Berkshire’s Home Front 1914: Emergency Defence

In August 1914, the Chief Constable of Berkshire, Major Arthur Faulconer Poulton (1858-1935)¹ made an appeal to Berkshire’s Special Constables to organise a guard on all vulnerable points liable to outrage. Suggested points included: rail and river bridges (especially over the Thames), ‘water works, reservoirs, lighting works, magazines, churches, town halls and other large buildings’.

In addition, Special Constables were expected to register and watch all aliens, specifically ‘alien enemies viz those of German nationality who are now under certain restrictions‘.

By December, the threat from the enemy within was compounded by a real fear of invasion. I have a copy of a confidential circular issued under the remit of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) instructing Berkshire’s Emergency Defence Committees in the event of ‘a landing of a hostile force in the South or South East coast’. It states that as soon as the order was issued to ‘denude’ Kent, Sussex and Surrey of all ‘cattle, sheep, horses, vehicles (both horse and motor), consumable stock, suitable for man or beast and all other commodities which may be considered of use to an invading force’, both people and resources were to be removed to special centres in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.

A Most Desirable Eighteenth Century Investment Opportunity

In the early 1770s the British government was (as ever) short of cash and facing problems at home and abroad. Their troubles only intensified in 1775, when war finally broke out in America.

                  Georgian Coin Scale                  

Against this backdrop, they decided to resurrect a previously less than successful money-making scheme called a tontine, loosely based on an issue of life annuities. Via the Irish Parliament, they established three state-run Irish Tontines: in 1773, 1775 and 1777, all heavily promoted by the national press in both England and Ireland.¹