From the archive: 1917
Janet Scott continues her series of selections from the archives of the Friend and looks, this month, at January 1917
It was the year of the Russian Revolution; the year the United States entered the war; the year of the advance into Palestine with the surrender of Jerusalem to the Allied forces, and the declaration by the British government of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations; the year of the Irish Convention; and the year the House of Commons adopted a large measure of woman’s suffrage.
Prison
At the start of the year many Friends and attenders were detained by the military or were in prison as conscientious objectors. By January 1917 conscientious objectors who had completed one sentence were being rearrested and tried and sentenced again. In the issue of 5 January the Friend printed the names of sixty-nine men who were in prison, fifty-two of whom were in Wormwood Scrubs. There was also a list of thirty-eight men engaged in work on Home Office schemes for conscientious objectors. The decision not to fight, for these men, was deeply rooted in their faith. The magazine, in the issue of 19 January, reported the case of George A Sutherland, who said:
I have spent four months in prison, and I know that while you may order my body to be confined you cannot confine my soul… I count it an honour to-day to be allowed to take a part in the building of that city where there is neither English nor German, bond nor free, for all are one in Christ Jesus.
In a similar vein, in the same issue, another imprisoned Friend, Robert O Mennell, was reported as saying:
I am free from the reproach of my own conscience – that is the true freedom. And in prison I shall still be free – and proud, and thankful beyond any words that I have been called to render what I am fully persuaded is a service to the cause of truth and to humanity.
A Barratt Brown wrote about prison in the Friends’ Fellowship Papers, which the Friend quoted in the issue of 12 January. Concluding a graphic account of his experience, he writes that he:
…is almost inclined in all seriousness to recommend a similar experience as a desirable one for every young fellow to pass through after leaving college. For “you get real experience of poverty and the barest conditions of life, though free from the insecurity which is perhaps the worst feature of poverty outside. You get some experience of the life of a factory hand in the daily workshops, and also of a charwoman and seamstress in your daily cleaning and sewing duties in the cell. But more than that, you get an acquaintance with men of all types who have in some way got across the law, and you are bound to learn a new respect for human nature among those whom the world would despise, but with whom you are now intimately bound up as a fellow criminal. And that means a stimulus to work for prison reform and for social justice. And, best of all, you get a deep sense of the everlasting values of certain things that prison bars and severe conditions and even isolation cannot spoil or take away”.
Iowa
Throughout the war letters of encouragement were received from Friends elsewhere in the world, especially from those in the United States. The Friend of 12 January included a report from Friends in Iowa, who had written to conscientious objectors in prison in Britain:
It is with feelings of deep concern we hear of the sufferings you are called upon to undergo in consequence of your testimony against war. Your faithfulness has been a source of encouragement to us, and has awakened earnest desires with us that you may continue faithful to the cause of Truth: and that you may draw your inspiration and strength from our Heavenly Father who is abundantly able and willing to succour all His dependent children and to deliver them from all the power of the enemy so that it can in no wise harm them. His power is over all and is able to so over-rule these seasons of trial that they will prove your choicest blessings.
Meeting for Sufferings
Meeting for Sufferings in January 1917 responded to the news that four Friends who had planned to travel abroad under concern were returning their travelling minutes from the Meeting because permission to travel had been refused by the authorities. The Friend, on 12 January, reported the minute:
…it was believed to be the first time that Friends seeking to travel abroad on religious service had been refused permission to leave the country. Under the circumstances we desire to record our sense of the call thus made upon us to work for the freedom of human brotherhood whilst we are suffering under such saddening evidence of the limitations imposed upon us by the existing conditions of national distrust. We believe that the love which called forth these concerns will not be lost and we pray that even now it may bear fruit, albeit in ways which we cannot see.
Emergency Committee for Helping Aliens
Many male German and Austrian civilians had been interned at the start of the war. Quakers were quick to respond to the plight of their families. A committee was set up for this purpose and ran throughout the war: the Emergency Committee for Helping Aliens. The January Meeting for Sufferings heard a report on the work of the committee, which recognised and appreciated the ‘continuous help’ coming from Friends in America:
…each need as it arises is met, sometimes from some entirely unexpected quarter. Other Friends referred to the kindnesses of Commandants and officials in the camps, to the value of the Christmas parties, especially for the older boys and girls, to the difficulty of removing families into the country, to the inadequacy of the Government allowances…
The Friend also carried a report on 12 January of the Birmingham branch of the Committee:
…we now have six lady visitors in Birmingham, one in Walsall, one in Coventry, one in Leamington. The exhaustion of savings, the increasing cost of living and the difficulty of finding employment for anyone with a German name have brought many cases of acute suffering under our notice. About 400 cases have been inquired into. At the present time sixteen families are receiving a supply of milk daily during the winter months, other regular assistance is being granted to forty families, and fifty parcels of groceries, &c., have been given this Christmas. In addition to this, we continually have requests for new boots, warm winter clothing and medicines. The husbands interned in camps ask us to see after their property and send news of their families. We have interviewed indignant landladies, from who we have rescued violins and boxes… Every request is carefully inquired into, and where there is evidence of real need prompt help is given.
Family budgets
On 26 January the national Committee reported on family budgets. The government grant would have been ‘barely sufficient for necessaries under pre-war conditions’, but with the increasing rate of living, even for the simplest commodities, the actual purchasing power of the grant was so low that ‘acute distress, amounting in the worst cases to semi-starvation’, was the inevitable result. Some typical weekly budgets were shown:
Budget 1. Mrs S and 3 children. Grant 16s. 9d
This covered items such as bread, sugar, tea and sugar, margarine, soap, soda and gas. There was, for the families, a lack of fat and of nourishing food:
Neither fish, meat nor potatoes can be obtained out of the 10s 2d remaining when rent and insurance are paid. Mrs S is a delicate woman, and requires far more nourishment than she can get.
The case of ‘Mrs E’ and her child was also mentioned. They had a grant of 13s 3d. The Friend reported:
In the above case a rabbit had been bought. But a rabbit, cook it how you will, does not go very far for two people when it must be spread over a week, and when one of the two is a growing child… With the utmost economy and care the expenses exceed the income by 3d, another of these inconsiderable sums which spells tragedy in these poverty stricken homes.
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