Fred Baines, The Orphan From Ripon Who Wanted To Fly

 Fred Baines, 2560, Private, 1/5^th Battalion, and 110930 Flight Cadet, Royal Air Force

On 17^th December 1903, Fred Baines was a ten-year-old boy, living in the Hunslet area of Leeds with his large, and as yet incomplete, family. His father had died eight years earlier aged 28, and two years later, his widowed mother, Eliza, got married for a second time, to Joseph Holmes.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in the United States, brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright would make history by making the first flight in history that was made by a heavier than air machine and was both under control and sustained. The brothers made four flights that day, each lasting only seconds, but in those few seconds the world was irreversibly changed.

Wright Brothers Flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, 17th December 1903 (USA Today)

Five years after those first flights, the British Government began to take flight for military purposes seriously and created the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and the Aerial Sub-Committee of the committee of Imperial Defence. Eventually, a military air capability was deemed essential, and in April 1912, the Royal Flying Corps was formed within the British Army, and in the Royal Navy on 1^st July 1914, the Royal Naval Air Service was created.

By the outbreak of the Great War, the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) could muster 93 aircraft, 6 Airships, 2 balloons and 727 officers and men. The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) possessed 63 aircraft, operated, and maintained by 900 officers and men.

At the end of the war, an entirely separate service had been created in the Royal Air Force, responsible for all military aviation. It was the first independent air force in the world, and the largest. It was unrecognisable from the embryonic elements it had grown out of, and Fred Baines was a part of it. Having come from the humblest of beginnings, Fred Baines was embracing the most cutting-edge technology that existed at the time.

He was born in Towler’s Court off Fishergate in the centre of Ripon, North Yorkshire, on 13^th July 1893. Courts provided the lowest quality of housing imaginable, with numerous dwellings being tightly packed around small yards in which there might be a water pump and perhaps a single, outside privy type toilet, which was shared among all the dwellings of the court. Conditions in the court dwellings were often insanitary, with the inhabitants often falling victim to the diseases associated with slum housing and poverty. Fred Baines’ father, George, was a drayman, and his wife and four children were dependent on his wage for their survival.

Ripon Market Square, with Fishergate off to the right

Tragedy struck in November 1895 when, at the age of 28, George Baines died at home. He left Eliza a widow, and four children, Albert (b. 1887), Henry (b. 1889), Fred, and Sarah (b. 1893) with no immediate source of income to pay rent or support themselves, and this, in part, forced the family to become dependent on charity. Albert and Henry were the only children old enough to be attending school at the time of their father’s death, and the two boys were admitted as inmates to Jepson’s Hospital on Water Skellgate, now the City Club, in Ripon. Jepson’s Hospital was a charitable school, in the same vein as other hospital, or Bluecoat schools that was in existence for 250 years from 1672 founded by an endowment left by Zecharias Jepson to board, clothe and educate the sons of poor Freemen of Ripon, or their orphaned sons. Originally, the endowment was to provide for 20 boys, but by the time the Baines brothers were admitted, the provision had been reduced to ten places. Boys were admitted aged 7 and would be apprenticed at the age of 15 to enable them to learn a trade. Fred Baines was too young to be admitted to the school, and Sarah, because she was a girl, could not be offered a place at the school, even if she had been old enough.

George Baines Death Reported in the Ripon Observer 21 November 1895

The widowed Eliza Baines married Joseph Holmes on 29^th January 1898 at St Silas’ Church in Hunslet, Leeds. At 28 years old, he was the same age as Eliza, and worked as a platelayer in a private forge, of which, there were many in the Hunslet area. Initially, the family, including Fred and Sarah, lived at Frederick Street, but they would soon move to a larger house in Westbury Street after the addition of two children in Richard and Edith Holmes, born in 1899 and 1900, respectively. During the next ten years, the family would increase with the births of Wilfred in 1902, Walter in 1905, and Hilda in 1907.

Westbury Street in July 1967 (Leodis)

By 1911, Fred Baines had become an apprentice draughtsman at a machine tool company, and the family had moved to Parnaby View. He was still living there when the war came, and it remained his address at least until the compilation of the Absent Voters’ Lists in 1918. Having left Jepson’s Hospital School, Albert had remained in Ripon, and was living with his father’s sister’s family at 4 Garbutt’s Court. He had trained as a bookbinder. Henry, now known as Harry, was a clerk, and had come to live with the rest of the family in Hunslet.

Parnaby View in December 1967, prior to demolition to make way for the M621 Motorway (Leodis)

Fred Baines enlisted into the Army on 14^th October 1914 at Harrogate. He initially joined the 5^th (Reserve) Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment that was being recruited for home service only (at the time, although the battalion would serve overseas from early 1917). This battalion would soon be designated the 2/5^th Battalion, and before it left Harrogate was billeted in schools and hotels across the town. In peacetime, the 5^th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment recruited mainly from the Harrogate area, but also had a company based in Ripon, where he had spent his early years, and as the newspapers in Leeds were reporting that the infantry units based in the city were full, Fred Baines may have been taking the chance to rekindle some childhood friendships by serving beside men from his home city.

A transfer took Fred Baines into the 1/5^th Battalion, which was earmarked for foreign service, and for which he must have volunteered, and he would sail to France with this battalion on 16^th April 1915, when 49^th (West Riding) Division embarked for the war. He would serve with the battalion until December 1917, and was, presumably with the battalion throughout that time, except for a period in June 1915 when he was admitted to 10 Stationary Hospital, at St Omer, suffering from influenza after serving in the low-lying and constantly damp Artois region since his arrival in France.

A Ward in the Chapel at 10 Stationary Hospital, St Omer (BMJ)

He was present in the battalion for some of its toughest and most challenging periods, from the very beginning of its deployment, with the concentration of the Division in Merville and the introduction to trench warfare on the Western Front in the Estaires area, including its long occupation of the canal area, north of Ypres, during which, the Germans attacked the British using Phosgene gas for the first time, its subsequent transfer to the Somme, and the particularly hard fighting of September 1916 near Thiepval. He went north again with the battalion to coastal trenches and training areas on the border between France and Belgium, before the battalion faced perhaps its most fierce fighting up to that point, when on 9^th October 1917, the division went into action in the Battle of Poelcapelle as part of the Third Battle of Ypres. Fred Baines may, or may not, have fought this action, as although his transfer to the Royal Flying Corps was confirmed until 17^th December 1917, he was struck off the strength of the battalion sometime during October, and the transfer of one man to the RFC was mentioned in the monthly manning table.

The Area of Operations for 49th (West Riding) Division for much of the Summer of 1916 (McMaster University

As well as applying to transfer to the RFC, Fred Baines had also applied for a commission. He reported to No. 1 Officers Technical Training Wing at St Leonards, near Hastings in Sussex on 17^th December 1917, and would stay there for 9 weeks at the beginning of the 9 months it would take for him to become a fully trained pilot ready to be posted to an advanced training squadron to complete his specialist training prior to a posting to an operational squadron. On joining the RFC, Fred Baines became an Air Mechanic Class III. At the Officers Technical Training Wing the candidates were given basic technical training in the operation of engines, the instruments in an aircraft, the construction of aeroplanes and the operation of machine guns.

From St Leonards, Fred Baines was sent to 5 Officer Cadet Wing at Shorncliffe, where all cadets, regardless of any previous military experience, received basic military training during a two-month course which included drill, physical training, military law, map reading and signalling using Morse code. On 1^st April 1918, while he was in training at Shorncliffe, the Royal Air Force was created, combining the RFC and the RNAS into a single independent service.

No. 2 School of Aeronautics at Oxford was the next training establishment Fred Baines was sent to. He arrived there on 20^th June 1918 and would build on some of the skills learnt at 5 Officer Cadet Wing, such as navigation, signalling, and map reading as well as new skills like photography and how aircraft cooperated with infantry and artillery formations. The men also learnt more about aero engines and the instruments onboard the aircraft. They would also learn basic rigging of an aircraft to ensure that they were able to maintain the aircraft’s structural integrity.

Cadet about to start on a solo flight in an Avro two-seater training aeroplane (Type 504K) at a Training Depot Station        (IWM Q 27252)

Having passed these preliminary courses, the prospective pilot candidates were then sent to a Training Depot Station (TDS) where a comprehensive ground training programme prepared the men for their flight training. Fred Baines was sent to 205 TDS near the French town of Vendôme, in the Loire et Cher Department. The flight school here had been in existence since 1916 when the RNAS set it up with the aim of being able to conduct flight training all year round, owing to the better, more predictable weather than could be relied upon in the UK. The expansion of the flying services during the war created an enormous need for new pilots, both to increase the numbers available for new squadrons, and to replace the losses among pilots who had become casualties, and this required a facility that could operate with few interruptions due to the weather. Vendôme fulfilled this need very well, and although it was a facility originally operated by the RNAS, it also trained the Army’s RFC pilots under a reciprocal agreement whereby the RNAS could have pilots trained by the Army’s flight school in Egypt. Since the creation of the RAF in April 1918, the inter-service jealousies, rivalries and ad-hoc agreements had become redundant, and now, the RAF was responsible for all flight training, and all military aviation concerns.

At Vendôme, Flight Cadet Baines would have to complete two distinct phases of flight training, and the progression to phase 2 was dependent upon him passing phase 1, which consisted of the ground work and at least 25 hours of elementary flying training, some of which would be solo flying on Caudron GIII training aircraft. Successfully passing phase 1 earned the candidate pilot a Grade A, which he would work to convert into a Grade B at the end of Phase 2.

Caudron G-III Trainer Aircraft (Wikimedia)

The second phase would test the trainee pilots through a minimum of 35 hours flying, with at least 5 hours on current variants of aircraft that the fighting squadrons were operating, and at Vendôme, the school was using both the Sopwith Pup, and the Sopwith Camel. The candidate pilots would need to demonstrate proficiency in cross-country and formation flying, reconnaissance work and gunnery. If he was graded highly enough, he was awarded his Grade B pass, and if following a stream towards commissioning, the pilot would become a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force, wearing his pilot’s wings and would be posted to a fighting Squadron.

Being successful in pilot training was not a matter of mere attendance. The course was difficult, and there were few transferrable non-flying skills that a candidate could bring with him to assist him through it. Many men were ill-suited to becoming pilots. Whether it was that the technology they were expected to master being beyond their capabilities, or their physiology making it impossible for them to adapt to flying and overcoming air-sickness, many men had to drop out of the course. For those who progressed into flying, the risks of accidents caused by mechanical failure or their own inexperience were extremely high, and it is well known that the number of candidate pilots who were killed in training was high. Fred Baines was at Vendôme between June to September 1918, and during that time, seven men were killed in training accidents.

Sopwith Camel (Brooklands Museum)

It appears, from his time at Vendôme being short of the 5 months usually spent there by candidate pilots, that Fred Baines did not complete the course. There is certainly no entry on his RAF Service Record that records him having qualified as a pilot and earning his wings. He was sent to ‘E’ Section, RAF Depot at Blandford in Dorset, which was being used as an ‘Intake’ depot at the end of September 1918. The RAF may have wanted to keep Fred Baines due to his technical abilities and his engineering background; he would have been an asset to the service, and undoubtedly more valuable in that role than if he had been sent back as an infantry soldier, but before his future could be decided, Fred Baines fell ill with influenza and was admitted to hospital.

East Leeds Military Hospital - Now the Thackray Medical Museum, Leeds

Somewhat ambiguously described on his service record as ‘Leeds Military Hospital’, it is likely that the hospital referred to was East Leeds War Hospital, which had taken over the site of St James’s Hospital on Beckett Street in Leeds, as this hospital, when in military use, also incorporated Killingbeck and Seacroft Hospitals, with Seacroft continuing to serve as an isolation unit for infectious diseases, ideal for the treatment of influenza. Entering the hospital on 21^st November 1918, he remained there until his discharge on 7^th January 1919, when he was sent to the Reserve Training Wing (D) to have his discharge from the RAF processed on 10^th January. He was one of thousands who was described as ‘Services No Longer Required’.

Immediately after the end of the Great War, all the armed services set about returning men to civil life. The priority was to repair the economy of the country and in Leeds much of that repair work would be done in the engineering and manufacturing sectors of industry which had largely been turned over to the production of armaments and munitions. Fred Baines, having a technical engineering background, would be made a priority for discharge from the RAF, which no longer needed him. He would have been welcomed back by his old employer as the company attempted to capitalise on prevailing need for manufacturers to reconfigure their production and retool their workshops.

In the decade following the end of the war, his release from the RAF, Fred Baines progressed in his career to become a works manager, and moved away from Leeds to Harrogate, where he lived in a substantial, three-storey, millstone-grit, house.  On 3^rd September 1927, he married Maude Evelyn Lalor, the daughter of a master tailor, at St Peter’s Church.

Marriage Register Entry for Fred Baines and Maude Lalor - 3 September 1927 (Ancestry)

Peter George Lalor Baines was born on 18^th March 1929. He was the Baines’s only child. Fred Baines continued to do well in his career, and by 1939 had become a technical and commercial representative in the engineering company he worked for. His expertise would be extremely valuable in the coming months as war was looming and once again, the British manufacturing base would be largely turned over to production of war materiel. During the Second World War, the Air Ministry opened administrative offices in Harrogate, and it is possible that Maude Baines, a former Admiralty clerk may have worked for the Air Ministry during the war. The family, at this time, lived at Woodgates, Lascelles Road, Harrogate. Maude Baines died in Harrogate on 3^rd October 1948, aged 48.

Newspaper Headline from Peter Baines's Bankruptcy Hearing (Bradford Observer - 16 July 1955)

It appears that although Peter Baines shared his father’s drive to better his personal circumstances, he did not share the same work ethic, and was, it seems, content to live on an allowance from his father. He had been a law student at Leeds University, but did not complete his degree, and left without qualification. After completing National Service, he married and bought a house in Starbeck, but he was living far beyond his means, and in 1955, he was brought before a bankruptcy court to have his financial situation examined. During the proceedings, the Recorder was dissatisfied that all his financial arrangements had been disclosed and seemed sure that more debt was being hidden by Peter Baines, who had already been accused of trying to mislead the Official Receiver by claiming he had been a Barrister-at-Law and had served as a commissioned officer during his National Service. Baines denied an intention to mislead but admitted that neither assertion was true. Fred Baines, one of his son’s creditors, offered to waive his claim of £1400, and would pay a further £200 to reduce his son’s debts further, but it was too late as far as the Recorder was concerned, accusing George Baines of trying to bargain with him.

In later life, Fred Baines, now a widower, moved to Granby Road in Harrogate. He died in Harrogate on 9^th January 1975, aged 81.