World War One Soldier's Story - Riley Smith from Barnsley POW

Last year I was searching the Barnsley Chronicle in the Archives for mentions of my husband's family during the First World War when I came across a list of Prisoners of War published on the 24 August 1918.  It was a huge list of names, and very tempting to any family historian.

Barnsley Chronicle 24 August 1918 (from Barnsley Archives)

The list states it is of "Prisoners of War from Barnsley and District: List received up to Tuesday August 13 1918" and then goes on to solicit further information from readers about any other prisoners that might not appear on the list.  The article is two full column lengths and a part column in the Chronicle, which is a broadsheet newspaper, so you can imagine how long the list was.  I have logged 199 names in an Excel spreadsheet and found more information about seventeen of the men so far.


Barnsley Chronicle 24 August 1918 - entry for Riley Smith (from Barnsley Archives)

This entry reads, "Smith, Riley, 1588, Y & L Ret, Depot Des Prissonniers de Guerre, Philippopoles, Bulgaria (King's Head Hotel, Barnsley)"

It caught my eye because of the pub name, the King's Head Hotel, Barnsley. This pub no longer exists, but it was on Market Hill.  The address at which he was imprisoned also leapt out as there are only two prisoners on the list who were held in Bulgaria, the other being Ernest Lomas, also in the Yorks and Lancs, and I wanted to know how they got there.

I was able to find Riley Smith's World War One Service records and Medal Card on Ancestry without too much trouble - handy having an unusual name.  He enlists in 1915, but maybe because he was a married man, he was allocated to the 15th York and Lancs battalion, the reserve although his regimental number is 14/1588 suggesting he was initially enlisted in the 14th battalion, the 2nd Barnsley Pals.

Born in December 1887 in Barnsley, the son of John Smith and Mary (maiden name Riley), Riley Smith was baptised at St Mary's church in Barnsley the following January.  John Smith had a Grocer's shop on New Street (in the vicinity of the Gala Bingo building) in the 1891 census and was listed as a Butcher and Slaughterman  in 1901 census. 


1908 Marriage Entry at St John's, Barnsley for Riley Smith and Annie Crampton (from Ancestry)

Riley marries Annie Crampton in August 1908, when his occupation is given a Butcher and his address 31 Bond Road, Barnsley.  This address is a end terrace house towards the top of Bond Road, which is in the Old Town area of Barnsley.  A nice little house in a nicer part of town, a pleasant suburb I expect in contrast to the packed courts and lanes of New Street and the town centre. 


1911 Census for 11 Blenheim Road, Barnsley (from Ancestry)

Within three years Riley and Annie have two daughters, Jessie born in 1908 and Lily born in 1910.  In the 1911 census the family are living at 11 Blenheim Road, which is a mid terraced house on the edge of Barnsley town centre, near to St George's church.  Riley completes the census return himself, declaring he is a Butcher and that their house has four rooms.  He signs the return - the 1911 census is the first time we are able to see the actual handwriting of the householder on the individual household schedules, prior to this the entries we see in the 1841-1901 census returns are the transcriptions by the census enumerator into his books from the individual returns which were then destroyed.

The First World War breaks out in August 1914 - the general feeling is that it will be over quickly, there hadn't been a long drawn out European war for many years.  Young men in Barnsley rush to volunteer to join the army, keen not to 'miss out'.  By the beginning of 1915 two new battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment, the 13th and 14th, known as the 1st and 2nd Barnsley Pals have been recruited and are in training at Silkstone Camp. 


The Descriptive Report on Enlistment from Riley Smith's Service record (from Ancestry)

World War One soldiers' records were stored in central London during World War Two, and unfortunately the building was damaged during the blitz.  Over 60% of the records were destroyed and many others were burnt or water damaged.  The above snip is from Riley Smith's record - one of the surviving records but you can see the damage to the top and edges of the sheet of paper.  Riley was 28 years old when he enlisted in November 1915 - he volunteered, conscription did not begin until the following year and even then married men were exempted for a little while longer.  Knowing that conscription was coming in he may have decided to volunteer while he still had a choice about which unit to serve in.  He was enlisted into the 14th York and Lancs with service number 14/1588, and reports to Silkstone to join the rest of the battalion but seems to have been transferred to the reserve soon afterwards. 

The Descriptive Report on Enlistment shown above gives all kinds of interesting family information.  Annie is given as Riley's next of kin and their home address was 3 Elder Place, off Castlereagh Street.


Map snip from the 1890s showing Elder Place, centre

Elder Place is not very large, nestled between Castlereagh Street, Nelson Street and Blucher Street.  Whichever house No 3 was it was much smaller than any of Riley's previous addresses and probably a back to back - I'm guessing the three squareish shapes at the top of the yard are the houses, with privies to the right and some kind of industrial buildings at the opening of the yard.  A ring road, the Westway, runs right through this area now with the Holy Rood church and the Salem Chapel still surviving on either side of the dual carriageway.  The map above is part of one of a collection held by the Barnsley Family History Society, donated to them after an office clearout you can see where someone has drawn a couple of rough lines to show the route of the new road.

The Smiths now have four children, Jessie and Lily, plus John born in 1912 and Edna born in 1915.  The birth dates of each child and the date of Annie and Riley's marriage are all included in this document.  As I suspected on seeing the age of Jessie in the 1911 census she was born just two months after their marriage - but this wasn't an uncommon occurrence then or now!  Annie must have needed to be a strong woman to face seeing Riley go off to war leaving her with four children under ten years of age to care for.  I hope she had support from family. 


A section of Riley's Casualty Report from his Service Records (from Ancestry)

Another smudged and blotchy page from Riley Smith's Service Record shows that in late 1916 he was posted to Sunderland to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.  He arrived in Salonica (now Thessaloniki) in September 1916.  The British had a force in Greece to "help the Serbs in their fight against Bulgarian aggression" (The Long, Long Trail).  Forces would have been sent to join them periodically to help hold the position and in 1916 the position was dug in and reinforced. 

Although it is very hard to read Riley's record notes that he was reported 'Missing in the field' on  11 October 1916.  The next note says that he was 'unofficially a POW' and then in March 1917 he is recorded as 'officially accepted POW war office no.5572'.  The date of his disappearance does not tally with any of the battles in that area, there were some advances between the 30 September and 4 October, but then it is (relatively) quiet until the middle of November.   We can only assume that he was assisting in recovering wounded or dead after the captures of Karajakois and Yenikoi in northern Turkey, on the edge of the Black Sea, near the border with Bulgaria.

Map of Bulgaria, northern Greece and Turkey (from Google Maps)

There is very little information on line about what might have happened to Riley next - there is one more clue in his records.  The word Phillipopolis is entered just below the official recognition of his capture, this tallies with the entry in the Barnsley Chronicle.  The name of this Bulgarian city, has changed over time, it is now Plovdiv, and can be seen at the centre of the map snip above.  It was the site of a large Prisoner of War Camp according to a discussion to be found on the Great War Forum.   You can also see Thessaloniki to the bottom left of the map snip where Riley disembarked from his ship and the actions in that area when Riley may have been captured are on the curving edge of the Turkish coast with the Black Sea to the right of the snip.

Riley spends the rest of the war in what were apparently very harsh conditions, with little food and poor accommodation.  He is returned to England after the Armistice in November 1918.  He does not claim to be suffering any disability or illness that would have given him a pension although a wound is noted on his record dating from his capture.

He returns to his life in Barnsley with Annie and the family in March 1919 when he is discharged.  They have no further children, and he dies in 1931 aged just 43 years old.  He is buried in Barnsley Cemetery and the address given as his place of death is 3 Elder Place.  The family lived for at least another eleven years in that little house off Castlereagh Street - and he died relatively young.  Was his health affected by his imprisonment?   Annie dies in 1971, she does not remarry and she is buried in the same grave as Riley.  By this time she is living in Kendray a large council estate built in the 1930s to the south of Barnsley, a much nicer environment than Elder Place I am sure.

On another occasion I will try to find out what happened to the other Barnsley man held in Bulgaria, Ernest Lomas - unfortunately his service records do not appear to have survived the blitz. 

Disablism, Retraining, Remunerative Work and Volunteering

I've just read Sue Marsh's last two posts (here and here) on the topic of managing your pain so that you can still have a life - I agree wholeheartedly.  I too do not want to give in to this pain and tiredness - I have always struggled to get to where I want to be, why should I give up now? ... however I also agree that the present situation is not amenable to us trying to be 'normal' or even 'differently normal' if we have a fluctuating disability. 

I want to be as useful now as I was before the Crohn's and Fibromyalgia struck me down.  I just haven't found a satisfactory way to do this yet.

Job Centre Plus sign

When my sick pay from my previous employment ran out I applied for ESA (Employment Support Allowance). I was put into the Work Related Activity Group by ATOS and attended my monthly interviews at the local Job Centre ... who were very happy to discover that I'd already signed up to do a teacher training course (PGCE) at the local Uni once my redundancy came through - work had refused to retire me 'due to ill health' as the pension advisor, against all the advice of the occupational health doctor at work and my consultants, had told them that I would recover 'with cognitive behaviour therapy and exercise' - translation, "there's nothing wrong with you, it's all in your mind".  I wish ...

The advisor at the Job Centre, a very nice woman actually, tried to get me to agree to being interviewed on the phone instead of me coming in to the Job Centre - but I objected saying the trip out MADE me get out of the house  - which as you will know when you are recovering from an illness is the hardest thing to do, and you might as well class my symptoms as permanently 'recovering' as I will never be 100% again.  I spent my interviews with her chatting about the weather, my course, holidays and watching her tick boxes on her computer.

Barnsley Uni logo

The PGCE went well for the first six months or so, then they moved the goal posts - instead of teaching for between six and eight hours a week, which I could just about manage, bearing in mind the two days (9am to 3pm) in Uni as well, they wanted us to teach full time.  Teaching IT is a very active job, you can't just sit at the front of a class and lecture, you have to move around and assess learning, assist learners having problems, and in mixed syllabus workshop style classes teach up to six different topics at the same time.  I failed spectacularly one morning in front of a class - I just couldn't cope - the journey from home had been tiring, the walk down to the centre where I was teaching was getting longer and longer every day, and my mentor alternated between never leaving me alone and trying to give me too much to think about whilst I was already busy. 

I was off for several weeks, maybe even a month and came back too late to complete the required teaching hours to get my full PGCE with the rest of my class.  I was offered the chance to extend into the next academic year, but declined as it was obvious that my placement, now knowing I was flaky, were not EVER going to let me take full responsibility for a class - "we can't have the learners disadvantaged by your illness" - which I suppose was fair enough, I did like my learners, generally disadvantaged adults of one variety or another, most of them were wonderful people and I didn't want to do anything to hazard their chances of passing their assessments.  In order to pass the PGCE I needed to demonstrate that I could prepare a lesson and teach, not just one off lessons or lessons to someone else's plans, but a whole chunk of a subject all by myself - it just wasn't going to happen. Even if IT teaching and learning had lent itself to this kind of structure, which in the Adult sector it doesn't - the usual class has six to ten learners all doing something different at different paces at different levels ... it's like driving down a motorway with heavy lorries on either side with no brakes!!  the Centre was not going to risk me becoming ill again in the middle of a set of classes that only I could teach.  Please note that I have nothing but admiration for the tutors I met during my placement - they are tough, hardworking women with unlimited compassion for their learners!

The woman at the Job Centre wasn't too bothered that I'd crashed out of my chance to retrain ... she didn't suggest anything else, in fact she told me that my year was up and that I didn't need to see her again for a while.  My ESA had stopped in the April as I'd had over twelve months worth, so that left me entirely dependant on my husband for EVERYTHING.  In financial desperation I applied for a part time job in our local Co-op (not mentioning the illnesses at all) but didn't even get an interview, overqualified I suppose. 

Because I'd made friends with several of the tutors at the centre I continued to volunteer there for another year - I did a couple of classes a week as a kind of teaching assistant, unpaid of course.  Even then I didn't make it every week, sometimes the dread flare ups caught me and I was too ill to turn in.  I discovered another kind of volunteering - transcribing at the local Archives - that involved sitting down and typing for three to four hours one morning a week - I added that into my plan - of course I still didn't make it every week, but I did feel as if I was being useful.  Over the year it became apparent that other, more able bodied, people were coming forward to volunteer at the Adult Learning Centre and they had another student from the Uni (who I'm glad to say gained from my experience and was given a much more structured programme of lessons to teach).  The economic threat posed by the government withdrawing funding from Adult Learning and the cuts imposed by the local council jobwise made the atmosphere at the Centre difficult for the tutors.

Last September I contacted the tutor I had worked with most often but she could only offer me a Tuesday late morning session with her which clashed with my work at the Archives. There was barely enough work for the employed tutors, many of them were having to take cuts in their hours to keep their jobs, they didn't really need volunteers any more.  I turned her down as I really felt I was getting somewhere volunteering at the Archives - then the Archives closed in November to prepare for their move to the new Experience Barnsley museum in the Town Hall.  This left me with only the Cudworth Local History Group, who meet about 400 yards from my house in the local Resource Centre (aka Library) two mornings a week and my OU study to keep me busy.  

Open University logo

I started this blog - that does fill a couple of hours several times a week and you can see what you've achieved mounting up in numbers of posts and people viewing them. 

I did a talk on World War One Soldiers for the Friends of the Archives, which has generated several enquiries about doing a similar talk for other groups next year.  Unfortunately in both cases I got the feeling that asking for a small fee to do the talk, just to cover expenses really, put them off inviting me.  So that's not going to be a great money spinner in years to come is it?

The Archives contacted me and my friend GB a few months ago and asked us to come in to do some transcription of index cards towards the new computer system ... we did that for a few months every Tuesday morning - it's a very tiring job, you can only manage about 60 or 70 cards in three hours and then your brain turns to mush!  GB, who was also made redundant last year, and I even managed a fortnightly 'ladies who lunch' appointment where we chatted about family history happily for a couple of hours over a cheap Wetherspoon's meal deal without anyone else's eyes glazing over.  We took a break just over a month ago, GB to go away with her husband and myself to study for my OU exam.  We promised to let the Archives know as soon as we were available again.

Continuing to be financially challenged I recently applied for a part time job at a local building society ... if they'll let me do half days I could manage it, it is sit down work and only a few hundred yards from our house ... I did ask, they said they were very flexible, but I haven't heard anything back from them.

I would really, really like to earn some money of my own so I can buy books and music without feeling guilty, even my OU modules are being paid for by my mum (Thank you, mum!)  But there are no jobs that I know of which let you work just a few hours a week, whenever you can.  And now even volunteering is getting difficult ... with jobs at risk people employed by the council, for example at Learning Centres and Archives don't want lots of overly keen volunteers doing work they need to be paid for.

Experience Barnsley logo

The Archives reopens in Experience Barnsley next Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 2pm.  Myself and my friend GB have just offered to help with anything that needs to be done to get ready for the opening ... but have been turned down.  Cross fingers that once the new Archives is open they will need us again ... or I could just spend time there doing my own research ... but that feels nowhere near as useful.  Chances of getting some kind of work that pays money ... what do you think?