![]() Between 1914 to 1918 over 700,000 British men were killed one in eight of those who set out to fight, and nine percent of Britain’s males under forty five. When war broke out many of these men came back to fight for King and country, only to be blown up, shot or gassed alongside those who had stayed behind. By 1914 nearly half a million men were leaving Britain annually to service the needs of Empire in places such as India, Australia, Canada and Kenya as soldiers, civil servants, clerks, engineers, surveyors or businessmen. This was because more boy babies died than girls it was also because men emigrated to the Colonies in large numbers and due to the fact that men generally were exposed to more difficult, dirty and dangerous work. ![]() In 1911 there were 664,000 more women than men in the country. However, even before war broke out in 1914 there were not enough men to go around. In 1911, the population of England and Wales stood at 36.1 million (the entire UK population which included Ireland totalled to 45,370,530). The statement proved to be prophetic as the interwar years led to the phenomenon of what has been popularly known as the “surplus women” – a term adapted during the early 1920s to collectively describe young women born between 18 who were unmarried by the time the war ended and were destined to marry late if they were lucky or not at all: which for many of these women ended up being their fate.īefore we go any further it is important to establish the demographic patterns that had led to this situation. ![]() “Only one out of 10 of you girls can ever hope to marry… Nearly all the men who might have married you have been killed.” In 1917, the headmistress of a girls’ school in Bournemouth delivered her customary address to the sixth formers but on this particular day the speech had a sobering note “I have come to tell you a terrible fact,” she began. Warning: Contains spoilers for those who haven’t watched series 6 of Downton Abbey
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