From the archive: King and parliament
Janet Scott describes Friends’ losses in conflict and advances in politics
The Friends’ Ambulance Unit reports for August 1918 tell of a surprise visit to their Queen Alexandra Hospital by the king. It was noted in the Friend on 6 September that:
His Majesty was received by the Principal Medical Officer (Captain Humphrey Nockolds, DSO) and then made a tour of the hospital, conversing with several of the patients. It is an open secret that His Majesty caused some astonishment among the staff by his obviously intimate knowledge of the details connected both with the administration and with the recent vicissitudes of the hospital. His Majesty was obviously impressed with its orderliness and efficiency and was twice heard to remark, “What a nice place.”
During the course of the visit the King was pleased to shake hands with the Matron and several of the Sisters, and requested that Miss Hardy, one of the VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachments], might be specially presented, presumably for the reason that His Majesty had recently decorated her father with the Victoria Cross.
It is hardly possible to exaggerate the appreciation of the Principal Medical Officer and his staff of the honour of this Royal visit or to express… how much they have been encouraged in their work by His Majesty’s kind thought and consideration.
Losses
Other news, however, was not so cheerful. Ambulance Convoy 13 reported the death of Colin Priestman on about 9 August. He was twenty-five, and joined the Unit in January 1915, serving as a hospital orderly before becoming a driver. The 6 September edition of the Friend described how:
He and several other members of the Section were loading a car… at about 8 o’clock in the morning when a shell burst among them… Colin Priestman was wounded near the heart and died almost immediately, after being carried into the dressing station. He was buried the following morning close to the spot where he was killed.
On the night of 21-22 August five members of the same section were gassed while asleep in their dugout. Two were able to return to work after a day or two but the others had to be hospitalised.
On the night of 11 August the Unit’s headquarters was damaged. On 23 August the Friend reported that Charles L Procter and Frederick O Kitching:
…were killed in the collapse of a portion of the Unit’s Headquarters as a result of enemy action. Death in both cases was probably instantaneous.
Charles Procter was a mechanic and the keeper of the petrol stores. Frederick Kitching first worked on Ambulance Train 11 before transferring to the works department. According to the Friend on 23 August:
The Adjutant, William Mordey, was buried beneath a mass of debris in the collapse of Headquarters, and was only rescued after three hours’ dangerous and difficult work. He is comparatively unscathed, and is progressing favourably. Charles Whiteley is suffering from a broken arm and other slight injuries. Several other members are suffering from slight cuts and contusions…
A later report, in the 6 September edition of the Friend, tells of the general disorganisation caused by the removal of the headquarters’ offices and billets. The offices were placed:
…in a building previously used as Nurses’ quarters, while the sheds at the old hospital site which were not removed in the spring are serving as sleeping and feeding quarters.
All members who can be spared from other duties are engaged in sorting the debris.
On 13 August Ambulance Train 17 came under fire. The 6 September edition of the Friend described events:
During a night bombing raid, three members of the train personnel were wounded – Ralph W Thorp, Harry Cox, and J H Cuthbertson, the last named somewhat seriously. The two first named have now been evacuated to England, and Cuthbertson has sufficiently recovered to be removed to the Base.
In the same issue of the Friend Ambulance Section 14 was able to report that the graveyard in which their members H Jackson and N E Gripper were buried had been recaptured. Members of the section had been able to visit the graves. On 11 August several members of the section were decorated and the Croix de Guerre was bestowed on H Jackson and N E Gripper.
Parliament
The Friend on 2 August included a report on the passage of the Education Bill soon to receive the royal assent. Its principal provisions raised the school leaving age to fourteen and forbade the employment of children under the age of twelve. The Friend commented:
Many members of the Society of Friends have had a share in the seed sowing which finds its fruit in this great Education Bill. William Edward Forster and Joseph A Pease (now Lord Gainford) have presided over the Education Office, and both of them have had large influence in making the new Bill possible, the former laid the foundations in the Act of 1870, the latter pressed home the claims of the physical care of the child as the basis of its education, and in 1913 put before the House of Commons many of the proposals which now form part of the present Bill.
One clause in the Bill, that requiring the provision of medical treatment of children found in need of it, certainly occupies its place as a result of the able, timely and courageous speech of Arnold S Rowntree, the senior member for York… when it became evident that [his eloquent and convincing speech] had carried the House of Commons with him, the President accepted his amendment, which… makes it… one of the most beneficent social reforms of this time.
The same issue of the Friend also quoted with approval part of the introduction to the Bill by Herbert Fisher, the president of the board of education:
‘The province of popular education is to equip the men and women of this country for the tasks of citizenship. All are called upon to live, many are called upon to die, for the community of which they form a part. That they should be rescued from the dumb helplessness of ignorance is… at least an elementary part of political prudence… But the argument does not rest on grounds of political prudence only; but upon the right of human beings to be considered as ends in themselves and to be entitled… to know and to enjoy all the best that life can offer in the sphere of knowledge, emotion and hope.’
Peace
The Friend on 23 August contained a report of a speech made in the House of Commons by T Edmund Harvey on the subject of peace negotiations. He pointed out that Germany should not be thought of as having an unchanging character, and that though the militarists were currently dominant there was, in his view, a better Germany in ‘the toiling masses’ and the ‘noble-hearted intellectuals’. It was, he said:
…part of our task to call out the better Germany, the Germany that some day will help in the partnership of Europe, in which she will have her legitimate share, along with other peoples…
We must appeal to the instincts in our opponents that make for better things…
[The Government] should encourage… a vision of Europe as it ought to be and as we must help to make it, united in the fellowship of nations… to keep the laws, and to help each other in that real comity in which every nation shall have its positive contribution to being to the wellbeing of mankind.
Joseph Allen Baker
T Edmund Harvey was to retire from parliament at the end of the year. Another Quaker MP, Joseph Allen Baker, died suddenly in July:
Joseph Allen Baker… was apparently in vigorous health. He was at business in the morning. In the afternoon he read with pride the accounts just received from Italy of the First British Ambulance Unit, of which his son is an officer, and in whose work he took the keenest interest. Later, he gave tea to some wounded soldiers upon the terrace of the House of Commons. After dinner he was taken with a sudden illness, and within three hours… he passed away.
The Friend on 12 July detailed his efforts for peace, his development of an international association of churches, and the faith which guided his actions:
Through the relationships formed before the war, Mr Baker and his friends in Germany were able to institute in the first weeks of the war two Committees in London and Berlin respectively for aiding wives and children of German and British subjects stranded in hostile surroundings.
Comments
It’s good to see the Quaker MP’s of a hundred years ago getting the credit they deserve for putting their power and privilege to good effect.
Joseph A Pease was known as ‘Jack’ Pease. Was he the last Quaker to have been raised to the peerage? Another Quaker worth mentioning in the context of the Education Act 1918 is Sir (and Dr) George Newman, who pioneered the school medical service and was an adviser to Pease (as well as a leading figure in the FAU). Was he the last Quaker to have been knighted?
To say T. Edmund Harvey retired from Parliament in 1918 needs a gloss. In fact he was deselected by his constituency party for his overzealous support of conscientious objectors and for speaking in support of the Peace-by-Negotiation candidate, the Quaker Edward Backhouse, at the Stockton by-election in 1917. Harvey returned to Parliament briefly in 1923-1924 as a Liberal and for a longer stretch 1937-1945 as an Independent Progressive.
Harvey was connected with J Allen Baker, who started him on his political career by making him his running mate in the election for the East Finsbury division of the London County Council in March 1904. Baker, Canadian by birth, was an engineer who helped build London’s trams. Harvey would have felt his sudden death keenly. Another connection was that Harvey was brother-in-law to Arnold S. Rowntree. The Quakers then drew strength from their clannishness.
By frankem51 on 31st August 2018 - 7:23
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