Arborfield
Local History Society

 The 'Mercury' and the Home Front in WW1

Fund-Raising for Cigarettes and Tobacco

A Tobacco and Cigarettes Fund was set up in 1914, and it regularly appealed for money. Sometimes it hectored, as in this advert from mid-1916:

Fund in Danger! Wake Up, Berkshire!

£800 Required. Five Thousand Appeals Posted.

Only £400 Received.

To the People of Berkshire,
Two years ago the Royal Berks Regiment started to fight for you. We started asking you for Tobacco and Cigarettes as a small recognition of sacrifices, dangers and sufferings incurred to keep you untouched by the horrors of war.

Our appeal was generally acclaimed, and a great meeting in Reading Town Hall cheered to the echo our question: "Will you help the boys till the end of the War?"

That pledge is in danger, and for the honour of Berkshire we appeal to all classes to redeem it.

Newspapers dropped. Keep up the "Baccy"!

Brevity and frankness are essential. Briefly then, our Fund has been maintained by a small but generous band who have responded to every call. The vast majority of the people have stood aside. We cannot believe them callous, but they must be given a chance to subscribe. For this purpose we want

TWO HUNDRED COLLECTORS.

Working men, help your mates at the front. Hundreds of workers in large firms will give if one of you will send for a collecting book. One will be sent on application to MR. HOPE. All books and cash collected to be returned on October 1st.

SPECIAL APPEAL TO READING.

Reading is the Head Quarters of the Regiment. We ask volunteer collectors for:

• The Biscuit Factory, Messrs. Sutton’s, and all other large Firms in Reading.

• Also the Corn Exchange, Cattle Market, Railway Staff, Police Force, Banks, Masons, Foresters, Oddfellows and Buffaloes Friendly Societies.

• University College and the Magistrates’ Bench, and the following Clubs:-

• Athanaeum, Balfour, Beaconsfield, Berkshire, Curzon, Gladstone, and Guildhall.

• Ladies’ Conservative and Ladies’ County.

• Park Institute, Reading Liberal, and Salisbury.

• Wellington and West Reading.

We ask each place of amusement for just one show for their best customers. Maidenhead Picture Palace has given us six benefits. No Reading house one.

Finally, we beg

READING LADIES TO HELP.

Ladies can do anything, even raise enough to send out the local papers again. Would not the "boys" just bless them! They can take collecting boxes and charm cash from their male surroundings – Whist Drives, Concerts, Dances and Bazaars are all their special province.

Come Ladies, you have worked nobly for French, Russians, Belgians and Serbs. Go and see the great official record of the "Battle of the Somme." See the grateful smile of the wounded soldier receiving first aid as a cigarette is handed to him, and make one effort in recognition of the

Paramount Claims of the Berkshire Boys.

FRANK W. PORTER, J.P., C.C., Persimmon Lawn, Maidenhead;  

RICHARD HOPE.C.C., The Firs, Maidenhead – Joint Hon. Secs.

Subscriptions may be sent to either Hon. Sec. Applications or Cards or Books to Mr. Hope.

A rather more restrained appeal took place for Christmas 1915:

ROYAL BERKS REGIMENT TOBACCO AND CIGARETTE FUND

A CHRISTMAS APPEAL

(from December 15^th 1915)

Listen to dear old Dickens: "How many dormant sympathies does Christmas awaken! Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, have ceased to beat; the hands we grasped have grown cold, the eyes we sought have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the merry voices, the jest, the laugh, crowd upon our mind as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday. Happy, happy Christmas, that can transport the sailor and the traveller back to his fireside and his quiet home."

This is the essence of Christmas. Remembrance, sympathy, love and sacrifice. We claim all these four things for our Berkshire boys in France. Remembrance of their heroism in the field; sympathy for their terrible losses and hardships gallantly endured; and the love that should go out to those who stand between England and ruin. Who, then, will refuse some little sacrifice to prove the reality of their gratitude?

FOLLOW THE KING’S EXAMPLE

The King has just returned from the front. He knows the soldier’s wants, and he has just sent £25 to the "Weekly Dispatch" Tobacco Fund, the very organisation whose machinery we have used for 15 months to send our gifts to the Royal Berks. We ask every loyal Berkshire-man and Berkshire woman to help us in our great task of sending to six thousand Berkshire lads a Christmas gift that shall cheer their hearts with the eloquent message of that gratitude and admiration we all feel, and which we urge you to translate into action.

CHRISTMAS COLLECTING CARDS

Once more we call on the ladies to help us. One week’s personal experience of the trenches would make any woman a willing collector. The sex is, above all else, imaginative. Will you not, women of Berkshire, visualise the scenes of which you have read, write for a card, and spend a week in getting comforts for our lads, whose Christmas will be so different from yours, the security of which you owe to them?

A full list of subscriptions will be advertised at the end of the month in the usual papers, but we wish at once to express our thanks to Mr. and Mrs L. Oppenheimer, of Waltham Place, who have literally "followed the King’s example" by sending us a cheque for £25.

FRANK W. PORTER, J. P. C.C.
Persimmon Lawn, Maidenhead.

RICHARD HOPE, C.C.
The Firs, Maidenhead.

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