Category Archives: 1916

All diary entries written in 1916.

Anna of the Five Towns

Cover ImageEnoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English writer and novelist. Anna of the Five Towns, first published in 1902, is one of his best-known works.

Anna Tellwright, daughter of a wealthy but miserly and dictatorial father, living in the Potteries area of Staffordshire. Her activities are strictly controlled by the Methodist church. The novel tells of Anna’s struggle for freedom and independence against her father’s restraints, and her inward battle between wanting to please her father and wanting to help Willie Price whose father, Titus Price, commits suicide after falling into debt.

Arthur Linfoot wrote that he had finished reading Anna of the Five Towns on 15th September 1916, while stationed at the military hospital at Méteren in Northern France.

8 September 1916; Friday

September 1916, , , , ,

Up shortly after 6.30. On duty all day. Received long letter from Joe and one from Mother telling me that George Crawford1 had enlisted. Fine day and good news from the front.

Fire at the house at the hospital. We were out all night at it. I got a job to watch the stuff we carried out of the ward. Got to sleep about 5 o’clock.

  1. George Crawford, of the Hendon Paper Works office, mentioned frequently in the 1914 diary (see footnote on 30 January 1914), according to an address in the 1917 diary entered the Army Veterinary Corps. See also all posts tagged “George Crawford” and George H. Crawford at Lives of the First World War. ↩

7 September 1916; Thursday

September 1916, , ,

Up at 6.30. Went to the C.C.S. and had tooth stopped. Fine day. Called at Y.M. in Bailleul and looked at some papers. Went over to the house at the top of the village with Duggins and had some supper. Running short of cash and Wood had to dig us out.

Heard that the Zeppelin1 was brought down by an airman named Robinson23 who had been presented with the V.C.

  1. “Zeppelin”: Continuing the story begun in the previous day’s diary entry. ↩

  2. Lt. William Leefe Robinson of the Royal Flying Corps (as it still was) was the first British pilot to shoot down a German airship over Britain during the First World War and was indeed given the V.C. for this act. He was himself shot down in 1917 in France by one of the Red Baron group, and was thought dead for around 2 months until a letter arrived from him at a PoW camp. He was repatriated in 1918 but died of influenza on 31 December 1918. ↩

  3. A similar incident is recorded on 7 June 1915 when Sub-Lt. Reginald A J Warneford RNAS brought down a Zeppelin over Ghent in Belgium by bombing it in the air. ↩