“Return to the land” -Help for injured soldiers.

[paul.pengelly]

 From a Canadian piece on WW1 soldiers 

 

Soldiers Aid Commission -Joint Initiative ,spring 1916

“The SAC and Toronto Rotary Club made land available to 57 returned soldiers along with a free supply of Seeds,Plants and Roots.The men plowed,harrowed and fertilised the land harvesting the produce for themselves and their families (The Globe 1916 ).

This was one of the earliest attempts to have soldiers “Return to the Land”.

 

Does anybody know if we did anything similar for our returning injured soldiers ,even if it was just organised on a regional basis ?

 

I was always told by my Dad that one of his uncles who had been discharged in 1918 due to a head injures had been given by “the government” ,a small plot of land to farm .

Cannot find anything to support this family legend ,no record of any Government  policy ,no mention of anything similar .Was it perhaps a local district scheme ,or something organised by a major landholder in the area ;Monmouthshire ,Forest of Dean say the Forestry commission?

 

Anybody heard of anything like this?  

 

 

[travers61]

This happened in Australia when the The New South Wales government introduced the Returned Soldiers Settlement Act in 1916. Soldiers were eligible to apply for Crown Lands if they had served overseas with the Australian Imperial Forces or with the British Defence Service. The soldiers also needed to have been honourably discharged to be eligible.

https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/275980-“return-to-the-land”-help-for-injured-soldiers/

 

A similar scheme in the UK that I have often passed is one of the Surrey County Council ones meant for demobilised servicemen, at Little Woodcote Farm, near Wallington. The farm & some additional land was divided up into 81 small holdings, usually 3 acres each & with a semi-detached cottage.

http://www.socialhousinghistory.uk/wp/index.php/surreys-post-ww1-designs/

[paul.pengelly]

Thanks for that travers61 very interesting reads .

 

Once I got that the key words were “soldier settlement “  I had another google, trouble is as I was looking for it in Wales it kept bringing up New South Wales for returning Australian soldiers.There seemed to be a lot of negative press for that, a ”failure”,”disaster” with a lot of men abandoning  their holdings for a variety of reasons.Schemes were also started in New Zealand ,Canada,South Africa,Kenya,with similar problems encountered.

 

Overall the best resource I found was a Thesis by E.K. Fedorowich -“Foredoomed to Failure”.Which deals with all the countries mentioned plus in chapter 2.3 “Domestic soldier settlement and reconstruction” England and Wales .

 

”May 1920 9 months after the “Land settlement (facilities) act had been passed three quarters of the allocation had been filled,4 months later it was full and further applications came in at  rate of 1,500 a month”...”A total of 253,000 acres had been aquired by Sept 1920 in England and Wales which was enough to settle 17,770 men,only 8,178 had been settled on allotments with houses.Dec 1920 14,858 were still without holdings and by June 1923 just under 19,000 men had settled.

 

Extremely interesting topic which seems to have been largely forgotten in this country unlike the schemes in the other countries,