Nostalgia: The impact of World War One on Kirkcaldy

Of these, some 900 were killed - a significant loss of young manhood to a town whose population was just 39,000 at the start of the 1910s decade.

One of those who died was Robert Dunsire, born in Denbeath, but raised in Kirkcaldy, who in 1915 won the Victoria Cross for his bravery in rescuing two wounded men under heavy enemy fire.

He escaped uninjured but, within just a few months, in 1916, he was killed when a German mine crashed through the roof of his shelter.

Those who stayed at home also played their part, with iron foundries going into munitions production and linen firms fulfilling contracts for the army.

Towards the end of the war, furniture firm A. H. McIntosh started making aeroplane wings, eventually turning out about eight sets a week for warfare’s newest weapon.

To help the war effort, Lady Lockhart led a knitting party to make garments for the men of the Royal Navy some of whom just happened to be quite close at hand, as the Royal Navy used Ravenscraig Castle as an ammunition store.

The Americans were here too, their Navy having almost completely taken over Kirkcaldy Harbour.

World war was not the only conflict during the decade. Outwith the war years of 1914 to 1918 there were notable changes and developments, both in Kirkcaldy and in British society as a whole.

As the country settled into the 20th century people began to get discontent with their traditional roles.

The trade union movement had got under way before the turn of the century and women had for some time been agitating for better rights.

The two fights combined in one instance in 1911, when women weavers in a Kirkcaldy factory went on strike.

They were supporting nine members of a newly-formed union who had been sacked after presenting a number of demands to the company. These included a 20 per cent wage increase, recognition of the union and no victimisation.

During the course of the dispute, 15 of the strikers were fined for disorderly conduct but a measure of their public support was the tumultuous reception they got from the Kirkcaldy townsfolk when they returned from their trial.

The women eventually won their strike, prompting further industrial unrest, and, eventually, wage increases in all the local factories.

It was certainly not the first strike in Kirkcaldy, and far from the last, but it might have been the catalyst for the reconstitution of the Kirkcaldy and District Trades Union Council in 1912, with the expressed aim of banding together all the different unions in the fight for better conditions of labour.

Women were active in a different sphere in 1912, during the agitation for female suffrage when, on December 2, they were credited with an incident where inflammable liquid was poured into pillar boxes in the town and a number of letters were damaged.

Although agitation slowed down during the war, the suffragettes were vindicated in 1917 when women over 30 were given the vote and in 1918 when women were allowed to stand for Parliament.

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