One hundred years ago, Tim Thorpe's great-great-grandfather wrote a letter to be handed down the generations. It provides a fascinating snapshot of his time
For as long as Tim Thorpe can remember, he has known about the "12.12.12" letter. When he was a boy in the 1970s, his family would talk about his great-great-grandfather's ambitious message to people "belonging to me" 100 years into the future and, eventually, Thorpe received his own photocopy of the handwritten letter. The power of Guy Wood's message from beyond the grave, written on 12 December 1912, continues to fascinate his descendants, and for some, such as Thorpe, it sparked an interest in history that has shaped their lives and careers.
"This is the time of Flying Machines and Motor Cars only in their infancy. I often try to picture to myself what things will be like in 12.12.2012," wrote Wood, who was 51 and nearing the end of his working life as "head attendant" of an asylum. "I am writing this today to put on one side so that some of my offspring may perhaps read it."
Despite having little formal education, Wood read newspapers avidly and fearfully predicted the rise of Germany and the invention of "death dealing machines" that would kill people in their thousands. What he could not foresee was that his letter would become a treasured heirloom, and he would be delighted to know his words were still being read by his great-great-grandchildren when 12.12.2012 came to pass.
"It's written in a very dramatic way and gives an insight into the times in a very exciting way, and it really helped foster my interest in history," says Thorpe, 47, who is now collections officer at Lynn museum in Norfolk.
"This is the year of the greatest shipwreck ever known," wrote Wood of the sinking of the Titanic. "Said by the builders to be unsinkable owing to her watertight compartments, as she was sinking the Band played Nearer My God To Thee and then all was over."
Wood's letter next described how "a Great War is raging between the Balkan allies Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece against the Turks who have persecuted them for over 500 years". This turmoil was, of course, to resurface with the breakup of Yugoslavia some eight decades later.
Interestingly, while mass immigration was another anxiety of Edwardian times to be replayed today, Wood worried about the consequences of thousands of English people emigrating "every week to Canada, Australia and New Zealand", which led him to fear for the future of his country in 2012. "England I suppose will still be in existence although it looks sometimes as if we should be swallowed up by Germany or some other country the way they are spending money on warships, both for sea and air."
Wood's own views of the futility of war are clear. "It seems to me doctors are spending money and time in trying to cure and save life. Others are inventing guns and different kinds of death dealing machines to kill people by thousands all for greed and to conquer others," he wrote.
As Thorpe observes, the letter is reminiscent of HG Wells's The War of the Worlds, published 14 years earlier. Like Wells, Wood was a socialist and read the Daily Herald, a new daily paper for the working man. Nevertheless, it is strikingly unusual for someone to sit down and seriously consider a time 100 years from now, and write a letter to people not yet born, even in an era of great uncertainty when writers were creating the first science fiction. What compelled Wood to do so?
"He wanted some way of putting down his fears and anxieties on paper and the date came along. Did he do it out of a feeling of frustration at his powerlessness and his inability to change these great events?" says Thorpe. The letter reveals how historical events can affect the perceptions of an ordinary working person but it does not reveal much about Wood's personal life. And yet by writing his letter and reaching across the generations, he did something that any one of us could do, but don't – and marked himself out as a truly remarkable ancestor.
His descendants know relatively little about him, except that his life was scarred by bereavement. Born in Batley, Yorkshire, in 1861, Wood married Sophia, but four of their sons, who shared a bedroom, died of TB. After this tragedy, the family moved south and Wood got a job at Cane Hill asylum (latterly hospital) in Surrey. His daughter, Florence, survived, as did one son, Harry, who left school at 11 and became a "hall boy" at Cane Hill. It appears his parents continued to worry that he too would succumb to TB, and he was encouraged to work in warmer climes, on a cruise ship – where he played the violin – when he was 17. Later, Harry became the first Labour county councillor in Essex.
Does Thorpe wish his great-great-grandfather had written more personally about his family? "He probably didn't see that as important – he's not boasting about his own life," he says. "In many ways it is personal, in that his hopes and fears are expressed very well." In fact, Wood lived to see the logical conclusion of many of the trends he identified in 1912. After his wife died, Wood decided he would be looked after by his son Harry and his family. "My nanny remembers him arriving at her front door complete with a huge box of piano and violin music, and he said, 'You're going to look after me now,'" says Thorpe.
His mother, Daphne, recalls that, when she was a child in the 40s, Wood wore a smoking jacket and a fez, and lived in glorious isolation in her grandfather's front room, where he took his meals and smoked his pipe. Before lunch and dinner, Daphne would be told to go and speak to her great-grandfather. "She would have a quick chat with him before he took his lunch," says Thorpe. "I think he was quite a grumpy old man by then – he was in his 80s," says Thorpe. Wood died in 1946, aged 85.
Wood's letter demonstrates the transformations of a century, but also shows the great constant of human nature and our unchanging hopes and fears. His observations also prove how difficult it is to know what is to come. Votes for women is a "great rage" he observed, in which "100s of women congregate together and smash windows and other kinds of outrageous deeds on purpose." With hindsight, the political emancipation of women seems inevitable, but Wood's verdict – "I don't know if they will get votes or not" – shows it was far from a foregone conclusion at the time. Thorpe first read Wood's letter when he was a child. "In the 70s, when we imagined 2012 we thought of an Arthur C Clarke world of space exploration and science fiction."
Thorpe knows of no other family mementoes of his great-great-grandfather except one photograph, but Wood's fascination with the future, and the window he created into the past, has had an enduring legacy. Daphne became a history teacher and Thorpe says the letter inspired his fascination with modern history, which he studied at university before choosing a career working in museums.
Thorpe is certain that his great-great-grandfather's letter will survive for another 100 years, and he and his two brothers will pass it on to their children. Has Thorpe considered writing his own updated version? "Where do you start? How do you imagine what life is going to be like 100 years from now?" he says.
"It's fascinating to have this direct line of communication from him, otherwise he'd just be a name on a census list. Now he'll always be thought of as a real living human being who was very thoughtful and caring and sent us this direct line from the past. I'm so grateful. We feel it's a real gift to us, his great-great grandchildren. It's such a magical message to receive."
• This article was updated on 22 December 2012 to include an image of Tim Thorpe with the letter from his great-great-grandfather Guy Wood
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Guardian