Frank, Elsie and Peter Dicks: A Stranraer Family and War

N.B. This article also appears in Dave P's Bits of History

All lives are interesting, not least to the people living them. But for those of us who dabble in family history, some relatives’ lives stand out as particularly noteworthy. In my family, one such is my Mother’s uncle (my great-uncle) Valentine Frank Dicks. In this article, I will relate what I know of Uncle Frank, his wife Elsie and their only son, Peter. It is a tale set in both England and Scotland, embraces the Rhins of Galloway and spans two world wars. It involves different kinds of courage and also tragedy. And although I never met Uncle Frank, it concludes with a link between our lives that Frank and his family could never have foreseen.

Valentine Frank Dicks (hereafter referred to as Frank) was born in 1889, the eighth child of Samuel and Eliza Dicks. My maternal grandmother was their tenth and final child. Samuel Dicks was a seedsman who worked for a firm that grew and marketed vegetable seeds. Frank was brought up in the family home in Penge, then in Kent, now part of the South London Borough of Bromley. The family were members of the New Church, a small non-conformist denomination whose doctrines are based on the teachings of an 18^th Century thinker, Emmanuel Swedenborg.

Unlike other members of his family, Frank did not stay in London. The 1911 Census finds him at the age of 22, living in lodgings in Edinburgh (he had apparently previously lived in Glasgow) and working as a cashier in the Foreign Exchange department of Thomas Cook’s in Princes Street. I do not know why he chose to move to Scotland, but he never returned to live in England.

In 1912, Frank’s London-based elder brother Ernest, then 27 and a commercial clerk, married Kathleen Daisy Winter, a 24 year old school teacher. As we will see, this union will be significant to Frank’s tale, a few years down the line.

Ernest Dicks and his wife Kathleen Daisy, nee Winter. I do not have a photograph of Frank Dicks

Frank Dicks during World War One

When World War One (WW1) broke out, Frank was 25, but he did not volunteer to join up. He continued to work at Thomas Cook’s until conscription was introduced in March 1916. Frank was then called up – and revealed himself as a conscientious objector.

The stigma and sometimes rough treatment of the 16,000 WW1 conscientious objectors (COs) has been well documented. The way that COs were regarded by the authorities and the general public meant that opting for CO status was far from a soft option. Two reasons may be identified for the often insensitive and ad hoc management of COs. First, there was the pro-war fervour (some would say mania) whipped up by a government desperate for manpower that led many to be prejudiced against those who refused to fight. Second, the authorities under-estimated both the numbers of those applying for CO status and the strength of feeling of many of them – including Frank Dicks. Policy regarding COs consequently evolved and adapted as the war went on. It must be remembered also that this was a totally new situation – there had never before been conscription in any previous British war and so the issue of conscientious objection had not previously arisen.

Will Ellsworth-Jones’s fine book We Will Not Fight provides a comprehensive account of COs during WW1 and the efforts made by the authorities to manage them. Those seeking CO status had to apply to a Military Service Tribunal. These were established across the country and tended to be made up of local “worthies”, who would not by nature be sympathetic to COs’ views. Also, each Tribunal had a “Military Representative”, a senior officer whose role was to put the case for the applicant to be made to join the forces. Applicants would not normally have legal representation, so the dice was somewhat loaded against them.

Most tribunal records were destroyed after WW1, on the orders of the government. The feeling was, in the aftermath of war, that the ill-feeling engendered by and towards those who did not want to fight should be put aside. Only two sets of records were retained, as benchmarks to be referred to if needed in the future. One set was for the county of Middlesex and the other was for Lothian and Peebles – by remarkable chance, the tribunal which heard Frank’s case. Recently, that tribunal’s records have been made available online on Scotland’s People’s website.

The forms available online tell the story of Frank’s application. He applied for ‘absolute exemption’ from military service in any form. His grounds were religious: as he explained, “I believe that military service is contrary to the principles of human conduct as taught by our Lord Jesus Christ in the holy gospels”. His application was supported by a letter from Rev. S. Cunningham Goldsack, Minister of the New Church in Edinburgh, who confirmed that Frank was an active member of the Church and a man of principle who had genuine conscientious grounds for refusing to fight.

While many COs whose objection was on religious grounds were non-conformists, the New Church as a whole was not a pacifist denomination. Both my grandfathers were life-long members of the New Church and both served in the army in WW1. Frank clearly had his own faith and justification for taking a different view.

The military representative attached to the tribunal did not assent to Frank’s application. Details of the tribunal hearing itself, which took place on 10^th April 1916, do not survive, but proceedings were likely to have been brief. The decision of the panel was to accept Frank’s conscientious objection, but to reject his application for absolute exemption. In this he was in the majority: only around 200 applicants were given absolute exemption during the war. He was granted exemption from combatant service but was still required to join the army. He was issued a letter directing him to report for service on 10^th May 1916.

As a CO, Frank was allocated to the Non Combatant Corps (NCC). This was established specifically for the purpose of ensuring that COs ‘did their duty’ and carried out useful work to help the war effort while respecting their wish not to bear arms. It was an unsatisfactory arrangement. The NCC was resented by rest of the army, who quickly renamed it the “no courage corps”. COs who joined the corps were ambivalent about their role and many felt that by accepting army discipline they were diluting their principles. Also, the work they were put to was often meaningless. In total, only 3,300 COs agreed to join the NCC – and Frank Dicks was not among them.

By refusing to answer the summons to the NCC, Frank put himself outside the law and liable to punishment. The authorities maintained the fiction that COs like Frank were subject to army discipline (although he had never worn a uniform) and on 19^th June 1916, Frank faced a Court Martial in Hamilton. His ‘guilt’ was not in question and he received the standard sentence of 112 days imprisonment with hard labour. Originally, COs were incarcerated in military prisons, but the numbers quickly made this impractical (around 6,000 COs were imprisoned during the war) and Frank served his sentence in Barlinnie civilian gaol.

During this time, Frank again appealed against the Tribunal’s decision not to award him absolute exemption. His case was heard by the Central Tribunal (the ultimate appeal court) on 1^st September 1916. By this time, attitudes towards COs who refused to join the NCC had softened somewhat, partly through recognition of their strength of feeling and partly through the practical difficulties of incarcerating large numbers of determined men. A Home Office committee, chaired by William Brace, established what became known as the “Home Office scheme”, whereby COs whose appeals were supported by the Central Tribunal would be officially reallocated to an army reserve unit (Class W) and offered work of “national importance”. Frank Dicks’s appeal was supported and he accepted allocation to the Home Office scheme.

While the Home Office scheme was established with the best of intentions, like the Non Combatant Corps it proved to be an uneasy compromise. Political and public attitudes were a little more understanding by this time, but there was still a strong view that COs should suffer as much as the men at the front. The solution reached by the Brace committee was to establish ‘work camps’ in redundant prisons (the prison population had fallen drastically, presumably because many potential criminals were serving in the forces). COs would be obliged to live in their allocated work camp, but there were no locked doors or uniforms and the warders were reframed as “instructors”. COs had to work regular hours, but could venture outside the camp during evenings and weekends and were paid a small amount for their efforts. Frank was allocated to Princetown work camp, situated in the temporarily redundant Dartmoor Prison.

Will Ellsworth-Jones characterises the work camps as “something akin to primitive boarding schools”. Life at Princetown seems to have been a mixture of tedium and unpleasantness, interspersed with some more civilised experiences. The work was largely standard prison fare of sewing mailbags and hewing rocks – hardly of ‘national importance’. The camp still had the atmosphere of a prison and flouting too many rules could lead a CO to be returned to a real prison. Some COs proved to be disruptive influences. The main grounds for CO status other than religious conviction was strong political belief and a few of extreme socialist or anarchist persuasion regarded their role as being to cause as much trouble to the authorities as possible. Also, when out in the local community, the COs often faced hostility and sometimes violence. On the other hand, COs at Princetown organised classes, lectures and discussion groups and produced their own newspaper.

Despite the difficulties and compromises it manifested, many COs, like Frank, accepted the Home Office scheme. Only a small minority, around 1,300 “absolutists”, refused to participate and spent the war in prison.

After the War: Frank Dicks in Stranraer

It was unrealistic to expect that after the war was over, life would carry on for COs as if nothing had happened. Feelings were still too strong. Some COs had problems gaining work and some found themselves estranged from their families. Some even faced prejudice from members of their churches.

Frank Dicks returned to Scotland after the war, but if he initially went back to Edinburgh he didn’t remain there for long. By 1919 he was living in Stranraer, Wigtownshire – one of the more remote towns of southern Scotland. He had no visible ties to Stranraer (and there was no nearby New Church community) and it seems certain that his move was due to the after-effects of his CO status. He did however return to his former job as a cashier for Thomas Cokk's and it is possible that (as happened with other COs) he was transferred there by his employer.

On 2^nd June 1919, Frank married Elsie Maud Winter. Elsie was the younger sister of his brother Ernest’s wife, Kathleen Daisy (see above). The marriage took place at the New Church, Upper Norwood, South London - the family church. If there were any family tensions caused by Frank’s CO status they were not apparent at the wedding, as his father, Samuel Dicks and Elsie’s father Richard Winter acted as witnesses. Frank took his new wife back to Stranraer, where they lived for the rest of his life.

A couple of years after his move to Scotland, Frank, now in his 30s, left his employment as a cashier and set up in business as a “general merchant”. This was his occupation when his and Elsie’s only son Peter was born on 6^th May 1923. For a number of years Frank kept a general store at 12 Hanover Street, Stranraer (it remains a shop to this day).

Elsie Dicks and her new-born son Peter

Family legend has it that at some time in his life, Frank Dicks was virtually destitute and according to my mother, rescued mouldy bananas from rubbish bins, put them in jars and sold them as hand cream. There is no evidence that this was ever the case (could it be that some stigma from Frank’s CO status trickled down through the family?) However, in 1935, Frank was declared bankrupt. This seems to have been caused by an ill-fated venture into opening a restaurant and dance hall in Stranraer, ambitiously named the Ritz and unpromisingly situated on the site of a former reformatory school in Dalrymple Steet. Following its failure, the liquidators tried to sell the Ritz as a going concern but apparently had no takers, for by 1939 it housed a boys club and was being used as a reception centre for wartime evacuees. Frank and Elsie however picked themselves up from this setback. Elsie set up a timber merchant business and once discharged from bankruptcy, Frank established a new business in Stranraer as a supplier of fireplaces and tiles, maintaining it for the remainder of his life. When he left school, Peter joined his father in his tile and fireplace business.

Peter Dicks Serves in World War Two

When World War 2 (WW2) broke out, Peter Dicks was 16. In 1941 he was liable for call up and willingly went to war, volunteering to train as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm (FAA). How Frank viewed this in the light of his previous conscientious objection I cannot tell, nor do I know if Frank himself would have continued as a CO if he had been called up again (despite the different circumstances of WW2, there were almost four times as many people granted CO status during that war when compared with WW1).

In summer 1944, at the age of 21, Peter Dicks joined his first operational squadron as a Fleet Air Arm pilot. He was allocated to 831 Torpedo Bomber Reconnaissance squadron, based on HMS Victorious and flying Fairey Barracuda torpedo bombers. HMS Victorious had recently been assigned to the Eastern fleet, based in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), pursuing the war against Japan.

Prior to leaving Stranraer to go to war, on 7^th February 1944, Peter married Mamie Kennedy, a local woman 14 years his senior. I know nothing about the background to their relationship. He also visited his family in London; my mother, then a teenager, remembers him resplendent in his uniform, with his ‘wings’ and stripes indicating his rank of Sub-Lieutenant (acting) in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, the standard rank for a newly qualified FAA pilot.

Peter Dicks and his mother, presumbly taken on his wedding day. Peter is wearing his uniform of sub-lieutenant in the R.N.V.R., known as the "wavy navy" due to the wavy stripe on the sleeve of the jacket

On 25^th July 1944, 831 squadron was involved in Operation Crimson, a carrier-based air attack on Japanese harbour and oil installations on the island of Sebang, Northern Sumatra (part of Indonesia). Peter was not involved in this action, however and it may be that he joined the squadron as a replacement for losses during that mission. On 4^th August 1944, Peter flew in to make his first landing on HMS Victorious.

The letter from his squadron leader to his parents stated that the landing gear designed to catch the aircraft as it touched down on deck failed and the plane, unable to stop, fell over the side of the carrier. By tragic irony, twenty eight years after his father was imprisoned as a CO and on his first operational flight, Peter Dicks became the only member of my family to be killed serving in WW2.

There is presumably an official report of the accident somewhere in the archives, but I have not been able to access it. It is likely to be brief. Deck landing accidents were sadly common during WW2; one audit in 1945 showed that between 2% and 4% of all landings resulted in an accident (although only a few would have led to fatalities). The majority of such accidents were caused by pilot error, or by the aircraft having been damaged in action. Landing gear malfunction was also possible however; perhaps there was failure of the hook under Peter’s plane that should have caught on the arrestor wires stretched across the deck of the aircraft carrier.

Peter’s body was recovered and he is buried in Trincomalee Military Cemetery, Sri Lanka. Nearby is buried Petty Officer Airman W.A. Allen, also of HMS Victorious, who died on the same day and who was probably a member of Peter’s crew. The cause of death on Peter’s death certificate is simply “On war service”.

Frank and Elsie Dicks after World War 2

Peter Dicks is commemorated on Stranraer’s War Memorial. The reactions of his wife and parents to his death can be imagined, however his wife Mamie disappears from the story at this point (though she did keep in contact with some members of Peter's extended family).

On 5^th October 1947, Frank Dicks died at the age of 58. He had apparently had a cerebral haemorrhage three years previously, around the time of Peter’s accident and the cause of death was “general arterio-sclerosis”. It seems quite likely that Peter’s death had a part in Frank’s failing health.

Elsie Dicks had lost her son and husband in the space of three years. She continued to live in Wigtownshire, however and some time after Frank’s death she moved to a tiny and isolated cottage in Larbrax Bay, on the North West coast of the Rhinns of Galloway. Her cottage had neither electricity nor running water and she apparently relied on a local farmer for provisions. Now in her sixties, she lived there alone for some years – perhaps this was her way of coming to terms with her double loss. It was not however a completely isolated existence as she kept in touch with her extended family and sometimes relatives would come to stay with her for holidays.

Larbrax Bay. Elsie Dicks' cottage is hidden beneath the hill at the top of the picture

Shore Cottage, Larbrax Bay, where Elsie Dicks lived during the 1950s. It is now a holiday cottage

In 1956, at the age of 67, Elsie bought a one-bedroom cottage in Colonel Street, Portpatrick, a village down the coast from Larbrax Bay. This cottage had more ‘mod cons’ than her previous dwelling. She lived there for a further ten years and continued to occasionally welcome relatives for holidays, including her niece (and my aunt) Barbara Nicholls. Towards the end of her life, Elsie finally returned to South London to live with her sister, Kathleen Daisy Dicks, who (as mentioned above) had married Frank’s brother Ernest and was now widowed. Elsie died in London in 1966, aged 77.

Envoi: The Dicks Family and Me

As a child, I knew Kathleen Daisy Dicks (‘Auntie Daisy’) well - a small, saintly woman who for years sat in the same pew during services at the New Church, Anerley. Sometimes I would visit her house after church with my parents and I have a faint memory at the age of 10 of meeting Elsie Dicks (inevitably ‘Auntie Elsie’) during the time she lived with her sister. Neither of us had any inkling at that time that our lives would become indirectly linked, many years later.

Following Elsie’s death, her cottage in Colonel Street, Portpatrick was bought by her niece, my aunt Barbara Nicholls, who had previously holidayed there with Elsie. Barbara Nicholls used the cottage as a holiday home and as I have related in my history of “the Cottage”, my wife and I became regular visitors after honeymooning there in 1984. In 1993, Aunt Barbara gifted the cottage to us and we own it to this day.

While we have recently carried out some renovations, there is still much in the cottage that Elsie Dicks would recognise. The living room fireplace dates from the 1940s or 1950s and it is just possible that it was installed by Frank Dicks. The enamel sink in the kitchen would have been there in Elsie’s day and there is still a tin bath hanging on the passage wall that may well have been Elsie’s means of keeping clean in the days before my Aunt had a shower installed. Finally, pride of place over the fireplace is still given to a framed photograph that is likely to have been displayed there for sixty years. It is a black and white photo of a little boy eating a candy bar – Peter Dicks, R.N.V.R.

Sources Used

Census returns, valuation rolls, records of births, marriages and deaths and Military Service Tribunal records all available through Scotland’sPeople.
Articles from The Dumfries and Galloway Standard available at the British Newspaper Archive

Fleet Air ArmArchive

Forces WarRecords

The PearceRegister of British WW1 Conscientious Objectors

Ellsworth-Jones W (2008) We will not fight: The untold story of World War One’s Conscientious Objectors. London: Aurum Press.

Wragg D (2001) Fleet Air Arm Handbook 1939-1945. Stroud: Sutton Publishing.