Hartlepool in the Great War

Explores how Hatlepool reacted to the outbreak of the First World War.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 185 pages
Publication date: 08 August 2018
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Ltd

With the outbreak of the First World War, it was not surprising that a number of individuals who were of German decent and who lived in Hartlepool and its surrounding areas were rounded up and detained by the British military authorities. These individuals were held at the towns Stranton Ice Rink, in the interests of both national security and for their own personal safety. The numbers included the ex-German Consul for the Hartlepool district, as well as others who had been local residents for many years.

The first soldier with connections to Hartlepool to be killed on foreign soil during the war was Corporal 57561 John Robert Richardson. Richardson was serving with the 54th Battery, Royal Field Artillery, when he was killed in action on 4 October 1914. He is buried at the Bergen Communal Cemetery at Mons.

The war came to Hartlepool on the morning of Wednesday, 16 December 1914, in the shape of three vessels of the Imperial German Navy. By the time their attack was over, more than 1,100 artillery shells had landed on the town, killing 9 soldiers, 86 civilians, and wounding a further 438. Amongst the dead was 29-year-old Private 18/295 Theophilus Jones of the 18th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, making him the first British serviceman to be killed on British soil as a result of enemy action during the course of the First World War. Before the war was over, his brother Alfred would also be killed, during fighting at the Battle of Arras, on 3 May 1917.

By the time the war had ended, some 1,700 men and women from Hartlepool and its surrounding areas had paid the ultimate price of having served their King and country.

Weight: 436g
Dimension: 233 x 156 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781473828605