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Chatham Naval Memorial

William Charles Tidnam

18 August 2015 by SWM

W. C. Tidnam
Service no. 227258
Able Seaman, Royal Navy, H.M.S. “Vanguard”
Died on 9 July 1917, aged 30
CWGC: “Son of William Tidnam, of Harleston, Norfolk; husband of Kathleen Mary Tidnam, of 2 Burnley Road, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Chatham Naval Memorial and on the war shrine at St Michael’s Church, Stockwell Park Road, London SW9 0DA

Information from the parish register

On 11 December 1916, William Charles Tidnam married Kathleen Mary Roberts at St. Michael’s Church, Stockwell. Kathleen’s address was 15 St. Martin’s Road, Stockwell. She gave her father’s occupation as carpenter and joiner. William gave his father’s as coachman.

Information from the censuses and other sources

In 1911 William Charles Tidnam, 23, was staying at the Union Jack club in Waterloo Road, Lambeth. He was listed as a  “Navy able seaman” from Reddenham, Norfolk. In 1901 he was a 14-year-old errand boy, living at “Mendham Lane, Redenhall With Harleston” in Norfolk. His 45-year-old father, also called William, was a “groom (domestic)”; his mother, Emma Tidnam, 44, was born at Reddenham. Besides William the couple’s children included
Ellen Tidnam, 11
Alice Tidnam, 10
Percy Tidnam, 7
Fred Tidnam and Herbert Tidnam, 5
Winifred Tidnam, 11 months
Ernest Singleton, a 22-year-old Irish-born “motor car driver”, boarded with the family.

Filed Under: Chatham Naval Memorial, St Michael's War Shrine, Stockwell War Memorial, T names Tagged With: 1917, age 30, Died, naval

Horace Thomas Pelling

17 August 2015 by SWM

H. T. Pelling
Service no. CH1/8111
Private, Royal Marine Light Infantry, H.M.S. “Bulwark.”
Died on 26 November 1914, aged 18
Remembered at Chatham Naval Memorial

Information from Royal Naval Division

Horace Pelling was born on 9 December 1895 in Clapham. He enlisted on 3 July 1913, embarked on H.M.S. “Bulwark” on 22 October 1914, but, as the service record says bluntly, “discharged dead” on 26 November 1914, killed by an internal explosion of his vessel, off Sheerness. His father, Horace John Pelling of 174 Wandsworth Road, received a Star medal issued on 27 July 1919.

The explosion left all of the Bulwark’s officers dead, and out of her complement of 750, only 14 sailors survived; two of these men subsequently died of their injuries in hospital, and almost all of the remaining survivors were seriously injured. There is a good account at www.nhcra-online.org

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 Horace Thomas Pelling, 15, was a labourer working in the manufacture of ammonia. He was born in Clapham. His father, Horace John Pelling, 40, as a general gas fitter from Steyning, Sussex; his mother, Hanna Elizabeth, 41, was from Walworth. Horace had one sibling: Albert Edward Pelling, 7, born in Battersea. Three other siblings had died. The family lived in two rooms at 3 Garnies Street (now gone, although there is a Garnies Close off Sumner Road), Camberwell.

Filed Under: Chatham Naval Memorial, P names, Stockwell War Memorial Tagged With: 1914, Accident, age 18, naval

George Sidney Miller

13 August 2015 by SWM

G.S. Miller
Petty Officer Stoker, Royal Navy, HMS Vanguard
Service no. 311632
Died in an explosion on 9 July 1917, aged 27
Remembered at  Chatham Naval Memorial, Kent

Chris Burge writes:

George Sidney Miller was born in Willesden, northwest London in 1892, the second child of parents George Henry and Elizabeth Miller, who were both originally from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. At the time of the 1901 census, George, 33, and Elizabeth, 29, lived in four rooms at 47 High Street Clapham with their three children: Irene, 12; George, nine; and Samuel, five. George Snr, a police sergeant, died in 1903, aged 36. On 16 January 1909 Irene married Talbert Vincent Wilcocks at St Mark’s Church, Kennington, giving their addresses as 74 and 76 Clapham Road. The marriage was witnessed by Talbert’s sister and Frederick Staughton.

By the time of the 1911 census, Irene was living in four rooms at 26A Mandalay Road, Clapham, with her husband and their two baby daughters. George Sidney Miller appeared in the census at the Royal Navy Torpedo School Ship HMS Vernon, Portsmouth, listed as ‘Stoker 1st Class’. He was listed as 22 and single, both of which were untrue. 

George Sidney Miller had joined the Navy on 1 May 1907, signing for 12 years. He claimed to have been born in Willesden on 25 November 1888. He was described as 5ft 6in tall with dark brown hair, brown eyes and a fresh complexion. He married Laura Hazelden on 17 November 1910 at St Barnabas, South Lambeth, where Laura had been baptised as a child. Her family home was at 8 Horace Street. At the time of the wedding George gave his true age, which was 18, and HMS Vernon as his place of residence. Frederick Staughton was one witness of their marriage. George and Laura’s first child, George Frederick Sidney Miller, was born on 25 April 1911 and baptised on 10 May 1911 at St Stephen’s, South Lambeth, at which time Laura gave her address as 76 Clapham Road, where she lived in one room and had been working as a laundress. 

In the 1911 census, policeman Frederick Staughton was living at 74 Clapham Road with his wife ‘Amy’ and 15-year-old stepson John Miller, born in Harlesden, northwest London. Amy Staughton was 38 and from Great Yarmouth. Frederick had married an ‘Amy Miller’ in 1906. While it’s not certain that George’s mother Elizabeth and Amy were the same person, his younger brother was baptised Samuel John Miller, which suggests Frederick Staughton may have been more than a family friend.

At the of outbreak of war, George Miller had risen to Leading Stoker and already educationally passed for Petty Officer; he was at the Pembroke II shore station. Between July 1914 and May 1916, he served on HMS Stour, part of the 9th Destroyer Flotilla that patrolled home waters. George and Laura’s second child, Eileen Laura,  was born on 7 December 1915 and baptised at St Stephen’s, South Lambeth, on two weeks later, when their home address was 35 St Stephen’s Terrace, which was virtually opposite the church.

A year later George Sidney Miller was involved in an incident that threatened to end his naval career. He appeared in court accused of the manslaughter of Herbert Jones. George Sidney Miller, 24, stoker, had been bailed in a police court on 23 November 1916 after a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Herbert Jones. The case was heard by Justice Avory on 13 December 1916 at the Old Bailey where George pleaded guilty, and was reported in newspapers soon after:

A NAVAL WHIRLWIND. A naval stoker, aged 23, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to-day to the manslaughter of Herbert Jones, whom he was said have struck outside a public-house. It was alleged that an insulting remark had been used to him and he ran amok. Mr. Justice Avory said that he doubted whether the prisoner intended to hit the deceased. You were the victim of that mistaken kindness which people show men in the services home on leave. I wish it could be made a more serious offence than is now to treat soldiers and sailors. You were mad with drink for the time being, and you ran amok. “I understand that someone called you a coward. Anything more calculated to irritate a man like you I don’t know. You ran about waving your arms like a whirlwind, striking anyone and not caring who it was.” Prisoner was bound over.

Justice Avory’s sympathetic hearing saved George from disgrace and worse. Whether it was chance or the Navy deliberately keeping George out of further trouble, he found himself sent far from London to the Fleet at Scapa Flow where he joined the crew of HMS Vanguard on 1 January 1917 and by April was an acting petty officer (stoker). HMS Vanguard was the Royal Navy’s seventh dreadnought battleship when launched in 1909, part of the Naval Arms Race that had preceded the war when the public were associated with the chant ‘We want eight and we won’t wait!’ The only time HMS Vanguard fired her guns in anger was during the battle of Jutland in 1916. In the Fleet anchorage in Scapa Flow on the evening of Monday 9 July 1917, it was overcast, with a gentle northeasterly. Vanguard and her neighbours carried out their usual evening routines until about 11.20pm when, without warning, flames became visible abaft Vanguard’s foremast, followed immediately by two heavy explosions, and the battleship disappeared under a pall of smoke. When the smoke lifted the great ship had gone. Of the 845 onboard, only two survivors were found. George Sidney Miller had died that day. 

The Naval Court of Inquiry was unable to determine any definite cause to the explosion. It was only able to conclude that it may have been due to the ignition of cordite from an ‘avoidable cause’, or the deterioration of perhaps unstable cordite. No blame was attributed to any one person. 

By the time the loss of the Vanguard was widely reported in the British press on 14 July 1917, the next of kin had been notified and Laura Miller was still at St Stephens Terrace, South Lambeth Road, SW8. When the Stockwell War Memorial was unveiled in 1922, Laura had been living at 111 Gaskarth Road, near Clapham South since 1918. It was the home of George’s married sister Irene, whose husband Talbert had served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the war. 

Laura Miller was married for a second time in 1925 to Edward Henry Gardener, an older man who had served in the Royal Navy between 1897 and 1906 and during the war. They lived in Boyd Road, Colliers Wood, from 1925, where Laura was still living when Gardener passed away in 1954. Laura passed away in Merton in 1971, aged 78. 

George and Laura’s daughter Eileen Laura Miller died in 1934, aged 18. His son George Frederick Sidney Miller died in 1989, aged 78.

Filed Under: Chatham Naval Memorial, M names, Stockwell War Memorial Tagged With: 1917, Accident, age 27, Chris Burge, navy

Frederick Eversfield

10 August 2015 by SWM

F. Eversfield
Service no. J/12826
Able Seaman, Royal Navy, H.M. S/M “D6.”
Died age 24 on June 1918
Husband of Kathleen Christina Eversfield, of 19, St. James Rd., Carshalton, Surrey.
Remembered at Chatham Naval Memorial

Information from the censuses

In 1911 Frederick Eversfield, a 16-year-old stores porter lived at 6 Emily Mansions, Landor Road, SW9 with his family: parents Harry Eversfield, 46, a stone maston born in Wrotham, Kent and Mary Eversfield, 45, from Dover; and siblings   Eliza Eversfield, 25, a restaurant counter hand, and Hilda Eversfield, 12. All three children were born in Dover.
In 1901 Frederick Eversfield was 6 and living at 1 Alexandra Cottages, Tower Street, in Dover, Kent, with his mother and siblings. Mary J. Eversfield was 34 and born in Dover. The children on the census were
Harry Eversfield, 16, foundry labourer
Elizabeth Eversfield, 12
Alfred Eversfield, 9
Frederick Eversfield, 6
Hilda Eversfield, 2
Winifred Eversfield, 1
Sarah A. Burbridge, 84, a widow living on her own means and born in Alkham, Kent, lived with the family.

Filed Under: Chatham Naval Memorial, E names, St Andrew's War Memorial, Stockwell War Memorial Tagged With: 1918, age 24, Died, naval

Arthur Stephen Crumpler

10 August 2015 by SWM

A. S. Crumpler
Service no. SS/112057
Leading Stoker, Royal Navy, H.M.S. Cornwallis
Died on 9 January 1917, aged 22
Remembered at Chatham Naval Memorial, Kent
Crumpler was one of 15 men who died when the Cornwallis was torpedoed by the German U-boat (U-32) off Malta. He had previously survived the sinking of the Cressy, which went down in the North Sea in less than 30 minutes on 22 September 1914, after an atttack by the U-boat U-9.

Information from the 1911 census

In civilian life, Crumpler was a plumber’s mate working in the building trade. One of five children, he was born in Charminster, Dorset. In 1911, he lived with his family in five rooms at 41 Dorset Road, Stockwell. Crumpler’s widowed mother, Mary Ann, was a newsagent and tobacconist, from Martinstown, Dorset.

Filed Under: C names, Chatham Naval Memorial, Stockwell War Memorial Tagged With: 1917, age 22, Died, naval

William Alfred Crowther

10 August 2015 by SWM

W. A. Crowther
Service no. K/27519
Stoker 1st Class, Royal Navy, HMS Vanguard.
Died age 19 on 9 July 1917
Son of Mrs. M. Flowerdew (formerly Crowther), of 16 Birds Hill, Railway Side, Letchworth, Herts. Native of Clapham, London.
Remembered at Chatham Naval Memorial

The Vanguard exploded on 9 July 1917. You can read about it at www.gwpda.org/naval/vanguard.htm.

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 William Alfred Crowther lived with his family in 4 rooms at 48 Cottage Grove, London SW4 – his father, George Crowther, 39, a coal porter and his mother, Elizabeth Crowther, 38; his siblings George, 18, a milkman “on round”; William, 15, an errand boy; Alfred Crowther, 13, and Albert Crowther, 10, at school; and the youngest Nellie Crowther, 4. All were born in Clapham, except William who was born in Lambeth.

Filed Under: C names, Chatham Naval Memorial, Stockwell War Memorial Tagged With: 1917, age 19, Died, naval

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  • All the men
  • Died on 1 July 1916
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