Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Survivors of War
Many thousands of people were either convalescent or working at the military hospital once sited on our Headingley Campus. Many will remain anonymous, but some come to life thanks to the happenstance of surviving archival material.
From August 1914 until well into the 1920s, Army and Ministry of Pensions personnel were somewhere on campus. By 1916 about half the college buildings of the City of Leeds Training College were occupied by the hospital. Women students were still residential on campus, much to the dismay of Director of Education James Graham. He was appalled at the lewdness of soldiers, impromptu spectators, of young women students playing tennis.
In March 1916, Private Charley Gibson may have been one of those soldiers as he recovered at the 2nd Northern General Hospital at Beckett Park. Like many of his fellow patients, he added his name to a curious document. ‘A Remembrance’ of wounded soldiers at the military hospital. The soldiers wrote down their Number, Rank, Name, Regiment, Date when wounded, Nature of wound, Engagements, and What would you do with Kaiser Bill. The Archive at Leeds Beckett has a copy because a former student used it in a project. The original is held by Leeds University, possibly as part of the Liddle Collection. Charley’s entry reads 968, Pte., C. Gibson. Army Veterinary Corps, March 1916, Ankle, Poperinghe, Leave him to the Women of England.
Before his military career, Charley had been a Milkman, and later a Butcher, a trade he returned to immediately after the war. Charley’s Army career began when he was part of the Militia Volunteers Artillery North Eastern District based at Scarborough. In 1901 he enlisted in the 1st Dragoon Guards. At some point during the South African War in 1902-03, he was classed as a Marksman and saw action around Potchefstroom, about 75 miles SW of Johannesburg. Bouts of eczema and scabies punctuated his time as a soldier, the latter undoubtedly due to the less than hygienic conditions during the Boer War and later in the WW1 Trenches. Around 1909 Charley entered the Reserve Service Volunteer Corps. He re-engaged in 1913 with the Corps of Dragoons of the Line, in the 1st and later possibly the 5th Dragoon Guards.
Charley’s disciplinary record was not good. His misdemeanours included being found in a stable with a woman, disturbing the peace in Barracks and Town and interfering with the Military Police. Other more severe transgressions were frequently absent without leave and, in 1917, striking a superior officer. Despite all this and being detained several times, he rose to the rank of Acting Sergeant. However, he seems to have frequently gained promotions swiftly followed by demotions. Perhaps, as a result, he did have trouble getting an Army pension. By 1939 he was a Bus Driver in Scarborough.
Charley Gibson was born on 14 May 1883 at Barnetby-le-Wold in Lincolnshire, the son of Mark Gibson, a Groom and Coachman, and Ellen Snowden Wright. He married Annie Elizabeth Clark in 1912 in Scarborough; they had three children. Charley died at Scarborough in 1946.
At about the same time as Charley Gibson was treated in hospital, Winifred Louisa Fry was one of the many young women who joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment. Fry gave her nationality as British but was born in Auckland, New Zealand; her maternal family were prominent landowners, merchants and shipping owners. She was a talented musician and had passed the Music Theory examination at Trinity College in London. Fry engaged as a VAD Nurse in May 1915 on a wage of £22 per annum. She lived and worked at Fairfax, but in September 1916, she was posted to a Military Hospital in Malta. Fry returned to Beckett Park in July 1917, by which time Beckett Park was a much bigger hospital and had taken over almost all college buildings. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross (2nd Class) and decorated by King George V on 14 November 1917 at Buckingham Palace. Fry returned to New Zealand, leaving the UK on the SS Kigoma on 31 May 1919, travelling First Class.
Fry was born in 1878 in Auckland, New Zealand, the daughter of Robert Fry, a Department Store Owner and Sarah Stone, whose father, Captain James Stone, was a prominent landed New Zealander who owned the shipping business C J Stone & Son. Fry’s subsequent life in New Zealand remains a mystery, but she married Jack Ward and died in 1962.