Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

T names

Cecil Archibald Jaques Treacher

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C. A. J. Treacher
Service no. 33191
Private 2nd Class, Royal Air Force
Died on 9 May 1918, aged 25
CWGC: “Son of Joseph Jaques and Sarah Ann Treacher, of 14 Stansfield Road, Brixton, London.”
Remembered at Lambeth Cemetery, Tooting, London SW17

Information from the censuses

Stockwell-born apprentice electrical wireman Cecil Archibald Jaques Treacher, 17, lived with his parents, Joseph Jaques Treacher, 48, an electrical wireman from Clerkenwell, north London and Sarah Ann Treacher, 50, from Bermondsey, and older brother Joseph Jaques, an instructor of handicrafts, born in Newington. Their accommodation at 14 Stansfield Road, Brixton had five rooms, and the family had been there since at least 1901.

James Trace

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J. Trace
Service no. 8867
Rifleman, London Regiment (Queen’s Westminster Rifles), 1st/16th Battalions
Enlisted in Westminster; lived in Brixton
Killed in action on 1 July 1916, aged about 21
Remembered at Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France

Information from the censuses

James Trace was an office boy for a firm of solicitors. He shared four rooms at 70b Hackford Road, Stockwell with his parents and siblings. His father, unemployed cab driver John Trace, 59, was from Torbryan, Devon; his mother, Lucy Trace, 51, was from Leicestershire. Three other children lived at home: Maude Trace, 20, a dressmaker; William Trace, 18, like James a solicitor’s office boy;  and Arthur Trace, 14, an errand boy. There were seven other siblings.

James was baptised at St John the Divine, Kennington, on 4 September 1895, when his parents lived at 116 Cowley Road. At that time his father described himself as an ostler (he looked after horses at an inn).

Harold Percy Tozer

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H. P. Tozer
Second Lieutenant, Royal Flying Corps/Durham Light Infantry, 9th Battalion
Died in a flying accident on 16 December 1916, aged 25
CWGC: “Son of Henry James and Agnes Emma Tozer, of 31, Lansdowne Gardens, Clapham, London.”
Remembered at East Harnham (All Saints) Churchyard, Wiltshire

Information from the censuses

In 1911 Harold Percy Tozer, 19, a clerk for a timber merchants, lived with his parents and sister at 31 Lansdowne Gardens, Stockwell. His father, Henry James Tozer, 43, was a solicitor’s clerk from Shadwell, east London; his mother, Agnes Emma Tozer, 43, was from Ipswich. Lilian Elizabeth Tozer, Harold’s sister, was 16 and working as a clerk for a philatelist (stamp collector/dealer). Both Harold and Lilian were born in South Lambeth. The Child family lodged with the Tozers: Arthur Ernest Child, 32, a cook from Portsmouth; his wife Ethel, 32, from Egham, Surrey, and their son Leslie Eric, 8. The Tozers had been at the same address since at least 1901.

British Army WW1 Service Records 1914-1920 (Officers)

Tozer enlisted in the 4th Battalion of the Cameron Highlanders on 11 September 1914 and served for 347 days with them. He was described as 5 feet 9 inches, with a 36½ inch chest which he could expand by 3½ inches. He embarked from Southampton on 19 February 1915 and was wounded in action the following month (gunshot wound to the elbow). He was invalided back to England, to the Fairfield Hospital, Broadstairs on 18 June.

Later that year he was granted a temporary commission – 2nd Lieutenant in the Durham Light Infantry (he was gazetted on 20 August 1915). Tozer’s service from then until the accident that killed him in 1918 is not known.

George Charles Toze

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G. C. Toze
Service no. 9451
Serjeant, King’s Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment), 1st Battalion
Born in Kennington
Died on 24 May 1915, aged 27
CWGC: “Son of John and Nellie Toze, of 11 Stockwell Green, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Ypres, Belgium

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 George Charles Toze, aged 21, was registered as a Lance Corporal in the King’s Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment), at the Clarence Barracks, at Spithead Forts, Portsmouth, Hampshire. He was born in Kennington. He was born in Kennington and baptised at St Peter’s, Vauxhall on 5 February 1890, the son of John Toze, a harness maker, and Ellen (known as Nellie) (née Fisher), from Bampton, Devon. The family lived at 236 Upper Kennington Lane. 

Meanwhile, at 11 Stockwell Green, his widowed mother (John Toze died in 1907), Nellie Toze, 43, a housekeeper from Bampton, Devon, shared her two-roomed home with two sons, Cyril Stanley Toze, 19,  an unemployed labourer, and Frank Albert Edgar Toze, 16, an errand boy, and a boarder: Arthur Miles, 43, a married brewer’s labourer from Watford. Hertfordshire. Nellie had had 10 children; only four survived. George’s father John Toze is on the 1901 census.

David Townsend

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D. Townsend
Private, East Surrey Regiment, 1st Bn.
Service no. 442
Died on 8 May 1917, aged 26
Remembered at Arras Memorial, Pas de Calais, France

Chris Burge writes:

David Townsend was born in August 1890, the third child of Harry and Elizabeth. In the 1891 census, the couple were living at 27 Broomgrove Road, off Stockwell Road, with their three children: George, Walter and baby David. Three other families lived at the same address, a total of 17 people in one property. The overcrowding was typical of all the properties in this alley, which the social reformer Charles Booth described in his 1899 notebook as the only squalid part of the area, ‘as like a den as I have seen anywhere.’

By the time of the 1901 census there had been three additions to the family: Florrie, Charles and Sarah Ada. The Townsends had moved next door to number 29, which was also home to the Williams family of nine. David’s mother Elizabeth died in 1904 and the family began to split up.

In the 1911 census, siblings Florence and Charles were in live-in service, while only David’s older brothers George and Walter were still in Lambeth. George was a boarder in the Wandsworth Road and Walter was still in Stockwell. Walter had married Beatrice Elsie Hurley in 1909 and their first child Walter John was born and baptised in 1910. Walter (known as Jack) made a living as a fishmonger’s assistant, Beatrice was a daily servant. Walter Townsend’s family lived in three rooms at 29 Broomgrove Road, a property also occupied by another family of nine people. We cannot find David on the 1911 census. 

David enlisted on 7 September 1914, shortly after the outbreak of war. Only burnt fragments of his service papers have survived, but his service number and other records suggest that pre-war he had been in the 4th Extra Reserve Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment. All reservists had been urged to report for duty and were processed ‘with all possible speed’. 

At the time of his enlistment David was just over 24 years old, 5ft 4in tall and weighed 118lbs with a 34in chest. He gave his brother ‘Jack’ at 31 Broomgrove Rd as his next of kin. Passed medically fit, David was first posted to the 3rd East Surrey stationed at Dover. 

He was sent to France on 3 December 1914 as part of a draft of 160 men who reached the 1st East Surrey eight days later. David endured the winter in the trenches of the Ypres Salient. Spring 1915 brought a renewal of fighting, notably at Hill 60 in April and his battalion was subjected to chlorine gas in early May. Quieter months followed and they were near Morlancourt, on the Somme, by September 1915. It was noted on 16 September that two men were wounded by trench mortar fire and one other by an accidental explosion of one of their own bombs. David Townsend was wounded in the back and invalided back to England by 26 September. He would not rejoin his battalion in France until 25 May the following year.

 Almost another year of fighting had passed when the 1st East Surrey took part in the Battle of Arras in April and May 1917. An attack on Oppy Wood and Village on 8 May was a costly failure, the total of killed, wounded or missing of all ranks numbering 509. David Townsend was posted missing that day. An enquiry was made via the British Red Cross on 20 July, but eventually on 13 February 1918 private 442, David Townsend was regraded for official purposes as having died on or since 8 May 1917.

It was David’s brother Walter who received his medals in 1920 and 1921. It was also Walter who took the Army form W5080 to be witnessed and countersigned at St Andrew’s Vicarage on 17 March 1921, in order to receive his late brother’s plaque and scroll. According to Walter, David Townsend’s only other living relatives were his brother Charles and married sister Florence. Walter and Beatrice Townsend lived at 31 Broomgrove Road until around 1930, when they moved to Stockwell Grove.

Postscript: David Townsend’s brother ‘Jack’, also served in the Great War. Walter John Townsend was marked as a ‘Naval or Military absent voter’ in the 1918 Electoral Roll for Lambeth at 31 Broomgrove Road. The separate list of Lambeth’s absent voters which would have identified his unit has not survived. Between May 1915 and the war’s end Private ‘6546 Walter John Townsend’ served in the same company of the 1st East Surrey as David Townsend. It’s possible that the brothers had both been in the East Surrey Regiment before the war. chris burge

Charles John Totham

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C. J. Totham
Service no. G/20867
Private, Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment), then London Regiment, posted to 1st/20th Battalion
Born in Stockwell; enlisted in Camberwell
Killed in action on 2 June 1918, aged 18
CWGC: “Son of Arthur John and Emma Alice Totham, of 2a Tasman Road, Landor Road, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Dernancourt Communal Cemetery Extension, France

Information from the censuses

We have not found Charles Totham on the 1911 census, but his parents and siblings are registered at 32 Eastcote Street, Stockwell, where they had two rooms. Arthur John Totham, 33, was a “contractor’s carman” from Coggeshall, Essex;Emma Alice Totham, 33, was from Castle Combe, Wiltshire. Charles’s siblings were Lilian Annie Totham, 8, and Frederick Thomas Totham, 3, both born in Lambeth.

British Army WWI Service Records 1914-1920

When joining the Kings Royal Rifle Corps at Battersea on 10 March 1915, Charles Totham gave his age to the attesting officer as 18 years and 272 days and his occupation as “carman”.

Totham was posted to Winchester on 12 March and then to Sheerness on 19 March, but he was found out on 19 June 1915 and discharged, “having made a mis-statement as to age in enlistment.” He had served 102 days. He returned to his family at 24 Lingham Street, Stockwell.

He was a slight lad, although at 5 feet 3 inches and weighing 121 pounds with a 35 inch chest he was not unusual. Many recruits were similarly slender and he was judged fit to serve. But he was only 15, possibly 16.

Later, he joined the Queen’s Own and died, killed in action at age 18.