PARCELS PROVIDED FOOD AND COMFORTS TO TYNEMOUTH PRISONERS OF WAR

This year, our talk to mark Remembrance Day, will be by Alan Fidler who led the award-winning Northumbria World War One Commemoration Project.

Alan will talk about the Tynemouth Prisoners of War Parcels Fund, established and managed by a local woman, Mrs Ethel McConnell, to provide food and comforts to the hundreds of servicemen and others from Tynemouth Borough who became prisoners of war or were interned as enemy aliens in countries that Britain was at war with during WW1 – Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey. He will include stories about some of the local people involved.

One hundred years after the end of the war, the Northumbria WW1 Commemoration Project was handed a cache of correspondence that hadn’t previously been examined which not only shed much light on Mrs McConnell’s work but provided information on some of the local people who were Prisoners of War or civilian internees.

The correspondence, including postcards from local prisoners of war and letters to Mrs McConnell from families and friends of prisoners of war with donations for the fund, was found in the loft of the house in Manor Road, Tynemouth where Mrs McConnell lived, by a new occupier.

Alan said: “This cache of documents added a whole new dimension to the Northumbria WW1 Project. After discussions with academics, we realised the significance of this collection of documents because it provided important information about the structure of support for prisoners of war. In most cases such documents had been destroyed after the war.”

With a grant of £10,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project was able to research stories of some of the local people who had been prisoners of war and had received parcels.

In total, the project identified 300 local prisoners of war, some as a result of the parcels fund documents.

“We were able to follow these people from their time in prisoner of war camps, their return home, right through to the end of their lives. We found some very interesting stories,” he added.

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