Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

N names

Herbert Charles Nuthall

by

Herbert Charles Nuthall in uniform
Herbert Charles Nuthall. By kind permission of Brian Denny

H. C. Nuthall
Service no. 7498
Private, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 1st Battalion
Born in Camberwell; enlisted in London; lived in Brixton
Killed in action on 25 April 1915, age 31
CWGC: “Son of Henry and Jane Nuthall, of Lambeth, London; husband of Gertrude Beatrice Nuthall, of 12, Lingham Street, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Seaforth Cemetery, Cheddar Villa, Belgium

Herbert Charles Nuthall.
Herbert Charles Nuthall. Photo © Marietta Crichton Stuart. The headstone has the following inscription: “From strife to the peace and love of God” Marietta Crichton Stuart writes: “The cemetery is a fairly rare instance of a battlefield cemetery, originally called Cheddar Village, the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Bn Seaforth Highlanders later asked if the name could be changed to Seaforth as 100 of the 127 burials belonged to that Battalion. Herbert’s headstone was very clear and so must have been recently cut.”

Brian Denny, Herbert Charles Nuttall’s great-grandson, says he may have been a witness to the Christmas truce of 1914 and the first gas attack in April 1915, as his regiment was in the vicinity of both. Brian has written this beautiful song in memory of Nuthall.
http://youtu.be/4slLT8aC3sA

 

Alfred Edward Nunn

by

A. E. Nunn
Service no. 63634
Private, The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), “A” Coy. 7th Battalion
Died on 10 May 1918, aged 19
CWGC: “Son of Alfred and Emily C. Nunn, of 108 Manor Street, Clapham, London.”
Remembered at St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen, France

Chris Burge writes:

Alfred Edward Nunn was born in 1899 and baptised at St Andrew’s, Stockwell Green on 21 May 1899, the first child of Alfred and Emily Clara Nunn who lived at 7 Landor Road. Alfred’s father worked as a laundry manager and his mother as a laundress. 

The 1901 census shows that they shared their home with a daughter from Alfred’s first marriage (he was widowed). Alfred Snr was now working on the trams. A second son, George William Nunn, was born on 4 February 1903 and baptised at St Andrew’s on 22 February 1903. 

In the 1911 census, the Nunn family now lived in five rooms at 38 Landor Street, close to the Avondale music and dance hall, and the Landor Hotel Public House. Alfred Snr, aged 49, worked for the London County Council tramways as a motorman. Alfred Jnr and George were at school. The property was shared by an elderly widow and her daughter living in two other rooms and a family of three in another two rooms.

Alfred was 15 at the outbreak of war, but  conscription was introduced in 1916 and Alfred was called up early in 1917. The Surrey Recruitment Registers, a rare survival of its type, record Alfred’s details. After reporting at Wandsworth, Alfred was directed to be at Kingston by 30 March where he was assigned the service number 45901 and instructed to join the 23rd Training Reserve Battalion for basic training. Alfred was 18 years and 2 months, 5ft 7in tall, 108 lbs and had a chest size of 34in. His address was 108 Manor Street, Clapham. 

Training complete, Alfred was posted to the 7th Battalion of the Royal West Surrey Regiment. No records exist to say exactly when Alfred was sent to France. Spring 1918 was a time of crisis on the Western Front when the enemy threatened to break through, the 7th RWS were in the forward zone to the east of Amiens. March and April were a time of retreat and counter-attack. An assault on Hangard Wood on 26 April resulted in further casualties, a total of five officers and 141 other ranks. The first week of May was quiet as the 7th RWS worked hard to improve trenches, build shelters and erect barbed wire. The records note on the 4th May 1918, ‘2 O.R. wounded by shell whilst on way to join Battn, in the line’. 

Alfred Edwin Nunn was among the wounded and later died of his wounds on 10 May 1918 in one of Rouen’s many hospitals. 

Alfred Snr and Emily lived in Manor Street, Clapham until Alfred’s death in 1929 at the age of 67. Emily was living in Epping, Essex when she passed away in 1943, aged 75. Alfred’s brother George William died in 1979, aged 76.

Harry Norris

by

H. Norris
Gunner, Royal Field Artillery, 6th Ammunition Col.
Service No. 70166
Died as a prisoner of war on 24 September 1916, aged about 23
Remembered at Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery, Iraq 

Chris Burge writes:

Henry (known as Harry) Norris was born in 1893 in Stepney, east London, the first child of parents of Thomas Henry and Edith (née Hollole) who had married the previous year at St Mark’s Church, Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets. Harry’s father was a serving Metropolitan Police Constable, born in Chelsea, and his mother Edith was originally from Cornwall. Harry’s younger brother Arthur was born in Chelsea in 1898 and in the 1901 census the Norris family were living in Stepney. Another child, Rose, was born in 1900 in Stepney but died as an infant and a second brother, Charles, born in 1901 and baptised at St Anne’s on South Lambeth Road on 5 August 1904, died in 1906. Henry’s third brother Albert was born Lambeth in 1905. 

In 1904 the family’s address was 39 Coronation Buildings, opposite Vauxhall Park on South Lambeth Road (since demolished and replaced with offices). In the 1911 census, Thomas and Edith Norris were living with their three sons in four rooms at 26 Radnor Terrace, off South Lambeth Road, a property that also housed two other people in one other room. Henry’s father was now 44 and his mother 46; they had been married for 18 years. Thomas listed all their children on the census return including the deceased Rose and Charles. Harry was working as a waiter at the War Office. 

Just a year later, Harry had decided to join the Army. His enlistment is recorded in the pages of the Surrey Recruitment Register. He had attested on 26 April 1912 at Kingston, Surrey, joining the Royal Horse Artillery. His stated age was 19 years 5 months and he was 5ft 9¾in in height, weighed 10st 6lb and had blue eyes. His occupation was described as ‘light porter’ and reference was made to Charles Dawes, a cheesemonger who lived with his family at 237 Wandsworth Road.

Harry was in India, serving in the Anglo-Indian Army at Kirkee (now known as Khadki) when war broke out. When the 6th (Poona) Division was mobilised in September 1914, Harry was posted to the 6th Ammunition Column of the Royal Field Artillery. On 16 October the division sailed from Bombay for Mesopotamia (an area encompassing present-day Iraq and Kuwait, and parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey), ostensibly to protect the Anglo-Persian oil pipeline and the refinery at Abadan in the Persian Gulf. Oil was vital to the British Navy. The Anglo-Indian force landed in the Shattl-Al Arab waterway in November 1914 and Harry Norris was recorded as disembarking on the 20th.

Beyond the marshlands of the lower Tigris was flat desert with no roads and no water, except in rivers. In an ill-fated advance to capture Baghdad, the Anglo-Indian forces were repulsed at Ctesiphon (Tusbun, or Taysafun) on 24 November 1915. Pursued by Ottoman forces, 6th (Poona) Division retreated to Kut-al-Amara but were surrounded and cut off after digging in on 7 December 1915. On 29 April 1916, after 147 days, the siege of Kut-al-Amara ended in a humiliating surrender. An estimated 10,061 troops and 3,248 followers were taken captive. Already weakened by hunger and disease, thousands of men were forced marched across the Syrian desert to the mountainous region of Anatolia. The survivors were mostly used as forced labour on railway construction and tunnelling work. According to the March 1916 returns taken at Kut before the surrender, the 6th Ammunition Column numbered two officers, 37 British and 96 Indian other ranks, a total of 135 men (see E.W.C. Sandes (Major E.W.C. Sandes M.C., R.E.), In Kut and Captivity: With the Sixth Indian Division, London, Murray, 1919, p.475).

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission database lists the names of 37 British servicemen who served in the 6th Ammunition Column and died as prisoners of war. Most of the men had been scattered among the camps that sprang up around the railway works in half a dozen different places in Anatolia, in both the Amanus and Tuarus Mountains. The majority perished at Baghtche and its associated camps. Among the identified deaths at the Tarsus camp was Harry Norris who died on 24 September 1916. He was not the only man from the 6th Ammunition Column at the Tarsus camp. Gunner 91160/26927, Henry Christopher Lovegrove died three days later, on 27 September 1916. Although recorded as a Gunner in the RFA by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, his entry in the Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects, 1901-1929, shows Lovegrove was in the 6th Ammunition Column and had died as a prisoner at Tarsus. Gunner Lovegrove was born in Wandsworth and his family lived near Clapham North at the time of the war, and later in Balham. His brother Harold Courtney Lovegrove was also killed in the war. 

The date at which Harry’s parents were informed of their son’s death is unknown. An official report into the treatment of British Prisoners of War in Turkey presented to Parliament in 1918 and printed by HMSO led to newspaper articles that could only have brought great distress to the families of these men. More than 60 per cent of the British troops taken prisoner at Kut were known to have died as prisoners of war. 

The Norris family had moved to 5 Meadow Road near Vauxhall Park during the war and remained there until at least 1930.

Harry Albert Nixon

by

H. A. Nixon
Service no. L/12127
Private, Middlesex Regiment, 2nd Battalion
Died 1 July 1916, aged around 27
Remembered at Thiepval Memorial, France

Roll of Honour of the Great War 1914-1918

NIXON, H.A., Private, 2nd Middlesex Regiment.
He enlisted in 1906, and was drafted to the Western Front shortly after the commencement of hostilities. He fought in many important engagements, including those at Ypres, Loos, and Albert and did good work. He was unfortunately killed in action on the Somme on July 1st, 1916, and was entitled to the 1914 Star, and the General Service and Victory Medals.
“His memory is cherished with pride.”
31, Priory Grove, Lansdowne Road, S.W.8.

Army Service records

Nixon’s Army Service records are extensive, as you would expect with such a long service history (8 years and 128 days) and they throw up some interesting aspects of life in the military in the early 20th century:

  • Nixon’s travels across the globe in the service of Empire – to Aden, India, Malta, and when the Great War, with the British Expeditionary Force to France, where he died.
  • his health – inoculations against typhoid, treatment for repeated bouts of syphilis
  • his regular problems with discipline

Sadly, like so many other Service Records, Harry Nixon’s are in a very bad state and difficult to read. However, I have been able to establish that Nixon joined the Middlesex Regiment at Winchester, the city of his birth, on 24 February 1908, aged 19 and 5 months. He abandoned his previous life as a “van guard” (train guard) and became a career soldier.

Nixon’s general health was good. He stood taller than average at 5 feet 6½ inches (169cm) and weighed 134lbs (just over 9½ stone or 61kg). His chest measured  37½ inches (95cm), which he could expand by 3½ inches (9cm). With a fresh complexion, grey eyes and fair hair, the British Army was happy to sign him up. He was pronounced fit to serve.

However, Nixon proved to be something of a difficult character. He remained a private throughout his long army career and possibly his poor conduct record accounted for his lack of advancement.

The following list is what I have been able to interpret from the record. No doubt, if I understood the abbreviations I would be able to pull out more details.

  • In January 1910 he was pulled up for inattention on the range.
  • At Dum Dum (West Bengal) he was absent from parade.
  • Using improper language towards an NCO.
  • At Malta he was punished for “improper conduct – walking arm in arm with other soldiers” and “using obscene language”.
  • On 11 September 1913 in Aden he was punished for “using improper language towards a NCO” and promptly shipped out of the 1st Battalion to the 2nd.
  • On a date I cannot decipher, in Valletta, he was disciplined for “interfering with the military police”

Venereal disease was a common hazard for career soldiers. Nixon became infected with syphilis, according to his Syphilis Case Sheet on around 31 August 1911 at Darjeeling. He sought treatment less than two weeks later on 9 September 1911 and by 1912 the Army doctors at Dum Dum were treating him regularly. His appointments were weekly, although he is often marked as “absent”, presumably because he was on operations.

Nixon was treated with mercury and iodides – neither of them very effective. Better, more modern medications were available (the German Nobel prize-winning physician Paul Erlich developed Salvarsan 606 and Neosalvarsan 614 in 1906).

When the Great War started, Nixon was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force. On 1 July 1916 he was listed as “missing’, but his next of kin were not notified until 15 August. He was eventually classed as killed in action. His effects were sent to his younger sister, Mrs Alice Maude Weaver, who lived at 42 Margate Road, Lyham Road, SW2, rather to his mother Alice/Rebecca. “I recive [sic] the photos quite safe,” she wrote in reply, “thanking you very much for sending them.”

When sent Harry’s medals in 1919, she wrote in her careful handwriting: “Recive [sic] with thanks. Thank you very much for sending me the 1914 Star, I am very proud of my Poor Brother.”

On Army form W. 5080, in which relatives give the names and addresses of living family of the deceased, Father is listed as “None” (presumably his father, Frederick C. Nixon, a general labourer, was by then deceased) and mother as “Alice Nixon” (there is some confusion over her name: she is listed on the 1901 and 1891 censuses as “Rebecca” and on the 1911 as “Alice”), 59. Two siblings were declared: Daisy Dorithey [sic] and Fredrick. All three were living at 31 Priory Grove, South Lambeth, SW8. In reality, there were or had been at least 11 siblings (of 18 born alive in 29 years of marriage), although some of them may not have survived. The form was signed by G. Robinson Lees, the vicar of St Saviour’s, Brixton Hill.

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 Harry’s family lived at 31 Priory Grove, SW8, where they occupied 4 rooms. The household consisted of his parents Frederick C. Nixon, 55, a general labourer born in Stepney, and Alice Nixon, 49, born in Dorset. The couple had 12 surviving children (of 18). These 6 are on the census:
Alice Maud Nixon, 18, born in South Lambeth (as were all the children listed on this census) and whose occupation is given as “oatmeal stores manufactures” for a brewery
Kate Nixon, 15
Rose Helen Nixon, 11
Tom Owen Nixon, 9
Daisy Dorothy Nixon, 8
Fredrick Joseph Nixon, 6 

Information from 1901 census

In 1901 Harry was living at 22 Conroy Street with his mother, Rebecca A. Nixon, 39, who worked as a bottler in the vinegar works*, and who was born in Pullin, Dorsetshire. The children registered on the census were
Fannnie Nixon, 13, born in Winchester, Hampshire, working as a greengrocer’s assistant
Charles Nixon, 14
Harry Nixon, 12
Alice Nixon, 8
Kate Nixon, 5
Rose Nixon, 1
There is no mention of Harry’s father Frederick. There were two lodgers: widower Harry Wimble, 45, a casement maker from Ileywhite, Hampshire, and Laura Wimble, 13, born in Paddington (presumably his daughter).
* Possibly the Beaufoy Vinegar Works (later taken over by Sarsons), now Regents Bridge Gardens