As we mark Remembrance Day, we take a moment to remember the Moor Pool residents who served during the First World War. We invited our University of Birmingham placement student, Clementine Birnie, to delve into the history of three residents, uncovering their stories and remembering the lives behind the names.
Hal Harper was born into an artistic family, with his father, Edward Samuel Harper, teaching at the Birmingham School of Art and his older brother, Edward Steel Harper, also becoming a popular artist. Similarly, Hal worked as an Architect Assistant. He acted in a play alongside his brother, Wilfred Harper, in 1908, which fundraised for a children’s home and orphanage. In 1910, he married Alice May Griffin, and by 1911 they were living at 15 North Gate in Moor Pool. They lived near his parents and siblings, who lived at 85 Wentworth Road. In May 1911, their son, Kenneth Hal Harper, was born.
After the First World War began in 1914, many men were persuaded to join the army by Lord Kitchener’s ‘Your country needs you’ campaign. Hal Harper was likely one of these men, as he joined the army long before conscription was introduced in 1916. He served on the Western Front as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in the 2nd
and 6th Battalion.
He was killed in action on the 19th July 1916, at the age of 29. He likely died in the course of day-to-day trench warfare or during a small-scale engagement, which characterised warfare along his section of the line. He is commemorated alongside 11,000 other servicemen in the Ploegsteert Memorial in Belgium. He is also memorialised at Handsworth
Grammar School, with the tribute:
"All these were honoured in their generations and were the glory of their times. To the everlasting memory of the old boys of this school who fell in the Great War 1914-1918."
Like so many others who lost their lives in war, his family had to figure out a new way of living without him. He was survived by both parents, his wife and his son. Kenneth received his father’s pension payments until the age of 18. Alice May was also compensated, however provisions were typically meagre and widows were subject to moral scrutiny by Local Pension Authorities. It is possible that she risked or lost these payments when she remarried in 1921. However, her position as a single mother meant that her remarriage likely provided her and her son with more material stability. She stayed with her second husband until her death in 1947, surviving the Second World War. Kenneth would go on to work as a pharmacist, and volunteered as an Air Raid Precaution warden.
Brothers Ernest and Frederick Tasker lived at 27 Moor Pool Avenue with their parents and brothers in 1911.
At age 16, Ernest worked as a clerk for an accountant. However, his life was cut tragically short in 1916 at the age of 22 whilst serving as a Private in the 14th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He died during the first month of the infamous Battle of the Somme, an offensive which lasted until November 1916 with catastrophic losses of life. He is commemorated at the Thiepval Memorial alongside 72,000 others who have no known grave.
Frederick enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1915, at the age of 18. Prior to 1918, a soldier had to be a minimum of 19 years old to serve overseas. Therefore, Frederick worked at the 1st Southern General Hospital in Birmingham, a military hospital set up in the Aston Webb building of the University of Birmingham. He would later work in Blackpool, before being discharged in 1919 for being ‘surplus’ after the war ended. He was recorded as having been impaired at some point during this time, however he was still considered medically fit to serve.
After his discharge, he resumed living with his parents at 27 Moor Pool Avenue. One of his brothers, Charles Edward, lived just a few doors down at number 23 with his wife. In the 1921 census, Emma Jennings, a machinist at the Chad Valley Toy factory, is listed as a visitor in his parent’s home. The pair got married that same year, and from 1923 they
lived in their own house on the estate, at 4 North Pathway.
