War and welfare

British prisoner of war families, 1939–45

Barbara Hately-Broad

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781847797261
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism of Shakespeare
• Index: Literature

This book examines the experiences of the millions of service dependents created by total war, particularly those of men taken captive in both Europe and the Far East.

1

‘No such useless appendage’ – the state and service families before 1939

Traditionally, the British government did not see the wives and families of servicemen as part of the state’s responsibility. Instead this responsibility was devolved to the individual services themselves who, in their turn, took steps to limit their involvement with the well-being of wives and families. Although some changes in this attitude became apparent during the nineteenth century, it was only with the deployment of troops in colonial wars at the end of the century and, more forcefully, with the impact of the First World War that this situation began to be reappraised.

From the beginning of the modern British army in the seventeenth century, marriage for soldiers was discouraged and responsibility for the welfare and well-being of servicemen’s families was slow to be acknowledged. Indeed, this responsibility was ‘not so much evaded as unrecognised’ especially for lower ranks with the army expressing the view that ‘subalterns must not marry, captains may marry, majors should marry, colonels must marry’.¹ The views of the navy were equally explicit in the late 1880s, as the service officially recognised ‘no such useless appendage or encumbrance’ as a sailor’s wife; at least not below the rank of Admiral, at which stage wives were acknowledged as being a useful accessory for social purposes.² Similarly, in the army, increased rank led to increased responsibility for men and a perceived need of a wife to augment the officer’s work and ‘contribute her special brand of feminine care’.³ This attitude may well, however, have been attributable to a wish on the part of both services to avoid any responsibility for the welfare of servicemen’s families, a responsibility which would have had to have been acknowledged if formal recognition of marriage had been granted.

Despite this official attitude, a study of women at sea in the age of sail records that ships’ captains routinely recognised the status of sailors’ wives.⁴ For example, many captains permitted wives to be ferried out to ships in the Pool of London to spend time with their husbands who were refused shore leave.⁵ However, responsibility for the welfare of families was largely regarded by the services as being the province of the serviceman himself. The decision to allot money from pay to families, or not, was left to their discretion and there can be no doubt that a number of men deliberately joined the colours to escape both financial and moral family responsibilities. The words of an eighteenth-century army song tell of men leading happier lives ‘by getting rid of brats and wives’ as until 1873 soldiers, unlike civilians, could not be charged under the vagrancy laws with failure to maintain their wives and families.⁶

Even in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the only existing provision for family welfare within the armed services was that for army wives ‘on the strength’ (that is, married with the express permission of the soldier’s commanding officer), legitimate children and legitimate stepchildren.⁷ However, in the late 1880s and early 1890s, only six men per company of one hundred were granted permission to marry, and then rarely below the rank of Senior Non-commissioned Officer (NCO).⁸ Figures for 1861 show that only 48.31 per cent of other ranks under the age of 40 were married compared to 82.59 per cent in the general population.⁹ However, the British army was not unusual in this practice. In Canada, where compulsory military service was in force, a similar situation existed and young men were not expected to marry before this service was complete; as late as 1914 permission for other ranks to marry was granted only where there was a vacancy on the married establishment and where the woman was judged to be ‘a desirable character’. In practice this resulted in all warrant officer and sergeants being granted permission and only 8 per cent of other ranks.¹⁰ In Britain, the granting of permission to marry was limited not only by the discretion of commanding officers but also by individual regimental practice and the availability of accommodation. In some regiments more soldiers were granted permission to marry than in others. In the Guards, for example, who rarely moved establishments and who were sent abroad only in emergencies, more men were granted permission to marry than was the norm in other regiments who moved more frequently.¹¹ Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State for War in 1854, regarded wives as a ‘serious evil for a marching army’.¹²

In the late nineteenth century normal practice was still for a number of families, chosen by ballot, to travel with the regiment whenever it was posted away from home, although the Crimea was the last war in which families actually followed their menfolk into a battle zone.¹³ The number of families allowed to travel differed according to the actual destination. For regiments leaving for service in India, twelve families were allowed to travel per hundred men; for all other destinations the number of families was limited to six per hundred men.¹⁴ Even recognised ‘on the strength’ families left behind were not encouraged to remain in the regimental town whilst their husbands were absent. Instead they were provided with a meagre allowance of 1 guinea, plus 5s for every child, to allow them to return to their home parish.¹⁵ In Irish regiments who were ‘much married’ the situation was often extreme, and from one battalion alone more than four hundred women and their children were sent back to Ireland.¹⁶ Once home, however, there was no guarantee that their relatives would be able to provide for them. With increased industrialisation came a breaking down of the traditional family autonomy in providing care for the very young, the old and the destitute, and the increasing mobility of labour meant that those remaining at home might themselves be in need of care. Many army wives then had to appeal to the Poor Law Commissioners for outdoor relief to allow them to survive until the regiment returned home.¹⁷ Unacknowledged ‘off the strength’ wives were not granted even this minimal allowance and so were forced to remain, without any means of support, in the regimental towns.

By the latter part of the nineteenth century, the only type of allowance granted to the families of servicemen when separated from their menfolk was a ‘one-off’ payment to allow them to return to their former homes. No provision was made, by means of an ongoing allowance, for them to maintain the home they had established with their husbands. Although the question of separation allowances had been raised within the War Office, and a Board of General Officers set up in 1810 to investigate the possibilities, no proposals for such allowances were devised for over fifty years.¹⁸ Neither the government nor the services recognised any responsibility to provide continuing support for the families of those fighting for their country. Women were recognised by the army only through the men to whom they were married. As a result, once the men were posted overseas, the women effectively disappeared from official view. Where servicemen themselves had not made financial provision for their families or where this provision fell short of need or broke down completely, families faced destitution. Until the mid-1800s the army argued that a soldier’s pay was intended solely for his own upkeep although not to be spent as the soldier wished. Instead it was intended to be used to maintain himself as an efficient fighting member of the service.¹⁹ Compulsory stoppages from service pay to maintain wives and children were not introduced into the Army Act until 1878, and then only to give service wives parity with the non-maintenance claim available to civilians whose husbands did not provide for them.²⁰

Given this minimal level of welfare provision, and the vagaries of Poor Law provision, it is clear that many families were forced to rely on philanthropic organisations to avoid hardship, if not actual starvation. Although within the army some provision was made at regimental level, this was largely dependent on the sympathies and traditions of individual regiments. Guards regiments, who had an ‘impressive array of funds’ at their disposal were, perhaps, the most solicitous of family welfare, setting up a Work Society to provide employment for ‘on the strength’ wives left behind.²¹ In many other cases responsibility for family welfare was often left to the regiment’s commanding officer and his wife. Even during the Second World War, these same attitudes were apparent and officers were expected to adopt a paternalistic attitude to the men in their care and, by extension, to their families. However, the very real needs that led to the founding in 1885 of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Family Association (SSFA; after 1919, the Soldiers’ Sailors’ and Air Force Families Association, SSAFA) suggest that in many cases this informal provision proved inadequate to meet the needs of the families concerned.²² Given the fact that the very existence of sailors’ wives remained unrecognised, it is perhaps not surprising that no similar tradition of care existed in the navy. However, some organisations, such as the Royal British Female Orphan Asylum in Devonport, offered care to the orphans of both soldiers and sailors.

In fact, although service wives remained largely unrecognised whilst their husbands were alive, some provision for widows had existed since 1646. In that year a committee of the House of Commons ordered that an allowance of £40 per week, originally paid to the Earl of Mulgrove, was, following his death, to be made available for the use of soldiers’ widows.²³ The impact of this measure is difficult to assess, as there is no further detail of the administration of this allowance or any claims made on it. Although this action does suggest some government acknowledgement of responsibility for army widows that did not exist for wives, it is worth noting that the committee considered that a sum previously allocated to one man was now sufficient to fulfil the needs of all army widows. Whilst husbands remained alive, however, both the government and the services themselves rema...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 ‘No such useless appendage’ – the state and service families before 1939
• 2 ‘An untidy arrangement’ – service Family and Dependants’ Allowances, 1939 to 1945
• 3 ‘Dead, missing or prisoner of war?’ – classifying men lost in action
• 4 ‘The fortunes of war’ – uncertainty and economic hardship
• 5 ‘Nobody would tell you anything’ – official secrets and bureaucratic misinformation
• 6 ‘By ourselves, for ourselves’ – unofficial information, self-help and charities
• 7 ‘The rate for the job’ – debates on postwar service allowances
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index