Harry and Billy or Napoleon the penguin remembered in our most popular blogpost so far

Harry Munro, the now named ‘Keeper with King Penguin 1914’ (as described on a recent London Zoo postcard I was given) Copyright ZSL / London Zoo/ F.W. Bond

The poignant story of Harry Munro ZSL London Zoo keeper killed or missing in action on 29 September 1915 and the King Penguin (nicknamed ‘Billy’ in the press) has touched many people and received over 1500 hits or readers over  its first few days  around the world.

Thanks to all of you who read it or passed it on to others. Harry Munro is definitely not forgotten 100 years after his death.

This has become our new highest most read story in the shortest time since Armistice in November each year.

Since posting on the 29 September (the centenary anniversary) I have been tracing the penguin’s story, starting with  an interesting picture of Princess Mary with a King Penguin was taken in 1911 by the photographer (possibly Lewis Medland) of this image from Queen Mary’s Album in the Royal Collection. It has also,  like Harry Munro the Keeper With King Penguin, been used as a postcard by ZSL London Zoo.

This Princess Mary and Penguin photo is published on page 246 in London Zoo from old photographs  1852-1914 (2nd edition) by Bartlett Society member  and zoo historian John Edwards. This fascinating 2012 book is still available from ZSL London Zoo’s online shop on Amazon.co.uk and other booksellers, well worth buying.

Interestingly the picture of Harry Munro and Penguin doesn’t feature in John Edward’s book as his book is designed to complement the historic photos already published in  Golden Days (Duckworth 1976) the photographic history of London Zoo covering 1914 to 1939 (also still available second hand via Amazon and others)

The photo (possibly from Queen Mary’s Album) shows King George V and Queen Mary on a Royal  Visit with Princess Mary on 4 June 1911, greeting London Zoo’s only King Penguin.

This King Penguin appears to be named and identified by John Edwards as “Napoleon”, a grander name than the news picture of Keeper Munro with “Billy the famous Zoo Penguin” shown in the 16/11/1915 Daily Graphic reprinted picture of the missing Keeper Munro.

The ZSL London Zoo postcard of Harry Munro that started this story off for me. On display in our Tropical House display case for the World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo, below a short panel about Harry Munro’s life.

John Edwards notes on p.246 of London Zoo from Old Photographs:

“the King Penguin known as Napoleon was the only one in the Zoo at that time, having been presented on 11 February 1911 by Dr Clemente Onelli, the very capable director of Buenos Aires Zoo (1904-24). He died on 15 September 1914.”

So this seems to be the same King penguin pictured with Harry Munro.

Was the King Penguin called Napoleon or Billy?

Is this a press invention or keeper nickname, different from his official house name?

The naming of animals goes back traditionally  as far as Genesis and Adam, and No-ah doubt it went on in the Ark too.

I know from long working in zoos that this is still very common, what a keeper nicknames an animal can be quite different from what the official record keeper, previous zoo or enterprising press and marketing department have christened this same animal. Its name in the Crib Room or keeper’s staff room may vary quietly from that used in the Marketing Office.

Princess  Mary (1897- 1965) shown in the photograph with ‘Napoleon’ was well known in WW1 for her interest in nursing, women’s services and the comforts of soldiers.

There is a short Wikipedia biography: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Princess_Royal_and_Countess_of_Harewood

This was expressed most famously through the Princess Mary’s Christmas Boxes sent in December 1914  to each serving sailor, airman or soldier like Harry Munro.

Wikipedia / Simon Speed picture of a Princess Mary 1914 box.

So hopefully Harry enjoyed the smokes and chocolate out of his Christmas tin in the last year and Christmas of his life, away from home  a week or so before he embarked for France

Napoleon or Billy was sadly dead by then, reputedly on the 15th September 1915, around the time of Harry’s enlistment and absence from the zoo.

Harry Munro would be missing or dead just over a year later.

Harry’s  name stayed – hopefully? – as ‘missing’ on the typed list that  I saw pasted into the London Zoo Daily Occurrences Book (now in the ZSL archive). It remained as ‘missing’ well into the 1916 typed list of staff on active service.

Reactions to the  photograph

I have been interested in how different people react to this photograph from amongst zoo staff and animal management students, so have been dropping the picture into conversations and teaching recently. The equality of eye level and ease or affection between them are often what are commented on, unprompted.

I put it up on screen between talks at a recent bird keepers meeting at Newquay Zoo, so Harry Munro and his penguin were there in spirit 100 years on. Sadly on a busy day I didn’t get a chance to ask the bird keepers from other zoos what they thought of it.

You can use the comments form to contact us with your thoughts on the photograph, we’d love to hear from you.

Suitable Memorials

If I named a rose, it would be for Walter Morland of Kew Gardens and RBGE Edinburgh, lost at Gallipoli (1915), mentioned in this previous 2013 WW1 blogpost:

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/such-is-the-price-of-empire-the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-in-the-first-world-war/

If I had the price of a zoo statue, it would probably be of Harry Munro with his King Penguin (pictured on the postcard) or on the Daily Graphic photo watering his Penguin.

Something along the lines of the Winnie Statue, now relocated near the ZSL War Memorial.

Along with the Animals in War memorial statue in London has no human figures, just a wartime ark if different companion animals large and small.

A similar lovely statue of Man and animal can be found in the Wojtek the WW2 Soldier Bear statue near Edinburgh Zoo http://www.wojtekmemorialtrust.com/

ZSL London Statue of Winnie the Bear donated as a WW1 Regimental Mascot (inspiration for Winnie the Pooh) and his Canadian handler. Image: Mark Norris, 2014.

Harry Munro and Billy or Napoleon, Remembered.

London Zoo staff will be remembering Harry Munro and other  lost colleagues of WW1 and WW2 during the Armistice / Remembrance silences this November: https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/remembering-lost-wartime-staff-of-zsl-london-zoo-in-ww1/

Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.

Remembering Driver Arthur William Bugg died 2 November 1915

Arthur William Bugg’s picture.Source: from The WW1 Pictorial Roll of Honour, http://www.vic.ww1anzac.com/bu.html

Remembering Australian Arthur William Bugg of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne staff who died on active service on or around  2 November 1915.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/buggs-life-and-death-royal-botanic-gardens-melbourne-staff-memorial-tree/

Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne staff memorial tree (Photo by Graham Saunders via Monuments Australia website)

His Bugg family relatives met at the memorial tree earlier this year:

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/54606/

Arthur died at Heliopolis, Egypt on 2nd November 1915 aged 20 as a result of meningitis.

Cairo War Memorial Cemetery (image CWGC website)

He is buried in the Cairo War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt and is also remembered on the headstone of his maternal grandparents, William and Ellen Currell, in St. Kilda Cemetery, Melbourne. He is also remembered on panel Number 181 of the Australian National War Memorial.

Arthur William Bugg, remembered.

Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne staff memorial tree plaque (Photo by Graham Saunders via Monuments Australia website)

Posted on 4 November 2015 (2 days late due to a scheduling error) by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.

Chessington Zoo Blitzed 2 October 1940 – eyewitness accounts

Two wartime friends reunited again after nearly 75 years, 2014 – evacuee Peter Pollard (left) and Derek Witney, Chessington Zoo staff child (right) Photograph: Derek Witney

A chance conversation with the Hart family about their ‘zoo evacuee father / grandfather’  whilst picking crops in  our wartime garden as part of our Junior Keeper experience back in 2008 led me to the story of Peter Pollard, Derek Witney – and the tragic story of Chessington Zoo on 2nd October 1940.

These are some of the previously unpublished memories I have been sent by Peter and his sister Wendy, along with the story of Derek Witney, wartime Chessington and Paignton Zoo staff child.

Ladies first …

Peter and Wendy Pollard, Chessington Zoo 1940 (Pollard family album)

Wendy Gothard (nee Pollard): 1940 Chessington memory

“As I was only four when we lived at Chessington Zoo in the Summer of 1940, my memories could best be described as snapshots, but they are very clear. I was allowed complete freedom to play around the zoo all day long, without any adult supervision, and apart from scraped knees I came to no harm.

I loved the rehearsals for the circus. I would sit on the bench closest to the ring, all on my own – magic. Sometimes there would be cubs born to the big cats, and I shall never forget sitting on the ground and having a cub carefully settled on my lap for a cuddle.

The slides in the playground both thrilled me and scared me to bits. They were very high, and of course even taller for a small person. The older children would go down head first, but I never managed that.

Our caravan in the corner of the field was amazingly quite small. With gas mantle lighting the temperature ranged from ninety odd degrees near the ceiling to freezing at floor level. My mother would stand ironing in her bra and sheepskin boots. In the floor there was a small trapdoor which my parents would open for ventilation until an air raid warden came knocking saying he could see the light from a long way off. With several windows it was difficult not to have a single chink of light showing.

I remember well the night of the bombing when the big air raid shelter was hit.

The small brick shelter is clear in my mind, but I have no picture of the big shelter. The next day I was forbidden to go the zoo, and I knew something terrible had happened there, so perhaps my mind blotted it out.

Later my mother told me that the bomb rolled down the steps, but they did not tell me that my playmate [Derek Witney],* the son of the zoo manager, was among those killed.

We did not know whether the Germans had just unloaded a few bombs on something suspicious or were actually aiming for a munitions factory just up the road, but my father was in a great hurry to move us away from the zoo in case they returned.

However, one of the bombs had made a crater in the lane from the zoo to the main road, and he had a big problem getting the caravan out. The animals were evacuated to [Whipsnade].* They were taken away two by two , an unusual sight as the elephants plodded along the main road.

My time at the zoo is among my most cherished memories. It was my garden, my playground ,and even when the visitors were there, it was still my zoo. Fortunately, they went home.”

Wendy Gothard (nee Pollard), Chichester, December 2008.

Wendy Pollard and Derek Witney, Chessington Zoo 1940 (Pollard family archive)

Researching this story,  I struggled to reconcile this memory with any WW2 casualty lists, but as it later proved it was not Derek Witney who was killed on the night but another of her zoo playmates. Derek Witney thinks the elephants were headed somewhere else- Devon!

Aerial detail of Chessington Zoo from Alan Ashby’s We Went to the Zoo Today: The Golden Age of Zoo Postcards (2009)

Chessington Memory  – Peter Pollard (born 1930)

By the end of August 1939 I was approaching my ninth birthday, my sister Wendy was five years younger and we lived with our parents in a three year old detached house by the River Thames at Richmond. However when war was declared I was not actually there, having been sent for safety to The Linns, a 1000 acre dairy farm outside Dumfries, owned by my Uncle Alex and Aunt Kathleen. It was in a window seat at The Linns on 3rd September 1939 that I listened to the historic broadcast by Neville Chamberlain which ended “and I have to tell you now that no such undertaking (to withdraw from Poland) has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany” …

The rest of the family were not cowering from the bombs in the bolt hole under the stairs. My father let the house for the duration of the war to a Czech diplomat called Pospisil, bought a small caravan and sited it in the car park at Chessington Zoo which I think was still open but very quiet. Later on a bomb did land on Richmond Palace across the river and the blast damaged our house, but fortunately it was empty at the time.

My rough sketch notes from my conversation with Derek Witney on 1940s locations, identified with Derek on a more recent 1960s 1970s map of Chessington  Zoo from the online Chessington Zoo.info website

Chessington Zoo – 1939/40 memory by Peter Pollard 

In 1939 the zoo proper occupied the same area as it does now, although the animals and attractions were very different. There was one small field for parking on the North Boundary, whereas now there is parking for thousands of cars at both North and South ends. At the heart of the Zoo was “The Burnt Stub”, a beautiful old manor house occupied by the owner Reginald Goddard.

The Southeast quadrant of the site was mainly a vast playground of high slides, oscillating roundabouts and swing boats.

In the centre of the site, and immediately in front (i.e. South) of “The Burnt Stub” was a  small permanent circus with stabling and props rooms, and also the terminus and workshops for the miniature railway. This was no land train but a genuine miniature locomotive, all steam and polished brass, which took visitors around the site on narrow gauge tracks.

Just to the west of the Burnt Stub was an odd construction, a cafeteria room with large cage attached to the left and right hand sides for lions and tigers respectively, while beyond that was a small lake for water birds like flamingos.

I returned from [school at Dumfries Academy in] Scotland in the Spring of 1940, and had free access to all parts of the zoo, even the private areas. This was quite perfect for a boy of nine. I helped to feed all the wild animals, and the ponies in the circus. I helped backstage in the circus during the performances, hosed down the elephants, helped to polish and maintain the rolling stock and rode the rails whenever I wanted., and spent hours in the huge playground.

But it didn’t last.

Satellite mapping of Chessington Zoo Bombsight.org 1940/41 bomb mapping

The Chessington Raid – memory by Peter Pollard 

There were two air raid shelters in the zoo.

The first was a small brick surface shelter like a tool store, with room for four camp beds, which was used by Mr. Goddard and his family. It was not blast resistant.

The second was a proper shelter, excavated four feet into the ground and covered over with arched corrugated sheeting and the excavated earth to five feet above ground. There was  enough room for about twenty people, sleeping on wooden shelves. This was where my family and I spent our nights, sharing with the zoo keepers and their families. It was by uncomfortable, with no privacy and little sanitation.

One day in the summer of 1940 Mr Goddard who owned a second zoo in Paignton  [* Goddard had entered a wartime business arrangement with Herbert Whitley at Paignton Zoo]  to which he had transferred some animals, told my father that he would be making a short inspection visit to Devon, and invited my family to use his shelter while he was away.

That same night a German Bomber flew over and mistaking the zoo buildings for a nearby army camp in the moonlight, dropped four bombs.

The first breached the railings of the water bird enclosure, releasing dazed birds to wander round the Zoo.

The second blew out the cafeteria, leaving the big cats on either side uninjured and angry but fortunately still secure.

The third landed on the driveway and did little damage but the fourth penetrated straight through the roof of the big shelter, exploded and killed every body inside, including our friend ‘Derek Witney’.* [Here Peter has made a fortunate memory slip after 70 years]

Our family in the flimsy brick shelter was unscathed, and I didn’t even wake up.

Chessington wartime memory by Peter Pollard.

Bombsight.org 1940 /41 bomb map of Chessington Zoo with one bomb clearly on the zoo site. Image : bombsight.org

The aftermath – a memory by Peter Pollard 

My father decided that we were still too close to the Luftwaffe bombing campaign on London and hastily removed us to a farm at Christmas Common in Oxfordshire where we had only well water and a two mile walk each way back to the shops in Watlington.

This was a bit too primitive, and we came back as far as a farm at Hedgerley, between Beaconsfield and Slough. The farm was owned by the Halse family and it was Brenda Halse who taught me how to trap and skin rabbits. It was still a two mile walk each way to the good shops in Beaconsfield but at least it was sometimes (depending on the weather) possible to get a bus into Farnham Common where I attended a small primary school for the Autumn term of 1940.

In January 1941 I was sent off to Board at Derby Grammar School, which was settled in a holiday camp in the wilds of Derbyshire near Matlock. But that is another story …

Previously unpublished Chessington wartime memory by Peter and Wendy Pollard, written up for the World War Zoo Gardens project November 2008 (with thanks to the Hart family).

The dustjacket cover to Frank Foster’s circus autobiography Pink Coats, Spangles and Sawdust (Stanley Paul, late 1940s) Image: Mark Norris, private collection

Frank Foster’s account

Frank Foster, “Pink Coat, Spangles and Sawdust”, published by Stanley Paul 1949?

Frank Foster was a circus performer, ringmaster and equestrian director who wrote one of the few accounts of wartime Chessington Zoo. R.S. Goddard (or ‘RSG ‘ as Derek Witney still calls him) died very suddenly at Christmas 1946 and few archive records have survived throughout the changing ownership of Chessington Zoo.

P.158. “After we had arrived back at Chessington twenty-one bombs fell in the grounds. One was a direct hit on a shelter and killed three attendants.

Two high explosive bombs dropped within a hundred yards of the elephants quarters. With lions, tigers, polar bears and many other animals to look after, this was an anxious time.

Apart from the possibility of their being killed there was the danger that cages might be blasted open and occupants escape into the surrounding countryside.

Fortunately this has only happened to the penguins’ cage: their quarters were completely demolished.

Searching in the debris for their remains, we were astonished to see them walking towards us, like Charlie Chaplins, along the miniature railway track.

They’d been blown clear and without hurt. Later came the buzz bombs …”

These blitzed penguins are possibly some of the ‘dazed water birds’ that Peter Pollard mentioned. (Derek Witney  chatting in October 2015 also thinks this might be a bit of characteristic circus story embroidery by Goddard or Foster).

Frank Foster’s 1949 book is out of print and hard to obtain, so I have scanned the 4 relevant pages about wartime:

Tracing the Chessington Zoo Casualties of 2 October 1940

For a while I could find no trace of a Derek Whitney being killed at Chessington Zoo or a bombing date. Now thanks to the CWGC records being online, I have found the identity of the child and other zoo staff sadly killed that day.

The three casualties recorded CWGC as “Died at Chessington Zoo Shelter” on 2nd October 1940 by the Municipal Borough of Surbiton are:

1. Annie Page, aged 37, the Cottage, Zoo, Chessington. Daughter of Mrs Todd, 128 Woodside Road, Westborough, Guildford, wife of Reginald Page.

 

2. Ronald Page, aged 10, son of Reginald and Annie Page. 

 

3. Elizabeth Arnold, aged 54, of the Lodge, Chessington Zoo, wife of George Arnold.

Several family photos of the Page family, Ronald, Reginald and Annie can be found on the Ancestry website.

A BBC audio clip of Peter Pollard 2010

There is a short sound clip of Peter from 2010 online talking about the bombing on  a BBC Radio Cornwall report as well as a brief paragraph:

“For a while Peter Pollard found himself living in a caravan in the car park of Chessington Zoo at the age of nine in the summer of 1940. He shared his memories with the Zoo for the exhibition.

Reflecting on the time Peter said: “It was wonderful for a small boy of nine. I had a complete run of the zoo, I helped in the circus, maintained a miniature railway, they had an enormous playground there, it was perfect, it was heaven.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cornwall/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8539000/8539314.stm

Chessington Zoo advert 1937, Zoo and Animal Magazine (Image source: Mark Norris private collection)

Researching and confirming this wartime story

Curiously the Pollard’s  9 & 5 year old memories seem to suggest that they quickly left Chessington for safety somewhere else and were told their playmate ‘Derek Whitney‘ [sp] was killed in the bombing.

What they did not know until 70 years later was that Derek had left that day with his father, the park’s engineer, to take some animals and the miniature railway down to Paignton Zoo, a story Derek confirmed when he visited me at Newquay Zoo last year. Leopards, lions and tigers were mentioned as travelling down. Mr. Witney was there on behalf of Chessington Zoo’s  Mr. Goddard  to help Mr. Herbert  Whitley open his  zoo up again (see late August 1940 press cuttings) from its early wartime closed state.

The Miniature Railway by the way is still going strong at Paignton Zoo. Mr Witney, Derek’s father, was the Chessington Zoo Engineer and organised taking one train and the track down to Paignton Zoo. According to Derek, this train  returned at the end of the war when the animals returned. It was obviously popular as the miniature railway was reconstructed postwar. Life in wartime Paignton Zoo sounded a little makeshift, the family lived in a caravan for about a year.

I first had a feeling that the Pollard’s account was slightly wrong after 70 years when I couldn’t find a CWGC or death record for a ‘Derek Whitney’.

Having been reading the two Chessington history books by the late  C.H. Keeling of the Bartlett Society and some further research on this little reported 1940 incident (compared to the buzz bombs of 1944), it suggests that a “Derek Whitney of Burgh Heath Surrey, who literally grew up around Chessington’s Circus” (p. 29 , The Chessington Story, CH Keeling) had met Clinton Keeling  the author to talk about the 1935 Chessington Circus blaze where some circus horses were killed. So unless Clinton Keeling had met a ghost …

This set me thinking that something in the Pollard stories did not tie up with what happened and led to reuniting Peter and Derek 70 plus years later!

The ‘forgotten name’ of their playmate casualty was young Ronald Page.

Herbert Whitley as Derek Witney would have known him. Source: Paignton Zoo

Meeting up with Derek Witney and family to hear their stories

In 2014 I was lucky enough to meet up several times with Derek Witney at Newquay Zoo and  also when he came in the company of wife and grandson to my wartime zoo and botanic gardens Kew Guild talk at Kew Gardens. It was odd to be able to put his picture of being reunited with Peter Pollard on screen, tell his story and then point to Derek in the audience!

The Witney family visiting me at Newquay Zoo, full of a lifetime of stories of working with animals, 2014. (Derek Witney and his wife on the right) Image: Mark Norris

Derek told me more about his meeting with Peter, who is now suffering from health problems. Derek also remembers meeting Herbert Whitley wearing a battered pair of old white plimsolls at Paignton Zoo (Whitley was famous for his scruffy or eccentric dress sense). Derek’s other  family memories of this period include:

“Eight or nine people in the shelter that night it was hit included my grandmother who was keeping house while we were on our way down to Paignton with a convoy of animals having left that morning.

The alarm was raised by two of the zoo staff who were in another part of the shelter.

I was not aware of any animals going to Whipsnade for the duration of the war but this could well be true.

What I am absolutely certain is that the Elephants remained at the park and worked in the circus during the whole of the war. I know this to be true as I looked after them as part of my duties in my school holidays.

Frank Foster came to  Chessington at the start of the war from Bertram Mills Circus along with some of the animal trainers and remained there until the end of hostilities when he and some of the artists returned to the Bertram Mills circus while at Chessington  Frank was responsible for the circus smooth running only.”

Derek Witney, personal comments, 2014

As we pored over past maps of Chessington Zoo in the past (http://www.chessingtonzoo.info/zoo-maps.html) to locate where the shelters were, Derek mentioned that the surviving brick built shelters remained for many years in various roles such as tool sheds, something Peter said they looked much like.

“I hope that this will further inform you of life at Chessington”: I am currently chatting to Derek Witney about more of his wartime memories of Paignton Zoo.

This temporary wartime expedient business  merger between Goddard’s Chessington Zoo and Whitley’s Primley / Paignton Zoo is not a well-studied area and I will post more on this blog as I uncover more.

“You Will Enjoy Yourselves Here!” These documents remain in the Archive at Paignton Zoo and we will post further research about them in time.

Derek Witney, one of the remaining Chessington / Paignton Zoo wartime staff children,  mentioned to people after my Kew Guild talk  about the GIs at Paignton Zoo and their big Anti Aircraft AA guns, being there at Paignton Zoo protecting the Clennon Gorge GI camp in the run up to D-Day.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/war-and-the-whitleys-para-medics-peacocks-and-paignton-zoo/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/d-day-1944-and-the-disappearing-peacocks-and-ducks-of-wartime-paignton-zoo/

This was further supported by Dave Ellacott, Reserves Warden, Primley park and Clennon Gorge, who mentioned

“As for GI leftovers I have not found anything which would have hinted at their presence.  Google earth makes a claim that there was a gun emplacement in Primley Park which makes sense as this is on an elevated position with good 360 views of Torbay.”

Lots more stories to follow …

Remembering Ronald and Annie Page and Elizabeth Arnold, “Died at Chessington Zoo Shelter”, 2 October 1940. 

Research posted by Mark Norris at Newquay Zoo, World War Zoo Gardens Project.

Remembering Henry Munro London Zoo Penguin Keeper missing 29 September 1915

Remembering Billy and Harry.

The Zoological Society of London war memorial bears the inscription:

In memory of employees who were killed on active service in the Great War 1914-1919

Staff casualties are listed on the plaque in order of date of death. The first of these is:

29.9.1915 Henry Munro 4 Middlesex Regt ZSL Keeper

I first saw Henry  pictured on a postcard from London Zoo given to me by a zoo colleague and I became intrigued by the unnamed “King Penguin with Keeper 1914”.

Harry Munro, the now named ‘Keeper with King Penguin 1914’ (as described on a recent London Zoo postcard I was given) Copyright ZSL / London Zoo/ F.W. Bond

The Photograph

Look at the photograph again. Really look at it. Look at it carefully in detail. What attracts your attention?

It would be fascinating to know how different people react to this photo – a photographer from a technical point of view or that of another zoo keeper?

On a recent Twitter #ThrowbackThursday pic.twitter.com/7Zv155kWSe @zsllondonzoo 30 January 1914 release of this picture by ZSL, there were a few brief comments including someone who misread the caption: “King Penguin with keeper Harry Munro (1914), who was sadly lost in action during WWI” to reply (hopefully tongue in cheek) that “He was a brave penguin who fought valiantly for his country” !!!

Maybe  you can use the comments box at the end of the blogpost to tell me your view of this picture, I’d be interested to hear.

To me this is a fantastic photograph, considering the photographic technology of the time. It’s one of my favourite zoo archive photos.

Having myself spent around 20 years working with zoo animals, having on many occasions sitting with them and other keepers to keep the animal still enough to be photographed, I know how difficult this is today, let alone with the cameras of 1914.

I have looked at this photograph many, many times since I first started the World War Zoo Gardens research project. What do I find so fascinating about it?

It is beautifully framed, the keeper at the same height as the penguin, so somehow equal. Many photographs emphasise the height or short size of penguins measured against a keeper bending down to it. Height implies dominance or mastery. It is a species photo of a penguin, but with the photographer’s choice to include the keeper. This photo can be read as being about equality or friendliness.

The Penguin

We should not forget that in 1914 this is almost certainly a wild caught King Penguin, one of few that would have been around in European zoos at the time. These were usually brought back from Salvesen whaling or from polar expeditions, such as the famous penguin groups established at this time at Edinburgh Zoo in its first year.

In  1914, the year that this was taken, Ernest Shackleton was still on his Antarctic expedition, Captain Scott was only a year or two dead from the race to the Pole in 1912, and the extreme journey of Apsley Cherry Garrard to retrieve Emperor Penguin Eggs from the South Polar sea ice nesting grounds nearly cost him has life, recounted in his book The Worst Journey in the World.

This was a box office animal, a very topical and popular unusual bird, worthy of a photograph. A King Penguin (possibly the same one?) is pictured on another London Zoo postcard meeting royalty and Princess Mary around this date.

Getting down to penguin level holds some risks. Putting your shiny eyes near or at penguin beak height is unwise. Many press photographers have asked myself  or other zoo colleagues to hold penguins or other injured seabirds at our face height to get a better cropped head shot. This is something we have to warn them against, if we value our eyes against that powerfully muscled head and neck with fish-hook of a beak.

The Keeper’s hand is blurred with movement, perhaps caught in the act of either stroking the Penguin to reassure it in this unfamiliar setting, or to keep it in place for the photograph and at a safe distance.

Is it a portrait of the Keeper as well as the Penguin? It is to me a very purposeful gaze – the Keeper’s attention is fully focussed on this bird, rather than smiling to the camera. Difficult to tell what mood the keeper is in – has he been kept too long doing this by the photographer, as sometimes happens? Is the penguin being cooperative? What mood is the penguin in? It’s also difficult to judge the keeper’s character from the photograph, but F.W. Bond as London Zoo’s  photographer and staff member would have known the other staff reasonably well.

The clothes

I like the slightly naval look to the informal uniform, not the usual keeper double breasted suit and peaked cap that London Zoo staff were pictured in at the time, but a much more relaxed waistcoat, scarf, and the oddly modern looking boots.  Was it a hot day the picture was taken?

I have seen these boots  advertised in garden magazines of the period, very similar to the clogs worn by working gardeners and no doubt good in the wet slippery conditions a penguin or sea lion keeper would work in. They are pretty much the Edwardian / Georgian equivalent to today’s steel toe-capped keeper safety boots.

It is also resonant as a picture of a youngish man in uniform in 1914. Soon many such photographs would be taken in different circumstances, once war was declared in August. Their jobs in many workplaces, including London Zoo, would increasingly be taken by women until the war ended (see the Mary Evans picture blog below for an early WW1 female keeper).

The background

Looking into the background, unlike in many zoo photos of the time, there are no crowds of visitors around in the background. Nobody is  sitting on the ornate metal bench, the path is swept clear of litter. Is this photograph taken before the zoo day begins, the end of a long day or a quiet Sunday when the zoo was mostly the preserve of ZSL fellows rather than public?

Another photograph

I was excited looking at London Zoo’s Zoo at War 2014 exhibition in their old elephant tunnel under the road (put together by Adrain Taylor) to see another photograph of Harry and his favourite penguin.

The Daily Graphic coverage of a “Missing Soldier-Keeper”, 16 November 1915 mentions more about this keeper – penguin relationship. It reads:

“Billy” the famous King Penguin at the Zoo died shortly after his keeper, Munro, enlisted at the beginning of the war. Munro is now reported missing from his regiment. It is hoped he may be a prisoner.

So we have a name for the King penguin as well as the keeper too.

The Keeper

But who was this  ‘unnamed’ Keeper with King Penguin?

Henry Munro was the first of the London Zoo staff to be killed on active service, 29 September 1915.

On the CWGC site and UK Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919 database (1921), ZSL Keeper Henry Albert or ‘Harry’ Munro is registered as born in the St. Pancras Middlesex area and enlisting in the Army in Camden Town, Middlesex (the area near Regent’s Park Zoo).

Quite old in military terms, Harry appears to have volunteered or enlisted most likely in 31 August 1914; conscription for such older men was only introduced in 1916.

Munro served as Private G/2197 with the local regiment, 4th Battalion, The Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own).

Henry (Albert) Munro served in France and Flanders from 3rd January 1915 and died  aged 39 in action on or around 29th September 1915.

 

The Ypres Memorial (Menin Gate). Image: CWGC website

Harry has no known grave, being remembered on panel 49-51 amongst the 54,000 Commonwealth casualties of 1914 to 1917 on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial in Flanders, Belgium.

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/918293/MUNRO,%20HENRY

His death occurred a few days after September 25th 2015 saw the British first use of poison gas during the Battle of Loos after the first German use in April. The Battle of Loos took place alongside the French and Allied offensive in Artois and Champagne, following the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April to May 5th 1915 onwards).

Henry Munro served from 31 August 1914 to 5 January 1915 in Britain, and then with the 5th and then 4th Middlesex Regiment as part of the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) from the 6th January 1915 in France until his death on 29th September 1915

Much of the detail for this story comes from his Military History Sheet, and WW1 Army Service Papers (“Burnt Documents”) that fortunately have survived. Here he is listed as a “Zoological Attendant” This early service gained him the 1915 star, along with the standard Victory and British medal.

According to his service record, Henry enlisted at Camden Town on 31 August 1914. Posted as a Private, 5th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment GS (General Service) on 2 October 1914, by the 6 January 1915, Henry was posted to the 4th Battalion with whom he fought and was posted missing 29 September 1915.

Land, air and sea 

I first came across the keeper’s name as ‘Harry’ Munro as it is listed in Golden Days, a 1976 book of London Zoo photographs (ZSL image C-38771X?) This same book also lists Harry as intriguingly being involved in “the army, airships and anti-submarine patrols”. Airships from coastal bases were used for anti submarine patrols because of their longer range and stamina than the flimsy aircraft of the time.

Nothing more appears on his service papers about this air and sea activity. I have little more information on this intriguing entry at present but the London Zoo typed staff lists of men of active service list him as ‘missing’ well into their 1917 Daily Occurence Book records. Many of the identifications of staff in the photographs in Golden Days were from the memory of long retired staff.

Harry Munro’s name is the first of the names of the fallen ZSL staff from the First World War, ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, 2010

Harry Munro is pictured with a King penguin but is listed on his staff record card as a keeper of sea lions. Intriguingly, several London Zoo histories list secret and unsuccessful attempts made early in the war to track submarines using trained seals or sealions. Airships were also used for U-boat spotting. I wonder if and how Harry was involved?

On the Mary Evans Picture blog “London Zoo at War” there features an interesting reprinted picture from the Mary Evans archive:

http://blog.maryevans.com/2013/04/london-zoo-at-war.html

“In March 1915, The Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News featured this picture, showing a zookeeper in khaki, returning to his place of work while on leave to visit the seals, and to feed them some fish in what would be a rather charming publicity photograph.”

This soldier, according to Adrian Taylor at ZSL, working on their WW1 centenary exhibition, is George Graves, one of Munro’s keeper colleagues in khaki who survived the war and returned to work at London Zoo.

Family background

Henry Munro was born in Clerkenwell, in 1876, not far from Regent’s Park zoo (London 1891 census RG12/377) and may have worked initially as a Farrier / Smith, aged 15. His family of father William J Munro, a Southwark born Printer aged 42 and mother Eliza aged 43 (born Clerkenwell) were living in 3 Lucey Road, (Bermondsey, St James, Southwark?)

Private Henry or Harry Munro was 39 when he died, married with three children. He had married (Ada) Florence Edge on 20th November 1899. His service papers record along the top clearly written that half his pay was to be allotted to his wife.

They had three children, born or registered in Camden Town (near the zoo) by the time he was killed on active service. Hilda was 14 (born 29th March 1901), Albert Charles was 9 (born 5th June 1906, died 1989) and Elsie, 7 (born 17 August 1908, died 1977), all living at 113 Huddleston Road, Tufnell Park to the north of the zoo in London in 1915. 2 other children died in infancy according to the 1911 Census.

Interestingly, maps list Regent’s Park as having a barracks on Albany street (A4201).

Sadly Ada Florence his wife died in 1919, his later medal slips amongst his service papers being signed for by Hilda, his oldest daughter. Hilda was then around 19 in 1920 and no doubt responsible for her younger brother Albert Charles by then around 14 and of school leaving age and much younger sister Elsie, by then 12.

Staff record card information

I was lucky enough in 2014 in the ZSL Archive to look through the 1914 Daily Occurrence Book that recorded daily life and works in London Zoo, handwritten in a huge ledger each day. After many mentions thought preceding years, Munro’s name disappear from the keeper’s list in August 1914.

Even more revealing and intimate was his staff record card, an index card listing his career:

Henry Munro. Married. Born February 18 1876.

January 18 1898 Helper at 15 shillings per week.

February 21 1899 Helper at 17 shillings and 6 pence a week.

February 6 1900 Helper at 21 shillings per week.

February 6 1903 Helper at 24 shillings and 6 pence per week.

May 19 1906 Helper at 25 shillings per week.

August 15 1909 Junior Keeper on staff Antelopes at  £6 per month.

December 15 1913 Senior Keeper on staff Sea Lions at £6 10 shillings per month.

Entered Army September 15th 1914.

Missing 29 September 1915.

Enlisted for war 1914, balance of pay given to wife.

Addresses listed include 177 Gloucester Road, Regent’s Park, NW (crossed out) 113 Huddlestone Road,Tufnell Park, N. (Date stamped April 23 1913)

A Helper is the lowest or youngest  rank of Keeper, this phrase crops up on the ZSL London Zoo staff war memorial for young staff.

(Many thanks to Michael Palmer the archivist and library team at ZSL for their help during my visit.)

 

 

 

Middlesex Regimental War Diary

On 29 / 30 September 1915, the number of officers and other ranks killed, wounded and missing is listed after an account of the preceding few days of battle. Harry Munro would have been amongst these missing.

Remembering Billy and Harry, 100 years on.

Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.

 

Remembering George Fallow from Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh to Gallipoli

19th August 2015 is the 100th anniversary of Sergeant George Fallow’s death in Egypt from wounds received at Gallipoli serving with the 5th Royal Scots. This was very much the local regiment for many others on the staff at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.

Leonie Paterson the RBGE archivist has produced another timely Botanics Story and blogpost about Fallow http://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/16849 

Sergeant George Cruickshanks Fallow No.1739, died on 19 August 1915 aged 24 from wounds received whilst serving with the 5th Royal Scots at Gallipoli. He is buried at Grave Reference: K. 4. of Port Said War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt. Many other Gallipoli casualties are buried here too.

Port Said War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt where George Fallow and many Gallipoli casualties are buried. (image: CWGC)Buddleia fallowiana

The CWGC holds the additional family information that he was the son of Margaret Fallow, of Rosebank, Carluke, Lanarkshire, and the late Archibald Fallow.

On his headstone is the inscription chosen by his mother “Till The Day Dawns” (and the shadows flee away) based on a biblical inscription from the Old Testament Song of Solomon.

Botanics Stories 

Leonie Paterson the Archivist and colleagues  at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh uncovered in 2014 a strange aspect of Fallow’s story about why he does not appear on the RBGE staff war memorial:

RBGE at War – Hume and Fallow’s stories

“As a fan of eminent plant collector George Forrest (1873-1932), I’d long known that two of his plant introductions had been named after former RBGE gardeners killed in the First World War; Roscoea humeana, named for Private David Hume and Buddleia fallowiana for Sergeant George Fallow.

What I found curious was that Hume’s name appears on RBGE’s war memorial, now situated in the foyer of the Science Buildings on Inverleith Row, despite him having given up horticulture in 1906, whereas Fallow’s name doesn’t appear at all. Why? What are their stories?

George Fallow’s story is perhaps less mysterious, but no less tragic. The reason for his name not

Buddleia fallowiana from the RBGE plate negative archive.

being included on the memorial is a simple one – he had left the staff of RBGE during the summer of 1914.

The reason for this was recalled by Henry (Harry) Howden Bryce in the RBGE Guild News Sheet, March 1980: “Some of the ‘lads’ joined the Territorials. The ‘Terriers’ were quite an attraction during this time. Apart from the drills and parades there was the big attraction of the Summer Camp”… “In July 1914 the Prof [Isaac Bayley Balfour] supervised the arranging of a demonstration of exhibits in the Laboratory… The whole layout was like a cross-section through the field of Botany.” All this was for a surprise oral examination for Balfour the following evening – the probationers would have to study the exhibits in order to talk about any subject Balfour asked them to. After the exam, “the Prof then asked if anyone would volunteer to talk on any of the subjects… only one stood up and that was George Fallow.

The following morning George was called up to the Prof’s office.” Balfour had been asked to recommend someone for the post of Subinspector in the Horticulture Branch of the Board of Agriculture, London. Fallow was recommended and selected for the position. “Now, George was a member of the Territorials and he decided to go to camp with his fellow students, then after camp he would proceed to his new appointment. Alas, the ‘best laid schemes’…” Fallow was still at camp on the 4th August when war was declared. The ‘Terriers’ were immediately put on active service training rather than return to their jobs.
As Fallow had left his post just prior to the outbreak of war he does not feature on the RBGE memorial nor the Roll of Honour, but the footnote to the description of Buddleia fallowiana states: “The specific name is given to keep in memory Sergeant George Fallow, 5th Batt. The Royal Scots, a former gardener on the staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, who died 19th August 1915, in Egypt, of wounds received in action at Gallipoli.”

The shrub collected by George Forrest is shown in the RBGE negative archive.

There is more about the plant at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddleja_fallowiana

The World War Zoo Gardens Project in graphic form

World War Zoo Gardens sign, Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK

A few close ups of the lovely World War Zoo Garden sign / graphic (c. 2011) designed by Stewart Muir and myself (Mark Norris) at Newquay Zoo in Cornwall working with graphic designer Michelle Turton (Studio 71).

As I can’t spend all day chatting over the garden fence to visitors about this project, Stewart Muir  (Director of Living Collections – plants and animals at Living Coasts, Paignton & Newquay Zoos) thought that a simple sign should tell the recreated allotment garden’s story. We wanted a sign that would all year round, in all weathers,  tell the story behind the wartime garden project to our visitors. Its prime spot on a bashed old lawn corner next to our African Lion Enclosure means it gets lots of footfall and comment.

One design idea was to use scanned ‘evacuee tags’  (obtainable from any office supplier) for caption backgrounds.

World War Zoo Gardens sign, Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK

All the images are from items in Newquay Zoo’s wartime life collection and a few from Mark’s family archive!

World War Zoo Gardens sign, Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK

The allotment is a real talking point – and a smelly, tactile multi-sensory exhibit that grows valuable fresh enrichment veg, fruit, flowers and herbs for keepers to use with animals.

We wanted to pick out some of the contemporary parallels between the 1940s and the present and future – recycling, food imports  …

World War Zoo Gardens sign, Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK

Rationing and resource shortages was one major stimulus to developing the wartime garden project – how did the animals survive in wartime zoos without ration books?

World War Zoo Gardens sign, Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK

Fabulous pictures here (below bottom three) from a 1939 Zoo and Animal Magazine showing London Zoo and Whipsnade’s wartime preparations, (top right) my  junkshop photo / postcard find of a very well dressed and proud dig for victory garden effort ‘somewhere in Britain’ and (top left) one of my family photos with my child evacuee mum (left) haymaking in Sussex for the war effort.

Shortly after the picture was taken my mum  was strafed or machine-gunned  by a ‘tip and run’ German aircraft, surviving like the other children by diving into the haystack behind them!

World War Zoo Gardens sign, Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK

The link between our wartime sister zoo at Paignton and Chessington Zoo is briefly mentioned on the Evacuation section.

An Old Maid / Happy Families Wartime card game image of a WLA Land Girl adds period detail.

World War Zoo Gardens sign, Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK

Critically Endangered Sulawesi Black crested macaque monkey photographed by zoo volunteer Jackie Noble, showing him ‘podding’ and eating broad beans fresh from our wartime garden produce

(below) two baby warty piglets and mum, the world’s rarest wild pigs, Visayan Warty Pigs from the Philippines (also Critically Endangered) tucking into fresh leeks from our wartime garden allotment.

Summarising our whole project onto seven short ‘evacuee’ tag captions was difficult.

We also use other simpler temporary A4 signs to highlight different or topical aspects of the garden, such as its memorial function for zoo staff of all nations …

The centrepiece sign amongst the flowers – A small memorial at Newquay Zoo to the many zoo keepers, families and visitors worldwide who have been affected by wartime since 1914 (Image: World War Zoo gardens project, Newquay Zoo)

Two simple A4 trail signs placed around the zoo and in the small wartime garden plot, part of a visitor and schools trail mounted for special occasions and ‘wartime zoo’ primary school history workshops.

.A ‘barn find’ rusting but still serviceable wartime Stirrup or fire pump (based on prewar garden sprayer designs and snapped up as wartime surplus postwar by gardeners) amid this year’s centennial poppies.

More poppies in the World War Zoo Gardens Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, U

Getting ready for winter and 2016 planting in the World War Zoo Gardens plot, Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK

Some of the images and scanned objects on our graphics sign are on temporary and changing display in our Tropical House display cabinet about the wartime garden project and wartime life in both WW1 and WW2.

A small selection of WW1 items on display alongside our usual WW2 material, display case, Tropical House, Newquay Zoo.

Remembering John Mackenzie Campbell Kew Gardens died 14 July 1915

 

Header panel, Kew Gardens War memorial.
Image: Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project

John Mackenzie Campbell is remembered on the Kew Gardens staff war memorial. Unusually he died of heatstroke whilst in training in Canada and is buried in Toronto.

RBG Kew’s war memorial, Temple of Arethusa, Kew
(Image copyright : Kew website)

After training at Kew, Scottish-born Campbell had been working in Canada since 1908 and volunteered for the Army, serving as  Private John Mackenzie Campbell, 204th Canadian Beavers Infantry Battalion

Toronto St. John’s Cemetery where J M Campbell is buried. Image: CWGC website

 

He died and was buried in Toronto (St. John’s Norway) Cemetery, Toronto, Canada in 1915. His 1917 Kew Guild Journal obituary lists him as dying aged 36 of sunstroke whilst training in Canada, where he worked for the Toronto Parks Department.

Toronto Cemetery where J M Campbell is buried. Image: CWGC website

He was born into a family of ten children of Mr. Roderick Campbell of Ardross, Lanarkshire and the late Isabella Campbell. His private headstone exists amongst other IWGC / CWGC headstones, a photograph exists on the TWGPP website. 

His Kew Guild Journal obituary can be read here: http://www.kewguild.org.uk/media/pdfs/v3s24p333-38.pdf

Old Kewites  returned from working in many parts of the Empire to serve in the armed forces in both world wars. You can read more about Campbell and the other Kew Gardens staff casualties at our previous Kew WW1 blogpost “Such is the Price of Empire.” https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/such-is-the-price-of-empire-the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-in-the-first-world-war/

Remembered.

j mac campbell Kew

 

Remembering Ernest George Gentry Natural History Museum died Ypres 13 July 1915

Ernest George Gentry of the British Museum (Natural  History) was killed in Ypres, Flanders, Belgium on 13 July 1915. As Ernest Gentry has no known grave, he is remembered on Panel 34 of  the Ypres (Menin Gate) memorial to the missing.

He died serving as a Lance Corporal, no. 6896 in the 2nd Battalion East Surrey Regiment on 13 July 1915.

Working for what is now the Natural History Museum, his name is included on the staff war memorial near the entrance.

According to his WW1 medal record cards (including a 1915 Star), after enlisting in Shepherds Bush, Middlesex and undergoing training, he entered the France ‘Theatre of War’ on 25 May 2015. He appears to have been amongst reinforcements to this regular army battalion which arrived in France in January 1915.

The www.queensroyalsurreys.org.uk website has digitised the original typed war diaries which record day by day what happened to the 2nd East Surreys. The website records of the 2nd East Surreys  that “of the 1000 who went up the line [in 1915] only 200 survived in just 5 days of action.”

I can’t find a surviving WW1  service record for Ernest Gentry. Other Ranks are not mentioned by name in the unit’s war diary. Gentry may have been amongst the draft of 25 men who arrived on 27th or the 119 who arrived on 28th May 1915.

The 2nd Battalion East Surreys (The Glasgow Grays) were being reinforced for losses sustained in an earlier gas attack and fighting during the Battles of St Julien and Frezenberg as part of the 2nd Battle of Ypres, 22 April to 25 May 1915.

On the 13th July the Battalion was in trenches again “casualties to noon killed two, wounded 2” including 2 /Lt. F. L.Carter , a “Quiet day”.

One of those casualties was likely to have been Gentry, who has no known grave.  The other 2nd East Surrey casualty is probably Private H. F. Aldridge killed on 12 July 1915 and reburied at Voormzeele Enclosure No. 3 Cemetery, Ypres.

The Natural History Museum archives website lists Gentry’s museum career as being appointed ‘boy attendant’ in Department of Zoology around 8 May 1899 (corroborated by an entry in the Edinburgh Gazette 9/5/99 p. 463 Civil Service Commission), becoming an attendant 26 August 1903 and transferring to the Department of Botany in 1910.

Ernest was born in 6 May 1884 to Richard Gentry, a Police Sergeant (1891) living in Fulham and later (1907) Travelling Agent. Ernest had 6 surviving sisters and brothers who thankfully survived the war.

In the 1911 census Ernest is listed as a Civil Servant (Attendant) at 32 Delvino Road, Fulham alongside his growing family.  On 28 March 1907  he married Hilda Mary French (1887-1952)  of 25 Onslow Gardens, Kensington, daughter of Joshua French, an Engineer.  By the time he died, they had several young children: Dorothy Hilda Gentry (1908-1987), Ernest Charles Gentry (1909-1996) and George Richard Gentry (1912-1982)

Ernest George Gentry, remembered. 

 

Gilbert Ramsay art gallery curator killed Gallipoli 12 July 1915

I have been reading a very interesting book by Gaynor Kavanagh, Museums and the First World War published by Leicester University Press, the product no doubt of Leicester’s excellent Museum Studies Programme.

Gaynor Kavanagh’s book is an interesting parallel to what I have been researching about how institutions such as zoos and botanic gardens survived the challenges of both world wars. Staffing challenges and casualties, evacuation of collections, closure or requisition of buildings, air raid precautions and damage  – there are many similarities between the wartime stories of museums and zoos, or between galleries and botanic gardens and other ‘places of entertainment’.

Describing them all as places of entertainment seems a little frivolous. However as the zoologists at London Zoo or botanists at Kew, camoufleur artists from galleries and the art world or geologists and scientists from museum collections found, they often had extremely useful skills in wartime ranging from geology to sanitation, cryptic camouflage to food production, pest control to code-breaking and intelligence work.

Early on in my research I read the story of how Britain’s Art Treasures were hidden away underground, whilst more recently I have been reading Gerri Chanel’s remarkable story Saving Mona Lisa about how the treasures of the French museums and galleries (including the Mona Lisa) were saved and hidden in occupied France during WW2. A staff war memorial for the Musee Nationaux casualties exists in Galerie Denon, Louvre for both WW 1 and WW2

Sadly one recurrent theme across many sites, especially in the First World War, was the casualty lists.

One of the Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery staff, its director Gilbert Ramsay, was another 1915 casualty at Gallipoli. The previous director James Paton, who had retired in 1914 aged 71, stepped back into the post until 1919.

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/687342/RAMSAY,%20GILBERT%20ANDERSON

Lance Corporal Gilbert Anderson Ramsay, No. 2253 died in Gallipoli on 12 July 1915 aged 35, serving with the 6th Battalion (City of Glasgow) Highland Light Infantry (Territorials) in Gallipoli.

Helles Memorial to the missing of the Gallipoli campaign, Dardanelles, Turkey.
(Image: CWGC website)

He has no known grave and  is remebered on Panel 174 of the Helles Memorial to the missing of the Gallipoli campaign. The Additional Information listed by CWGC describes him as the “son of Mr. G. A. Ramsay, of Glenlee, Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire. A Director of Glasgow Art Galleries.”

Ramsay also features on the Glasgow Art Club war memorial, pictured here: http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/warmemscot-ntopic3063.html

and on the Glasgow School of Art War Memorial where he was a student.

De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour gives further biographical details: Born on 7 June 1880 in Greenock, educated at Greenock Academy and Glasgow School of Art before becoming an architect. He was director of the Whitechapel  Art Gallery from 1911-14, before being appointed to be Superintendent (Director) of Glasgow Corporation Art Galleries in May 1914. By Oct 1914 he had enlisted and arrived in Gallipoli in May (medal card says July) 1915. He was killed “whilst charging with his regiment” on 12 July 1915.

Lucinda Matthews-Jones’ blog A Historian’s Tears notes of Ramsay’s involvement with the Toynbee Hall university settlement in the East End, during his Whitechapel Gallery years.

http://lucindamatthewsjones.com/2013/07/29/the-historians-tears-toynbee-hall-first-world-war-obituaries/

“Most of these men were unmarried and childless. As the obituary of Gilbert Anderson Ramsay commented on his death in July 1915 ‘he was struck by a shell, and instantly killed. So died, in his thirty-sixth year, childless and unmarried, one of the most gifted, and surely one of the most lovable of Toynbee men’. Ramsay was instrumental in the decorative schemes of Toynbee in the Edwardian period and he worked tirelessly at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. His weekend jaunts with fellow settlers to Essex were remembered with fondness together with his ability to cook chops. For Francis Gordon Shirreff, Ramsay’s death forced him to ‘look upon an empty world’ and ask ‘Can anything, however, high and holy, repay the loss of such a life? So we ask ourselves in our utter desolation? But the measure of our loss, is in reality, the measure of our reply. All we loved is in the dust: all we loved has laid it there’ (December 1915)…

His time at Whitechapel Art Gallery http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/history/ was at an interesting and exciting time for British art:

“However, in 1914 proposals for an exhibitian of Twentieth Century Art, organised by Aitken and Gilbert Ramsey, who had become Director when Aitken moved to the Tate, caused Henrietta Barnett to write to plead with them “not to get too many examples of the extreme thought of this century, for we must never forget that the Whitechapel Gallery is intended for Whitechapel people, who have to be delicately led and will not understand the Post impressionist or futuristic methods of seeing or representing things”

Letter to Ramsay by Barnett, 7 Feb 1914 (Whitechapel Art Gallery archives) Quoted from the Passmore Edwards website. http://www.passmoreedwards.org.uk/pages/history/Libraries/Whitechapel%20art%20gallery/history%202.htm

This 20th Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements summer  exhibition did eventually open at Whitechapel Art Gallery from 8 May to 20 June 1914, by which time Ramsay was heading for Glasgow. Just over a year later Ramsay was dead at Gallipoli. The Toynbee Art Club exhibitions ran from 1911 to 1915 and then continued postwar.

The  20th Century Art summer exhibition is widely covered in many books including an article (11)  by Juliet Steyn p. 212. – 230 entitled “Inside Out: Assumptions of ‘English Modernism’ in the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Summer 1914” in  Art Apart: Art Institutions and Ideology Across England and North America  (edited By Marcia R. Pointon) and  also  London, Modernism, and 1914 by Michael J. K. Walsh.

The tiny number of paintings in the exhibition  by the few Futurists and Cubist artists received disproportionate coverage out the 494 works of art featured, but these featured artists such as Bomberg, Nevinson and Wyndham-Lewis are now seen by some as prophetic of and highly influenced by the coming war. Their war art regularly  features in visual representations of the dehumanised battlefield, industrial slaughter and mechanised warfare of the First World War.

Gilbert Ramsay, art gallery curator, remembered amongst the dead of Gallipoli.

Posted by: Mark Norris, Newquay Zoo, World War Zoo Gardens project

In future blog posts I will feature the British Museum staff war memorial names starting  this centenary anniversary  with the death this week in 1915 of  E. George Gentry.

Lost Gardeners of World War One – 1914 and 1915

“It is to be hoped that we shall not have too many deaths to record among horticulturalists …”

wrote  a Versailles nurseryman in the October 24th 1914 edition of the Gardener’s Chronicle. It was to prove a false hope.

Reading through First World war period copies of The Garden, My Garden Illustrated and The Gardener’s Chronicle, it is possible to get some idea of the effects of the “Great War” on gardeners, their families and the parks or estates where many of them worked.

I’ve been researching since 2009 for the World War Zoo Gardens project based at Newquay Zoo how zoos and botanic gardens survived wartime and increasingly we’re asked about what happened in WW1.

The Garden 1917, edited by Herbert Cowley.

The Gardener’s Chronicle is now available online in several places including at the Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/83840# Library online at the University of Amherst and other websites. The Garden Illustrated edited by Kew gardener and injured soldier Herbert Cowley is also available online at this and other sites.

In August 1914 within weeks of war being declared, already some estate owners had published or publicised the patriotic response of their gardens staff; Welbeck Abbey was one such estate which soon  became a military hospital and later army staff college.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassinated at Sarajevo in June 1914, one of the flashpoint triggers of WW1, was injured in a hunting accident there before the war.

At Rotherfield Park, Hampshire, Head Gardener Wilmot H. Yates joined the National Reserve, one of whose tasks was to guard Prisoners of War (Gardener’s Chronicle, 19 September 1914). POWs by the end of the war would be working on the land to replace the men killed or on active service.

G.B.Blackwell of Woodgreen Park Estate, Cheshunt, Herts proudly sent a photograph of 6 unnamed Woodgreen Park gardeners who had enlisted.

J.L. Veitch of the famous Nursery family was swiftly gazetted a Captain in the 7th Cyclists’ Battalion, Devonshire Regiment and saw action in France by Christmas 1914. He was one of many Kew Gardens trained men to be killed later in the war on 21 May 1918, an obituary being posted in the Gardener’s Chronicle on 1 June 1918. Later in the same month in 1914, 40 Kew Gardens men were noted as volunteered (see our Kew WW1 blogpost).

Baron de Worms of Milton Park was noted as having “sent 6 servants” or estate staff, along with a former South African / Boer War veteran Head Gardener William Gent on the National Reserve (see above), who was also liable for call up.

Notable was also the sons of older nurserymen being called up and for the professional soldiers and reservists amongst them, quickly being killed in the early battles of the war. This loss of heirs “and sons” would have an ongoing effect on historic houses and estate gardens, as well as nursery businesses for many years after WW1. It was to be part of the death and decline of many such gardens.

One correspondent ‘A.C.’ in The Gardener’s Chronicle of September, 19th 1914 notes that some gardens staff were leaving their gardens posts not only to enlist but also to avoid “coercion on the part of employers is to be deprecated.” Who was A.C.? It was common for many contributors to be known only by initails or a pen-name. There is a suggestion from Sarah Cobbold that this might be her relative Arthur Cobbold, brother of Kew WW1 casualty Sydney Cobbold, and a noted gardens speaker during wartime with such timely messages as “Help the War, Help Your Country, Help Yourselves by Growing Vegetables.” Sarah is also researching his literary activities, as Arthur also appeared to be a writer on gardening in The Manchester Guardian. Arthur was Curator of the Charles Darrah collection of Cacti at Alexandra Park Manchester for 30+ years until retiring in 1934.

 

WW1 soldiers gardening

War, Lord Derby and Knowsley Park
Interestingly for someone researching the effect of the war on zoos, Knowsley Hall (now home of Knowsley Safari Park) had extensive parkland and an exotic menagerie, once painted in Victorian times by Edward Lear. Many of its gardens staff joined up, supported by Knowsley’s owner the Earl of / Lord  Derby:

Gardeners respond to the Call
Eight young men from the fruit and plant departments of Knowsley [Park], the seat of the Earl of Derby, have volunteered or active service … Lord Derby will keep the places of the men open until the end of the war … Gardener’s Chronicle, 29 August 1914.

Lord Derby went on to set up the Derby Scheme to encourage more volunteers for the Army, but eventually conscription was introduced in 1916. Lord Derby served as Secretary of State for War from 1916 to 1918.

In the Second World War, parts of the grounds of Knowsley Park near Prescot were used as tank and army training. The craters were still visible when the Safari Park was created in 1971. There was also a No 49 SLG (Satellite Landing Ground) RAF Knowsley Park from May 1942 to November 1944, staffed by No. 37 and 48 MU Maintenance Units. Remnants of a P51 fighter were excavated from a crash site recently.

Tanks on the Lawn! Knowsley Estate Prescot (now Safari Park) IWM image collection The British Army in the United Kingdom 1939-45
Matilda II and Light Mk VI tanks of the Royal Tank Regiment on exercise in Knowsley Park, Prescot, near Liverpool, England, 25 July 1940. This training operation formed part of British preparations to repel the threatened German invasion of 1940. Image source : IWM H2529/ Wikipedia

Several times in the autumn of Gardeners Chronicle in 1914 the prospect of a “Gardeners Battalion” or Pals Battalion was suggested such as ‘CR’ 5 December 1914: https://archive.org/stream/gardenerschronic356lond#page/n407/mode/1up and an eralier suggestion by W.N. Wright of Northampton on November 7th 1914, p.310: https://archive.org/stream/gardenerschronic356lond#page/310/mode/1up

‘Disruption of the Horticultural Trades’ 1914
The war beginning in the August 1914 harvest season caused much disruption to the horticultural trades. In The Gardener’s Chronicle of the 19th September 1914, boy scouts are noted as harvesting flower and vegetable seeds – in Germany!

Show and exhibition halls became drill halls, being quickly requisitioned for mobilisation and the wave of eager recruits enlisting as volunteers. Many flower and produce shows were cancelled, including wartime Chelsea Flower Shows, the proceeds of others gone towards “the relief of distress caused by the war“. Other nurseries offloaded stocks of flowers and produce patritiocally to hospitals.

The Gardener’s Chronicle featured news in French and Belgian for the many refugee Belgians who had fled to Britain to escape the fighting. Very quickly French and Belgian horticulture was affected as fighting swept through the countryside, destroying vulnerable areas like glasshouses and nurseries. News of casualties of notable gardens and gardeners were carried in these journals and a Societe Francaise d’ Horticulture de Londres continued to meet on the 1st Saturday of each month in London from 1915. The equivalent publication in France Le Jardin shut down at the start of the war by October 1914 as so many of its staff had been mobilised into the war effort.

Much the same happened in Britain in some nurseries and businesses like the Cheddar Nursery of George B. Mallett, who had enlisted in the Bristol Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment when the rest of his eligible staff had enlisted; his nursery business was ‘suspended’ (Gardener’s Chronicle, 26 September 1914).

George Bunyard’s nursery was also affected by the callup, maiantaing their full staff whicch appears to mean supporting the families of those men who had left to enlist and appealing for public support through sales from the horticultural trade to maintain this.https://archive.org/stream/gardenerschronic356lond#page/191/mode/1up

Many local newspapers featured advertisements for young or old garden staff, leading to a witty Punch cartoon by A Wallis Mills of May 19, 1915 about the demand for any available labour:

Lady: “I hear that your boy has left his last place and I thought he might come to us as a gardener.”

Cottager (mother): “Well, Mum, there’s been arf a dozen after im this morning. But I shall be very happy  to put you on the waiting list.”

It was in this market that many women gardeners would get their chance of work and experience, if only for a few years.

Punch 1915 cartoon on the demand for garden labour once enlistment had removed many young men from garden work. (Source: World War Zoo Gardens collection)

WW1, Ireland and The Easter Rising 1916

George B Mallett appears to have survived the war, unlike Alan Livingstone Ramsay, a partner in his father’s Charles Ramsay & Son, Royal Nurseries, Ballsbridge Road, Dublin:

“volunteered for service on the outbreak of war and has been gazetted a lieutenancy in the Royal Irish Regiment. He left Dublin on Christmas Eve 1914 to join the second battalion of his Regiment at the front and was last heard of at Rouen” (GC, 9 January 1915).

Although he served in France, Ramsay was to die aged 26 on active service on 24 April 1916 fighting in his home town of Dublin. He was the first Dublin-born British Army officer to die fighting the Irish rebels in the Easter Rising for Irish independence of 1916. According to his CWGC records, he is buried in Mount Jerome cemetery in Dublin. Catherine de Courcy’s excellent history of Dublin Zoo describes more about how the city and its Anglo-Irish institutions like the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland’s zoo fared during the uprising. You can read more about Ramsay and his family on a JSTor archive article from the Dublin Historical Record. 

There is more about how WW1 affected Anglo -Irish estates and gardeners in the WW1 Kew gardens blog post entries about Charlie Beswick and C.F. Ball, along with my ‘garden ghosts’ article on the BGEN website, mentioning lost gardeners from Glasnevin, Kilmacurragh and Fota Gardens in Ireland.  

Other gardens affected in 1914 / 1915

Mr James Whitton, Superintendent of the Glasgow Public Parks and Gardens Department records in the Gardener’s Chronicle of 3 October 1914, p.238 that his office clerk and five young gardeners had gone from the Glasgow Botanic Gardens. Already  29 of its young men had volunteered for the Kitchener’s New Army of volunteers, more were expected to enlist, whilst Whitton’s own son was  already mobilised as a Captain in the 7th Scottish Rifles (Territorials)  and noted an enthusiastic reaction by other Territorials of the Lowland Scottish Division. Kew Gardens, Birmingham and RBGE Edinburgh Botanic Gardens would also steadily lose staff to the war.

The territorials appear to have been popular amongst the staff and men of some Nurseries such as Kelway’s, where James Kelway the Nursery Owner was Captian of the Langport Co of the Territorials (Somerset Light Infantry) and  precluded from serving (by age?) He notes that 25% of his eligible men were already enlisted – 24 men so far – in the Gardener’s Chronicle September 19, 1914, p. 205.

5 staff and 3 students had left Wisley to enlist (Gardener’s Chronicle, 12 September 1914) – a memorial exists for their fallen staff and they are blogging their research.

Messrs. Sanders and Sons notes from their orchid houses 12 out of 27 staff joined up including 3 Belgians, leaving behind a staff of “nearly all married and elderly” whilst at Chivers & Sons 40 joined the colours, many Reservists or Kitchener volunteers (Gardener’s Chronicle, 5 September 1914).

Other presumably smaller nurseries note single staff leaving such as P.C. Bridge, the travelling salesman from J. Cheal’s Lowfield Nursery joining the 25th County of London Regiment Motorcycle Section (GC, 12 September 1914). Bridge appears to have survived the war, unlike another Cheal’s man, Private Richard Hubert Holton, the son of Richard Henry and Sarah Holton,

“foreman at J. Cheal and Son’s Nursery, Crawley, Sussex to whom the deepest sympathy will be extended by his numerous friends in the horticultural world …” (Gardener’s Chronicle, 31 August 1918)

Private R.H. Holton, 201034, 1/4 Royal Sussex Regiment died in the closing months of the war aged 25, on 29 July 1918 and is buried at Jonchery-sur-Vesle British Cemetery, Marne, France.

Jonchery sur Vesle cemetery, France a post war concentration cemetery where Holton lies buried. Image CWGC website

Sutton’s Seeds and WW1

9 staff went from Suttons Seeds of Reading into the Territorial Force, along with several of Arthur Sutton’s sons, Eric and Noel quickly gazetted as officers. Arthur Sutton established a rifle range for his staff at Bucklebury Place.

Sutton was to lose most of his sons in the war, “of his five sons who have joined HM Forces, four have laid down their lives for their country” (Gardener’s Chronicle, 6 April 1918). His other son Leonard Noel Sutton was badly wounded. A fuller account of this is given in Richard Van Emden’s recent book, The Quick and the Dead. A memorial (UKNIWM#1940) survives to his sons and the staff of the Royal Seed Establishment (Sutton’s), listing 23 names, worthy of a separate blog post in future.

Several articles in 1914/5 and even adverts by Clay’s Fertiliser notes the bizarre development of trials by Sutton’s of using radioactive uranium to encourage lettuce growth! This substance would be put to an even deadlier and less optimistically constructive use at the end of the next war.

1916 onwards

After the Somme battles beginning 1st July 1916, I thought that long casualty lists would appear in the pages of Gardener’s  Chronicle and other journals in the weeks after July 1916 as  many of  Kitchener’s 1914 and 1915 volunteers, Derby scheme men and Pals battalions saw action. However surprisingly few obituary entries appear in the second half of 1916 and into 1917, although I’m sure the deaths and wounds of many ordinary gardens staff went unnoticed in the garden journals. We shall describe the effect on gardeners and the horticultural world after 1915 in the second part of this article in a future blog post.

Gardening, allotments and food production was soon to change gear with the unrestricted U-Boat warfare of 1917, loss of men, disastrous harvests and the spread of patriotic allotments along with food rationing in 1917 and 1918. Herbert Cowley’s editorials in The Garden Illustrated increasingly reflected this.

ww1 ration book

Gardening was also suggested as horticultural therapy during and after the war for recovering physical and mental health of returning veterans, something that has reoccurred recently through Gardening Leave with links to Chelsea Physic Garden and Royal Chelsea Hospital and other groups, again another blog story here for the future, illustrated with contemporary WW1 gardening journal links.

 

Inside a ww1 ration book

More on gardeners and gardens in WW1
You can also read more about Kew Gardens in WW1 and garden editor Herbert Cowley’s wartime career on our past blog posts.
The UK National Inventory of War Memorials has an excellent project blog post by Frances Casey on Lost Gardeners of World War 1 with many interesting links.

As we begin the WW1 centenary, many historic houses and gardens are marking their WW1 contribution. Some of these houses eventually became or diversified into becoming zoos and safari parks with the decline of the country house postwar after WW1 / WW2. Along with Heligan, other places such as Woburn Abbey are celebrating their contribution.

Exhibitions at the Museum of Garden History on Gardeners in WW1 and at Kew Gardens with wartime garden tours and exhibitions.

I look forward to talking in October at Kew Gardens about our wartime gardens  research at the KMIS talks -see www.kew.org and www.kewguild.org.uk for its events and 2014/15 talks list.

I’ve also been researching a local Cornish village war memorial and writing recently  about food and farming in WW1 Britain.

Meanwhile its forward in time and back out onto the WW2 Dig For Victory allotment at Newquay Zoo to tidy up after some delicious and much needed days of rain and clearing all that has bolted in the recent hot weather, some to the animals at the Zoo, some to the compost heap.

Happy gardening,

Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project , Newquay Zoo, 29 June 2014