by Jane Hatcher
Seventy-five years ago, on 8th March 1929, there died a remarkable man. Popularly known as Woodbine Willie, his real name was Rev. Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, MC. He acquired his nickname from his habit of giving out cigarettes to soldiers in the trenches during the First World War, but he was also a poet of note.
Born in Leeds on 27th June 1883, he was the seventh of the nine children born to Rev. William Studdert Kennedy, vicar of St. Mary’s Church in the impoverished and overcrowded industrial area of Quarry Hill in Leeds, and his wife Jeanette Anketell.. After attending Leeds Grammar School, Geoffrey went up to Trinity College, Dublin where he graduated in Classics and Divinity in 1904. He then trained as a clergyman, and served as a curate, first in Rugby and then to his father in Leeds, before taking a living in a poor part of Worcester in 1914.
After the First World War broke out, he volunteered to become a chaplain to the armed forces, and went out to the Western Front in France at Christmas 1915. Here he moved among the men who were enduring frightful hardships, terrible injuries and horrific deaths, giving what comfort he could, spiritual and material, the latter often in the form of the cigarettes for which he, as a chain smoker, became famous. He did his best to boost their morale, writing letters home for them, singing songs, telling jokes, as well as preaching the Bible. In 1917 he was awarded the Military Cross for his conspicuous gallantry in tending the wounded, German as well as British, under heavy machine-gun fire in No-Man’s-Land. The soldiers were at least armed with a gun, whereas he merely carried a wooden cross.
Remarkably, he survived the War, and returned to Worcester, but by now he was convinced of the futility of war, and a convert to pacifism and Christian Socialism. He decided to work for the Industrial Christian Fellowship (ICF), crusading to alleviate poverty, industrial unrest and employment in post-war Britain. He was appointed to the Church of St. Edmund King and Martyr in Lombard Street, London, a post which allowed him to undertake extensive public speaking tours as well as preaching powerful sermons.
It was during an ICF crusade in Liverpool in 1929 that he was taken ill, and he died of influenza at the age of only 46. He was buried in Worcester, in St John’s Cemetery, where his widow Emily and his sons raised a cross of remembrance, but there is also a memorial to him in Worcester Cathedral which describes him as “a poet, a prophet, a passionate seeker after truth and an ardent advocate of Christian fellowship”.
Woodbine Willie had met many miners among the troops serving in the First World War, and they made an impression on him as men used to working very hard, enduring great deprivation and showing great comradeship. This prompted him to write The Colliers’ Hymn: