[To be added]

Letters to the Editor of local, regional or national newspapers were part of the era’s equivalent of today’s social media as a way of conducting public debate.

Writers would often write anonymously by using a pseudonym, in the same way that usernames or ‘handles’ are now used to mask identities.

Examples of 1915 debates are:

Cancellation of Langholm’s Common Riding

Eskdale Laddie

An earlier 1913 debate may also be of historical interest, as it involved the antagonistic 21-year old Christopher Grieve, later known as the poet Hugh MacDiarmid.