Stockwell War Memorial

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Alfred Roskilly

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A. Roskilly
Second Lieutenant, The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), 7th Battalion
Killed in action age 26 on 3 May 1917
CWGC: “Son of Mr and Mrs A. J. Roskilly, of 96, Stockwell Park Road, London; husband of Ruth Roskilly, of 16, Briarwood Road, Clapham Park, London.”
Remembered at Arras Memorial, France and at St John’s Church, Clapham Road, London SW9

After Alfred Roskilly died, there was some confusion in the War Office as to whether he was killed in action on 3 May 1917 or died just over a month later as a prisoner of war. The authorities had received information via the International Red Cross, that an “A. Rostkeilly” of the Royal West Surrey Regiment was held by the Germans. However, no real conclusion emerges from the files, except that, in the absence of real evidence, the Army accepted the earlier date as the date of death. The date of death was important as it affected the payments owing to the deceased, inherited by his widow.

Roskilly, an assistant clerk in the Post Office Savings Bank at Blythe Road, West Kensington, had considerable military experience, having joined the 2nd (Cadet) Battalion of the London Regiment (Civil Service), moving to the 15th Battalion, and subsequently transferring to the London Field Ambulance on 9 July 1915. He served 1 year and 225 days before being granted a temporary commission in March 1917. He survived less than 10 weeks.

Arthur Roskilly, the eldest of four children of compositor Alfred Joseph Roskilly, from Dalston, east London, and Clara (née Guest), from Southampton. His military character was described as “very good.” He stood 5 feet 7½ inches, weighed 9¾ stone and had a 39-inch chest. In 1911 the Roskilly family lived at 32 Clitheroe Road, Stockwell, where they occupied six rooms. Arthur married Ruth Lambert at St Anne’s and All Saints Church, South Lambeth Road on 2 April 1914.

Information from the censuses

In 1911, Alfred Roskilly, the eldest child of compositor Alfred Joseph Roskilly, 41, from Dalston, east London, and Clara Roskilly, 42, from Southampton, was 20 and working as a civil service clerk. The couple had three other surviving children (one had died): Frank Roskilly, 19, a “boy clerk’, like Alfred born in Southwark; Doris Roskilly, 8, born in Stockwell; Ruby Roskilly, 6, born in Stockwell. A boarder, Henry Goerge Downer, 19 and from Cirencester, Gloucestershire, another boy clerk, lived with the family at 32 Clitheroe Road, Stockwell, where they had six rooms. A decade earlier, the Roskilly family lived at 16 Grantham Road.

Sydney (or Sidney) Herbert Rogers

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S. Rogers
Private, Middlesex Regiment, 1st Bn.
Service no. G/43526.
Died on 23 October 1918, aged 32.
Remembered at Remembered at Vis-En-Artois Memorial, Pas de Calais, France

Chris Burge writes:

Sydney (aka Sidney) Herbert Rogers was born in Lambeth in 1886 and baptised at All Saints, South Lambeth on 24 October 1886. His parents, William and Mary Rogers, were living at 5 Gladstone Street, off Wyvil Road, in Stockwell, at the time and his father worked as a porter for the London & South Western Railway, which employed many of Gladstone Street’s inhabitants. 

The 1891 census shows Sydney was the second youngest of six siblings and the Rogers family lived in four rooms at the Gladstone Street property, which was shared with a family of three in two other rooms. The Rogers family were still living at the same address ten years later when Sydney’s father was 56 and his mother 51. Sydney worked as a printer’s messenger, his older sister Alice as a domestic servant and his younger brother Tom was still at school. Sydney’s widowed grandmother Mary lived with them.

Sydney’s mother died in 1911, leaving just his sister Alice and brother Tom living with their father at Gladstone Street. William Rogers was still working as a railway porter for the L&SWR and Alice, 26, was looking after the family. Tom, 21, was now an engine stoker for the L&SWR. The property also housed another railway porter’s family with three young children, living in two rooms. 

In 1911, Sydney was one of Alice Swan’s three boarders at 72 Fulwell Road in Teddington, Middlesex. All three boarders worked as railway engine stokers for the L&SWR which had a locomotive shed at Fulwell Junction. 

Sydney Herbert Rogers was conscripted in around March 1916. (Estimated from the £12 War Gratuity paid to William Rogers as recorded in the Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects.) He first served in the 1/7th Battalion, a Territorial Force unit, as private 6064 Rogers, but there are no surviving records to say exactly when and where he was transferred to the 1st Middlesex, and was renumbered. (The pages of Middlesex Regiment Medal Roll show a number of men transferred from the 1/7th to the 1st Middlesex in the service number range G/43440-G/43720, with the first casualty in this range on 16 January 1917.) Sydney Herbert Rogers’ service in the 1st Middlesex probably dates from the beginning of 1917. Their main actions in 1917 and 1918 are listed here.

Sydney was killed in action during the final advance in Picardy when the end of the war was in sight. His 74-year-old father William was the sole beneficiary of Sydney’s will which amounted to £133 2s 1d when probate was granted on 8 January 1919. 

Alice married George Griffin in 1917 and by 1925 the couple had moved to 5 Gladstone Street to be with William, who died in 1926, aged 81. They were still in residence when the street was renamed Trenchold Street in the 1930s (it was redeveloped in 1948; its one remaining landmark is the Builders Arms pub).

Joseph Rogers

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J. Rogers
Private, Hampshire Regiment, 2nd Bn.
Service no. 27971
Died on 6 May 1918, aged about 22.
Remembered at Remembered at Cinq Rues British Cemetery, Hazebrouck, Nord, France

Chris Burge writes:

Joseph Rogers, born in Lambeth in 1896, was the youngest of six siblings. He was baptised together with his two-year-old brother Edward on 16 December at St Stephen’s Church, South Lambeth. His parents, Frederick James and Annie Maria (née Seeds) Rogers, gave the family address as 18 Beech Street, off Dorset Road, Stockwell, and his father worked as a ‘carman’. By the time of the 1911 census there had been four additions to the Rogers family and Joseph was now one of ten children whose ages ranged from eight to 21. Joseph’s father now worked as a ‘fitters labourer’. Three of Joseph’s brothers worked in various jobs for the London & South Western Railway and two of his sisters worked as packers, one in a chemical factory and another in a preserves factory. Joseph, 14, worked as a ‘printers boy’. The 12 members of the Rogers family lived in four rooms at 18 Beech Street, a property which also housed another family of six in four other rooms. 

By the outbreak of war in 1914, both of Joseph’s older sisters had married. His brother Edward had married in 1913 and had two children when he was conscripted in May 1916. Because he had longstanding health problems, Edward was placed on the Army Reserve and became a worker at Vickers munitions factory in Erith, Kent. 

Joseph was conscripted towards the end of 1916 and served only in the 2nd Hampshire once in France in 1917 and in 1918. The 2nd Hampshire were present at the Arras offensive in 1917 and at 3rd Ypres, notably in August and October 1917. In March 1918 they were still in the Ypres Salient but were moved south in early April when the enemy offensive between Ypres and Bethune threatened the import centres of Armentières and Hazebrouck. The situation was only stabilised by the end of April when they were digging the reserve line around La Motte, some three miles to the south of Hazebrouk. A tour of duty in forward positions between the 6 and 13 May was described as ‘quiet with few casualties’. Enemy planes had overflown the nearby Bois d’Aval strafing and dropping bombs each afternoon with little effect, something that might have made Joseph think of his brother Charles who was in the RAF back in England in 1918. With no other detail, the casualties for the 6 May 1918 were listed as ‘3 killed, 3 wounded, 3 sick to hospital, 3 reinforcements, 1 died of wounds’. Joseph Rogers was one of those killed in action on that day.

The Rogers family were still living in Beech Street after the end of the war. Joseph’s father Frederick James Rogers died in 1929, aged 64. Annie Maria Rogers was 81 when she passed away in 1948.

Alfred Rodgers or Rogers

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A. Rodgers (on the memorial as Rodgers, in the Commonwealth War Memorial database as Rogers)
Private, East Surrey Regiment, 1st Bn.
Service no. 11158
Killed in action on 25 September 1916, aged 21
Remembered at Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France

Chris Burge writes:

Alfred Rodgers was born in November 1894 in Pimlico on the north side of the Thames, the second child of Frederick William and Mary Ellen (née Mulcahy). His older brother Frederick was born in Pimlico in 1890, in the same year that their parents had married at St John’s, Worlds End, Chelsea. By the time of the 1901 census, the four members of the Rodgers family lived at 55 Dalyell Road in Stockwell, in just one room in a property that housed two other families. The family faced considerable hardship as Alfred’s father Frederick was unable to work after the amputation of his right leg. His mother Mary was a packer in a laundry. 

In the 1911 census, brothers Frederick and Alfred Rodgers were still living with their parents, who were now both 43. The family had moved a few doors away to 40 Dalyell Road, where they lived in just two rooms of the three-storey building which also housed a family of six in four rooms, a widow in one room and a young mother and child in another room. Alfred’s father had found work as a beer bottler while his mother was working as an ironer in a laundry. Alfred’s brother Frederick, now 20, was an attendant in a cinema and Alfred, whose age was given as 18, was a shop boy for a bookmaker (betting shop). 

Frederick volunteered at the very beginning of the war, on 9 September 1914 at Marylebone, joining the Buffs (East Kent) Regiment. Within a week, as private 2176 Rodgers he was posted to the 8th Battalion at Shoreham, Sussex. His disciplinary record started to deteriorate in the spring of 1915; on six occasions between April and June he is absent without leave. The last of these was on 18 June 1915, when he was absent for over four days. On his return, he was given 14 days confinement to barracks and hauled before the Commanding Officer for a second time. On the 26 June he was posted as a deserter. He was reputedly the father of a child born in the Hastings area around March 1916 but his parents had no knowledge of his whereabouts, and may never have heard from him again. 

In mid 1915, the mayors of London boroughs were encouraged to boost the dwindling numbers of volunteers by launching new recruitment campaigns to raise local battalions. In Lambeth the designated battalion was the 11th battalion of the Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey), established on 9 June 1915. In neighbouring Wandsworth, it was the ‘Wandsworth Regulars’, the 13th (Service) battalion of the East Surrey Regiment. Alfred Rodgers chose to volunteer at Wandsworth on the 9 July 1915, giving his address as 74 Paradise Road, Clapham and stating his age as 20 years and nine months. At his medical he was recorded as 5ft 1in tall, weighing 7st 7lbs, and with a 32in chest. His recorded occupation was ‘vanguard’. His mother Mary was his next of kin. 

The battalion made a series of farewell route marches around Wandsworth in late August 1915 before moving to Witley in Surrey and to Blackdown near Aldershot by February 1916. Alfred was not with the battalion when it finally departed for France in June 1916 as he had been transferred to the 14th Reserve Battalion in May and then the 10th Reserve Battalion. on 24 June. He was finally sent to France in a draft of men supposedly destined for the 9th Battalion, who sailed from Folkestone on 27 July. 

Once in France, Alfred and others were diverted to the 1st East Surrey, joining them at the Somme front on 7 August. August was spent out of the line in a period of training and practising bombing and firing on the ranges. They returned to the trenches in very wet weather on 31 August. September was spent in and out of various support trenches in continuing bad weather until a Brigade attack on enemy position took place on 25 September. Among the many casualties was Alfred Rodgers, killed in action on that day.

When Alfred’s mother Mary Ellen took Army Form W5080 to be witnessed and countersigned at St Barnabas vicarage on 18 August 1919, she had written just her own and her husband’s names on the form as the sole relatives of her dead son. Mary Ellen received her son’s medal in August 1921. 

Alfred parents Frederick William and Mary Ellen Rodgers were still living at 74 Paradise Road in 1938. They passed away within a few months of each other in 1944, both aged 77.

Robert Harry Roberts

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R. H. Roberts
Service no. G/22229
Private, Royal Sussex Regiment, 1st/4th Battalion
Died on 7 August 1918, aged about 19
Remembered at St Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen, France, and St Andrew’s Church, Landor Road, London SW9

Information from the 1911 census

Robert Harry Roberts was a 12-year-old schoolboy in 1911. He lived at 21 Cottage Grove, Stockwell with his parents and two sisters. Roberts’s father, Lambeth-born Robert Alfred Roberts, 43, was a clothworker; his mother Emma Eliza (née Farr), 38, was from Islington, north London. Norah Aileen Roberts, 16, was a “tailoress, born in Edgware, north London; Emma Winifred Sarah Roberts, 3, was born in Brixton. Three boarders shared the six-room accommodation: Beresford Worthington, 60, a single journalist from Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland; Frederick Collinds, 28, a single sugar confectioner from Andover, Hampshire; and Samuel Lloyd, 24, a single baker from Brixton.