This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: remove irrelevant information.(August 2022) |
During the First World War between 1914 and 1918, many Belgian refugees fled to the United Kingdom.
Because archive material of the hundreds of local Belgian refugee committees is scant and incomplete and because systems of registration were not watertight (nor did they run from the very start of the conflict), it is very difficult to estimate the number of Belgians that sought refuge in Britain during World War I. Estimates vary between 225,000 and 265,000. The estimation does not include the roughly 150,000 Belgian soldiers that took leave in Britain at some point during the war, and an additional 25,000 wounded Belgian soldiers convalescing in Britain. The fullest account is given in Belgian Refugee Relief in England during the Great War by Peter Calahan (Garland Publishing, New York and London, 1982).
On 12 October 1920, the Anglo-Belgian Memorial was unveiled at Victoria Embankment Gardens in London. The memorial was intended as proof of Belgian gratitude to the people of Britain who had accommodated the Belgians so well during the First World War. It features a central statue by the Belgian sculptor Victor Rousseau, himself a refugee. [26] [27] At the unveiling Belgium was represented by Princess Clementine, several members of the Royal Family, and the Prime Minister Léon Delacroix. [28] Representing the British nation was Lord Curzon, the then Foreign Secretary and friend of the Belgian King Albert. [28]
Edith Louisa Cavell was a British nurse and member of La Dame Blanche. She is celebrated for treating wounded soldiers from both sides without discrimination and for covertly helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium and return to active service during the First World War, which in wartime was a death penalty offence under the German military law of the Second Reich. Cavell was arrested and court-martialed for that offence as an act of Kriegsverrat, found guilty, and sentenced to death by firing squad. Despite international pressure for mercy, the German Government ruled that Cavell knew that her acts were punishable; they thus refused to commute her sentence, and she was shot. Her execution, however, received worldwide condemnation and extensive global press coverage arranged by Wellington House.
Joseph Guillaume François "Jef" Denyn was a Belgian carillon player from Mechelen. He originally studied to be an engineer. His carilloning career started in 1881 when his father, the official carilloneer of Mechelen, went blind and became unable to play. This caused Denyn to take over. In 1887 Denyn was recognised for his skills and officially appointed to the same position his father had held. He used his engineering knowledge to vastly improve the technology surrounding carillons, which is now used all over Europe and the United States. In 1922, he founded the world's first and most renowned international higher institute of campanology, later named after him, the Royal Carillon School "Jef Denyn" in Mechelen.
Henry Ludwig Mond, 2nd Baron Melchett was a British politician, industrialist and financier.
Swansea was a borough constituency. It was represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elected one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first-past-the-post system of election.
Dame Emma Maud McCarthy, was a nursing sister and British Army matron-in-chief.
Violet Florence Mabel Mond, Baroness Melchett, was a British humanitarian and activist.
Dame Elizabeth Mary Cadbury was a British activist and philanthropist. Her husband was George Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer.
The name Rhyd-y-gors or Rhydygors has been associated with two historic sites near the market town of Carmarthen in Southwest Wales. The first was the Norman Rhyd-y-gors Castle and the other was Rhyd-y-gors Mansion, home of the Edwardes family.
Norah Neilson Gray was a Scottish artist of the Glasgow School. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy while still a student and then showed works regularly at the Paris Salon and with the Royal Academy of Scotland. She was a member of The Glasgow Girls whose paintings were exhibited in Kirkcudbright during July and August 2010.
The Royal Star and Garter Home on Richmond Hill, in Richmond, London, was built between 1921 and 1924 to a design by Sir Edwin Cooper, based on a plan produced by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1915, to provide accommodation and nursing facilities for 180 seriously injured servicemen.
Aubrey House is a large 18th-century detached house with two acres of gardens in the Campden Hill area of Holland Park in west London, W8. It is a private residence.
Richmond Ice Rink was an ice skating rink at Clevedon Road, Twickenham, formerly in Middlesex and now in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. When it opened, in 1928, it had the longest ice surface in any indoor rink in the world and it soon became the premier rink in London. The rink closed in 1992 and the building was demolished.
Following the creation of Belgium as a nation state, Belgian people have sought refuge abroad on several occasions. From the early days of independence and the threat of The Netherlands or France, to two World Wars and the Independence of Congo, Belgians have been on the run themselves, for various reasons, as refugees.
Major Archibald Alexander Gordon alias Major Gordon CBE, MVO, KStJ, JP, Officer in the Order of Leopold (BE), Commander in de Order of the Crown (BE), Commander in the Order of Leopold II (BE), Officer in the Legion of Honour (FR), Order of Saint Anne, 4th Class (RUS), Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy (IT), was a British soldier who served as attaché to the Military Household of King Albert I of Belgium during World War I, with the title of Belgian King's Messenger. He is the younger brother of William Eagleson Gordon, who was awarded the Victoria Cross. The alias Major Gordon was given to him by the Belgian Military Household of King Albert and was later confirmed to him by Princess Marie-José of Belgium in Hardelot on 19 July 1918.
Laura Elizabeth Forster (1858–1917) was an Australian medical doctor, surgeon and nurse noted for her service in France, Belgium, Turkey and Russia during World War I.
Violetta Thurstan, MM was an English nurse, weaver, and administrator whose work included help for refugees and prisoners of war. She knew several languages, travelled frequently and wrote a number of books. The first was about her experiences of nursing in dangerous troublespots during the First World War. She was honoured by three countries for her courage while nursing in the war, and was awarded the Military Medal.
Mabel Annie St Clair Stobart was a British suffragist and aid-worker. She created and commanded all-women medical units to serve in the Balkan Wars and the First World War. She became the first woman to achieve the rank of Major in any national army. She was also the author of several books and articles.
Alice Hutchison was a British medical doctor who served in the Balkan and First World Wars. She was one of the first women to lead a war-time hospital unit and was awarded the Serbian Order of Saint Sava.
Vera Christina Chute Collum, was a British journalist, suffragist, anthropologist, photographer, radiographer and writer.
Mary Alice Blair (1880–1962) was a New Zealand doctor who organised hospitals in Malta, Serbia and Salonika during the First World War. She was in charge of Serbian hospital evacuation to Corsica where she was responsible for the thousands of refugees. She was awarded the Serbian Medal of St Sava and mentioned in despatches for her distinguished service. An anaesthetist, trained in New Zealand and Britain, Blair was described as one of “the great women of anaesthesia.”