Our latest “Document of the Week” was chosen by our Academic Liaison Manager, Dr Catherine Bateson. It is a photograph from The Illustrated War News, printed on 24 March 1915.
On Sunday 21 March 1915, the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, came to Liverpool to watch 12,000 soldiers parade. The ceremonial event celebrated recruitment into Lord Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ from across the city and regions of South Lancashire and West Cheshire. It also provided visual encouragement for further enlistment. The parade was photographed and printed several days later in The Illustrated War News, which published images and stories relating to First World War events, combatants, and life on the home-front. The photograph shows part of the forty-five minute parade passing by Liverpool’s St. George’s Hall, which had been a recruitment headquarters in the city centre since the war’s outbreak.
The caption under the image reported how Kitchener took “the salute from some of the finest of our new soldiers”, congratulating “everyone concerned” for signing up. In particular, “he was more than pleased with the appearance of the Bantams”: newly-created battalions first formed in neighbouring Birkenhead. These comprised of men below the army’s then-minimum height requirement of five-foot-three-inches. Most of the Bantams Kitchener saw on parade here came from local mining areas and had successfully championed the War Office to allow them to fight.
There was more to Kitchener’s Liverpool visit than this parade, however. The Illustrated War News reported that the War Minister came to hand “a message to the General Secretary of the National Union of Dock Labourers”. This direct order stated that “any delay caused by refusal to work overtime was a very serious and dangerous” matter which “must be stopped”. This related to the ongoing disorganisation at Liverpool Docks during the conflict’s first months as the Mersey became severely congested with greater volumes of shipping. Without proper regulation, and with increasing numbers of dock workers answering Kitchner’s own famous call to sign up and fight, the situation was becoming untenable by early 1915. The following month after Kitchener’s visit and message, the Liverpool Dock Battalion was formed, effectively militarising the labour force to manage the situation as part of the war effort.
Where to find this document
This piece comes from our primary source collection, The Illustrated War News, 1914–1918 & 1939. Consisting of nearly 8,600 images, it brings together editions of the IWN that were published weekly during the First World War (1914–1918) and briefly in November 1939 in the Second World War as an offshoot of The Illustrated London News. The IWN covered a range of topics, including military enlistment, battle engagements on land, sea and air, new weaponry and global front-lines, as well as discussion and images of civilian home-front life, prisoners-of-war, and wartime social and cultural experiences. Visit the collection page to learn more.