This fund raising film for the Sailors’ Children’s Society is one of 24 films donated to the YFA by the Sailors’ Families’ Society. The films date from 1936, and continue right up to include the visit by Diana, the Princess Of Wales, in February 1991. Other Royal visits include Princess Mary in 1949, the Queen in 1957 and Princess Anne in 1971. Many of these films are promoting the Society or simply showing the Society’s activities, but others are explicitly appealing for funds – although the...

This fund raising film for the Sailors’ Children’s Society is one of 24 films donated to the YFA by the Sailors’ Families’ Society. The films date from 1936, and continue right up to include the visit by Diana, the Princess Of Wales, in February 1991. Other Royal visits include Princess Mary in 1949, the Queen in 1957 and Princess Anne in 1971. Many of these films are promoting the Society or simply showing the Society’s activities, but others are explicitly appealing for funds – although the promotional funds are clearly aimed also to raise money.  Other fund appeal films are: Gladys Young Appeal Film (1951), Silent Appeal (1952), A Family Affair (1960), narrated by John Mills, Brian Rix TV Appeal (1964) and Safe On Shore (1980). Another kind of film among the Collection are of reunions, including 100 Years of Care (1963) documenting the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Society. 

 

At the time most of these films were made the Society was known as the Sailors’ Children’s Society – a name it adopted in 1950. Before that, from 1917, it was the Port of Hull Society’s Sailor’s Orphan Homes. But it changed its name again in 1991 to the Sailors’ Families’ Society to reflect the wider scope of its work. The Sailors’ Children’s Society started taking care of the children of men of the sea in an orphan house on Castle Row, in 1862, with six boys and six girls. It moved to the Park Street Home in 1867 and then in 1895 to the Newland Home. For much more on the Sailors’ Children’s Society, its history and current activities, see the Contexts for A Family Affair  and for Seamen’s Reunion. 

 

The choice of Brian Rix to make an appeal might have been connected with the fact that he comes from Cottingham, on the outskirts of Hull, and also that his father was a Hull shipowner. Brian Rix would already have been known for his work in charities involving people with learning disabilities – his daughter, Shelley, being born with Down’s syndrome in 1951. In 1947, after serving in down a mine during the war as a Bevin Boy, he started his own theatre company. He subsequently spent most of his career acting and managing in the theatre, specialising in farces – although he also appeared in 11 films and 70 farces for BBC TV.  His films are mainly from the 1950s, and in the run up to this appeal he had been getting 21 million viewers starring in his own TV series ‘Dial RIX”. Before this he also produced ‘Brian Rix Presents’ for the BBC presenting theatre on TV (now, what happened to that idea?). He was awarded a CBE for his work in charities in 1977 – a knighthood in 1986 and a life peer in 1992 – and later become Director of MENCAP.

 

The use of a well known actor was not new.  Gladys Young was also a well known actress – appearing in several films, including The Lady With A Lamp in 1951, the same year as her appeal – many TV programmes and in radio broadcasts for the BBC. And of course John Mills was perhaps the most well known British actor at the time of his 1960 appeal.

 

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this film is the interview that Lord Rix has with the children. Several children who were taken in at the home were interviewed on the ITV programme The Way We Were. One of them, Janet Wakelin, notes that they were well looked after, with warm beds and plenty of food, but that, “the only thing that was missing was a bit of love.” Another earlier resident, Eric Brown, talks of how traumatic it was to be taken away from his home, which he didn’t want to leave. Some of this may be evident in the obvious difficulty Brian Rix has in coaxing a response from some of the young children.

 

Getting information on the number of deaths at sea is no easy thing: the General Register Office is the place for this –‘Marine Births and Deaths, from 1837, which took place on British registered vessels’. Much of what is available online is geared towards finding individuals who have died at sea, so that getting an overall picture of numbers and trends isn’t easy. Figures for fishermen from just prior to when this film was made until 1980, after the introduction of bigger deep sea fishing vessels, show that during that period there were 711 deaths at sea due to accident, loss of vessel or other. This made being a seaman four times more dangerous than working in a coal mine. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the loss of three Hull trawlers in 1968 that this “extreme occupation” was recognised enough to have the Committee of Inquiry Trawler Safety (CITS) set up – see the Context for Pot Luck (1962). 

 

The numbers of merchant seaman who have been killed at sea is no easier to ascertain – at least outside of wartime. Information is very patchy: it doesn’t seem as if any official body was keeping full records of deaths at sea – which maybe says something about the level of concern this engendered for those not directly affected. For what is available see the Maritime Archives & Library in Liverpool.

 

References

 

M S J Reilly, ‘Mortality from occupational accidents to United Kingdom fishermen 1961-80’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1985, Vol. 42 pp. 806-814.

Theatre Archive Project, Interview with Lord Brian Rix