With only months to go before the start of hostilities, life in Britain is very much business as usual on the 8th of June 1914. There is concern about events in Albania, continuing frustration with the Suffragettes, ongoing industrial infighting but no hint to the catastrophic events in the coming weeks that would change the face of Great Britain and Europe forever.
The sparks there were to light the flames were yet to be struck in Sarajevo.
Despite the huge military build-up in the Kaiser’s Germany and an underlying concern about him and his government there are few signs that a world war is on the horizon.
I think we occasionally forget how very fast our country changed socially from August 1914 onwards. When men and women say “it was the end of an era” we in modern times could also utter with the starkness of hindsight “no truer words were ever spoken”.
The Edwardian era was about to crash and suddenly jolt to a holt with its shattering reverberation felt for generations to come. For the fortunate in Great Britain those early 20th century years were like a light English summer breeze. As with all summers, the winter is never far away and the Edwardian time was about to burn and disappear forever. As for the majority working and lower classes, those who were the servants of the sun-kissed rich, the devastation of war was to mark the start of a change to the British way of life that would be ongoing until after the Second World War and into the 1940s. The servants and the lower classes would be dragged with eyes wide-open into the modern age.
Meanwhile in June 1914 in the pages of The Western Times amongst the rural news stories was an item to alarm our Edwardian royalists. Whether or not King George or Queen Mary were actually at Buckingham Palace during the break-in is unreported.
An Unwelcome Visitor
Fitter At A Buckingham Palace Without Invitation
A man, describing himself as an engineer’s fitter, of Pimlico, was arrested at Buckingham Palace early yesterday morning, and will be charged today with being on enclosed premises. Apparently, between one and two o’clock, he scaled the Palace wall and obtained access to the servants quarters, entering several rooms. One of the maid servants awoke, and the intruder, apologising, said he wanted 19. Entering the bedroom of Mr. Copple, one of the Queens pages, the latter challenged his unexpected visitor, who had decamped. Mr. Copple, clad only in pyjamas, gave pursuit, and the intruder was captured. He asserted his object was to show it was possible to enter the Palace despite the guards.
Ian Waugh
Old British News
