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The town of Middlesbrough today is a sprawling conurbation, much of it neglected and run down following the closure of its once vast manufacturing industries of Iron & Steel, Shipbuilding and Chemicals but still a place of manufacturing just on a much-reduced scale.
The subject of this Tale from my Shed, is the paradox of Middlesbrough and its people during the period of 'The Great War'.
Death and wounding on the European field of battle was frequent and common, but unnoticed mortality rates at Home for men and women actually fell between 1915 and 1920.
The most startling fact, was also the unexpected reduction in infant mortality, so how was this possible? The statistics from the time show it quite clearly happened but you need look a bit further into Middlesbrough's social conditions, to see one of The Great War's many paradoxes that emerged...
The ‘Middle Burgh’ dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, when long treks by monks travelling from the Abbey at Whitby to Lindisfarne, were broken by a stop perhaps at this convenient little hamlet, before crossing the river Tees by ferry from the York side to the Durham side.
By early 1800 the small hamlet of a dozen farm buildings clustered close to the river showed a population of around 25 people.
By 1830 the land had been acquired by the Quaker Pease family of Darlington, and the creation of an endeavour called the ‘Middlesbrough Estate’ had been proposed.
Coal from the Pease coal mining concerns in the County Durham Coalfield, could be exported much easier by having a loading port at the mouth of the Tees, rather than navigating the tidal river some miles inland.
Initially going to the town of Yarm and then later Stockton. Wooden coal ‘staithes’ were erected at what was going to be known as ‘Port Darlington’ but the newly created Darlington to Stockton railway, was extended to 'Port Darlington', and the town of Middlesbrough and it's population began to expand rapidly.
By the year 1841 the population had grown to 5,463 and the process of building dwellings for this burgeoning population began, with rows of back-to-back houses with central communal yards being rapidly built.
Views of Yards in the St Hildas District
(Courtesy of Steve MacKenzie on Facebook)
Each yard had access to water from a hand cranked pump, and toilets were provided by 'night soil' ashpans (note the door flaps to gain access to the 'night soil' boxes above), they required emptying daily. Life was a struggle not only to avoid disease but malnutrition too, most working men earned on average between 18/- and 20/-shillings) a week depending on their age and role, but a woman’s life was centred around the home, feeding her working husband and usually a large brood of children...
In 1850 Ironstone in significant quantities had been revealed in the Cleveland Hills that surround the Town, which kicked off a veritable 'Gold Rush' of mining and iron smelting concerns and in fact, one area of Middlesbrough, the nearby village of Eston became widely known as ‘California’..
By the coming of The Great War, the population had grown so much that it had spread across the railway tracks, into what was quickly becoming a well-planned Edwardian Industrial town, well earning it's Epithet of 'Infant Hercules' given to it by Benjamin Disraeli the then Prime Minister on a visit to the town in 1862...
This was the view across the railway tracks from St Hildas, known as the Ironmasters district and looking down Linthorpe Road...
As the two views above show, the town was surrounded closely by the ironworks and foundries that ran 24hrs a day, the atmosphere was smoky, laden with red dust, as well as pungent gases from the Calcining Kilns used to roast the ore, to remove unwanted impurities and the constant glare of flames from various Blast furnaces. The people living in these conditions, that were not conducive to good health, suffered various pulmonary ailments and coupled with poor wages, poor food and poor sanitation, living conditions in this area by the coming of World War 1 were becoming intolerable, life expectancy only averaging about 50 years for men and infant deaths within the first year, averaging around the 50% mark.
A study report was written by Lady Hugh Bell in 1907, she had set up several assessments of the lives of various working-class families in Middlesbrough. Looking at how wages were earned and how they were subsequently spent.
Reading it in 2026, our modern era, reveals a world of poor people and the moralistic but I suppose maternalistic attempts by those wealthier, to assist these 'unfortunates' to help themselves navigate the exigencies of life, by better control of household finances and the abstention from the 'demon drink'.
A somewhat familiar tone repeated in the late 20th and early 21st century, only now large screen TV's and iPhone seem to be the factors of declining monetary ability and 'relative poverty'.
The report showed the cost of 900 anonymous households at different income levels...of which 125 were 'Absolutely Poor' meaning they were unable to provide adequate food and clothing, nor were they able to provide a home with a moderate level of comfort.
A further 175 were only just able to manage the normal exigencies of life but frequently dropped over the line of being able to support a family and a home. Fully 30% of households in the town were in this position, most if not all of the time.
The first was a family on the lowest income level of 18/- 6d (18 shillings and sixpence, less than £1) per week and the items that needed to be bought from that budget.
As can be seen housing cost of a two up two down properties, with a small room on the ground floor a second room behind reached by a small hallway, this was usually the 'kitchen' and was where the family mostly lived.
A steep stairway was usually situated in the corner of this room to access the two upstairs rooms and was approximately 30% of the budget, another 50% went on food. For the week for these three persons, as it would appear to the eye, we should see on the table
The 'Gold Dust' referred to here, was a form of shredded soap which was bright yellow.
Milk was a commodity that hardly anyone drank except in Tea.
An 'Octavo Volume' is usually 8" by 10", A quartern-loaf is made from a quartern of flour, equal to 1/4 stone, 3.5 pounds, or about 1.5876 kilograms.
The finished loaf usually weighs about 4 pounds (1.81 kilograms); as a result, a quartern is sometimes described as a weight of 4 pounds.
By 1914 and the start of Great War, Middlesbrough was a typical expanding Edwardian Industrial town, with an 'old' district and several 'new' districts that had spread along the river Tees.
Now with a Public Library, Public Parks, a New Town Hall and universal schooling, it was still dogged by the conditions of low pay, poor housing and a polluted living environment.
Which fed ill health and compounded by industrial accidents and working conditions that saw men labouring among fumes and gasses, that could not only render them unconscious but caused pneumococcal illness as well.
Without a recognisable health and welfare system, this led to low life expectancy and high infant mortality and chronic ill health...
The first shots of The Great War were fired in a distant part of Europe, one that most readers of Middlesbrough's North-Eastern Daily Gazette would have struggled to place on a map...should they own one or have access to one.
'The Balkans? were the bloody 'ell are the Balkans?' could have been on everyone’s lips...'And oo' the 'ell is Ferdinand'. Well as it happened, he was the heir to the throne of Austro-Hungary so was quite important.
His assassination by Gavrilo Princip and his cohorts started the first domino to topple in a World-wide conflagration that involved millions of people from around the globe. Not least those living in a large Industrial Town in Northeast England...
According to the North-Eastern Daily Gazette of Monday June 29, 1914,
'With desperate and diabolical pertinacity the Heir-Presumptive to the Austrian throne was assailed in the capital of Bosnia yesterday and he succumbed at last, along with his wife, to the attacks of his anarchical enemies.'
This set in train the course for the next 4 desperate years. By the 8th of August the whole of Europe was in flames and to quote Sir Edward Gray, the British foreign Secretary "The lights are going out all across Europe, we may never see them lit in our lifetime"
The Cleveland Standard ran the story amongst such things as the 'Sandcastle Competition' and the Football Season fixtures for Middlesbrough FC, South Bank and Redcar Clubs.
It was after all a Bank Holiday and many thousands flocked on excursion trains to the coast, at Redcar and Saltburn.
Meanwhile, a few miles away in Marske-By-The-Sea units of the Northumbrian Division of the Territorial Force was holding it's annual 'practice' camp.
Above we see The Campgrounds established in fields around 'Tofts Farm' Whilst below members of the Northumberland Fusiliers had photographs taken on the beach at Redcar...
All this was about to change, yet no-one seemed concerned about the events unfolding. Many excursion trains were cancelled over the next few days; they were needed to return those Troops at 'Camp' to their home locations to allow them to 'Mobilize'...
Through the following Autumn and Winter of 1914, the Allied armies fought the Germans to a standstill and after the 'Miracle on the Marne' had pushed the Germans back into Belgium and the year ended with a line of entrenched positions stretching from the Belgian coast all the way to the Swiss border.
It was going to take a lot of effort manpower and systemic changes to defeat the Germans in various places around the Globe.
By 1915 and the call to arms by Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, which saw millions of men swarm to recruiting stations around the country.
In Middlesbrough an open-air Meeting was called, convening on the 'Infirmary Corner' next to the North Riding Infirmary in the town kicked off calls for a 'Local Pals' Battalion.
The Mayor W M J Bruce in a letter to Lord Kitchener, requested permission to raise a 'Pals' Battalion in Middlesbrough and word went out in the local press...
Eventually this local Battalion was raised, designated as a 'Pioneer' Battalion the 12th (Service) Battalion Yorkshire Regiment (Teesside Pioneers) was embodied as part of 40th Infantry Division leaving in June 1916, the 'Boro' lads went to France to take their place.
But what of those left behind? Any men not fit for Army Service remained, as well as the women, who were now joining the workforce.
Where workers were badly needed as industry began to expand to meet the demand for armaments.
As seen previously, living conditions in Middlesbrough and its environs were extremely harsh and very unhealthy.
The food that was able to be purchased by families hovering around the poverty line, resulted in most childhood diseases that we take for granted in our modern age, to become endemic and in the 1900's the death rate amongst new borns and under 5 year olds was very high at around 1 in 500...
In fact, "infant mortality rates (deaths before age 1 per 1,000 live births) were blunt indicators of the extent to which urban squalor shortened or stunted the lives of a substantial part of the British population. The contrasts between the survival chances of infants born to prosperous and to poor families were revealed each year in annual reports of registrars general.
For example, at the turn of the century, approximately 200 per 1,000 infants failed to survive the first year of life in the following English county boroughs: Birmingham, Blackburn, Bootle, Burnley, Dudley, Middlesbrough, Preston, Salford, Sheffield, Stockport, Wakefield, Wolverhampton, and York. The names read as if taken from a Baedeker guide to industrial England. In more prosperous areas the infant mortality rate was well below the national average.
In the London metropolitan borough of Hampstead, for example, in 1910, 60 per 1,000 infants died in the first year of life; in England and Wales as a whole, the infant mortality rate was 105. Over the years 1910-12, children of unskilled workers were subject to an infant mortality rate twice that of children of professional men and women. Indeed, no one doubted that a working-class child born in late-Victorian or Edwardian Britain had an uphill struggle for survival, much more hazardous than that faced by its middle-class or upper-class brethren.
This was the demographic meaning of social inequality in pre-1914 Britain" as reported in the book 'The Great War and the British People by J M Winter...
These facts and other government statistics over the years of the Great War revealed something that, amidst the death and destruction being wrought in France and Belgium, was an unforeseen improvement in health and life expectancy of the whole population. A paradox indeed but why did this happen?
Courtesy of Dorman Museum, Middlesbrough, the above image is of women workers at Gjer Mills an engineering company in Middlesbrough, that had been employed because of the lack of men available due to the recruiting campaigns of 1915 and 1916.
For people in Britain - "fully 10 per cent of the population - could not afford to buy enough food to ensure a minimum level of physical efficiency. Additional evidence along these lines was provided by H. J. Wilson, Inspector of Factories and Workshops in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who pointed out that the substandard heights and weights of the children of workers in the jute mills of Dundee, were indicators of chronic malnutrition among the low-paid sector of the labouring population."
Increasingly it fell to women. An agreement had to be reached by the Government and the Trades Union Congress that 'during the 'hostilities' pre-war demarcation rules would be suspended, allowing women to enter the workforce en-masse...
During the years 1915-1920 unemployment as would be expected in an economy rapidly expanding, fell to a point where there was a shortage of workers available to keep the war economy going.
Eventually the 'Ministry of Munitions' was formed and indeed some men from Teesside as seen by the extract from the Service record of Alec Allenden, a miner at Upleatham Ironstone mine in New Marske, were recalled from Service returning home to bolster the workforce...
So given the new circumstances, household incomes began to rise and with factors such as 'Separation Allowances' which were paid to wives and mothers whose family member was serving in the Armed Forces.
Increasingly the income of families, who were now receiving a much more stable income budget, instead of the precarious money only being available for food when work was available to provide it.
Whilst it was acknowledged at the time that food availability was a factor, the increased and constant consumption of food meant that women, who had previously taken a back seat in family food consumption, inevitably leading to failing health due to multiple pregnancies.
Again: "The war economy created some conditions which helped reduce mortality rates indeed, the substantial fall in deaths due to diarrhoeal disease and to complications of pregnancy and childbirth would not have been possible had there been a major deterioration in levels of nutrition during the war. The same is true in the case of common infectious diseases, as well as in diseases of maternity and early childhood. Statistical data present substantial evidence as to the unintentional effects of the war in raising family incomes and thereby nutritional levels especially among the worst-off sections of the community."
Statistically this also meant that, "in flat contradiction of the views of many who argued before 1914 that high female workforce participation rates were responsible for high infant and maternal mortality, in fact these gains were registered while more than half the medical profession was in the army and therefore unable to care for the civilian population. Of course the wartime declines in the birth rate, meant that fewer women were pregnant and therefore in need of medical or para-medical assistance at this time."
In the table above, the number of deaths per 1000 is displayed and from a pre-war position of 107/1000 or 1 in nearly 11 births ended within the first year of life. By the wars end 1 in 6.8 suffered the same problem.
These statistics showed that even with the background of Rationing of certain foods, the population at home were benefitting from the increased wages, allowances and the reduction of inconsistent wages and the consumption of poorer food...
Seen here is 'Women's Canteen at Phoenix Works, Bradford' (Art.IWM ART 4434)
The interior of a canteen filled with female workers. There is a counter to the right of the composition, and
tables occupied with women in overalls and cloth caps to the left. There is a queue at the counter, with several women holding large white
cups.
In the centre two women walk arm-in-arm towards the viewer, and next to them another stands looking out in the same way... (Courtesy Imperial War Museum.)
Another by product of the 'Total War Economy' were the 'workers canteens' in 1917, an idea suggested by the Munitions Board.
If employers were encouraged to provide cheap but nutritious meals at midday, then workers had more energy which stimulated productivity. As well as meaning workers didn't leave the works in order to eat, which reduced the 'waiting' time of production.
In the pre-war period, some progressive firms had decided that hot meals be served to their workers at midday, but even after 1914, many employers were slow to see the utility of this arrangement.
Ironically, it was control of the liquor trade from 1915 that changed the situation entirely. The Central Control Board (Liquor Trade) set up a canteens committee, under the chairmanship of Sir George Newman which supervised this form of welfare provision."
By September 1916, 435 industrial canteens had been opened, serving over 640,000 munitions workers. By the end of the war, this had risen to more than 900 canteens, built at a capital cost to the government of £3.5 million, providing hot meals to over 1 million war workers.
This form of industrial welfare in wartime brings us squarely to the subject of standards of nutrition, which can be argued, was the fundamental source of improvements in civilian health during wartime.
So, as we can see, even though there were huge numbers of dead and injured directly caused by the fighting.
Serving soldiers were also seeing their overall health increasing, due to consumption of 'Rations' including more meat and vegetables on a regular basis.
The same was happening to the civilian population back in Britain. It was recorded that by September 1916, 435 industrial canteens had been opened.
This form of industrial welfare in wartime increased the standards of nutrition of the population as a whole and it can be argued, that it was the fundamental source of improvements in civilian health during those four years of wartime…
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