The Daily Mirror Overseas Weekly Edition
dated Thursday April 24th 1919
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An epic post featuring The Daily Mirror Overseas Weekly Edition from a week in Spring 1919 – nearly 6 months after the cease fire of the Great War the final Peace settlement is still being thrashed out in France, there is trouble in India, Egypt and Turkey, intrepid aviators are trying to cross the Atlantic or being killed in almost daily plane crashes, while the public is being urged to take joy-flights and serial killer Landru is on trial in Paris. This edition is basically 5 Daily Mirrors stapled together with a wrap-around cover (now detached) and deals with the news for the 17th to 23rd April.
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The first carefree Spring holiday since 1914 is here. Carefree apart from those things mentioned above – and a rabies scare.
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And if you are in Hastings there is always the latest in beach attractions - a washed ashore German U-boat.
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Henri Désiré Landru (1869 – 1922) was a French serial killer (charged with 11 murders) and real-life "Bluebeard".
Landru lured victims by putting advertisements in the lonely hearts sections in Paris newspapers, then he would seduce the women who came to his Parisian home and, after he was given access to their assets, would kill them and burn their bodies in his heating furnace. Between 1914 and 1918, Landru claimed 11 victims: 10 women plus the teenaged son of one of his victims.
In 1919, the sister of one victim tried to track down her missing sibling. She eventually persuaded the police to arrest Landru. After a lengthy and highly publicised trial he was found guilty and guillotined.
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How can one not trust a dentist that not only knows where the lady’s teeth are but isn’t afraid to point them out with arrows?
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Note the name Shinwell among those jailed - Emanuel ‘Manny’ Shinwell went on to become a Labour MP, chairperson of the Labour Party, Minister of Fuel and Power in the post-war Labour government, Secretary of State for War, Minister of Defence, Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and Baron Shinwell of Easington.
1919 saw a wave of race riots in Glasgow, South Shields, Salford, Hull, London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Newport and Barry directed primarily at black sailors. On January 23rd fighting broke out on the Glasgow docks between black and white sailors waiting to sign on to a ship. The black sailors, over 30 of them, fled pursued by a much larger crowd of white sailors, who, using guns, knives, sticks, batons, bricks and other makeshift weapons, attacked the nearby sailors' home in which the black sailors had taken refuge.
The Glasgow branch of the main seafarers union, the National Sailors and Firemen’s Union (NSFU), succeeded in having a ban imposed on the employment of black sailors in the port. British Seafarers’ Union (BSU), a small and more militant breakaway from the NSFU, refused to accept black sailors as members. Shinwell was a leader of the BSU.
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By 1919 many educated nationals in India were far from satisfied with the reforms introduced by the ruling British since the formation of the Indian National Council in 1885. White Englishmen still dominated India and there had been no real decrease in their power or increase in national power.
Even thought Gandhi had already embraced the idea of Satyagraha or non-violent action, there were many deaths on both sides before Indian independence finally came in 1947.
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The Russian Revolution of October 1917 was followed by a period of Civil War with the communist Red Army fighting off the White Army, which had been formed by ex-Tsarist men like General Denikin. British Prime Minister David Llloyd-George covertly supported the Whites because he feared the spread of communism to the rest of Europe and particularly Germany. The Treaty of Versailles was being hammered out at the time and Lloyd-George was worried that the end result would weaken Germany to such a degree that a Communist Revolution would follow there.
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I always thought that the old so-much-down-and-so-much-a-week, aka the never-never or hire purchase, was an invention of the 1950’s. Apparently not. By the time you add 2/- for the luminous dial and a further 2/6 for p&p you’d be paying 19/6 for a 14/- watch, and I wouldn’t dare phoning the customer help-desk – note the phrase ‘no unpleasant inquiries’. There is an unspoken ‘or else’ there.
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An odd juxtaposition – a page full of pictures showing the delights of flying (newly re-introduced to the public after the restrictions of the War) and a portrait of a very experienced pilot who was killed the previous day.
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Public pleasure flights were very popular between the Wars. Sir Alan Cobham toured all over Britain looking for suitable sites for Aerodromes and used pleasure flights to win the support of the locals in each place. The one thing missing from these 2 articles that I would see as essential is a good working parachute.
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Hopefully they weren’t testing these anywhere near the pleasure flights.
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In a bid to cross the Atlantic and win a £10,000 prize put up by the Daily Mail, a Short Shamrock piloted by Major Wood and Captain Wylie took off on April 19, 1919.
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Unfortunately the engine faltered, and the aircraft was ditched off the coast of Wales, smashing on the beach at Holyhead.
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Jules Charles Toussaint Védrines had been flying since 1910
In 1912 he broke the air speed record reaching a speed of 145.161 km / h. Also in 1912 he was seriously injured during an attempt to fly to Madrid. In 1913 he flew from France to Egypt (with stops) in his Bleriot monoplane. He served in the French air force in the First World War, specializing in difficult missions dropping French spies behind German lines and later picking them up.
On January 19, 1919, he landed an aircraft on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann, despite a ban by the prefecture of Paris. He won the price of 25,000 francs offered for this feat, but became the first air-born offender in aviation history. He died on April 21, 1919, flying from Paris to Rome
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And if that wasn’t enough to put you off pleasure flights then this tragic accident should have.
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“By gad, Sir, if that filly wasn’t wearing a three quarter-length coat over a jockey’s coat not to mention a barrel and a telescope, I’d get a look at her knees! More brandy, Jeeves!”
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Then as now, the tabloid press, of which The Daily Mirror was a pioneer, loved a good panic. To be fair this was a serious outbreak, which led to an order that all dogs in London and the Home Counties must at all times be muzzled. All that is except fox hunting hounds. Can’t have the safety of the public interfering with ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’, as Oscar Wilde would have it.
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“How terribly modern –you’ll be getting the little tyke an iPod next.”
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Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement, which helped women win the right to vote. She founded the Women's Social and Political Union. Her 3 daughters – Christabel, Adela and Sylvia, joined her but in 1913 there was a rift and Sylvia and Adela left the WSPU. During the First World War Mrs Pankhurst and Christabel supported the Government while Sylvia and Adela became Pacifists.
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‘… the comfort of a pair of carpet slippers, a warm fender, hot shaving water in the morning and the rest of the luxuries…. Cannot be obtained without the aid of the woman…’ and this was written by a woman! Sylvia Pankhurst probably coughed and spluttered her burn porridge all over her breakfast table that morning.
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A topical item hot on the heels of last Wednesday’s Public Sector Workers Strike. Personally I wouldn’t face a class of 30 kids of any age for all the tea in China let alone ‘a pension of a guinea a week’. (a guinea was £1.05p). According to the National Archive’s currency converter this was the equivalent of £22.27p in 2005.
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“By gad, Sir, knees! Brandy!”
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