Category Archives: 1916

All diary entries written in 1916.

31 December 1916; Sunday

December 1916,

Up about 7 o’clock and on duty as usual. Kept busy all day. Managed to get away at 7 o’clock at night and went to the Y M service. It was very good and the parson preached from the text “Fear not”1. The last hymn “For all the saints”2 went very well indeed. Slept out the year. McGowan was drunk and made a collection to buy some bottles of beer.

THE END3

  1. Fear not: Probably Isaiah 41:14; “Fear not, thou worm Jacob and ye men of Israel; I will help thee,” saith the Lord and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. ↩

  2. For All the Saints: a processional hymn by the Anglican Bishop of Wakefield, William Walsham How, first printed in Hymns for Saints’ Days, and Other Hymns, by Earl Nelson, 1864. Since 1906, this hymn has usually been sung to the tune Sine Nomine (without name) by Ralph Vaughan Williams. ↩

  3. It was ALL’s habit to write “THE END”, or some variation thereof, on the last day of each diary; q.v. 1914, 1915. ↩

28 December 1916; Thursday

December 1916, ,

Up as usual. My first free day off. Spent it at the Y M writing letters to Mr Eaves, Sister Annie1 and home. Heard a speech and a bit of a debate in the Y M last thing.

  1. Sister Annie may have been a deaconess associated with one or more churches in Sunderland, including the South Durham Street United Methodist Free Church, where ALL was a member. Her name continues to appear in the diaries occasionally. ↩