Stockwell War Memorial

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M names

Herbert William May

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H. W. May
Service no. 129402
Private, Machine Gun Corps, 2nd Battalion, formerly 8343, London Regiment
Enlisted at Lambeth
Died of his wounds on 22 October 1918 at age 19
CWGC: “Son of Mr and Mrs W. C. May of 76A Thorparch Road, Wandsworth Road, London. Native of Box, Wiltshire.”
Remembered at Etaples Military Cemetery, France

British Army WWI Pension Records 1914-1920

Herbert William May first joined the London Regiment in April 1915 when he was about 16. He enlisted at St John’s Hill, Wandsworth and was accepted into the 23rd Battalion of the London Regiment (Territorial Force).

May was 5 feet 7 inches tall, 128 pounds (just over 9 stone) and 35½ inches around the chest (with 2½ inches expansion). His vision was judged to be good as was his physical development. He stated that he was 19.

This was a lie and on Christmas Day 1915 he was discharged “having made a mis-statement as to age”. He had served 205 days.

Later he joined the Machine Gun Corps, and was died of wounds at Etaples, where there was a high concentration of hospitals treating the wounded.

Information from the 1911 census
Herbert William May, 12, lived in a 3-roomed apartment at 51 Riverhall Street, South Lambeth. He was born in South Lambeth. His parents, Walter Charles May, 40, a general labourer, and Mary Ann May, 45, were both from Box, Wiltshire. Three of their 6 children survived:
Mary May, 18, a kitchen hand for the Express Dairy Company, born in Westminster
Herbert William May, 12, born in South Lambeth
Raymond Wilfred May, 4, born in South Lambeth

Joseph Temple Mandale

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J. Mandale
Service no. 1728
Lance Corporal, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), 8th Battalion
Died on 20 November 1915 age 34
Born in Lambeth; enlisted at Camberwell; lived in Vauxhall.
CWGC: “Husband of G. E. Mandale, of 49 Cambridge Street, Pimlico, London.”
Remembered at Douai Communal Cemetery, France

Information from the censuses

In 1911, Joseph Temple Mandale, 30, born in Brixton, was living at 61 Bessborough Place, Pimlico. He worked in the wine trade, was married to Gertrude Eleanor Mandale, 20, from Westminster, and had a baby, born in Pimlico, so new he had not yet been named.
In the 1901 census, Mandale lived at 3 Regent Place, in the parish of St Margaret And St John. He was 20 and worked as a porter in a wine cellar. His mother, Marie E. Mandale, 46, was a dress-maker, born in Paris. The previous census, 1891, shows that a 10-year-old Joseph was living with his mother, then 32, and father, another Joseph Mandale, a solicitor’s clerk born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, at 17 Vicarage Terrace, Fulham. There was a younger son, John D. Mandale, then 5.

Note: Some of the ages and names do not add up correctly and Joseph T. Mandale is listed as Joseph J. in the 1891 census.

Frank Clifford John Mason

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F. C. J. Mason
Service no. PS/2538
Private, Middlesex Regiment, 17th Battalion
Born in Stockwell; enlisted in Lambeth
Killed in action age 16 on 24 August 1916
CWGC: “Son of Maud Mary and Arthur Petherick (step-father), of 22, St. Michael’s Rd., Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Euston Road Cemetery, Colincamps, France and on the war shrine at St Michael’s Church, Stockwell Park Road, London SW9 0DA

Information from British Army Records 1914-1920

On 12 July 1915 Frank Clifford John Mason, an only child living with his mother and stepfather, lied about his age in order to enlist in the British Army and join the war effort. He was born in September 1899 and was two or three months shy of his 16th birthday. He claimed to be 19, and this was accepted. A little over a year later he was dead.

Frank’s birth father was also called Frank Mason and was described in the 1901 census as a “manager specialist”, then aged 58 and born in Pimlico. The 1891 census lists him as a “chef & manager” and shows that he had a previous family. He was married to Esther, at 54 seven years older than himself, and there was a grandson, one-year-old Thomas F. M. Tickling. The family lived at 22 Stansfield Road, Stockwell.

Some time after 1891 Frank senior became a widower and in 1899 he married again, this time to Maud Mary Mason from Ipswich, who was almost half his age. Soon there was a child, the Frank listed on the Memorial.

But Frank senior died in 1904, leaving Maud a widow and Frank junior without a father. Less than two years later, in 1906, Maud married again, this time to a man considerably younger than herself. Arthur Petherick, shown as 31 on the 1911 census, was a railway clerk born in Dorking in 1880. The family, Maud, Arthur and Frank junior, now lived at 22 St. Michael’s Road with three boarders.

On 12 July 1915, less than 12 months after the war started, 15-year-old Frank joined up. He claimed to be a 19-year-old clerk.

Mason was puny, even by contemporary standards. The examining officer described Mason’s physical development as “slight”, and he stood only 5 feet 4 and a half inches tall with a 32½-inch chest. He was immature emotionally as well. While training at Northampton, in March 1916, he was in trouble for insubordination and for making improper remarks to an N.C.O., for which he was punished with 14 days’ detention.

But the war was soon over for Mason. He was posted to France on 21 April 1916 and just over four months later, on 24 August, he was killed in action, having served a total of 1 year and 44 days. He had not yet reached his 17th birthday.
On 28 August 1918, Frank’s effects – photos, disc, diary and postcards – were forwarded to his mother and stepfather. The army asked for acknowlegement of receipt, but Mrs Petherick replied questioning the whereabouts of her son’s other possessions. “I wish to point out,” she said, “that seeing these other items were recoverable from my son’s body, there were other things such as watch, cigarette cases, fountain pen etc which should have come to hand.” In common with most of the rest of the civilian population, she had no real understanding of the conditions soldiers were fighting in.

Maud herself did not live long after this. The records show that a she died in March 1919 in Epsom, Surrey and by March the following year Arthur Petherick, Frank’s stepfather, was answering the war pensions board’s queries. He stated that his stepson had never been married and had no siblings, half-siblings, grandparents, nephews or nieces or children. Frank’s half-sibling from his father’s first marriage is not mentioned.

Information from the 1911 census

22 St Michael’s Road, 11-year-old Frank Clifford John Mason’s home in 1911, is described as a 7-room tenement. He lived here with his mother Maud Mary Petherick, 37, from Ipswich, Suffolk, and stepfather Arthur Petherick, born in Dorking, Surrey and 3 boarders.

Richard James Marshall

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R. J. Marshall
Service no. L/40226
Serjeant, Royal Field Artillery, “B” Bty. 186th Bde.
Born in Clapham; enlisted at Camberwell
Killed in action at age 45 on 24 March 1918
CWGC: “Husband of Charlotte Jane Marshall, of 22 Love Lane, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Pozieres Memorial, France and on the war shrine at St Michael’s Church, Stockwell Park Road, London SW9 0DA

Information from the 1911 census

Richard James Marshall, 39 in 1911, was a commercial coachman. He was born in Clapham and lived with his wife Waterloo-born Charlotte Jane Marshall, 39 at 6 Eastcote Street, Stockwell, where they had 4 rooms. They had 2 surviving children (of 3): Dorothy Ena Marshall, 2, born in Clapham; Gladys Edith Marshall, 3, born in Stockwell.

Frederick Albert Marsh

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F.A. Marsh
Rifleman, Royal Irish Rifles, 12 Bn.
Service no. 43355
Died 15 August 1917, aged 18
Remembered at Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium

Chris Burge writes:

erick Albert Marsh was baptised on 26 February 1899 at St Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, where his parents, Frederick Edwin Marsh, a railway goods shunter, and Frances Ellen Banks, had married just over a year earlier. By the time of the 1901 census, Frederick’s younger sister Ellen Frances was five months old and the family of four had moved to 8 Gaskell Street, off Union Road, in Stockwell. Engine driver William Meads’ family of eight lived at the same address. 

The 1911 census shows Frederick and Ellen Marsh had three children: Frederick Albert, 12, Ellen Francis, 10 and John Edwin, six. The family lived in five rooms at 37 Priory Grove. A family of four occupied two other rooms at the same address. Frederick’s father described his occupation as railway servant. 

Frederick Snr  had been employed by the London & South Western Railway since 1888, working as a shunter at Nine Elms. He was promoted yard foreman by 1907 and by 1912 his weekly wages were 38 shillings. The railways would be vital to the war effort and employees of the L&SWR were issued with a special war service badge. 

If Frederick and Ellen thought their son Frederick was too young to fight in this war, they were mistaken. With or without their consent, in the first week of June 1915, aged just 16, he volunteered at 9 Tufton Street, the administrative headquarters of the 2nd London Regiment. New recruits joined the 4th/2nd Battalion, the training reserve. Frederick was now private 4616 Marsh. 

Some underage recruits were weeded out before transfer to the 1st/2nd, or reported underage on landing in France, but Frederick seems to have remained in the Regiment, in England, until November 1916, when he was part of a large transfer of men to the 12th Irish Rifles and renumbered rifleman 43355 Marsh. A draft of around a hundred men sailed from Southampton to Le Havre on 11 November 1916, joining the 12th Royal Irish Rifles at the front near Messines two weeks later. After months of trench-holding, Frederick was with the 12th Royal Irish Rifles during the attack at Messines in early June and at Ypres in July and August, when heavy rain and constant shelling turned the battlefield into a hideous morass. On 15 August the battalion was readying for a 4.45am zero-hour attack the following day. Frederick was killed when their position was shelled.

Frederick’s parents were still at 37 Priory Grove when his father died in 1934. His mother passed away in 1949, aged 77. 

Frederick Marlow

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F. Marlow
Service no. 2999
Private, London Regiment, 1st/13th Kensington Battalion
Born in Lambeth; enlisted in Kensington; lived in Brixton
Killed in action on 9 May 1915, aged about 20
CWGC: “Son of Mrs C. Marlow, of 15, Stansfield Road, Stockwell Road, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Ploegsteert Memorial, Belgium, at Caxton House, Tothill Street, London SW1 and at St Andrew’s Church, Landor Road, London SW9

Memorial showing Frederick Marlow's name (middle of middle column
The original memorial showing Frederick Marlow’s name (middle of third column

Information from BERR.gov.uk
(Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform)

Before Frederick Marlow enlisted in the army, he was an abstractor in the Board of Trade – Labour Department (Central Office). He appears on a Board of Trade staff listed dated April 1913 as one of 47 Abstractors (New Class) in the Labour Exchanges and Unemployment Insurance Branch. The date of his appointment was 29 May 1912 (from when his pension accrued) and his salary was £45. He is remembered on the new war memorial plaque, unveiled in BERR’s headquarters at 1 Victoria Street, London SW1, on 11 November 2002, a replacement for a Roll of Honour to staff of the Board of Trade who fell in the First World War. (The original has been missing for many years.) Marlow is also commemorated on the Memorial to the Staff of the Ministry of Labour, now hanging in Caxton House, Tothill Street, London SW1.

British Army WWI Service Records 1914-1920
Frederick Marlow’s brother George also served in the Army (London Regiment, 15th Battalion). He described himself as a clerk at the Admiralty. The records show that he stood over 6 feet tall. He was discharged in late September 1918 as no longer physically fit for War Service (he suffered a gunshot wound to the left wrist).

Information from the censuses

In 1911 Frederick Marlow was a 16-year-old “boy clerk” working for the civil service. He lived at 15 Stansfield Road, Stockwell, with his parents, John Marlow, 53, a joiner from Twickenham, and mother Catherine Marlow, 51, from Gypsy Hill. The occupied 6 rooms. The couple had had 6 children, with 5 surviving:
Catherine Marlow, 21, a dressmaker, born in Kennington
William Marlow, 20, an accountant clerk for the civil service, born in Battersea
Henry Marlow, 18, like his brother Frederick a boy clerk for the civil service, born in Battersea
Frederick Marlow, 16, born in Brixton
George Marlow, 14, a boy messenger for the civil service, born in Brixton
The family is found at the same address 10 years previously.
George Marlow, 4, born in Brixton