Gretna Green: Scotland's Las Vegas?

Just across the Scottish border with England lies the village of Gretna Green (hereafter, GG). Despite its small size, it is notable for several reasons. 

The worst railway crash in British history occurred near the village in 1915, worse than the Tay Bridge Disaster of 1879. The Quintinshill Rail Disaster, involving several trains, led to the deaths of more than 220 people. More than 200 of them were Scottish soldiers on their way to Gallipoli, in Ottoman Turkey, which in itself was not a promising future.

In the same year, the environs of Gretna Green became the site of the largest cordite factory built in the UK during World War I. The Ministry of Munitions had it built in response to the "Shell Crisis" of 1915. The British Army, battling the Germans in France and Belgium, was running out of artillery shells. 

By the time the Gretna munitions complex was complete, it extended twelve miles along the border and employed more than 16,000 people, more than half of them women. At its peak it produced more cordite than all the other munitions factories in the UK combined.

But GG is best known today for another industry -- the wedding business. For more than a century it had a mixed reputation as a place where where young English folk could get married quickly, without a fuss -- for a fee. 

The making of GG's marriage industry (and the village itself) was Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1754. The act was designed to prevent persons under 21 from marrying without their parents' consent. The persons in questions were mainly young girls from wealthy families.

The Marriage Act, however, applied only to England and Wales. In Scotland, which retained its own legal system after the Act of Union in 1707, the law continued to allow persons under 21 to marry without parental permission, from age 14 for males and 12 for females. 

Scottish law also allowed for "irregular marriages." If the declaration of marriage was made before two witnesses, almost anybody could officiate at the wedding. One did not need to be a licensed clergyman. 

Some canny Scots quickly realized the opportunity these differences presented. And young English folk desperate to marry as quickly as possible soon learned that their salvation lay on the high road to Scotland. (Image: Carriage Arriving at Gretna Green, c. 1800)

Situated directly across the border from England, here the small River Sark, GG was providentially placed to profit from the new marriage business. In the 1770s, the construction of a new toll road that passed by the village made it the most easily reachable in Scotland. 

Marriages in GG were often performed by local blacksmiths, who became known as "anvil priests." One of them presided at more than 5,000 weddings.  

GG's role as a magnet for runaway couples is mentioned in many works of literature and in films. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, George Wickham convinces Lydia Bennet to elope with a promise of taking her to GG to marry. Instead he takes her to London, where Mr. Darcy finds her and returns her to her family.   

Changes in the law on both sides of the border eventually ended the  quickie marriage industry, though not the wedding business itself. In 1856, a new law in Scotland required a minimum of 21 days residence in the country before being married. That restriction was abolished in 1977. Nowadays, however, one must register intent to marry in GG at least 29 days before the ceremony.  Not so quick!

In 1929, another act raised the age of legal marriage in Scotland to 16 for both men and women. The parties can still marry without parental consent. In England and Wales, they can now marry at 16 with parental consent, and at 18 without it. The incentive that drove young English couples to the border no longer exists. Today, GG is a romantic, historic place to get hitched. 

GG was not the only Scottish border town where quickie marriages for English customers were performed, but it was unquestionably the most famous. Today that kind of fame is largely confined to Las Vegas, Nevada where anything goes and allegedly stays. Vegas also offers quickie divorces and other amenities.

Because of its history, GG remains a popular place for weddings, with several venues and hotels available. Services are always performed over the town's marriage icon, a blacksmith's anvil. 

Online ads for wedding packages urge you to stay, marry, and dine for anything from £500 to £5000 depending on the numbers attending and services offered. A smashing wee bargain for the matrimonially inclined. You take the high road and I'll take the low road. No, wait....

Beer, Britain, and the First World War

The current economic crisis in the UK is bad. It's not easy being a pound (£) right now, faced with becoming weaker every day. But let's take a moment to think about the equally dire fate of the humble beer in an even worse time: that of World War. 

The First World War proved difficult for beer in the United Kingdom. Ales, porters, and stout all had to make adjustments in pursuit of victory. They had to reduce their alcohol content, their hours of sale, accept much higher taxes, and suffer other indignities. 

War leaders wanted to keep British soldiers and sailors relatively sober. In 1915 David Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions. He immediately declared that drink, not the Central Powers, was Britain's greatest enemy. "We are fighting Germans, Austrians, and drink, and as far as I can see the greatest of these deadly foes is drink." 

The men at the front may have disagreed about that, but their views like their lives, counted for very little. They could get weak French lagers on leave and a rum ration on duty. After the war, the medical officer of Scotland's 4th Black Watch Regiment told a hearing on shell shock, "Had it not been for the rum ration, I do not think we should have won the war."

Brewers were also not too happy about the restrictions placed on their product. Guinness managed to promote its beer and appear patriotic at the same time:

 

For Lloyd George, drink was if anything a greater foe at home than at the front. He and others in authority feared that drunkenness would reduce workers' productivity, depriving the military of needed war materials and supplies. 

The authorities were especially concerned about alcohol consumption among munitions workers, and for good reason. Mistakes and misbehavior in munitions plants could lead to deadly explosions and delays in production. Hundreds of munitions workers died in explosions, most of them sober women. (Image: Charles Ginner, "The Filling Factory," 1918)

Starting in 1914, various Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA) gave the government sweeping powers to control many aspects of British life, including the production, sale, and consumption of alcoholic drinks. One government order prohibited "treating" or buying a round for other patrons. All drinks had to be paid for by the person consuming them. 

Some changes had long lasting effects. One order severely restricted the hours when pubs could legally serve alcohol. Opening hours were limited to the early afternoon and early evening, from 12:00 to 2:30 and 6:30 to 9:30. Violation could lead to loss of the pub's license. These restrictions remained in effect until 1988. 

Government propaganda also encouraged individuals to restrict their own drinking times, as in the poster below: 

Other orders mandated that the percentage of alcohol in beer be lowered to reduce drunkenness. The average Original Gravity (OG) of beer in England and Wales dropped significantly, from 1059 to 1029, between 1914 and 1919.

The wartime government also significantly increased the taxes on alcohol. The price of a pint roughly doubled even as its strength fell. In 1918, a bottle of whisky cost five times its price in 1914. 

The consumption of alcohol fell by about half during these years. Arrests for public drunkenness fell even more drastically. How much all these changes affected the war's outcome may be debatable, but they certainly saved some lives, and changed British social life in long-lasting ways. 

Art of the First World War: The Nash Brothers

The brothers John and Paul Nash were two of the major British artist-soldiers of World War I, renowned for their surrealistic yet realistic portrayals of the battlefields of the Western front. Here are some of their works:

Paul Nash, "We Are Making a New World" 1918

Paul Nash, "The Ypres Salient at Night" 1918

Paul Nash, "Wire" c. 1918

Paul Nash, "Spring in the Trenches, 1917" -- a less than ideal spring.

John Nash, "Over the Top, 1917" This painting commemorates an attack by the Artists' Rifles, in which most of the men, writers, painters, musicians, were killed or wounded.

John Nash, "Oppy Wood," 1917, showing the destruction of the landscape by artillery barrages.

Photo of Oppy Wood.

Paul Nash, "The Menin Road, 1917"

Photo of the Menin Road.

Art of the First World War

The First World War, which ended a century ago, killed at least 10 million soldiers and millions more civilians, led to the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism and Nazism, and World War II.  The guns fell silent at the 11th hour of the 11th day, of the 11th month. Clearly, the armistice makers had a sense of history. WWI was not the first war to be photographed or filmed, but none had ever produced so many images in those media. The war also produced a huge body of painting and art, most by those who fought. Here are a few examples, in realistic and more modernist styles.

    

C.R.W. Nevinson, "Paths of Glory" 1917. "Dulce et Decorum Est, Pro Patria Mori."

Nevinson, "Harvest of Battle" 1919. Blind leading the blind.

Nevinson, "Machine Gun," 1915. French soldiers.

Frank Branwyn, "Tank in Action" (1925) Painted for a public building in Britain. Rejected as "unacceptably morbid." In other words, too accurate.

Henri de Groux, "Gas Masks" (1916). French soldiers. Note resemblance to pigs. Asphyxiation by gas was perhaps the most horrible way of dying.

George Leroux, "L'Enfer" ("Hell") 1917, Suitably named. Artillery killed more men than any other weapon.

William Orpen, "Dead Germans in a Trench" 1918

Paul Nash, "The Menin Road" 1919

Nevinson, "Taube" 1916. Child killed by German aerial bombing. Total War.