Continuing my DMZ Demilitarised posts, here is a transcribed and researched handwritten diary in my collection.
It was written by a Scoutmaster of some Chesterfield Scouts from Derbyshire who camped in Lincoln for a week in September 1916.
It is rich with great details of camp life, fun on the river and the occasional glimpse of WW1 wartime life. The Battle of the Somme was in its third month whilst this was happening.
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN, 19 April 2022
One of the literary figures supporting H. G. Wells and his development of the Floor Game and Little Wars was the author Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) or J.K.J. as he is known in Little Wars. I mentioned him in a recent blog post:
Jerome K. Jerome (JKJ) and Little Wars
As H G Wells says of the origin of Little Wars being the spring loaded cannon, “It was with one of these guns that the beginning of our war game was made.” It was at his seaside home at Sandgate in Kent, England. Wells had two young sons, Gip and Frank Wells, born 1901 and 1903, to whom the “irrepressible debris of a small boy’s pleasures” probably belonged. Wells wrote:
“The present writer had been lunching with a friend – let me veil his identity under the initials J. K. J. – in a room littered with the irrepressible debris of a small boy’s pleasures. On a table near our own stood four or five soldiers and one of these guns.”
“Mr J. K. J., his more urgent needs satisfied and the coffee imminent, drew a chair to this little table, sat down, examined the gun discreetly, loaded it warily, aimed, and hit his man. Thereupon he boasted of the deed, and issued challenges that were accepted with avidity. . . .”
“He fired that day a shot that still echoes round the world. An affair – let us parallel the Cannonade of Valmy and call it the Cannonade of Sandgate –occurred, a shooting between opposed ranks of soldiers, a shooting not very different in spirit – but how different in results! – from the prehistoric warfare of catapult and garter. “But suppose,” said his antagonists; “suppose somehow one could move the men!” and therewith opened a new world of belligerence. The matter went no further with Mr J. K. J. …” (H G Wells, Little Wars, 1913)
Here Wells’ war game with toy soldiers moved from skittles or a shooting game more to one of strategy.
Like Chesterton, Wells and Nesbit, Jerome K. Jerome has a Literary Society devoted to his work: https://www.jeromekjerome.com
Reading his biography page on the website, Jerome can be seen as a hidden casualty of the Great War that Wells warned about in his Pacific last chapter of Little Wars in 1913.
Jerome wrote in his memoirs that in August 1914: “I heard of our declaration of war against Germany with cheerful satisfaction. The animal in me rejoiced. It was going to be the biggest war in history. I thanked whatever gods there be that they had given it in my time. If I had been anywhere near the age limit I should have enlisted. I can say this with confidence because later, and long after my enthusiasm had worn off, I did manage to get work in quite a dangerous part of the front line.”
“Men all around me were throwing up their jobs, sacrificing their careers. I felt ashamed of myself, sitting in safety at my desk, writing articles encouraging them, at so much a thousand words. Of course, not a soul dreamt the war was going to last more than a few months. Had we known, it might have been another story. But the experts had assured us on that point. Mr. Wells was most emphatic. It was Mr. Wells who proclaimed it a Holy War. I have just been reading again those early letters of his. A Miss Cooper Willis has, a little unkindly, reprinted them. I am glad she did not do the same with contributions of my own.”
“The newspapers had roped in most of us literary gents to write them special articles upon the war. The appalling nonsense we poured out, during those hysterical first weeks, must have made the angels weep, and all the little devils hold their sides with laughter. In justice to myself, I like to remember that I did gently ridicule the “War to end war” stuff and nonsense. I had heard that talk in my babyhood: since when I had lived through one of the bloodiest half centuries in history. War will go down before the gradual growth of reason. The movement has not yet begun.” (P.281, Jerome’s My Life and Times)
At first Jerome was keen as any other volunteer or writer to do his bit, preferably near the front line (or “got out”). However by his age his options were limited including the ‘Home Guard’ of the Volunteer Training Corps VTC, nicknamed the “Gorgeous Wrecks” or Rejects from their red GR arm bands:
Jerome K. Jerome’s 1925/6 memoir “My Life and Times” was written a year or so before he died:
“It was in the autumn of 1916 that I “got out,” as the saying was. I had been trying to get there for some time. Of course my age, fifty-five, shut all the usual doors against me. I could have joined a company of “veterans” for home defence, and have guarded the Crystal Palace, or helped to man the Thames Embankment; but I wanted to see the real thing. I had offered myself as an entertainer to the Y.M.C.A. I was a capable raconteur and had manufactured, or appropriated, a number of good stories.”
“The Y.M.C.A. had tried me on home hospitals and camps and had approved me. But the War Office would not give its permission. The military gentleman I saw was brief. So far as his information went, half the British Army were making notes for future books. If I merely wanted to be useful, he undertook to find me a job in the Army Clothing Department, close by in Pimlico. I suppose my motives for wanting to go out were of the usual mixed order. I honestly thought I would be doing sound work, helping the Tommies to forget their troubles […]”
A few years younger, Jerome could have joined the Cavalry or Yeomanry. In an earlier chapter ‘The Author at Play’, Jerome mentions his dislike of game shooting, his dislike of fox hunting (because of the fox) and his love of riding and driving carriage horses:
“I learnt riding with the Life Guards at Knightsbridge barracks. It was a rough school, but thorough. You were not considered finished until you could ride all your paces bareback, with the reins loose; and when the Sergeant-Major got hold of a horse with new tricks, he would put it aside for his favourite pupil.”
There is a whole chapter in his memoir (published in 1925/26) about his war experience, starting with his news of how foreign wars were reported, supported or opposed in Britain throughout his childhood, almost taking the Queen’s shilling out of poverty:
“I was down on my luck when the Russo-Turkish War broke out. There were hopes at first that we might be drawn into it. I came near to taking the Queen’s shilling. I had slept at a doss-house the night before, and had had no breakfast. A sergeant of Lancers stopped me in Trafalgar Square. He put his hands on my shoulders and punched my chest.
“You’re not the first of your family that’s been a soldier,” he said. “You’ll like it.”
It was a taking uniform: blue and silver with high Hessian boots. The advantages of making soldiers look like mud had not then been discovered.” (Chapter 12, The War)
… right through to the shifting colonial and international tensions in the build up to WW1 and how he served with the French Ambulance units. You can read this for free in this Project Gutenberg ebook free download:
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/jeromejk-mylife/jeromejk-mylife-00-h-dir/jeromejk-mylife-00-h.html
Over service age in 1914, he volunteered to serve in the Ambulance units in France and the experience of what he must have seen had a lasting effect on the comic novelist.
When he returned to England, his secretary observed “The old Jerome had gone… in his place was a stranger … a broken man”.
JKJ – player of Little Wars, sportsman, comic novelist – “Those who talk about war as a game … ought to be made to go out and play it.”
This quote came from his 1925/26 memoir, remembering his experiences in the Verdun French sector where a field hospital was shelled by the Germans but also thinking about his trip to America (1915) shortly before.
Now writing as Ambulance Driver Nine, he notes:
“The town was strangely peaceful, though all around the fighting still continued. Our Unit, Section 10, had been there the winter before, during the battle, and had had a strenuous time. During the actual fighting, Hague Conventions and Geneva regulations get themselves mislaid. The guns were eating up ammunition faster than the little tramways could supply them, and the ambulances did not always go up empty.
“Doubtless the German Red Cross drivers had likewise their blind eye. It is not the soldiers who shout about these things. I was on the “Lusitania,” the last voyage she made from New York to Liverpool, before she was torpedoed. We were loaded to the Plimsol line with war material. The Germans were accused of dropping shells on to the hospital. So they did. How could they help it? The ammunition park was one side of the railway head and the hospital the other. It was the most convenient place for both. Those who talk about war being a game ought to be made to go out and play it. They’d find their little book of rules of not much use.”
Presumably his quote about playing at war was not too much of a dig at his friend Wells’ Little Wars Chapter IV and its warning about the blunder of Great Wars?
“How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing,” Wells writes in Little Wars. “You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion …”
Wells’ wartime path diverged from that of Jerome. Wells was very active in Government Propaganda throughout WW1 through the Wartime Propganda Bureau run by his friend and Little Wars opponent Charles Masterman (see the related blog post on the Declaration of Authors).
Maybe Jerome’s remark is aimed at fellow jingo writers and poets like Sir Henry Newbolt with their sporting analogies to war (echoed in the sportsmen’s battalions)?
“Play Up, Play up, and Play the Game!”
(Vitai Lampada! or “They Pass On The Torch of Life”)
There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night —
Ten to make and the match to win —
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote —
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’
*
The sand of the desert is sodden red, —
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’
*
This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the School is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind —
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’
Sir Henry Newbolt, 1892
*
Like Wells and Jerome, Newbolt signed the 1914 Authors’ Declaration and was part of inspiring a generation of ‘heroic’ war poetry in the style of Rupert Brooke and minor, often public school wartime poets.
It is worth noting that even some of the later antiwar poets like Wilfred Owen started out with a flowery Rupert Brooke style heroic poetic view of the war at its beginning.
Brooke through the Neo Pagans group on the edge of the Bloomsbury group knew Harold Hobson, who played at Little Wars with Wells. We could play this ‘six degrees of separation’ connections and influences game back to Wells and Little Wars with a number of people. You know the sort of thing – Hobson knew Brooke who died en route to Gallipoli, a Churchill inspired disaster of a campaign; Wells can be doubly connected to Churchill through toy soldiers and through Liberal politician Charles Masterman. And so on and so on …
Reading Gissing’s letters to and from Wells and his family, there is a lovely informal group snapshot in Italy c. 1890s of Gissing, Wells, Conan Doyle and his brother in law Hornung. As the ‘Declaration of Authors’ signatures also show, the literary world was well connected at a professional and social, even friendly level.
“[Israel] Zangwill used to be keen on croquet, but never had the makings of a great player. Wells wasn’t bad. Of course, he wanted to alter all the laws and make a new game of his own. I had to abandon my lawn, in the end.” From the ‘Author at Play’ chapter in Jerome’s memoir.
Reading Jerome’s 1925/6 memoir I found that he was not the only one of the Author’s Declaration to suffer during WW1. In his chapter the ‘Author at Play’ about the “internationalism” of winter sports at Davos in Switzerland and such like in the years prior to the outbreak of WW1, p.233 –
“Engelberg is too low to be a good sports centre. We had some muggy weather, and to kill time I got up some private theatricals. Kipling’s boy and girl were there. They were jolly children. Young Kipling was a suffragette and little Miss Kipling played a costermonger’s Donah. Kipling himself combined the parts of scene-shifter and call boy. It was the first time I had met Mrs. Kipling since her marriage. She was still a beautiful woman, but her hair was white. There had always been sadness in her eyes, even when a girl. The Hornungs were there also, with their only child, Oscar. Mrs. Hornung, née Connie Doyle, was as cheery and vigorous as ever, but a shade stouter. Both boys were killed in the war.” (P.233)
Oscar Hornung, Conan Doyle’s nephew, was killed in 1915 – CWGC entry. Like the Hornung family, the Kiplings suffered the added grief of a son missing and an unknown grave until a recent (and disputed) identification – CWGC entry. The tragic story of John Kipling, Kipling’s only son, is well told in the Holt book, play and BBC TV drama My Boy Jack.
As Wells writes it at the end of Little Wars “And if I might for a moment trumpet! How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing!”
Bloog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 2 / 3 February 2021
*
Blog Post Appendix – the ‘pacific’ challenge by Wells at the end of Little Wars, 1913: source – e: text from Project Gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3691/3691-h/3691-h.htm#chap06
Little Wars Part VI
ENDING WITH A SORT OF CHALLENGE
I COULD go on now and tell of battles, copiously. In the memory of the one skirmish I have given I do but taste blood. I would like to go on, to a large, thick book. It would be an agreeable task. Since I am the chief inventor and practiser (so far) of Little Wars, there has fallen to me a disproportionate share of victories. But let me not boast. For the present, I have done all that I meant to do in this matter. It is for you, dear reader, now to get a floor, a friend, some soldiers and some guns, and show by a grovelling devotion your appreciation of this noble and beautiful gift of a limitless game that I have given you.
And if I might for a moment trumpet! How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing!
Here is a homeopathic remedy for the imaginative strategist. Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster—and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence.
This world is for ample living; we want security and freedom; all of us in every country, except a few dull-witted, energetic bores, want to see the manhood of the world at something better than apeing the little lead toys our children buy in boxes. We want fine things made for mankind—splendid cities, open ways, more knowledge and power, and more and more and more—and so I offer my game, for a particular as well as a general end; and let us put this prancing monarch and that silly scare-monger, and these excitable “patriots,” and those adventurers, and all the practitioners of Welt Politik, into one vast Temple of War, with cork carpets everywhere, and plenty of little trees and little houses to knock down, and cities and fortresses, and unlimited soldiers—tons, cellars-full—and let them lead their own lives there away from us.
My game is just as good as their game, and saner by reason of its size. Here is War, done down to rational proportions, and yet out of the way of mankind, even as our fathers turned human sacrifices into the eating of little images and symbolic mouthfuls. For my own part, I am prepared. I have nearly five hundred men, more than a score of guns, and I twirl my moustache and hurl defiance eastward from my home in Essex across the narrow seas. Not only eastward. I would conclude this little discourse with one other disconcerting and exasperating sentence for the admirers and practitioners of Big War. I have never yet met in little battle any military gentleman, any captain, major, colonel, general, or eminent commander, who did not presently get into difficulties and confusions among even the elementary rules of the Battle. You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing Great War must be.
Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but—the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realisation conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.”
H.G. Wells, Little Wars 1913
One of the aerial photo mysteries of the desert airstrip raided by my commandos was this curious heavy ‘brass’ biplane. A surprise gift from the family at Christmas …
Obviously this has the possible desk mount missing, just the screwhole fixing, and the propellor section missing. With the flux weld or solder marks and screws showing, this has a charming amateur, slightly stout DIY feel to it. Proper vintage …
Apparently the vintage shop had a desk mounted similar plane, and I have an old larger moulded ‘brass’ Spitfire in this desk style.
Such shiny desk ornament mounted planes are still produced and similar antique versions can be found online, in a naive faux trench art style.
Both van and biplane are very useful for games scenarios. I am reminded a little of Corporal Jones’ van in Dad’s Army …
Blog posted by Mark, Man of TIN on 22 January 2020
B.P.S – Blog Post Script
Dexey mentioned in his comments kits found on eBay to convert Lledo type vans into generic Armoured Cars. The pic-link I found below was a dead URL but gives an idea of what could be done with cardboard, plasticard etc. Most armoured cars in civil wars or irregular warfare were improvised lashups anyway.

Day 2 of our random Man of TIN gaming Advent Calendar: what is behind today’s window?
An interesting snowy story from earlier in the year on its 100th anniversary:
American Doughboys versus Bolshevik Russians – this sounds an interesting piece of history to explore through game scenario, if you have suitable WW1 era troops in greatcoats. Doctor Zhivago stuff, this!
The Smithsonian article is partly based on this book:
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN on 2 December 2019
My FEMBruary Challenge Number 1 has been going well, to photograph, share and celebrate some of the female figures in my toy soldier collection.
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/fembruary-hobby-challenge-conversions/
Today’s figure combines the women’s right to vote Centenary on 6 February 2018 and the wider focus on women’s role in the war as part of WW100 and the First World War Centenary Partnership.
At the outbreak of war in 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), one of the leading voices for women’s suffrage, had firmly decided to embrace the war effort.
She halted their increasingly militant and destructive campaign for women’s suffrage for the duration of the war. This move divided her family and the suffragette movement.
Emmeline Pankhurst redirected her efforts to push for an increased role for women in support of the war, particularly in industrial jobs, so that women could directly help the war effort.
The “shell scandal” of lack of artillery shells and munitions for the British troops in 1915 saw a need to put more workers into the munitions factories to replace those male workers left for military service.
On March 17 1915 the Board of Trade set up the Women’s War Service Register to pair willing women with jobs in war industries. Some parts of the British government was not overly enthusiastic about the plan. By the end of 1915, only 8500 of the 42000 registered women had been matched to jobs.
On July 17 1915, Emmeline Pankhurst and the WSPU organized the Women’s Right to Serve march in London, in support of the hiring of women in the munitions industry, demanding the same pay as men.
This “Right To Serve” would doubly contribute to the war effort, both by producing munitions and freeing up men to serve on the front.
The Women’s Right to Serve march received direct support from Lloyd George’s Ministry of Munitions. Despite these efforts, hiring of women into jobs vacated by men via the government Register set up for the purpose remained lacklustre throughout the rest of 1915.
More about the women’s Right to Serve March at
Photographs at the National Archive of the Right to Serve March
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/britain1906to1918/g4/cs4/g4cs4s1a.htm
There is an interesting photograph on this Alexander Palace blog showing Emmeline Pankhurst with Maria Bochkariev.
“Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, who had arrived in Russia in June 1917, showed her appreciation of the wonderful sacrifice made by the women of the the Battalion of Death by becoming an ardent champion of Maria Bochkarieva. The latter, in turn, appreciated Mrs. Pankhurst’s sympathy, and a warm friendship sprang up between these two leaders of women.”
http://www.alexanderpalace.org/thompson/93pankhurst.html
Mrs Pankhurst and the Battalion of Death – There’s a FEMbruary double for you that I didn’t expect.
Time is running out with only a week left of FEMBruary, I’m not sure if my third FEMbruary challenge, converting a Mexican peasant woman figure into a Suffragette will be complete in a week. If only I could find an extension of the FEMbruary painting challenge into March somehow?
Maybe I could finish my suffragette over the next week or two. Aha! There’s always #MARCH, the MARCHing figure, MARCHing parade or MARCHing band painting challenge that I just thought of. Sweet Procrastination!
It is according to the blog of CupcakesandMachetes, also Women’s History Month in March, and so has already linked to blogger Imperial Rebel Ork, who was my accidental introduction to FEMbruary via the Suburban Militarism blog.
https://cupcakesandmachetes.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/blog-event-celebrate-the-ladies/
Women’s History Month is always held in March so that it coincides with the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8. In 2018, Women’s History Month will run from March 1 to March 31 and is marked in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
International Women’s Day (IWD) has occurred for well over a century, with the first March 8 IWD gathering supported by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. Prior to this the Socialist Party of America, United Kingdom’s Suffragists and Suffragettes, and further groups campaigned for women equality. Today, IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere. IWD is not country, group or organisation specific. Make IWD your day! – everyday! https://www.internationalwomensday.com
It probably started in 1908 / 1909 New York and has been on March 8th since 1913 http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/history.shtml
In 2011, former US President Barack Obama coined or proclaimed March to be ‘Women’s History Month’.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/international-womens-day-did-start-important/
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN on 21st FEMbruary 2018.
A comic postcard from 1911 with an interesting WW1 story on the back.
Crossposted from my occasional blog Sidetracked
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2018/01/13/territorial-terror/
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN 15 January 2018
Armistice and Remembrance Weekend – a suitable time to reflect, in this case on the WW1 Centenary, Poppy or Armistice Day 99 years on and a 104 year old book by H.G. Wells.
Written by H G Wells in 1913, being the final page of Little Wars.
Something to think about as we mark another 11th November 99 years on and another Remembrance Sunday.
The extended original quote also available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3691/3691-h/3691-h.htm
Posted by Mark, Man of TIN blog, November 11th and 12th, 2017
Interesting WW1 signalling and comms innovation blogpost with archive photographs and many interesting articles.
In some game scenarios, failure of interception in comms and orders may have a big or random effect on the game scenario outcome.
Your carrier pigeon or messenger dog is killed, your telephone lines are broken by shellfire, your advance orders are read by the opposing player, no signal to reinforce or retire is received so your troops fight on in the same position through counter attack after counter attack. All these are interesting random events that might affect a scenario outcome. All these were likely or real problems in WW1 communications such as at Passchendaele.
At last a use for all those wiring party troops, carrier pigeon troops and flag signallers in Airfix WW1 OO/HO infantry boxes.
Passchendaele article on written by Dr Elizabeth Bruton http://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/innovatingincombat/category/wireless-telegraph/
Royal Navy naval comms and SigInt in early WW1
Brief mention of the formative experience for J R R Tolkien of being a WW1 signals officer on the Western Front https://percyswar.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/more-communication-fullerphone/
A subject explored more in John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth, 2005. Historical events and historical figure gaming meets Fantasy!
Naval Raiding Party Gaming Scenario
An exciting WW1 naval raiding party scenario could be formed out of this interesting piece on Wireless Interception in WW1 based around coastal listening stations such as Hippisley Hut in Hunstanton Norfolk. Just what Marines are for!
A scenario with a chance to use my recently scrap built desert or coastal telegraph station or in fact any lighthouse model that you happen to have lying around:
https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2017/05/17/by-heliograph-and-semaphore
Anyway an interesting WWI website to read and ponder.
For the dedicated researcher of WW1 SigInt and Naval Signals you can now stay in Hippisley Hut http://www.norfolkcoastholidaycottages.co.uk/hippisley-hut-hunstanton
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, October 2017
TOYS FROM THE SCRAP-HEAP
An interesting toy soldier scrap to add to my scrapbook collection, dated roughly to 1919 / 1920 from the news items on the back.
Toys from the Scrap-heap
A discharged soldier of Deptford turns his ingenious hand to making toys from margarine boxes and various odds and ends , such as knitting needles.
It is an attractive castle that I’m sure any boy would be delighted to receive as a present. Lots of levels, bristling with field guns with a good parade space in front.
It has an unusual bridge style drawbridge, a full parade of toy soldiers and a tiny glimpse of (handmade?) toy battleships.
Rough photos of this clipping don’t show much detail, I shall try to scan it in more pixelated detail when next possible.
I wonder if the double or modern meaning of being on the employment scrap heap as an injured veteran facing the economic troubles and postwar crash of the 1920s and 1930s had quite happened yet. The photograph caption instead seems to applaud this discharged serviceman’s quiet determination to make something from nothing, of skill and industry well applied, as something to be proud of.
The unnamed Deptford soldier appears to be wearing on his lapel a regimental metal badge or possibly the silver badge issued to discharged or invalided soldiers.
Hopefully he found some therapy and income from his talents, as well as cheering many young children.
In the 1920s it is often said that toy soldier companies developed more ‘pacifist’, civilian or non-military ranges such as the Home Farm, railway figures, gardens and others. This change and these ranges are excellently covered in Norman Joplin’s brilliantly comprehensive The Great Book Of Hollow-Cast Figures (New Cavendish, 1993/99).
Toy Workshops for disabled and discharged war veterans
The same Joplin book features amongst the many manufacturers, an intriguing advert and some toy soldiers from Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener’s Workshop for injured soldiers, painting toy soldier castings from various manufacturers c. 1916
Well worth tracking down a copy of this well illustrated Joplin book.
Judging by the Dundee example, some of these workshops survived until very recently (2010) and may still exist? http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb254-ms319
After the First World War there must have been thousands of such injured veterans, competing for work during the difficult economic times of the 1920s and 1930s. Dolls houses, furniture and board games like Bombardo were made postwar alongside the wartime painting of toy soldiers.
The following websites cover more about the Lord Roberts Memorial Workshop:
http://www.dollshousespastandpresent.com/issue17june2013p4.htm
http://outofbattle.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/lord-roberts-memorial-workshops.html
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30087
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Lord_Roberts_Memorial_Workshops
More about Discharged and Demobilised Soldiers
A close up of the man’s lapel badge suggests that he may be a medically discharged soldier, rather than demobilised.
http://www.1914-1918.net/soldiers/swbrecords.html
http://www.1914-1918.net/demobilisation.htm
Posted by Mark, Man of TIN blog, December 2016.
Man of Tin blog 