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The Armistice and its aftermath in photographs
A century ago World War I seemed to come to an abrupt end on 11 November 1918 with the signing of the Armistice. The time was marked with both joyful celebrations in the streets of the United Kingdom and the far more sombre tasks of clearing battlefields and creating cemeteries for the war dead. Here a selection of contemporary images from Mirrorpix’s archive, as seen in Victory 1918, highlight the variety of reactions, events and changes brought on by the silencing of the guns.
18 October 1918: The Liverpool Irish (8th Battalion, King’s Liverpool Regiment), accompanied by a young French boy carrying a rifle, march triumphantly into Lille, northern France, to liberate the town from nearly four years of occupation.
11 November 1918: Party time in Elswick, Newcastle, as residents of Tyneside Terrace celebrate.
1 December 1918: The first Christmas leave train departing northern Italy. The troops are happy, even if the mode of transport is somewhat crude.
4 May 1919: A spectator rushing to give a Canadian soldier a rose in Victoria Street, London.
24 September 1919: The last of the women conductors taking a fare on a London bus. By 3 October 1919, all women conductors had been retired and replaced by men just returned from the First World War.
3 November 1933: The British Legion Poppy Factory in Richmond, south-west London. It was founded in 1922 to offer employment opportunities to wounded soldiers returning from the First World War, creating remembrance products for the Royal Family and the Legion’s annual Poppy Appeal.
