C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 13 69 names were changed, despite some objections.6The contribution made by German immigrants was thus erased from the Australian landscape. Just as the naming of the road in the camp allowed those imprisoned to express their identity, so removing names denied Germans their place in society and history. Such wholescale renaming did not occur in the USA, but rather localised efforts to change particular names did take place. Berlin Street in New Orleans saw renamed after General Pershing.7 In Ohio, a whole German town, New Berlin, was renamed North Canton in early 1917.8 In Leicester, the Fifth Northern General Hospital was set up in the old asylum, and wounded soldiers were ferried the short distance from ambulance trains at the Midland railway station. The crowds which cheered the departure of so many young men for the front must have witnessed their more sombre return on ambulance trains from the front. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had been very popular.9 In South Highfields, located between the station and the hospital, the old names Gotha and Saxe-Coburg had been given to a number of streets and high-status houses. Perhaps watching injured young men caused the discomfort which so many local residents felt about the German street names. In April 1918, a local campaign petitioned Leicester Council: ‘householders in Hanover, Saxe Coburg, Gotha and Mecklenburg Streets requesting the Council to cancel the German names of those streets and substitute English names’, with two thirds of taxpayers supporting this. In October the council approved the change of Hanover to Andover Street, Saxe Coburg Street to Saxby Street, and Gotha to Gotham Street. Mecklenburg Street became Severn Street.10 Alderman Banton complained that changing names required ‘reason… not a passion. The Labour Party was against this childish display of passion, which…would not add to the dignity of the council’.11 The Mercury objected: ‘German names and German products are… anathema’.12 ‘Wounded Discharged’ asked for help ‘to wipe out those names which remind us of memories we are trying very hard to forget... to obliterate forever Hunnish names from our streets’.13 In many ways this emotive argument was quite unanswerable. One councillor suggested that ‘to call a street Gotham Street was to label the people living in it as people of weak mind.’14 Yet the response from the council was essentially to leave it to democratic process. If the two thirds of ratepayers were found, the council would remove ‘the names of streets which are so hurtful to many people’.15 The literature on street-naming is at least in part concerned with the downward flow of power relations, yet these cases were clearly grounded in the wishes of at least some of the local population. An element of the population, including councillors, objected, reflecting the uneasiness felt by many in the city about the war. One correspondent, signed ‘Gotha Street’, answered the injured solider, ‘shall we also boycott… the glorious music of Mozart because the composer was German, or shall we retain a little British Common Sense?’16 Some names in other areas of Leicester were changed too. Battenburg Avenue in Knighton was changed to Carisbrooke Road.17 This retained the namesake, Prince Alexander Battenberg, Lord Carisbrooke. Bismarck Street was changed to Beaconsfield Road in February 1919.18 If names were not to be German, what were they to be? For the main part, readability and familiaritywere retained by the almost inflexional adjustments. But some suggested Saxe-Coburg should be called Stratford ‘in memory of Shakespeare, who loved England’.19 ‘Compadre’ suggested Portuguese names would be best to ‘perpetuate the memory of this small, brave nation who have sent their men to fight beside our own in the trenches’.20 A century later, the plaques and other memorial architecture are familiar.Those with a particular interest know the military heritage. The episode of the street names is an important part of this legacy.We can look up to the changed street names, or at Gotha House, which never had the ‘m’ added to the masonry above the front door. Sparkenhoe Community Primary School is built on the site of Saxe Coburg House and Saxe CoburgVillas: the lintels bearing their names are preserved within the school. In these ways the streetscape has been fashioned, and the fabric retains the memory of the old names. It bears witness to the experience of the home front and the anti-German sentiment which was an integral part of this. This project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society. More information can be found at www.howsaxbystreetgotitsname.org.uk. Thanks to the volunteers, Kate Sullivan and Andrew Thirlby, who have collected newspaper information on the street name changes. References 6 MatthewW Rofe and Hilary PMWinchester, ‘Lobethal, the Valley of Praise’ in Roy Jones and Brian J Shaw (eds), Geographies of Australian Heritages, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007 7 JohnT Krumpelmann, ‘The Renaming of Berlin Street and Berlin Streets’, American Speech, 26, 2 (1951) 8 ChrisW Post and Derek H Alderman, ‘Wiping New Berlin off the map’, Area, 46, 1 (2014) 9 FP Armitage, Leicester 1914-18, Edgar Backus, Leicester, 1933; Ben Beazley, FourYears Remembered, Breedon Books, Derby, 1999; Matthew Richardson, Leicester in the GreatWar, Pen and Sword, Barnsley, 2014 10 Minutes of Proceedings of the Council from 9 November 1917 to 5 November 1918, Leicester, 1918 11 Leicester Chronicle, 5/1/1918 12 Leicester Mercury (hereafter LM) 2/1/1918 13 LM, 8/1/1918 14 LM, 31/7/1918 15 LM, 11/1/1918 16 LM, 14/1/1918 17 Minutes 1917-18 18 Minutes of Proceedings of the Council from 9 November 1918 to 28 October 1919, Leicester, 1919 19 LM, 8/1/1918 20 LM, 15/1/1918 Celebrations on London Road, Leicester Soldier-patients having cigarettes lighted at Leicester railway station Malcolm Noble is studying for a PhD in economic and social history at the University of Edinburgh.
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