PMC_6_1_1_9 Galleon Christmas term 1914 front cover

The story of life during the Great War at one of the University of Portsmouth’s predecessor institutions, as glimpsed through the student press.

Although only having opened in 1908, by 1913 the staff and students of Portsmouth Municipal College were already beginning to have a sense of their own history. In the spring of that year, the Old Students Association (OSA) were formed and their successful Christmas reunion was reported in student magazine ‘The Galleon’. The Galleon had itself had only been established in 1911 and the two student unions – separate unions for women and for men – were also rather new.

However, by the Christmas 1914 edition of the Galleon, international events had begun to unsettle life at the college. The magazine included a list of names of men ‘now serving our country’. A planned excursion to the Isle of Wight by the OSA in September 1914 had had to be cancelled because of the war, and the association’s members were joining up. The OSA report that ‘With regard to those of our members who have joined HM Forces we have heard but very little. Our Secretary, Mr Childs, is among the number…We extend our heartiest congratulations to the above mentioned who have come forward so nobly at their country’s call. We wish them god speed’.

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