Setting the Scene for the 1910s
Monarchs Edward VII, his son George V. Prime ministers: Herbert H Asquith, 1915 Coalition, David Lloyd George.
London Palladium music hall opens. National Insurance provides unemployment benefits and healthcare. Shops Act 1911 allows a weekly half-holiday for shop staff. British MPs to receive salaries for the first time. More than 1500 die in 1912 in the ocean-going RMS Titanic. Several thousand women evade being recorded in the census as a protest against the lack of women’s suffrage. Woman’s Weekly magazine launched. The remaining members of Scott’s Antarctic expedition die. 1912 the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) is established. The Morris Oxford 2-seater car goes on sale. The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan is published. World War I is fought between 1914 and 1918. More than one million soldiers die in the Battle of the Somme. 1917 bread rationing is introduced. Women’s Royal Naval Service is established. In 1918 the Royal Air Force is formed from merging The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. 1918 ration books are introduced for butter, margarine, lard, meat and sugar. British Summer Time started during the War to extend daylight working time and make savings in lighting costs. 11 November 1918 World War I ends. In 1918 the first national election in the UK allows women over 30 to vote or stand for Parliament, and the male franchise is extended (for men the age is 21). Dr Marie Stopes’ books Married Love and Wise Parenthood are published. Nancy Astor becomes the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons, and the second woman MP to be elected. 1919 meat rationing ends. Photographs are used on British passports for the first time.
Locally American-born aviation pioneer Samuel Franklin Cody is killed with his passenger (English cricketer William Evans) when his Cody Floatplane breaks up in a flight from Farnborough, Hampshire. The Sopwith Camel biplane fighter aircraft makes its maiden flight at Brooklands. The book Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie expands into the novel Peter and Wendy. (It was in Farnham, whilst living at Black Lake Cottage near Tilford, that supposedly inspired the author to write Peter Pan.)
| Chapter 4 Part 1 | Chapter 4 Part 2 | Chapter 4 Part 3 |
| Rowhills Estate, Heath End | Rowhills Estate, Weybourne | The Warren |
| Chapter 4 Part 4 | Chapter 4 Part 5 | |
| Army College | Reginald Welch |