Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

Stockwell War Memorial

Arthur Frederick Victor Routledge

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St Leger British Cemetery, courtesy of Peter Bennett
St Leger British Cemetery, courtesy of Peter Bennett

A. F. V. Routledge
Service no. G/14788
Private, Leicestershire Regiment, 9th Battalion
Killed in action on 14 April 1917, aged 28
Born in Highgate; enlisted in Leicester
CWGC: “Son of Arthur and Selina Routledge, of 13 Tregothnan Road, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at St Leger British Cemetery, France
(Photo: courtesy of Peter Bennett)

Information from the censuses
In 1901 Arthur Frederick Victor Routledge lived at 116 Junction Road, Islington. His parents, Arthur Chapelhorn Routledge, 40, an upholsterer, and his wife, Selina, 34, had five children:
Lilian D. Routledge, 14
Arthur F. Routledge, 12
Edward H. Routledge, 10
Emily Routledge, 7
Leonard G. Routledge, 2
All the family are listed as having been born in Islington.

I have not been able to find Arthur Routledge on the 1911 census. However, his father, Arthur C. Routledge, now describing himself cabinet maker, is located at 10 Belvedere Road Bournemouth. He was out of work, and his wife, Selina Routledge, 44, made a living letting apartments. The couple lived with their youngest son, 12-year-old Leonard G. Routledge. The other members of the family were dispersed: one daughter to Boscombe, another to Wimbourne.

February 2010

Norman  (Arthur) Routledge has emailed with this additional information about Victor Routledge, who was his uncle:

“Vic’s fiancée, Maud Seaman, kept in touch with us. She did not marry for a great many years and worked as a cook in Huntingdon. In old age she married three times – no doubt the cookery had something to do with that! When I was at King’s College in Cambridge (c.1950) I used to bicycle over to see her at the Literary Institute in Huntingdon, which she and her husband cared for.

You might be interested that Vic’s younger brother, my father, Leonard George Routledge, also joined up (RAF) and was awarded the Croix de Guerre, which we have together with the citation signed by Pétain. Maud had the very handsome bronze commemorative plaque for Vic which the authorities sent to all the families of dead soldiers.”

Thomas Edward Ross

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T. E. Ross
Service no. R/6733
Able Seaman, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Hood Battalion R.N. Div.
Died on 29 September 1918, aged 24 (missing, later reported killed in action or died of wounds)
Next-of-kin & home address: Wife, Emily [née Brown], 56 South Island Place, Clapham Road, Clapham, London SW9.
Service history: Army Reserve 24 June 1916
Entered 29 April 1918
Draft for BEF (British Expeditionary Force) 3 September 1918; joined Hood Battalion 8 September 1918-29 September 1918; Discharged Dead
Remembered at Anneux British Cemetery, France

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.