The Red Book
One of the most important items in the Talbot House collection is the so-called 'Red Book’. Tubby gave this name to a book with a red leather cover, on which "Talbot House – Communicants' Roll – Easter 1916" was painted in yellow.
Upon closer inspection, this title does not fully cover the contents. The inscription ‘Easter 1916’ is misleading. Regarding Talbot House, the ‘Red Book’ actually covers the period from December 1915 to December 1918. Additionally, the book contains about 230 names from the period May-November 1915, when Tubby was chaplain at No. 16 General Hospital in Le Tréport. Some of these men would later visit him at Talbot House. While Tubby was a patient (and chaplain) at No. 7 Stationary Hospital for officers in Boulogne in July and August 1916, he diligently noted down the names of some hundred communicants.
Furthermore, the ‘Red Book’ not only contains the names of officers and ‘other ranks’ who broke bread in the Upper Room. There are also names of those who were baptised or confirmed there, as well as organists, altar servers, and attendees of the weekly meetings of the Church of England Men's Society - an organisation focused on educational and social work. Also recorded were the names and addresses of men who applied for priestly training formation at Talbot House. Altogether, the book holds approximately 820 names, about half of which were personally written down by the men themselves.
In 1931 Tubby wrote the following about the ‘Red Book’:
The book, or (on days of a great multitude) separate sheets of paper, lay on the table on the second landing below the Chapel staircase. Officers and men gathered round this table and subscribed their signatures, as they came down from the Upper Room. While they were doing this after the Celebration, I would often follow them down the companion ladder and stand there talking to this man or that, or shake hands at the top of the staircase leading to the first floor, with old friends and new. One may wonder how it has come to be that only some three thousand signatures or names survive. We must indeed recognise that many men, some of the very best, were far too shy to sign their names. They were unused to doing so in any Church, or they were in a hurry; or they just felt, without a definite reason, that they would leave it where it stood and let the others sign who fancied it. The only way of getting Englishmen to accept an innovation is to assure them that it is an old custom now to be revived. (P.B. Clayton)
Because services were often overcrowded, regularly more than 200 men attended, separate slips of paper were also used for communicants to record their names. The addenda at the end contained more names than the book itself. Some of these names were later copied into the ‘Red Book’ by for example Talbot House staff members. Tubby did his best to preserve these sheets of paper, though it was not easy:
Meanwhile, what happened to the little slips which bore the signatures and home addresses? When they were signed, they were ensconced in two unworthy sand-bags in my cupboard. Sand-bags were used for almost anything and when Lord Northcliffe’s department of Allied publicity tried to flood Talbot House with their literature, this was also ensconced in sand-bags, and some of these were also piled into my cupboard. A few weeks later, after Kemmel fell, and life became still more precarious, we were compelled to build a rampart of sandbags across the marble step in the front part of the House. This rampart was constructed rapidly with sandbags taken from my cupboard, as if they contained something more solid than mere propaganda pamphlets. One sandbag full of our Communicants’ Roll paper was, by a desperate oversight, built into this rampart and never recovered. Perhaps two thousand signatures were lost therein. At the Armistice the other sandbag was brought home and its contents extracted. It provided the only list of Foundation Members’ names and addresses, from which the nucleus of post-war Toc H was formed. (P.B. Clayton)
After the war, Tubby always travelled with the same attaché case, containing his most important Talbot house and Toc H documents. In 1926, this case had an adventure of its own:
In 1926 Toc H Sheffield (led by C.J. Magrath, then Y.M.C.A. Ypres) organised a meeting in one great city hall and filled it handsomely. Owing to some delay – delays are not unknown – I reached the meeting more than an hour late, and those who welcomed me insisted on carrying me to the platform by a mysterious staircase, built in the days when politics were taken bitterly and speakers might require a secret exit in emergency. I had no luggage with me except my old attaché case. This I had bought on leave in 1915, and in it every document of Talbot House, Poperinghe, and Toc H, up to that night in Sheffield, had been in turn deposited. The little case, with one insecure fastening, had sailed the Atlantic twice, twice crossed the Rockies, once the Pacific, travelled north through Java, landed at Singapore, been far up-country, voyaged down to Ceylon, breathed in the grit of Indian summer trains, threaded the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to El Kantara, ascended to Jerusalem, then to Cairo, and home by Trieste, as well as visiting most towns and many villages of the United Kingdom. For all this time it had been part of me, held in the hand well-nigh continually. Now it was taken from me and put into the speaker’s green-room, just behind the platform. A foretaste of its fate was in my mind as I spoke and when the meeting ended we looked for it in vain. Some man, unknown, had followed my arrival all up the secret staircase, achieved the speaker’s room and seized the case as likely to contain – I know not what he thought of specie.
No stone was left unturned that night and the following day, when I had to leave Sheffield. By what they call the morning light, in Sheffield, a constable observed a small brown bag lying upon a heap of slag which divided the turbulent waters of a once lovely river above the road bridge. The bag seemed as inaccessible as if it hung on the point of Goats’ Island; but nothing daunts the Sheffield Fire Brigade. They brought a fire escape to the bridge, and from the further end of the ladder lowered a fireman, dangling on a rope until he reached the bag. He clutched its handle and was then himself again hoisted in the air. Alas! The little bag, under this sudden strain, behaved improperly. The single catch gave way, the lid fell open, and all the frail contents fluttered down into the stream. Even then the friendly firemen realised that some could be retrieved, and a few papers, stained and sodden, were gathered and replaced.
The bag itself, with these, came back to my possession. It would have seemed ingratitude to make much of the loss which had occurred. My pocket-book, within the case, contained sacred letters – among them one responsible for the first Chapel laincy in South Australia; my diary for the year, and my little documents loved and cherished through thick and thin, of war and peace; frayed scraps to which I turned in desperation, which taught me hope again – all these had perished. Among them was a rough brown envelope containing almost all the original Australian signatures to the Communicants Roll in Talbot House, Poperinghe. The men who pencilled these had mostly died in Flanders; and this bulky envelope had, through the infinite care of some of my sisters in Toc H, been prepared to go out by registered post for preservation by Toc H Australia. These had now passed for ever from the Family; and the rising generation would not be able, as I had hoped, to see the signatures of those who bore their name and brought it faithful love in those far fields. By a yet earlier accident, at the time of the Empire Exhibition, the Officers’ Visitors Book of Talbot House in Poperinghe, containing fifteen hundred signatures of officers who slept within the House during its earliest years was lost in transit from the Exhibition, where it had been on view. Had we but then foreseen the true significance which would in time, attach to these first records, we had been wiser and more careful stewards. (P.B, Clayton, 1934, pp. 194-195)
The remaining slips with communicants’ names and addresses – around 1,500 - were glued by some of Tubby's staff onto large sheets and bound into two large volumes. In addition, many other documents containing a lot of names were preserved.
From 1922 onwards, when Tubby became vicar of All Hallows by the Tower, the ‘Red Book’ was kept in a safe there. However, in December 1940 the church was almost entirely destroyed during the Blitz. The book miraculously survived but suffered severe water damage during efforts to extinguish the fire.
Following the advice of the Flanders Heritage Institute, we invited a specialist book restorer to assess the damage. The 28-page report lists more than 20 different issues, including pages sticking together or coming loose, tears, stains, dirt, fingerprints, warping and spine damage. The restoration of this valuable book is estimated to require over 100 hours of work.
The ultimate aim of the restoration is to recover all names and other valuable information in the book, digitize it and make it available online for public access. Moreover, we maintain a database of all ‘Talbotousians’, accessible on the Talbot House website. Currently, we have preserved 2,000 names, which are displayed in our museum, and new names are continuously added. Of course, we also hope to include those recorded in the ‘Red Book’.
Sources:
- Nolf, K., & Louagie, J. (1998). De eerste halte na de hel: Talbot House, Poperinge. Lannoo.
- Louagie, J. (2015). A Touch of Paradise in Hell. Helion & Company Limited.
- Toc H. (1934). Toc H Journal (Vol. XII).


