Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

C names

William Anthony Cox

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W. A. Cox
Service No. L/15560
Private, Middlesex Regiment, 12th Bn.
Died 26 September 1916, aged about 21
Remembered at Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France

Chris Burge writes:

William Anthony Cox was born in Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland in 1895, the first child of James and Alice Cox. William’s father was a serving soldier and all four of their children were born in Ireland. In 1901 the family were living in married quarters at the Shorncliffe Army Camp in Kent.  

In the 1911 census, James and Alice lived with their three surviving children, William, Elena and Jim in Ramsgate on the coast. William was working as gardener; his father, an Army Pensioner, worked was a valet attendant. It is not known when the family came to the Stockwell area, but James Cox appeared on the electoral roll in 1915, living at 15 Portland Place South, South Lambeth.

William Cox’s service number indicates he volunteered in either late April or early May 1915.  Ready, or not, he was posted to the 1st Middlesex in France on 29 September, just five days after the 1st Middlesex had suffered terrible losses at the Battle of Loos.  Several quiet months followed and the  early part of 1916 was mostly spent in the Cuinchy sector.  William Cox’s transfer to the 12th Middlesex by September 1916 suggests he may have been wounded at some stage and did not return to his original battalion. The 12th Middlesex were among the forces that attacked Thiepval on 26 September, advancing uphill under a creeping barrage with the support of a single tank, first used by the British Army in battle 11 days earlier.  The majority of the 138 men killed that day are remembered on the Thiepval Memorial.  

William Anthony Cox was initially posted missing, leaving his family in an emotional limbo his death was presumed to have occurred on 26 September 1916.

James and Alice Cox remained at 15 Portland Place South until at least 1927.  

Edward George Cox

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Chris Burge writes:

E.G. Cox
Rifleman, London Regiment (London Irish Rifles), ‘B’ Coy.
Service no. 590198
Died in hospital in the UK on 18 February 1919, aged 22
Remembered at West Norwood Cemetery and Crematorium

Edward George Cox was born on 10 May 1896 and baptised at Holy Trinity (demolished in 1953), Vauxhall Bridge Road in Pimlico on the north side of the Thames, on 7 June 1896 when his parents Edward Charles and Harriet Cox were living at 32 Ponsonby Terrace in Pimlico. Edward’s father worked as a moulder in a brass foundry. Four years later, when Edward’s sister Mabel Johanna was born the family lived at 30 Garden Street [where?]. At the time of the 1901 census, the Cox family were living in two rooms at 54 Romney Buildings in Erasmus Street, just behind the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain). 

At the age of five, in 1902, Edward George Cox attended the newly-opened Millbank School, across the street from the Romney Buildings. The school, and Edward’s early home, were part of the Millbank Estate, an ambitious housing scheme built between 1897 and 1902 by the London County Council. Two years later, when their third child, Ivy Georgina, was born, the Cox family had moved again, to 11 Hunter Buildings on the recently built London County Council Borough Road Estate.  

By 1911, Edward and family were living in more suburban surroundings at 5 Hill Street, Peckham, near the corner with Bird in Bush Road and close to the Surrey Canal. The Cox household then consisted of: Edward Charles, 40, and Harriett, 44; Edward George, 14; Mabel Johanna, 10; and Ivy Georgina, seven. In 16 years of marriage, Edward’s mother had borne four children, of whom three had survived. Edward had followed his father and now worked in a brass foundry. The Cox family lived in four rooms, the fifth room being occupied by Dora Saunders, a 74-year-old widow in a receipt of her old-age pension. 

Edward George Cox was already a member of the part-time Territorial Force at the outbreak of war. His original service number 1349 corresponds to those joining the London Irish Rifles towards the end of 1913, qualifying him as a recipient of the Territorial Force War Medal. (Note: The CWGC information refers to the wrong TF medal. The criteria for the Territorial Force War Medal is explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_War_Medal.)The medal roll of the 18th (County of London) Battalion (London Irish Rifles) was annotated with the dates and theatres Edward George Cox served in, and this corresponds with soldiers in the 2nd Battalion who served in France, Salonika, Egypt and Palestine 

Captain Ernest May wrote the story of the 2/18th London Regiment (2nd Battalion), London Irish Rifles during the Great War, a work started in 1926 but not completed and published until 1972. It explains how the battalion was disbanded in Palestine around June and July 1918 and the men drafted to other battalions in their Brigade. But the medal roll entry for Edward George Cox shows him leaving the theatre months earlier, on 6 March. Although wounding or sickness are possible explanations, there are no surviving records to say why or when Edward George Cox returned to the UK. The Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects merely records that Edward George Cox ‘died in hospital’ on 18 February 1919. His death was registered in the district of Weymouth and he was buried on 25 February 1919 at West Norwood Cemetery.

The Cox family were living at 48 Stockwell Park Crescent when Edward’s father passed away in 1934, aged 64. Edward’s mother Harriet moved to Sutton to live with her married daughter Ivy. Harriet Cox died in Sutton in 1942, aged 75. 

Victor Leslie Corben

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V. L. Corben
Second Lieutenant, Royal Fusiliers
Secondary Regiment: Rifle Brigade, attd. 52nd Battalion
Died age 23 on 22 July 1918
Son of Fred and Esther Margaret Corben, of “Stonehaven”, 55 St Albans Avenue, Bournemouth. Born in London.
Remembered at Lambeth Cemetery, London SW17

In July 1918 Victor Leslie Corben, a Second Lieutenant attached to the Rifle Brigade, was on leave in London when he started to suffer headaches and fever. He was admitted to the 3rd London General Hospital (this building, now known as the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building, sits opposite Wandsworth Prison). A few days later, appendicitis was diagnosed and on 7 July he was operated on by an Army surgeon. He had further surgery to drain a pelvic abscess but died the next day at 10.40am.

Corben’s personal effects, a suitcase and a small parcel of personal property, were sent to his father, Fred Corben, a stone merchant of “Hillside”, 51 Union Road, Clapham.

The will was proved by his father, who undertook to settle any debts left by his son. “The loss of the boy is indeed a severe blow to us,” Fred wrote to Major Bright of the Rifle Brigade at Colchester in August, thanking him for his sympathy and for the settlement of Victor’s accounts.

However, when Fred applied to the Army for funds to cover his son’s funeral expenses, he was turned down. Your son died in England, of an illness not related to his service, they said. Fred was outraged, barely concealing his anger in a note written on 10 December 1918. For him, the appendicitis was clearly connected with the wounds Victor had sustained the previous year, and also with a bout of trench fever. “I was never consulted in reference to the operations which were performed on him at the hospital,” he complained. “[Yet] as soon as he had passed away in his country’s service I was called upon to pay for the coffin in which he was to be buried. … This seems to me a gross injustice.”  The Army was intransigent: “No grant for Army funds is admissable,” it stated.

Victor Corben was born in Clapham on 23 February 1895, and after boarding at Cranleigh School, Surrey, worked in mechanical engineering. He was 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed just over 10 stone. The 1911 census shows the Corben family living in 10 rooms at 51 Union Road. Fred, then 49, was born in Lambeth; his wife, Esther Margaret, 48, was from Chelsea. Their daughter Florence, 25, was “assisting in the business,” as was Leslie’s brother Frank H. Corben, 20. A servant, Mary Bower, 26, from Langton Matravers in Dorset, had been with the family for at least 10 years (she appears on both the 1901 and the 1911 censuses). Later Fred and Esther moved to “Stonehaven,” 55 St. Albans Avenue, Bournemouth.

Information from the 1911 and 1901 censuses
In 1911 the Corben family lived in 10 rooms at 51 Union Road. Fred, then 49, was a stone merchant, born in Lambeth; his wife, Esther, 48, was born in Chelsea. Their daughter Florence, 25, was described as “assisting in the business”, as was Frank H. Corben, 20. Victor Leslie Corben, 16, meanwhile, was a pupil at Cranleigh School at Cranleigh, Surrey.

Victor is on the 1901 census as a six-year-old, although Florence is not. In 1901 there was a second son, Fred N. Corben, then aged three. He is not on the 1911 census, and may have died in the intervening years (the 1911 census shows that the Corbens had lost one child by that date). The household kept a live-in servant, Mary Bower, 26, from Langton Matravers in Dorset, who had been with them for at least 10 years (she appears on the 1901 and the 1911 censuses). In 1901 the family kept two servants, the other being Florence Dawson, aged 20, who was born in Battersea.