Our First World War exhibition is now on at the Heritage Gallery on the first floor at Solihull Central Library.
It’s on during library opening hours until 13th September 2014 so there’s plenty of time for you to come along and have a look round.
Solihull Remembers, Heritage Gallery, Solihull Central Library
If you want to remember anyone who died in the war, or who served and survived, do fill in one of our remembrance cards and let us add it to our ‘wall of memory’. It doesn’t matter if the person wasn’t from Solihull, we’re happy for you to remember anyone you wish to include.
Wall of memory in our Heritage Gallery exhibition, Solihull Central Library
You’re welcome to fill in one of the cards when you visit or, alternatively, fill in the PDF form below and email it to us (you may need to save the file first, and then edit it). If you have a photo you’d like to include, please attach that to your email as well, and send it to us at heritage@solihull.gov.uk. We’ll then add it to the wall for you.
According to the Birmingham Daily Post, Thursday 29th October 1914, the first group of Belgian refugees to be housed in Solihull arrived the previous Saturday. Residents had responded to appeals for funds, as well as offering meat, milk and vegetables. As well as a house being set aside to accommodate the refugees, several residents took refugees into their own homes.
In an age of larger families, it wasn’t unusual for a couple to have more than one of their children serving in the Armed Forces and, indeed, to have more than one child killed.
In 1909, the British Red Cross was tasked with helping the Territorial Forces Medical Service in the event of war. It set up local units called ‘Voluntary Aid Detachments’, and members were trained in first aid and nursing.
Auxiliary Hospitals, attached to military hospitals, were established – the following are known to have operated in Solihull:
Captain Robert Jacobs of the Royal Army Medical Corps died of wounds on 20th July 1918, aged 39, after an enemy bomb fell on his billet.
He was born in London in 1879 (his family moved to Ashburnham, 27 Whitefields Road, Solihull between 1901-1911) and he enlisted as a Private in the City of London Sanitary Company two days after the war began. He rose to the rank of Captain within 10 months, and served on the front continuously from his arrival in France on Christmas Day, 1914.
He was twice Mentioned in Despatches, and was congratulated on two occasions by Sir Douglas Haig.
By the time of his death, he was in command of no. 8 Sanitary Section. His knowledge of bacteriology and his inventive genius bought him distinction. He invented a method for the destruction of the ova of lice by heat, which was adopted by Allied armies, and he also invented a means of purifying bath water so that it could be re-used seven times. Amongst other inventions were a self-emptying incinerator and a process of rendering down waste fats to be turned into nitroglycerine for the manufacture of munitions.
Robert Jacobs’ father, James, a retired joiner, died in Spring 1911, so the War Office’s telegram advising of Robert’s death was sent to his mother, Ellen. She also received a photograph of his grave, marked with a wooden battlefield cross, which was replaced by a Portland Stone memorial in the 1920s/30s.
Photograph sent to his mother, showing the battlefield cross on his grave (Solihull Library ref.: D3/2)
He was the second of three children – his older brother Harry Jacobs (1875-1964) was a bank clerk with Lloyds Bank. The brothers also had a younger sister, Maud Jacobs (1880-1961) who kept house for her brother, Harry. The unmarried siblings remained at Ashburnham, Whitefields Road until at least 1939 and were living at 18 Elmdon Road, Selly Oak, Birmingham at the time of their respective deaths.
Robert Jacobs’ family gave his medals, and the next-of-kin memorial plaque and scroll they received to Solihull Central Library, as well as the photo of his grave and the telegram sent to his mother notifying his death.
If you have any more information about him, we’d be delighted to hear from you – please do let us know (email heritage@solihull.gov.uk or phone 0121 704 6977).
Three more men from places now within the Solihull Borough are known to have died in September 1914. They were:
Private Albert Newell, of West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Own), died 20th September 1914. He’s commemorated at Bickenhill and Marston Green.
Private George Edward Paston, of King’s (Liverpool Regiment), died 21st September 1914, aged 32. He was apparently born in Berkswell but was living with his wife and his son at his father-in-law’s home in Leicester. His peace-time occupation was a brick-burner. As far as we know, he’s not commemorated in the Solihull Borough, so please tell us if you know differently.
Corporal Claude Percival Wilks, of the 2nd Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, died 26th September 1914. He’s commemorated on memorials at Catherine-de-Barnes, Elmdon and Solihull.
If you have any information about any of these soldiers, please let us know – email heritage@solihull.gov.uk or phone 0121 704 6977.
As part of the commemorations marking 100 years since the outbreak of the First World War, we’re trying to get together a definitive list of individuals from places now within the Solihull borough (or in the former Solihull Rural District) who died as a result of war service.
Solihull was the only former Rural District Council to become a Metropolitan Borough Council in its own right under the 1972 Local Government Act, which came into effect on 1st April 1974. A little more than 40 years before, workers were taking up the cobbles in Solihull’s High Street – a graphic illustration of the incredibly rapid growth of the Borough. The population had more than doubled in 7 years, from just over 25,000 in 1932 to 52,610 by 1939.
2014 marks the 40th/50th/60th anniversary of Solihull becoming a Municipal Borough (1954), County Borough (1964) and Metropolitan Borough (1974).
We’d love to hear your memories of those times – for example, did you see Princess Margaret visit Solihull on Charter Day? Did you attend the teenage dance at the Civic Hall in 1964 to raise funds for the ‘Elevation Day’ clock? Do you remember the creation of the present-day Metropolitan Borough in 1974?
Please tell us what you remember of events then, or let us have your thoughts on how life in the Borough has changed since those times. There’s a memory sheet (PDF) attached below for you to fill in and email back to us at heritage@solihull.gov.uk
When Solihull became a County Borough on 1st April 1964, it also became constituted as a registration and licensing authority for motor vehicles and drivers. From that day, Solihull drivers had to obtain their tax discs from the Local Taxation Officer at the Council House in Poplar Road. The DVLC (later DVLA) took over vehicle licensing from 1974.
Solihull Life 