Stockwell War Memorial

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Alfred Bernard Gude

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A. B. Gude
Service no. 1556
Private, London Regiment, 24th Battalion
Born in Clapham; enlisted in Kennington; lived in Stockwell
Died aged about 19 on 16 June 1915
Remembered at Wandsworth (Streatham) Cemetery, London SW16

Information from the censuses

In 1911 the Gude family lived at 26 Willington Road, Stockwell, where they occupied 4 rooms.Thomas George Gude, 39, was an engine driver for the London and South West Railway. He was born in Battersea. Alice Milly Gude, 47, was born in Clapham. Alfred Bernard Gude, their only child, was a messenger lad for the London and South West Railway.

Ten years previously, in 1901, the Gude family lived at 17 Union Street, Clapham. Two locomotive engine firemen, Walter H. Dizzard, a 26-year-old single man born in Guildford, Surrey, and William E. Burnard, 20, single and from Southsea, Hampshire, lodged with the family.

Alfred Grout

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A. C. Grout
Service no. 13775
Private, Royal Berkshire Regiment, 8th Battalion
Born in Lambeth; enlisted in London; lived in Stockwell
Killed in action age 20 on 25 September 1915
CWGC: “Son of Mrs C. S. Grout, of 6 Garden Row, Stockwell, London, and the late George Grout.”
Remembered at Dud Corner Cemetery, Loos, France

Information from the 1901 census

In 1901 Alfred Grout, then 6, and his siblings lived with their widowed mother at 30 White Hart Street in Kennington. The census merely gives his mother as “C. Grout” and does not state where she was born. She was 31. Her children are listed as:
Emily Grout, 10
George Grout, 8
Alfred Grout, 4
Ernest Grout, 4
All the children were born in Lambeth.

Sidney Wallace Griffiths

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S. W. Griffiths
Service no. 25351
Private, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), 6th Battalion
Born in Lambeth; enlisted in Lambeth; lived in Clapham
Killed in action age 19 on 2 July 1918
CWGC: “Son of William and Caroline Griffiths, of 8 Aldebert Terrace, Albert Square, Clapham Road, London.”
Remembered at Bouzincourt Ridge Cemetery, Albert, France

Information from the censuses

In 1911 the Griffiths family was living at 8 Aldebert Terrace, South Lambeth. William Griffiths, 53, was a blacksmith working for the railway, from Mornston in Glamorganshire. Carrie Griffiths, 46, was from Oldswinford, Worcestershire. They had 6 children, all surviving in 1911.
Thomas Griffiths, 15, was a junior clerk in a stationery company
William Griffiths, 13
Sidney Griffiths, 12
Mildred Griffiths, 9
Albert Griffiths, 7
Charlie Griffiths, 1
All the children were born in Lambeth.
Theodore Arthur Hill, a single 32-year-old theatrical actor from Blackheath, south-east London, boarded with the family. In Ten years previously, in 1901 the Griffiths family was found at 183 South Lambeth Road living with 4 boarders.

Edwin John Burlington Green

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E.J.B. Green
Service no. 2637
Gunner, Royal Field Artillery, 236th Bde.
Killed in action 6 October 1916, aged 32
Remembered at Thiepval Memorial, France

This identification was made by Chris Burge, who writes:

Edwin John Green was born in the summer of 1883, the fifth child of parents Edward and Eleanor Green when the family was living in Camberwell. By 1891 there had been another child born and by 1901 Edwin was one of eight siblings, and like his father, Edwin worked as a slater. The family was then living at 104 Lyndhurst Grove, Camberwell.  

By the time of the 1911 census, Edwin, along with sister Ada and brothers Trevor and Clarence, was still living with parents Edward and Eleanor. Edwin’s father, now 65, was still working as a slater but Edwin was now carman, his younger brother Trevor a shorthand typist and Clarence a clerk. The six adults occupied nine rooms at 49 Lyndhurst Grove, Camberwell.   

Edwin married Harriet Jane Porter in 1913 and their first child, Edwin Frederick Burlington Green, was born later that year.

Despite Harriet expecting a second child, Edwin followed his brother Trevor’s example and joined the Army in May 1915. Edwin volunteered at 105 Holland Road (now Minet Road), Brixton, the HQ of the 6th London Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, Territorial Force (the batteries of this brigade were later re-designated as the 236th Brigade, RFA). So began a long and intensive training period for Gunner, 2632, E.J.B Green. Edwin and Harriet’s second child, Arthur Percy Burlington Green, was born two months later, on 6 July 1915.

Months past and Edwin was still in England. His departure to France was delayed until 1916, possibly the 13 June 1916, if the records of Gunner 2630 Henry Eugene Saunders of Stockwell are a guide. Harriet was expecting her third child at his time, and Alice Eleanor Burlington Green was born on 3 August 1916. The grim news from the Battle of the Somme must have filled Harriet with dread. It was in August that Edwin’s battery joined the Somme offensive.

Edwin had been in action in mid August and again in September between periods of relief and had returned to action at the beginning of October 1916 on the Somme. A time referred to as the Battle of Transloy Ridge. It was here that Edwin John Burlington Green was killed. Very unusually for an ‘other ranks’ soldier, Edwin’s death is recorded in the brigade’s war diary on 6 October with the battery position near ‘High Wood’.

C/236 Btty were shelled in their new position … and had to evacuate it. Gnr Green E.J.B was killed and one wounded ( Sgt Irons). Two or three others were buried but successfully dug out and remained at duty.

Harriet suffered further heartache when her baby daughter Alice died in October 1918, close to the anniversary of Edwin’s death. Harriet Jane Green remained in Lambeth for many years, passing away in 1972, aged 87.

Thomas William Gray

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T.W. Gray
Lance Corporal, London Regiment, 1st/24th Bn
Service no. 1909 
Died 22 April 1915, aged about 23
Remembered at Le Touret Memorial, Pas de Calais, France 

Thomas William Gray was born in 1892 in Plumstead, southeast London, the second child of Walter and Helen Elizabeth Gray.  As a child, Thomas lived in Hare Street, within sight of the Thames. It was a short walk downhill to the Woolwich ferry, with the vast complex of the Victoria and Albert Docks across the river. The area was home to the Woolwich Arsenal and a Royal Engineers barracks but still had the open space of Woolwich Common and Shooter’s Hill on its southern boundary. 

By the time of the 1911 census, the family was living in the crowded environment of Lambeth. Walter and Helen were now in their fifties. Six of their eight children had survived into adulthood, but it was just Thomas, then 18, and his sister Annie, 17, who lived with their parents.  The family included an elderly widowed aunt. Walter worked for a biscuit manufacture as a commercial clerk, Thomas was as a clerk at tourist agent and Anne was a costumier’s dressmaker. The family had four rooms at 16 Thorne Road, a house they shared with two other families.

Thomas was one of the thousands who volunteered in the first week of August 1914. He had gone to the drill hall in nearby Braganza Street (previously New Street), Kennington, where the 24th (County of London) Battalion (The Queen’s) was based.  As part of the Territorial Force, battalion was mobilised on 5 August, but were under-strength and needed to large numbers of new volunteers from Lambeth and beyond.  

Thomas was on the move in mid-August when The Queen’s marched to a camp in the St Albans-Hatfield area. Training continued through the autumn and winter until the battalion left for France, disembarking at Le Havre on the 16 March.  Thomas  had already been promoted Lance Corporal.  Between March 28 and April 18 The Queen’s were mostly employed to dig  trenches at Lapugnoy, near Bethune in northern France. A hot march on 19 April took The Queen’s into the front line trenches at Richebourg Saint-Vaast.Sporadic shelling wounded one man on 20 April, killed another and wounded two on 21 April. It was noted that ‘1 NCO was wounded from A company’ on 22 April 22. Thomas Gray’s war had been cut brutally short.

The wedding of Thomas’ sister Annie Alice May on 22 December 1917 to Robert Bessant, a former neighbour, must have brought some comfort to the family. Bessant had volunteered for The Queen’s in September 1914 but was discharged unfit in April 1916, having never served in France. 

At the end of the war Thomas’s parents received a small pension. The REgister of Soldiers’ Effects shows that the war gratuity was split between his father and May Elizabeth Martin, a dressmaker from Southwark, who we can infer was probably Thomas’s sweetheart.

Members of the Gray family remained at the Thorne Road address until at least 1932.

The Queens’s memorial is in Kennington Park.