Watford and South West Herts in the Great War
…. is a slim
volume of 150 pages about the lives of ordinary people in a corner of
Hertfordshire during the upheaval that was World War One. Divided into an
Introduction, 4 main sections and an Afterword, most of the content is
parcelled into section 2 entitled Civilian Life. Which is as it should be for a
book aiming to tell the story of ordinary life in Watford and its neighbouring
villages at this time.
Drs Eugenia and Quentin Russell have done an admirable job in portraying
the everyday life of a community that contributed to the war effort through
industry, health, transportation, art and voluntary work. From the introduction
we have a brief summary of the growth of Watford, how brewing and printing came
to dominate the town. But also how manufacture such as the Cobra Polish Works
in Bushey and the Watford Manufacturing Company played an important role in
Watford’s growth. The former employed “a large number of young women…. where
one employee on the filling line was capable of filling 20,000 tins per hour”.
That’s roughly 5.5 tins of polish per second!
