Tag Archives: Charlie

Charlie was Arthur Linfoot’s younger brother. See the Family page for more details.

22 May 1915; Saturday

May 1915, , ,

At work as usual1. Finished about 2 o’clock. Called for papers in the afternoon. Walked round Grindon with Charlie and Willie Whittaker at night. Fine night. Played the piano a bit.

Terrible Railway Accident at Gretna Green2. Troop train, goods train and express all smashed up and an appalling death roll. Daily Mail3 burned at Stock Exchange.

  1. Saturday morning working was of course normal – as it remained until the 1960s. ↩

  2. “Terrible Railway Accident at Gretna Green”: the Quintinshill rail disaster remains the worst ever UK rail accident – 246 injured, est. 230 killed (uncertain because regimental records being carried in the train were destroyed in fire caused by gas lighting in wooden carriages); troop train (carrying men bound for the Dardanelles) hit local passenger train (wrongly shunted onto main line), was then hit by express train; fire ignited two nearby goods trains. Two signalmen were convicted of culpable homicide (broadly equivalent to the English offence of manslaughter; the trial took place in Scotland). ↩

  3. The Daily Mail was burned (and its circulation fell by a quarter of a million) because of its personal attack on Field-­Marshal Lord Kitchener, who was still immensely popular with the public as Secretary of State for War. The proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, was running a campaign against the Government’s conduct of the War, mainly based on a shortage of shells to which the Generals in France claimed their lack of success was due. ↩

8 May 1915; Saturday

May 1915, , , ,

At work as usual1. Finished in decent time. Met Charlie in the station. At work at night. Went to Roker.

Heavy loss of life in Lusitania2 disaster. Got news at night of loss of “Maori”3 off the Belgian Coast.

  1. Saturday morning working was of course normal – as it remained until the 1960s. ↩

  2. Lusitania: See notes on 7 May. ↩

  3. “Maori”: RN destroyer, built 1909, sunk by a mine on 7 May 1915 off Zeebrugge. ↩

18 April 1915; Sunday

April 1915, , ,

At chapel and Sunday School as usual. Played organ in the chapel in the afternoon, and managed rather badly. Had usual walks. A boy sang at night, and a lady, and Charlie sang in the anthem. Both the other turns were off. Fine night.

Submarine E 15 lost in Dardanelles1.

  1. On 16 April 1915 E15 sailed from her base at Moudros and attempted to break through the Dardanelles to the Sea of Marmara. Early in the morning of 17 April, the submarine, having dived too deep and become caught in the current, ran aground some ten miles (16 km) in near Kepez Point directly under the guns of Fort Dardanus. E15 was (after some difficulty) eventually sunk by allied forces in order to ensure that she did not fall into enemy hands. ↩

14 April 1915; Wednesday

April 1915, , , , ,

At work as usual. German Air Raid on North East Coast1. One Zeppelin passed over Blyth, Wallsend and South Shields and over the sea again. No lives lost, very little damage done. Mother and Gertie down at Rowe’s. Joe and I went out for a walk and found that all the electric lights were out and the cars2 stopped in the streets. Charlie working until after mid-­night and brought us news what it was.

  1. Wikipedia’s summary of Zeppelin raids in 1915 notes only that “two Navy raids failed due to bad weather on 14 and 15 April.” ↩

  2. “Cars”, as noted previously, means “tram-­cars” at this period – powered through overhead electric cables. ↩