Armistice Day, November 11, 1918

The original Armistice Day: Pictures show how Londoners took to the streets to celebrate when the First World War ended in 1918 - after the deaths of 900,000 British troops

They packed the streets around every London landmark, and filled lorries and buses with their Union Jacks aloft.

Londoners celebrating the end of the First World War in November 1918 had been through more than four years of hardship, loss and grief. 

The good news had filtered around Europe within hours of the Armistice between the Allied victors and the defeated Germany being agreed shortly after 5am on November 11. 

Pictures show the stunning celebrations in the capital, as hundreds of thousands of Britons marked the joyous moment. 

The Daily Mail reported at the time: 'On Armistice Day the middle-aged and the old walked silently, wrapped in silent joy, incommunicable reveries, in a transfiguration of thankfulness and relief.

Nurses, soldiers and other Londoners celebrating in Whitehall after hearing that the Armistice had been signed, November 11, 1918

A group of soldiers, including a Scot, an Australian and a member of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps running down the Strand on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918

'The soldiers and the munition girls made the carnival while London watched them.

'From a thousand factories the girls poured out; on thousands of lorries they swept to the Strand.

'They made caps for their heads with Union Jacks; they used flag pins for hat pins; they ribboned themselves with bunting. They piled their lorries with pyramids of living beings.'

King George V and his wife Queen Mary moved through the jubilant crowds with only two mounted policemen as escorts.

The King told the nation from the balcony of Buckingham Palace: 'With you I rejoice and thank God for the victory which the Allied Armies have won and brought hostilities to an end and peace within sight.'

An Army lorry carrying celebrating soldiers through a London street on November 11, 1918

Jubilant crowds seen celebrating in London after the signing of the Armistice in November 1918 

Servicemen and civilians celebrate together outside Buckingham Palace, London after the announcement of the Armistice

King George V and Queen Mary (left) in a carriage in front of St Paul's Cathedral, London, after attending the Armistice Day service

The crowd gathered outside the Stock Exchange and the Bank of England in London after the announcement of the Armistice

The massed crowd in Trafalgar Square after the signing of the Armistice

A group of delighted women seen with soldiers in an American car on the day the Armistice was signed

Crowds and buses in London when the armistice was signed

The first crowds gather at Buckingham Palace on November 11, 1918, after the signing of the Armistice

From Downing Street, prime minister David Lloyd George told crowds massed outside: 'You are well entitled to rejoice. The people of this Empire with their Allies have won a great victory. It is the sons and daughters of the people who have done it.

'It is a victory greater than has ever been known in history. Let us thank God.'

The Daily Mail's coverage added: 'Everywhere the lights went up. Unscreened arc-lights flared. 

'Theatres and hotels shone again as they shone before the war, casting a glittering radiance on the wet streets and shining faces below.

'Every girl carried a flag. Many wore the Union Jack like a turban bound across the forehead and falling upon the shoulders.

'They stood on the tops of cabs, screaming their way through the throng. 

'They clung to the arms of soldiers, frantically pleased at the lighting of the shadow of war from their young hearts.'

The signing of the armistice came after the deaths of more than 8million soldiers, nearly 900,000 of whom were British. 

The toll was so great that the 1921 Census recorded 109 women for every hundred men. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14067673/Armistice-Day-World-War-London.html