Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

1917

David Townsend

by

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

Albert George Tilling

by

A. G. Tilling
Service no. 83361
Gunner, Royal Field Artillery, “A” Bty. 93rd Bde.
Born in Wandsworth; enlisted in Camberwell
Killed in action on 8 June 1917, aged about 23
Remembered at Rue-Petillon Military Cemetery, Fleurbaix, France

National Roll of the Great War 1914-1918
TILLING, A. G., Gunner, R.F.A.
Volunteering in 1915, he was sent to France in the same year and was in action on the Somme and at Ypres. He fell fighting at Armentieres in 1917, and was entitled to the General Service and Victory Medals.
“And doubtless he went in splendid company.”
82, Wilcox Road, Wandsworth Road, S.W.8.

British Army WWI Service Records 1914-1920

The file for Albert Tilling in WWI Service Records archive relates to an Albert Tilling born in Lambeth in 1895. I have made a connection between the Albert Tillings on the 1911 census, in the National Roll and in the Service Records. However, there are some anomalies, one of them being occupation. The 1911 census gives Albert Tilling as a horse keeper working for the London and South West Railway. The Army records state that Albert Tilling was an electrician’s mate. For me, this does not rule out a connection, but it brings in an element of doubt.

Electrician’s mate Albert Tilling, born in Lambeth and two days’ shy of his 20th birthday, signed up with the Dragoons of the Line (2nd Reserve Cavalry Regiment) at Clifton Street on 20 August 1914. He was tall and thin (5 feet 10 inches and only 9 stone, with a chest of 34½ inches) and his complexion was noted as “sallow”. However, he was accepted as fit for service.

However, after 65 days the Army noticed its mistake – this man’s physical development and pulse rate were “poor”. What’s more, he was suffering from tuberculosis. Tilling was duly discharged on 23 October.

In 1915, possibly cured of his TB or in remission, he must have enlisted again, this time with the Royal Field Artillery, and in 1917 he was killed in action.

Information from the 1901 census
In 1911 Albert Tilling, 17, was a horse keeper, working for the London and South West Railway. His family lived in six rooms at 82 Wilcox Road, South Lambeth. Albert’s father John Tilling, 50, from Wiltshire, was also a horse keeper for L&SW Railway. His mother, Annie Tilling, 49, was from Hampshire. There were four siblings: Florrie Tilling, 19, a waitress in a restaurant; Sidney Tilling, 14; Harry Tilling, 11; William John Tilling, 8. All the children were born in Lambeth. A cousin, Harry Burrell, 20, another horsekeeper for the railway, shared their home, as did a boarder, William Shickey, 30, a single fireman from Somerset. The family had lived at 82 Wilcox Road since at least 1901. In 1901 Albert was six and living with his family at 82 Wilcox Road. There were five boarders, three of them railway horse keepers, born in Iddesdone, Berkshire

William Charles Tidnam

by

W. C. Tidnam
Service no. 227258
Able Seaman, Royal Navy, H.M.S. “Vanguard”
Died on 9 July 1917, aged 30
CWGC: “Son of William Tidnam, of Harleston, Norfolk; husband of Kathleen Mary Tidnam, of 2 Burnley Road, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Chatham Naval Memorial and on the war shrine at St Michael’s Church, Stockwell Park Road, London SW9 0DA

Information from the parish register

On 11 December 1916, William Charles Tidnam married Kathleen Mary Roberts at St. Michael’s Church, Stockwell. Kathleen’s address was 15 St. Martin’s Road, Stockwell. She gave her father’s occupation as carpenter and joiner. William gave his father’s as coachman.

Information from the censuses and other sources

In 1911 William Charles Tidnam, 23, was staying at the Union Jack club in Waterloo Road, Lambeth. He was listed as a  “Navy able seaman” from Reddenham, Norfolk. In 1901 he was a 14-year-old errand boy, living at “Mendham Lane, Redenhall With Harleston” in Norfolk. His 45-year-old father, also called William, was a “groom (domestic)”; his mother, Emma Tidnam, 44, was born at Reddenham. Besides William the couple’s children included
Ellen Tidnam, 11
Alice Tidnam, 10
Percy Tidnam, 7
Fred Tidnam and Herbert Tidnam, 5
Winifred Tidnam, 11 months
Ernest Singleton, a 22-year-old Irish-born “motor car driver”, boarded with the family.

Oscar Albert Taylor

by

Family group photographed in the garden of 41 Landor Road, Stockwell, where the family lived. Back row, left to right: Mabel, Oscar, Henry and Eric. Seated in front: Alf and Rose. Approximate date 1911. (Photo courtesy of Sarah Mackay)
Family group photographed in the garden of 41 Landor Road, Stockwell, where the family lived. Back row, left to right: Mabel, Oscar, Henry and Eric. Seated in front: Alf and Rose. Approximate date 1911. Photo courtesy of Sarah Mackay

O. A. Taylor
Service no 397794
Rifleman, London Regiment (Queen Victoria’s Rifles), 2nd/9th Battalion
Killed in action on 27 September 1917, aged about 28
Remembered at Tyne Cot Memorial, Belgium

Information from the censuses

In 1911, Lambeth-born 22-year-old clerk Oscar Albert Taylor lived at 41 Landor Road, Stockwell with his parents, Albert WIliam Taylor, 52, a joiner from Hockering, Norfolk, and Rose Taylor, 47, from Hackney. There were four surviving children (of six): Mabel Maud Taylor, 26, a milliner; Eric William Taylor, 24, a joiner; Oscar; Henry Oswald Taylor, 18, a clerical assistant. Albert’s father William Taylor, 79, a widowed retired gamekeeper from Hockering, lived with the family as did Maud Mary Gladman, 29, a single shop assistant from Brighton. The household had six rooms, and the family had lived at that address since at least 1901.

Sarah Mackay has kindly shared her information about her great-uncle.

Oscar Albert Taylor, born 21 September 1889, was the third child of Rose and Albert (known as Alfred) Taylor. At the time of his birth, his sister Mabel Maud was four years old and his brother Eric William was two. A fourth child, Henry Oswald, was born in 1893. Oscar’s father signed his name ‘Alfred W. Taylor, Atheist and Socialist.’ He was a cabinetmaker who made musical instruments and grew dahlias in his spare time. Rose had been in domestic service before her marriage to Alf.
 
In the 1911 census, Oscar’s occupation is given as Clerk and Turf Accountant Worker. Henry was working as a clerk for London County Council, Eric was a joiner and building worker and Mabel was a milliner. Also living with the family was Alf’s father, William Taylor, a retired head gamekeeper. There was also a boarder, Maud Mary Gladman who was a shop assistant and drapery worker. Oscar joined up in 1914 and married his sweetheart, Ethel Andrews, while on leave in 1915, returning to duty with no time for a honeymoon. In 1911, Ethel was living at 129 Blackshaw Road, Tooting with her older sister, Emily (Em) and Emily’s husband, Ernest Hargreaves. Emily and Ernest had a daughter, Doris. Ethel worked as a shop assistant in a laundry. In the earlier 1901 census, although Ethel was not then living with her sister, the Hargreaves were living at 41 Landor Road with the Taylors which is presumably how the families got to know each other.
 
Postscript: Oscar’s sister Mabel died in the 1919 Spanish flu epidemic. Alf encouraged Oscar’s widow Ethel and Mabel’s widower Harry to marry, which they did in 1920. I remember as a child asking Granny (Ethel) what Oscar was like – her face lit up with a smile and she said ‘Oh, he was lovely’. By Sarah Mackay, daughter of Hilda Mackay nee Archer, born 1915 (Oscar’s niece and the daughter of Harry and Mabel), with grateful thanks to Rosalind Gold for her invaluable assistance

John Tanner

by

J. Tanner
Company Serjeant Major, East Surrey Regiment, 9th Bn.
Service no. 187 (previously 4056)
Died of wounds on 6 August 1917, aged about 41
Remembered Brandhoek New Military Cemetery, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium and at the London & South Western Railway Roll of Honour, Waterloo Station, London

Chris Burge writes:

John Tanner was born in 1876 and baptised at St Barnabas, South Lambeth on 16 June, the fourth child of house painter William Tanner and Jane Lightfoot who lived at 7 Wellington Terrace, Horace Street (now renamed Luscombe Street). 

John spent all his early life in Lambeth. By 1891, then aged 15, he worked as a cabinet-maker and lived with his parents and six of his 10 siblings at 13 Horace Street. Plans from 1889 to rename and renumber part of Horace Street show the Tanner family’s home to be close to the premises of George Boxall & Co. Ltd and the working man’s refuge, the Surrey Arms public house on the corner of Wilcox Road.

On 13 February 1893, John joined the East Surrey Regiment at Kingston, Surrey. His Army career spanned over 12 years and included two years in Malta and nine years in India. He had extended his service twice while in India and by 1901 was promoted to full Corporal. John reluctantly left the Army at the termination of his period of service on 17 March 1905. 

In 1900, while he was in India, John learnt of the death of his father William. His mother Jane was obliged to earn money as a laundress and his married sister Mary Peagam and her husband Frederick, a railway carman, shared her Horace Street home. Following Frederick’s example John began work as a railway goods porter for the London & South Western Railway at the nearby Nine Elms complex. In 1906, John married 23-year-old Ellen Dunn, but he was widowed within a year. On 5 April 1908 he married Ellen May Taylor at St Stephen’s, South Lambeth. 

In the 1911 census, John and Ellen were living in three rooms at 57 Dashwood Road in Battersea with their two infant children, Ellen, aged two, and William, one. The property was also home to a family of four living in four rooms. Ellen was pregnant with their third child and John was still working as a railway goods porter. Lucy was born in May 1911, followed by Alice in August 1912 and Winifred in April 1914. By the outbreak of the war, John and family were living in a ‘two up, two down’ property at 11 Ely Place, off the Dorset Road in Stockwell. 

At the outbreak of war John Tanner put aside family responsibilities and on 20 August 1914, aged 40, volunteered to rejoin his old regiment. As an former NCO he was welcomed back. His medical was a formality – he was recorded as 5ft 4in tall and weighing 135lbs with a chest size of 37in. He was initially posted to the 3rd reserve battalion based at the Grand Shaft Barracks  in Dover, with service number 187. His soldierly qualities were soon recognised and by November 1914 he was promoted to Company Serjeant Major, WO Class 2. 

John was part of the effort to train the recruits of Kitchener’s New Army, an all-volunteer (at least initially) portion of the British Army. Only burnt fragments of his service papers have survived but his movements over the following 16 months between Dover, Purfleet, Shoreham and back to Dover indicate he was working with the 10th reserve battalion. When he was sent to France in April 1916, he joined the 9th East Surrey, who were manning trenches near Wulverghem, south of Ypres. The enemy was very active in April and May and casualties were sustained on an almost daily basis until the 9th East Surrey moved south in July and were on the Somme by early August. 

An attack on an enemy strongpoint near Guillemont on 16 August lacked effective artillery support and was repulsed with heavy losses. The battalion was to move to new positions on 21 August and while going forward John Tanner was with two ‘D’ company officers when the group was hit by shell-fire. The acting Company Commanding Officer and Second Lieutenant G.C. Rivers was killed, Second Lieutenant G. Lillywhite was wounded and John Tanner was wounded in the neck and hand. He was invalided back to England by 17 August 1916 and admitted to Eastbourne Central Military Hospital. It was his first chance to meet his three-month-old daughter Elsie Maud, who born in May. Nine months later, John was fit to return to active duty.

He rejoined the 9th East Surrey in early May 1917. The battalion had been moved north in anticipation of the coming offensive at Ypres. The ‘big push’ on 31 July would turn into ‘Passchendaele’. Constant rain and shelling had turned the battlefield into a quagmire. According to future playwright, Second Lieutenant R.C. Sherriff of  ‘C’ company ,’The shelling had destroyed everything. As far as you could see it was like an ocean of thick brown porridge’. Sherriff was wounded on 2 August as the battalion struggled to take up forward positions which were little better than waterlogged holes in the ground full of slime with rain-soaked sandbags that disintegrated when touched. Between 3 and 7 August constant shelling and an infantry attack on their line caused many casualties. The battalion Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel H.V.M. de la Fontane was hit by a sniper on 5 August after coming forward to encourage his men. The keeper of the battalion’s war diary set out the casualty list in painstaking detail. It stretched over four pages with the names of all ranks killed, wounded or missing arranged in neat columns as if still on parade. On the bottom of the first page, alongside the date of 5 August 1917, is written ‘6/8/17 187 C.S.M. Tanner (died of wounds)’. John Tanner had been evacuated to no. 32 Casualty Clearing Station at Brandhoek, which had been brought as near to the front line as possible. Despite being staffed with some of the best medical teams available, John Tanner succumbed to his wounds and was buried shortly after at Brandhoek.

John left a widow and six children, the eldest Ellen, then aged nine, later recalled hearing of her father’s death: ‘Father was well known in the community. I never cried in front of other people… you are taught that. I waited until I got to bed and then had a good cry, just as I’m sure Mum did when she was on her own.’ Ellen also remembered that for a long time after her mother couldn’t bear to see her husband’s photograph in the dining room and turned it to the wall. 

John’s family were living at 39 Hartington Road at the end of the war. His widow Ellen started a new life when she married Robert Carter in 1921. Ellen was living in Lambeth when she passed away in 1950, aged 63.