The Postcard
A C.P.C. Series postcard that was posted in Southport using a ½d. stamp on Sunday the 26th. September 1915. It was sent to:
Miss E. Mothershead,
Eddisbury Hall Farm,
Old Buxton Road,
Macclesfield.
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Edith,
Just a line to let you
know we are having a
lovely time, it is so warm
and sunny.
I hope you are all well.
I wonder if this will suit
you.
Love Frances."
The Battle of Loos
So what else happened on the day that Frances was having such a lovely time in Southport?
Well, on the 26th. September 1915, German forces were able to reinforce their defences before the British launched a second attack, inflicting 8,000 casualties on 10,000 British soldiers over a four-hour time period.
The Third Battle of Artois
Also on that day, the French captured the village of Souchez, France, but failed to make headway south-east of Neuville-Saint-Vaast.
The Second Battle of Champagne
Also on the 26th. September 1915, the French advanced and closed a 7.5-mile (12.1 km) gap, capturing 2,000 German soldiers.
The Opera 'Mona Lisa'
The day also marked the premiere of the opera Mona Lisa, composed by Max von Schillings, at the Stuttgart Opera House in Germany.
It is a fictitious story of the subject behind the painting by Leonardo da Vinci, which had been stolen and returned to Paris two years earlier.
Keir Hardie
The 26th. September 1915 also marked the death of the Scottish politician Keir Hardie.
James Keir Hardie, who was born on the 15th. August 1856, was a Scottish trade unionist and politician. He was a founder of the Labour Party, and served as its first parliamentary leader from 1906 to 1908.
Hardie was born in Newhouse, Lanarkshire. He started working at the age of seven, and from the age of ten worked in the Lanarkshire coal mines. Hardie worked as a "trapper" – opening and closing a door for a ten-hour shift in order to maintain the air supply for miners in a given section.
With a background in preaching, he became known as a talented public speaker, and was chosen as a spokesman for his fellow miners. In 1879, Hardie was elected leader of a miners' union in Hamilton, and organised a National Conference of Miners in Dunfermline.
Keir subsequently led miners' strikes in Lanarkshire (1880) and Ayrshire (1881). He turned to journalism to make ends meet, and from 1886 was a full-time union organiser as secretary of the Ayrshire Miners' Union.
Hardie initially supported William Gladstone's Liberal Party, but later concluded that the working class needed its own party. He first stood for parliament in 1888 as an independent, and later that year helped form the Scottish Labour Party.
Hardie won the English seat of West Ham South as an independent candidate in 1892, and helped to form the Independent Labour Party (ILP) the following year.
He lost his seat in 1895, but was re-elected to Parliament in 1900 for Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. In the same year he helped to form the union-based Labour Representation Committee, which was later renamed the Labour Party.
After the 1906 election, Hardie was chosen as the Labour Party's first parliamentary leader. He resigned in 1908 in favour of Arthur Henderson, and spent his remaining years campaigning for causes such as women's suffrage, self-rule for India, and opposition to the Great War.
-- Keir Hardie's Racist Remarks
In his evidence to the 1899 House of Commons Select Committee on emigration and immigration, Hardie argued that the Scots resented immigrants greatly, and that they would want a total immigration ban.
When it was pointed out to him that more people left Scotland than entered it, he replied:
"It would be much better for Scotland if those
1,500 were compelled to remain there and let
the foreigners be kept out. Dr Johnson said
God made Scotland for Scotchmen, and I
would keep it so."
According to Hardie, the Lithuanian migrant workers in the mining industry had "filthy habits", they lived off "garlic and oil", and they were carriers of "the Black Death".
In 1908, when visiting South Africa, he said that the Socialist movement stood for equal rights for every race, but that:
"We do not say all races
are equal; no one dreams
of doing that".
On his return to the UK he stated his belief that black people should be given the opportunity to vote and to take a full part in society.
-- The Death of Keir Hardie
After a series of strokes, Hardie died in hospital in Glasgow of pneumonia at noon on the 26th. September 1915, aged 59. His friend and fellow pacifist Thomas Evan Nicholas delivered the sermon at Hardie's memorial service at Aberdare, in his constituency.
Hardie was cremated in Maryhill, Glasgow. A memorial stone in his honour is located at Cumnock Cemetery, Ayrshire, Scotland.
Hardie is seen as a key figure in the history of the Labour Party, and has been the subject of multiple biographies. Kenneth O. Morgan has called him:
"Labour's greatest pioneer
and its greatest hero".
The Death of Fergus Bowes-Lyon
On the following day, the 27th. September 1915, the British Royal Family lost one of their own during the Great War when Fergus Bowes-Lyon, older brother of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. was killed during fighting on the Hohenzollern Redoubt.
The Death of John Kipling
Also on the 27th. September 1915, author Rudyard Kipling's only son John was killed during the Battle of Loos, just weeks after his 18th. birthday.
John Kipling was born on the 17th. August 1897. His father Rudyard used his influence to get him a commission in the British Army despite being decisively rejected for poor eyesight. John's death at the Battle of Loos caused his family immense grief.