a man named Brian.

Sybil was also involved with a number of American celebrities including  Ronald Reagan who maintained an interest in clairvoyance throughout his life. She also had a friendship with the writer Robert Bloch best known for his novel Psycho.

She believed that she could predict events and scored an undoubted hit with a prediction she made in the early 70s.

"There is one menace to the career and potential of George Wallace”- the candidate for the American presidency in 1972," Leek asserted in her Astrological Guide to the Presidential Candidates.

 "The nearer he gets to his goal, the greater the danger of political assassination”.

Written in early 1971, these words were of more interest to horoscope buffs than to political ones. But when Arthur Bremer, nearly 18 months later, fulfilled the prophecy and shot Wallace, crippling the Governor of Alabama some political pundits decided to take a closer look at what is written in the candidates' stars.

 Not that Leek's peeks into the future always proved entirely accurate. She once predicted, for example, that in 1970 President Richard Nixon would become embroiled in a sex scandal that would jeopardise his renomination by Republicans, nor did she predict Watergate which really did bring Nixon down.