« Reply #7 on: Friday 08 December 17 13:38 GMT (UK) »
I'm transcribing Royal Navy records including the period of WWI and I would say that the majority of the men, some who enlisted as boys, all had tattoos. When I was a child in the 1940s/50s, the only people who had tattoos were sailors and people who'd been in prison.
I've already described that my grandfather had a red and blue anchor tattoo, I think I might revise why he had it because he worked loading and unloading ships.
He and his brothers were born in Wisbech, Norfolk and travelled north to the larger port of Hull in Yorkshire, for the seasonal dock work. When his brothers returned home, he stayed behind because he'd met my grandmother. She was a domestic servant but was also a tamborine girl in the Sally Army. He must have been star struck because he also joined the band and played the big drum. They married in 1911, which is the same year he joined the Northumbrian Territorial Army, known as the RAMC, Royal Army Medical Corps.
Aberdeen: Findlay-Shirras,McCarthy: MidLothian: Mason,Telford,Darling,Cruikshanks,Bennett,Sime, Bell: Lanarks:Crum, Brown, MacKenzie,Cameron, Glen, Millar; Ross: Urray:Mackenzie: Moray: Findlay; Marshall/Marischell: Perthshire: Brown Ferguson: Wales: McCarthy, Thomas: England: Almond, Askin, Dodson, Well(es). Harrison, Maw, McCarthy, Munford, Pye, Shearing, Smith, Smythe, Speight, Strike, Wallis/Wallace, Ward, Wells;Germany: Flamme,Ehlers, Bielstein, Germer, Mohlm, Reupke