Skip to content
VitrineRoyal Houses of Europe
Sign in

Prince John of the United Kingdom

1905–1919

Born
12 Jul 1905, York Cottage
Country of birth
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, today United Kingdom
Died
18 Jan 1919, Wood Farm
facts
9
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

  • Eventbaptism, 1905Confirmed1 competing claim1 source
  • Birth12 Jul 1905, York CottageProbable1 source
  • Eventburial, 1919Confirmed1 competing claim1 source
  • Death18 Jan 1919, Wood FarmProbable1 source
  • ParentGeorge VConfirmed1 source
  • ParentMary of TeckConfirmed1 source

A life in time

  1. Event · baptism

    Event

  2. Born · York Cottage

    Birth, York Cottage

  3. Event · burial

    Event

  4. Died · Wood Farm

    Death, Wood Farm

What was it like?

The world around York Cottage, 1905: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Prince was born the same year as Elias Canetti, Arthur Koestler, and Greta Garbo.

Known for

In their life

  • baptism1905
  • burial1919
Born the same year

  • Elias Canetti

    Bulgarian-born Swiss and British Jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer (1905–1994)

  • Arthur Koestler

    Hungarian-British author and journalist (1905–1983)

  • Greta Garbo

    Swedish-American actress (1905–1990)

  • Joan Crawford

    American actress (1908–1977)

  • Henry Fonda

    American actor (1905–1982)

  • Angelo Schiavio

    Italian footballer (1905-1990)

Fashion

Domestic servants' uniform requirements

Female domestic servants were required to purchase their own uniforms, which consisted of striped cotton dresses for morning chores and a black dress with a white cap and apron for afternoon duties.

Working-class menswear habits

Working-class men often wore their father's old suits for manual labor, leading to common sights of mismatched coats and trousers.

Music

Affordable dance halls in the 1920s

During the 1920s in Glasgow, young people flocked to dance halls where they could dance for six hours for the price of sixpence. These halls were known for being fiercely respectable, and participants focused on skill and style.

Concertina music at village festivals

In the early 20th century, concertinas were widely used at house dances, village festivals, and in pubs, where dancers might even perform on farm wagons. Collectors sometimes had to be stationed at doors to ensure dancers paid the musicians, as collecting fees became harder with the popularity of round dances.

Getting around

Horses ruled the early 1900s streets

Before World War One, horses dominated town streets, pulling everything from carriages and taxicabs to delivery carts and buses.

Around 1875–1899

Dramatic increases in travel speed by rail

Rail travel speeds significantly outperformed earlier coaches, with journeys that took 20 hours by stagecoach in 1830 taking only five hours by train by the early 20th century. For example, in 1872, a 220-mile trip to Scotland via train and carriage took over 9.5 hours, averaging about 23 miles per hour.

Daily life

Lighting in the home was rarely electric

Most late-Victorian and Edwardian families lacked electricity and relied on gas, or in rural areas, oil lamps and homemade rushlights.

Water was often collected from outside taps

Many homes lacked running water, requiring families to collect it from an outside tap shared with neighbours and heat it on the stove for bathing.

Food

Buying Meat for Home Cooking

Because many working-class homes lacked ovens, families often bought 3/4 pound of leg of beef and 1/2 pound of beef suet for meat puddings or rissoles.

Common Drink Adulteration and Reuse

Tea was frequently re-used until all flavour was extracted, and milk was sometimes adulterated with chalk and water.

Prices and wages
Around 1914–1915

Rising food costs for families in 1915

A standard family's weekly supply of food, which cost 19s 8d in July 1914, rose to 24s 5½d by March 1915 due to wartime price inflation.

Around 1875–1900

Bread prices at the century's end

By the late 19th century, bread prices declined to just above 1 penny per pound, a staple item for a subsistence-level family.

Work

Common Jobs and Uncertain Labour

Common jobs included agricultural labourers, coal miners, domestic servants, and factory workers, as the economy shifted from agriculture to manufacturing and service industries. Many unskilled workers were simply classified as labourers, relying on uncertain daily work at docks or quarries.

Early Morning Child Labour

In the early 1900s, some young boys rose as early as 3:00 a.m. to deliver newspapers or wake up workers before attending school. By 1918, new regulations and compulsory education to age fourteen made such extreme juvenile employment practices virtually impossible.

During their lifetime

  1. 1908

    Old Age Pensions Introduced in 1908

    In 1908, Parliament approved means-tested old age pensions of up to five shillings a week for people over 70.

  2. 1918

    Women Won the Right to Vote

    In 1918, a limited number of women were allowed to vote, and by 1927 all women over 21 were granted the right to vote.

  3. 1919

    Council Housing Construction Began in 1919

    Following the 1919 Housing Act, local authorities began building council houses to replace slums, with over 1 million built by 1939.

Family

Parents

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.