As a Section B reserve, Patrick received a retainer of 3 shillings and 6 pence (3s 6d) per week. This is roughly equivalent to £25 in today’s terms. He could only be called upon in the event of a general mobilisation. He was required to attend an annual training camp of three to four weeks.…
All posts tagged Great War
Shells
Some, perhaps most, of the statistics in WW1 are difficult to comprehend. With the wisdom of hindsight, it is easy to say that things should have been done differently. Of course they should. In the words of the Spanish American philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Politicians…
A legal matter
Family folklore records the visit to Brighton of (still unidentified) relatives of Patrick ahead of his proposed wedding to Edith in 1920. The story is that they endeavoured to ensure that Patrick’s bride-to-be would convert to Catholicism and that subsequent children would be raised as Catholics. The exact nature of Patrick’s response is not known.…
A good theory – while it lasted
First published in 1687, in Latin, the ideas contained within ‘Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ are better known as Newton’s Laws of Motion. These laws work extremely well in most cases. Over time, certain minor discrepancies began to be noticed. For example, the orbit of Mercury does not quite accord with the theory. Einstein came up…
The quick and the dead (and the living)
I have been unable to find any evidence that there was a formal training scheme to help disabled ex-servicemen become hairdressers. The most usual route into the profession was to be trained by a skilled man. I have a picture of Patrick standing outside his place of work. The Gloster Toilet Saloon was situated at…
Labourer to hairdresser
The fact that Patrick is missing from the 1921 census (see The Irish Pimpernel) is doubly frustrating due to the amount of information recorded on that occasion. The occupation and place of employment are both part of the census return. For example, his brother-in-law Ernest Delves worked as a Suction Gas Plant Attendant at John…
From Dewsbury to Brighton
Following my visit to the back-to-Backs in Birmingham, I started to think about Patrick’s accommodation in both Dewsbury and Brighton either side of the First World War. In 1911, Patrick, following eight years’ service in the Army, was living at 20 Elmwood St, Dewsbury. He shared the house with his widowed sister Mary Muldoon and…
The Irish Pimpernel
I seem to have mislaid my grandfather. He has disappeared, again. I started my search for Patrick Stanley in 2006. The lack of census returns for Ireland in 1891 was a known problem. I looked for him in both Ireland and England on the 1901 census (taken 31st March) without success. (I rechecked earlier to…
Just out of the picture
In ‘Lessons in Geography’, I compared the entries in the Regimental War Diary in 1918 with the content of Lyn Macdonald’s book ‘To the Last Man’. Whilst the 2nd Battalion of the Manchester Regiment was present during the actions described, they are not explicitly mentioned. This is quite understandable. If an author attempts to namecheck…
Medical treatment
Patrick’s time in hospital in Brighton (1914) and Kent (1918) has already been covered. I have very little detail on the nature of his treatment. The experience of being transported from the battlefield to the hospital can only be covered by referring to more general texts. Patrick would have been carried from the battlefield on…