Untold lives blog

A blueprint map, housed in a slim file held in the India Office Records, reveals an overlooked and neglected aspect of the First World War.

 Excerpt of a map showing the ‘re-erection yard’ Magil, Basra, 17 February 1919. IOR/L/PS/20/35 f. 56. 

The map is of the village of Magil, on the banks of the Euphrates, near Basra in Mesopotamia (Iraq). The map reveals the plans of the Inland Water Transport (IWT, a branch of the Corps of Royal Engineers) to transform the village into a vast dockyard, capable of building enough vessels to support Britain’s military campaign against the Ottoman armies in Mesopotamia. Amongst the wharves, sidings and workers’ camps there is small patch of land, identified as a Chinese Cemetery. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission states that 227 bodies were interred here; 227 unnamed casualties, who worked for the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC).

The use of Chinese manpower was widespread during the First World War. The British Government recruited nearly 100,000 Chinese labourers to support their frontline troops on the Western Front. As many as 6,000 Chinese were bought to Basra to help construct some 200 steamers, other vessels and pontoons that were shipped in flat-packed form from Britain. These labourers, and the vessels they reconstructed, supported the Indian Expeditionary Force D in Mesopotamia.

Slipway at the Inland Water Transport (IWT) Docks at Magi, 1917. Image credit: Imperial War Museum, Q 24551.

The manpower required for the CLC in Basra was recruited from late 1916 in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. In October 1916 the British Minister at Peking wrote that the General Office Commanding at Singapore was sending for a contractor ‘to recruit indentured Coolies for service in Mesopotamia’. In total, the British transported over 4,000 skilled Chinese mechanics, and over 1,000 unskilled Chinese labourers to Mesopotamia. Xu Guoqi has written that those Chinese labourers sent to the Western Front were ‘thumb-printed and assigned a number’, their only identification, the British regarding their names of being ‘of no importance'. This may explain why those bodies interned in the Chinese cemetery in Basra were never identified.

 The cap badge of the Chinese Labour Corps. Copyright in Flanders Field Museum.  Available as CC BY-NC-SA.

Although some first-hand accounts of life in the CLC on the Western Front survive, precious little about the lives of the Chinese labourers in Basra has been documented. While basic food rations, accommodation and clothing were provided, there was little entertainment beyond the occasional Chinese film shown at the camp cinema. Disease and malnutrition were a problem in Basra’s hot desert climate. The British Medical Journal noted in 1920 that scurvy and beriberi were more prevalent amongst those serving in Mesopotamia than in any other First World War theatre.  

 
Chinese labourers at Boulogne, 12 August 1917. Copyright: Imperial War Museum Q 2695.

The nature of the work was heavy and arduous, and inevitably resulted in fatalities. How prepared or adept the men were for the heavy labour is open to question. The claim (made in 1921 by the Assistant Director of the IWT, Leonard Joseph Hall) that over 4,000 of the Chinese recruits were skilled mechanics, is contradicted by a Mesopotamia Transport Commission report (1918), which stated that the rejection rate for Chinese labourers was very high – as much as 46 per cent. One official described the Chinese labour sent to him as ‘absolutely useless’.  The 227 fatalities suffered amongst the estimated 6,000 Chinese labourers at Basra equates to roughly one death among every 26 members of the Chinese Labour Corps in Mesopotamia.

Mark Hobbs
Subject Specialist, Gulf History Project
British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further Reading:

‘Report for the Army Council on Mesopotamia. By Sir John P Hewett, GCSI, KBE’ (IOR/L/PS/20/35)

‘Critical Study of the Campaign in Mesopotamia up to April 1917: Part 1 – Report’ (IOR/L/MIL/17/15/72/1)

'Mesopotamian Transport Commission. Report of the Commission Appointed by the Government of India with the Approval of the Right Hon'ble The Secretary of State for India, to Enquire into Questions Connected with the Organisation and Administration of the Railway and River Transport in Mesopotamia' (IOR/L/MIL/17/15/125/1)

Leonard Joseph Hall and Robert Herbert Wilfrid Hughes, The Inland Water Transport in Mesopotamia (London: Constable and Co., 1921)

Matt Leonard, ‘Eastern culture on the Western Front’ World War I Centenary: Continuations and Beginnings

John Starling and Ivor Lee, No Labour, no Battle: Military Labour during the First World War (Stroud: History Press, 2009).

W H Willcox, ‘The Treatment and Management of Diseases due to Deficiency of Diet: Scurvy and Beri-Beri’ The British Medical Journal 3081 (1920), 73-77.

Guoqi Xu, China and the Great War: China's Pursuit of a new National Identity and Internationalization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

‘Basra War Cemetery’ Commonwealth War Graves Commission

 Today Untold Lives features another in our series of postings focusing on extracts from letters written by Indian soldiers serving in France, or recovering from their wounds in the Indian hospitals in England.

In his report for the week ending 8 May 1915, the Censor of Indian Mail wrote that “The prevailing topics of correspondence in the letters are, as usual, despondency as to survival owing to the large number of casualties at the front and a keen desire to return to India. A pleasing feature is the mention of the very good hospital arrangements made for the comfort of the troops”.

 
Dome Hospital Brighton, showing some of the 689 beds Photo 24/(1) Images Online 

The truth of the Censor’s comments can clearly be seen in an extract from a letter written by Isar Singh of the 59th Rifles, recovering in the Indian General Hospital, Brighton. On 1 May 1915, he wrote in Gurmukhi to a friend in the 30th Punjabis in India.

“The battle is being carried on very bitterly. In the Lahore Division only 300 men are left. Some are dead, some wounded. The division is finished. Think of it – in taking 50 yards of a German trench 50,000 men are killed. When we attack they direct a terrific fire on us – thousands of men die daily. It looks as if not a single man can remain alive on either side – then (when none is left) there will be peace.”

“When the Germans attack they are killed in the same way. For us men it is a bad state of affairs here. Only those return from the battlefield who are slightly wounded. No one else is carried off. Even Sahibs are not lifted away. The battle ground resounds with cries. So far as is in your power do not come here. If you come, get yourself written down ill of something in Marseilles and say you are weak. You will do better to get the Doctor to write down that sickness you have in the head. Sick men do not come to the war. Here things are in a very bad way. In France the news is that dogs churn the milk in machines and look after the cattle. A man who keeps a dog has to pay 5 rupees a month to the King.”

“Do not be anxious about me. We are very well looked after. White soldiers are always beside our beds – day and night. We get very good food four times a day. We also get milk. Our Hospital is in the place where the King used to have his Throne. Every man is washed once in hot water. The King has given a strict order that no trouble is to be given to any black man in hospital. Men in hospital are tended like flowers, and the King and Queen sometimes come to visit them.”

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
Reports of the Censor of Indian Mails in France, Apr 1915-May 1915 [IOR/L/MIL/5/825/3, folios 318, 337 and 338]- Read online

On the First World War memorial at the British Library are the names of two Australian librarians who died at Gallipoli in 1915: Sylvester Sydney Day and Samuel Douglas Johnstone Figgis.

Sylvester Sydney Day worked at the Public Library of South Australia in Adelaide.  He married Rosalind Mary Robertson in 1910 and they had two children: Robert Sydney born in 1911 and Patricia Florence born in 1914. Day joined up on 11 September 1914 at the age of 27. His colleagues at the Library organised a party before he left as a mark of their admiration of his volunteering to fight. ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ was sung, and Day was presented with a plum pudding, a wrist watch, pipes in a case, and a purse of sovereigns. Whilst on active service, the Library paid him a weekly salary of £1.

 
Sylvester Sydney Day - image courtesy of State Library of South Australia via flickr

Day served as a Lance Corporal with the 16th Infantry Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force. His unit embarked from Melbourne on board His Majesty's Australian Transport Ceramic on 22 December 1914, arriving in Egypt in early February 1915. His battalion became part of the 4th Brigade which landed at Gallipoli in Turkey on 25 April. They faced constant action, with many men lost through sniper fire. Day was killed on the night of 2 May when his battalion was fighting and digging trenches under attack from the enemy.  His name is recorded on the Lone Pine Memorial at Gallipoli which commemorates the Australians and New Zealanders who have no known grave or who were buried at sea after being evacuated because of wounds or disease. Colleagues at the Library in Adelaide hung up a photograph of Day and draped a Union flag over it every year on the anniversary of his death.

Samuel Douglas Johnstone Figgis was the son of Arthur Johnstone Figgis and Ada Jane Figgis of Canterbury Victoria. He joined the Public Library of Victoria in Melbourne as a Library Assistant in August 1914 aged 19, but he was also a trained machine gunner having served for two years in the Citizen Military Forces at Kooyong.  On 13 March 1915 he enlisted in the 5th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force. His unit sailed from Sydney on HMAT Ceramic on 25 June 1915 for service in Egypt and Turkey as part of 6th Reinforcements. Figgis died on 10 August 1915 of shell wounds to his neck sustained in action and was buried on the same day at Beach Cemetery Gallipoli.  It was his 20th birthday.

Some months later Samuel Figgis’s personal effects were sent to his father from Egpyt in two brown paper parcels: a purse, three coins, a gold ring, a watch, a badge, keys, a whistle, scissors, a knife, three wallets, a diary, a booklet, letters and postcards, and, perhaps most poignantly, a school badge.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
First World War Army records from the National Archives of Australia
The war memorial for librarians at the British Library
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: ommonwealth War Graves Commission: Sylvester Sydney Day and Samuel Douglas Johnstone Figgis.
Carl Bridge, A trunk full of books: History of the State Library of South Australia and its forerunners (1986)

Over the coming period of the commemorations for the First World War, Untold Lives will be featuring extracts from letters held in the India Office Records written by Indian soldiers serving in France or recovering from their wounds in the Indian hospitals based in England. Today we feature two letters, one from a soldier, and one from worried parents in India.

One hundred years ago today, 14 January 1915, an Indian soldier serving in France, wrote to his father in his native Garhwali:

“It is very hard to endure the bombs, father. It will be difficult for anyone to survive & come back safe & sound from the war. The son who is very lucky will see his father & mother, otherwise who can do this? There is no confidence of survival. The bullets & cannon-balls come down like snow. The mud is up to a man’s middle. The distance between us & the enemy is fifty paces. Since I have been here the enemy has remained in his trenches & we in ours. Neither side has advanced at all. The Germans are very cunning. The numbers that have fallen cannot be counted”.

  Garhwal riflemen, Estaire La Bassée Road, France, 4 August 1915’ Photo 24/(243)  Images Online

On the same day, the father of a different soldier wrote from India, in Urdu, to a British officer:

“My son has given full proof of his loyalty. He went six or seven times into action. Now he has been wounded. I trust that your honour of your kindness will have him sent back to the depot, so that he may be well rubbed with oil & make his appearance in the mosque. When he is well, he can be sent to train the recruits or sent on recruiting duty, if he is able to walk. I make this request at the instance of his mother who has been ill & helpless since we heard of his wound”. 

In his report for the week, Captain E B Howell, the Head Censor of Indian Mail, wrote that this letter showed “… that Indian opinion regards the man who has been into the trenches & there been wounded as having very amply discharged his duty & there can be no doubt but that in the majority of cases the prospect of a return to the firing line appears to be regarded with something approaching dismay”.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
Reports of the Censor of Indian Mails in France, Dec 1914-Apr 1915 [IOR/L/MIL/5/825/1, folios 38, 39, 69 and 78] online

In 1943 it was decided to hold a Christmas party in London for the evacuated children of British prisoners of war in Malaya.  It was funded by the officers and men of HMS Malaya and held in the Royal Empire Society’s Hall in Northumberland Avenue off Whitehall on the afternoon of 4 January 1944.  Nearly 200 children aged between four and sixteen attended, including six sons and daughters of the ship’s crew who lived in London. The crew members’ children wore tickets bearing the name HMS Malaya so they were easily distinguishable. 

From Lizzie Lawson and Robert Ellice Mack, Old Father Christmas. Picture-Book (1888) British Library flickr 

The party was deemed a great success. It started with cine films of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Ferdinand the Bull.  Music was provided by Mr E J Smith’s Orchestra. After a very good tea, the children were entertained by conjuror Col Ling Soo with a performance of Chinese magic.

Col Ling Soo was the alter ego of Herbert J Collings (1881-1958). He told the party organisers that his fee for performing would be five guineas and no lower as he was sure of several other enquiries about bookings.  Collings was well-known, a founder member of the Magic Circle who was President for two terms.  He served in World War One as a soldier in the Artists Rifles Officer Training Unit.   The Artists Rifles gave a ‘splendid’ fundraising concert in Chelmsford in May 1917 and Corporal Collings contributed his ‘Merriemysticisms’.   Collings appeared before the King and Queen on more than one occasion and newspaper advertisements for his shows refer to a demonstration of Chinese magic given by royal command at Windsor Castle.

At the end of the party Father Christmas appeared and each child was given a present from under a beautifully decorated tree.  A message of thanks was drafted for HMS Malaya:
'The children of Malaya send their greetings to the battleship.  They wish the officers and men of H.M.S. Malaya could be with them this afternoon.  Everyone is enjoying the party and we, one and all, send our heartiest thanks for this splendid entertainment'.
The celebration ended with three rousing cheers for HMS Malaya.

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further reading:
India Office Private Papers: MSS Eur F168/53
British Newspaper Archive for Herbert Collings/Col Ling Soo

The lost and found columns in Victorian newspapers offer rewards for the return of lost dogs, silver lockets, watches, overcoats, sheep, and pigeons.  But tucked away amongst these are pitiful announcements about lost children.

CHILD LOST
STRAYED, about Half-past Five o’clock YESTERDAY (THURSDAY) Evening, from Hercules Street, a LITTLE GIRL, about three years of age.  Had on a black silk dress, with a little grey stripe on the bottom; hair fair; no hat; wore boots. Information to be given at 29, Hercules Street; to FRANCIS KANE, 47, Mill Street; or the Police.
(Belfast Morning News, Friday 31 August 1866)

LOST, on Saturday afternoon, at 2 p.m., ELY ENGLEBERG, 4 years old, round face, blue eyes, dressed in black mixture trousers, grey jacket, red stockings, clogs, and soft billycock hat. – Any person finding him bring him to 21, Johnson-street, off Red Bank, Manchester.
(Manchester Evening News, 22 February 1881)

From Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song. A nursery rhyme book (1893) British Library on flickr 

The disappearance of ten year old James Robert Leach was reported in the news columns of the Portsmouth Evening News in July 1894. James had left his home in Landport in Hampshire at about 10am on 18 July to buy a loaf and some milk. When he failed to return, his anxious parents Richard and Louisa Leach began to search for him.  They were told that their son had been seen at Hilsea with a man and woman who sold umbrellas. The police were then informed. The newspaper printed this description of the boy:

    When he left home he was without boots, stockings, cap, or collar. He was wearing a brown reefer     coat with an odd black sleeve, and trousers of a dark pepper-and-salt pattern.  He is short and     small for his age, has black hair and dark eyes, and on one of his little fingers is a bony     protuberance at the lower joint.  His back is scarred with burns.

His parents advertised widely and had photographs circulated in London by the Salvation Army.  Nothing was heard until November when James was found sleeping under a hedge in Chatham in Kent. An inspector for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children took him to the workhouse.  The poor boy thought that he had been missing for three years.

James had wandered off to play on Portsdown Hill when Thomas and Florence Cannon abducted him.  Thomas Cannon had threatened to cut his throat if he raised an alarm.  The boy was sent out to beg and thrashed if he did not take back threepence daily. His body was covered with bruises and wounds. When a School Board officer began to investigate, the Cannons took him out one night and deserted him.

Urchin asleep by Antonio Mancini (1852-1930) ©De Agostini/The British Library Board Images Online 

The Cannons were each sentenced to three months’ hard labour for employing James Leach for begging purposes.  At the end of their sentence they were sent back to court to face kidnapping charges but the Public Prosecutor decided not to proceed.

Sadly, our story does not have a happy ending. James Leach enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1901. He was killed on 9 November 1918 when HMS Britannia was sunk by a submarine off Cape Trafalgar. He left a widow Florence and two children.

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further reading:

British Newspaper Archive

Portsmouth Evening News 31 July 1894, 9 August 1894, 28 November 1894, 11 March 1895

Herbert Gladstone Booth is commemorated on the roll of honour for British librarians who lost their lives through service in World War One.  He was the first of the librarians on the memorial to die. We tell his story on the 100th anniversary of his death on 30 November 1914.

 
Herbert Gladstone Booth (1883-1914) 

Herbert was born in Burnley Lancashire in 1883, the son of Thomas Booth and his wife Emma née Crossley. Emma was born in South Elmsall in Yorkshire and had worked in Burnley as a domestic servant before her marriage to Thomas in 1877. Both Thomas and Emma were cotton weavers in 1881.  By the time of the 1891 census, Thomas had become a loom overlooker and Emma was still working as a weaver. Herbert aged 8 is shown as a scholar with a one-year old brother Benjamin.  Emma’s sister Lilly Crossley, also a weaver, was living with the family.

In 1897 Emma died aged 39. Thomas married again in 1899 to Frances Pickles and they had a son Thomas James Eric born in 1905. In the 1901 census, Thomas is described as a ‘Librarian Books’ whilst Herbert is a cotton weaver.  Ten years later, Thomas recorded his occupation as a librarian with the Co-operative Society.

Herbert married Martha Ann Aspden in 1906.  Herbert and Martha were living in 1911 at 23 Dial Street Burnley with her mother Margaret Richards.  Their only child had died. Both Margaret and Martha were working as cotton weavers but Herbert had left the mill and had a job as assistant librarian for his father at the Co-operative Society. 

When he volunteered for the Army at Blackburn on 3 September 1914 at the age of 31, Herbert was an assistant librarian at the Marshall public library in Burnley. He re-joined the 1st East Lancashire Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, a unit of the Territorial Force in which he had thirteen years’ previous service from 1900-1913. Within days he had been promoted from driver to quartermaster-sergeant, the rank he had held on his retirement in 1913.  His unit was immediately posted to Egypt and he wrote home about the grand sights there. Sadly Herbert died of dysentery at Hospital Citadel in Cairo on 30 November 1914 after being ill for about six weeks. An eerie coincidence was that Herbert’s home address was 9 Cairo Street in Burnley.  The War Office granted his widow Martha a pension of 11s per week.

Burnley Express 9 December 1914 British Newspaper Archive 

Herbert’s death was reported at length in both the Burnley Express and Burnley News on 9 December 1914.  He was said to have been well-known and highly respected by local people. His name appears on the Burnley roll of honour for World War One.

Margaret Makepeace, India Office Records

Jason Webber, UK Web Archive

Further reading:

Herbert Gladstone Booth’s grave in Cairo War Memorial Cemetery

Photographs of Herbert Gladstone Booth and some of his fellow librarians who died can be seen in a British Library Facebook album

British Newspaper Archive

Lives of the First World War https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/415182

Are you working on a World War One project which includes a website? Why don’t you nominate it for the UK web archive? Find out more - Your Web Archive Needs You!

Lance-corporal Allan Leonard Lewis was the only soldier born in Herefordshire to win a Victoria Cross during the First World War. But, as an adopted Welshman, his heroism is not acknowledged at all in Neath where he lived before the war. He is one of Wales's war heroes, and yet his sacrifice is not officially recognised in the place where he worked and joined the army.

Allan Leonard Lewis VC - courtesy of WalesOnline

Tragically, Allan Lewis was awarded the VC posthumously because he was killed in action, aged 23, at Ronssoy during the battle of Epehy on 21 September 1918. His award was for 'most conspicuous bravery'.  First, on 18 September 1918, he was in charge of an advancing section of the 6th Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment which was held up by ferocious machine-gun fire as it attacked outposts of the Hindenburg Line.

The official citation reports that, after observing how two enemy machine-gun teams were pinning down his men, Lewis 'crawled forward, single-handed, and successfully bombed the guns, and by rifle fire later caused the whole team to surrender, thereby enabling the whole line to advance.'  This in itself was bravery of the very highest order, but Lewis was not finished.  The London Gazette reported that three days later he 'again displayed great powers of command'. Unfortunately, though, 'having rushed his company through the enemy barrage' he was killed 'while getting his men under cover from heavy machine-gun fire.'

 
Western Daily Press - Friday 11 April 1919 British Newspaper Archive

By any standards, Lewis's actions at Ronssoy were remarkably brave, and he made the ultimate sacrifice in order to protect his men.  But the fact that his heroism is not noted at all in Neath, or indeed anywhere else in Wales, adds an even greater level of interest and poignancy to his story.

Although Allan Lewis was born just over the border with England, at Whitney-on-Wye, he was in many ways a Welshman, so much so that he had attempted to learn Welsh.  One of nine children, he had left school at thirteen to work on the land, eventually becoming a gardener at Truscoed House near Llandeilo in West Wales.

Lewis always enjoyed working with machines, though, and this led to him becoming an employee of the Great Western Railway.  He moved to Neath, and, after a period as a conductor, he drove a GWR bus on the Pontardawe route. 

So, with such strong roots in Neath, why does he remain a forgotten hero, even in his adopted home town?

Tireless research and campaigning by Mr Vyvyan Smith over the past forty years provides us with an explanation. 

Lewis joined the army in Neath in March 1915 and in doing so he left his job without seeking official permission from his employer.   This seems to have been too much to bear for the managers of the GWR, and they long harboured a grudge against the man who was to die seven weeks before the end of the war.

Indeed, not even the award of a posthumous VC served to change their minds. Other GWR employees who won a VC had locomotives named after them, but this honour was never afforded to Lewis.

This extraordinary attitude clearly affected perceptions of Lewis in Neath where his name is not included on any civic war memorial. Surely, it is now time to acknowledge the significance of Allan Leonard Lewis VC, a Welsh hero who gave his life for his country.

Huw Bowen
Swansea University

Further Reading:

The V.C. and D.S.O. A complete record of all those officers, non-commissioned officers and men of His Majesty’s Naval, Military and Air Forces who have been awarded these decorations from the time of their institution, with descriptions of the deeds and services which won the distinctions and with many biographical and other details, edited by the late Sir O'Moore Creagh and E. M. Humphris (London, 1924)