The first world war and Manchester Guardian staff: teaching resource from the GNM Archive August 2014

The first world war began for Britain on 4 August 1914. As we mark the centenary, this month's teaching resource looks at the Manchester Guardian roll of honour plaque and asks what records in the GNM Archive can tell us about the men it lists.

• Commemorative first world war plaque. Photograph: Robin Christian for the Guardian

The first world war was not only the principal news topic for the Manchester Guardian between 1914 and 1918, but also a first hand experience for the newspaper's staff members who served in it. This month we have been using the roll of honour to try and take a broad look at staff lives shaped and lost in the war.
The wooden plaque, broken in two, was unearthed in 2008. It was found lying in a Manchester warehouse alongside other Guardian assets put into storage when the newspaper left its Cross Street offices in 1970. Repaired and restored, it now hangs on the wall of the current London offices at Kings Place. It carries the names of 127 Manchester Guardian employees who served in the 1914-18 conflict, 12 of whom were killed.

First world war memorial plaque: transcript of names
Some of the names will be familiar to those interested in the Guardian's history: Edward Taylor (Ted) Scott was the youngest son of editor CP Scott. He joined the Royal Field Artillery in 1915, survived the war and went on to become editor of the Manchester Guardian when his father retired in 1932. Sadly he died in a boating accident later the same year. Charles Edward Montague was CP Scott's son-in-law, a well-known journalist and leader writer who was acting editor of the newspaper between 1895 and 1906. At 47, he was too old to enlist when the war began, but dyed his greying hair and joined up anyway. Robert Howard Spring had only been at the Manchester Guardian for a few months when he enlisted in 1915, but he returned after the war and went on to become a successful journalist and the author of several popular novels.
Uncovering the stories behind the less well-known names listed on the plaque is more difficult. The GNM archive contains very few records of Manchester Guardian staff members at this time, and these men do not feature in published histories of the newspaper. The bulk of records documenting the Guardian's history before it moved to London in the 1960s are held at The John Rylands Library at The University of Manchester and many of these men, including six of the fallen, have proved untraceable in our records.
The material we do hold for staff members at this time is made up of financial records, including a staff salary ledger book and staff index cards giving contact details and some brief information about individuals' careers at the newspaper. These include an unfortunately incomplete set of cards for deceased staff members, compiled from the 1930s onwards.
Salary record book for staff of the Manchester Guardian and Manchester Evening News. Photograph: Robin Christian for the Guardian These types of records can be very useful historical sources, particularly for genealogists, but they also tend to be terse and impersonal. Sections for family details in the staff cards have been left blank, and a man's death might be recorded in the ledger with nothing more than a strikethrough line across his salary entry. Nevertheless, this is enough to give us an idea of the working lives these men left behind when they joined up, and of the kind of jobs available at a newspaper in 1914.
Relatively few of the men listed were journalists. HF Clark, who joined the Manchester Guardian from the Bristol Times in November 1913, was a sub-editor. He worked for the newspaper for less than a year before enlisting. JH Lethar had been a reporter for the Guardian since 1910, and took four weeks salary with him when he joined up in December 1914. FWH Singfield, who worked in the London office, may have been a junior reporter. Sadly none of these men returned from the war to continue their journalistic careers.
Far more of the men were employed in proof-reading, producing and distributing the newspaper. Before enlisting (at the very beginning of the war) JH Heddle worked for two months in the summer of 1914 as a Manchester Guardian canvasser, or salesman. RH Savage and AW Dean were also part of the canvassing team and also enlisted swiftly once the war began. Both men returned in 1916 with injuries. Dean came back to work part-time in October but Savage's wounds rendered him 'no good' according to a note in the ledger, and his name does not appear on the following page.
P Gleave worked in the readers and copyholders department, a large quality control team responsible for spotting inconsistencies between the proof and copy versions of journalist's work before it went to press. Readers like JW Yates (whose first names were John William) would have read the typeset version of an article aloud while a copyholder, perhaps J Bergin, checked through the text originally submitted by the author.
Index cards for deceased Manchester Guardian staff members. Photograph: Robin Christian for the Guardian AFW Spencer was a composing room operative in 1914. By 1917 he had enlisted, gone to war and been killed. Other composing room employees listed left jobs as overseers, day hands, apprentices, mechanics, Linotype operatives and makers-up to join up and fight in the war. As both a Linotype printer and maker-up, Harold Armstrong would have spent his days typing lines of text into the Linotype keyboard to produce dismantle-able moulds. These were used to create metal 'slugs', which Armstrong would then have assembled, line by line, to get each page of type ready for printing. He started out as a composing room apprentice in 1913, returned after the war and continued to work for the Manchester Guardian, and for the Manchester Evening News, until retiring on sick pay in 1959.
Most of the remaining names listed belonged to mechanics, messengers, supervisors, counting house workers, telegraph operators and machine minders. All the information we have gleaned about them has been added to our archive catalogue, so that each man has an 'authority' record sitting alongside those for the Guardian's managing editors, directors and leader writers. These can be searched online using the catalogue's persons search function. The snippets of information they contain, pulled from ledger pages and index cards as well as the memorial itself, give glimpses of the men's lives and of life at the Manchester Guardian as it was a century ago.
Next month's resource will consider the Manchester Guardian's coverage of the war.