麻豆社

The wealthy industrialist and Mansfield MP, Sir Arthur Markham, was an early critic of the government鈥檚 handling of the war effort and went on to become the focus of a campaign to stop the recruitment of under-age soldiers.

For several months he raised questions in the House of Commons challenging Ministers of his own party about a policy that meant thousands of boys - who had lied about their age -were serving on the front line, despite petitions from their parents.

Markham was undoubtedly a patriot. He moved to take up a lease at the grand Nottinghamshire estate of Newstead Abbey in 1914 only after turning his own home near Folkstone into a Military Hospital for wounded soldiers. Initially his criticism of the government centred on what he felt was an inefficient use of manpower and resources. As a businessman who employed thousands of men in the mining and steel industry, he was concerned to learn that the early volunteers had little kit or equipment and there was a shortage of munitions for troops on the front line.

He had been a Liberal MP since 1900 and a backbencher of little repute before the war. The historian, Richard Van Emden and author of 鈥楤oy Soldiers of the Great War鈥� says Markham led a remarkable campaign to bring the issue of under-age boys enlisting to the attention of both politicians and the press, and forestalled many lads going abroad. He raised individual cases and one morning received 300 letters from parents anxious about their young sons who had been sent to the front.

After his death in 1916, The Times wrote in his obituary that 鈥淭he house accepted from him taunts and charges that it would have refused to hear from others, because it recognised his complete sincerity and his desire to serve public rather than party ends.鈥�

Location: Newstead Abbey in Ravenshead, Nottinghamshire NG15 9HJ
Image: Arthur Markham MP pictured with his estate, courtesy of the Library of the London School of Economics & Political Science

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