Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

1919

Alfred Willis

by

A. Willis
Lance Corporal, Royal Engineers, 39th Coy. AA Section.
Service no. 563845
Died on 7 March 1919, aged 21.
Remembered at Cologne Southern Cemetery, Germany

Chris Burge writes:

Alfred Willis was born in Clapham in 1897 to Arthur and Ellen Mary Willis who had married in 1894. Both of Alfred parents were from Kent. Arthur was listed on the 1897 Electoral Roll at 4 Larkhall Lane, Stockwell. In the 1901 census, the family of three were living a 2 Larkhall Lane and Arthur was working as a hay and straw salesman. Alfred’s younger sister Marion Edith Willis was born in 1902.

By the time of the 1911 census the Willis household had moved to 267 South Lambeth Road, situated just beyond the Stockwell Terrace, and consisted of Arthur, 43; Ellen Mary, 42; Alfred, 13; Marion Edith, nine; and Ellen Laura Dowell, 37, Arthur’s cousin by marriage. One of Arthur and Ellen’s babies had died in infancy. Arthur still made his income as a salesman of hay and straw. The family lived in some comfort in a two-storey house with seven rooms and a basement.  

Alfred Willis was conscripted around May 1916, a date estimated from the war gratuity paid to his father in 1919. Alfred joined a Territorial Force unit of the Royal Engineers as denoted by his original army service number T/2833. His service papers have not survived but the papers of Sapper 563844 (T/2384) V.H. Prodham provide a guide. Prodham, a clerk from Ealing, worked for the Gas, Light & Coke Company in Horseferry Road, Westminster and was conscripted into the ‘London Electrical Engineers’, his service reckoned from 8 May 1915. At the outbreak of the war the London Electrical Engineers, who specialised on searchlights, were based at 46 Regency Street, Westminster, on the north side of the Vauxhall Bridge. London experienced its first Zeppelin raids on 31 May/1 June 1915 and a double ring of searchlights and anti-aircraft guns was established around London in 1916. Zeppelin raids continued into 1916 with bombs dropping on Brixton and elsewhere in South London. Gotha bombers began raids in May 1917. Between June 1917 and May 1918 they made about 17 attacks on London. 

There is some ambiguity in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records as to which AA company Alfred served in and whether Alfred was deployed in England or France before the 1918 Armistice. Both the 39th Coy. AA Sect. and 3/Coy AA Sect. are mentioned in CWGC documents; they had both operated in France from 1916. There was also a no.39 AA Company based at Bower’s Gifford on the Isle of Sheppey operating six three-inch 20-hundredweight guns plus eight searchlights, as part of the Thames and Medway AA Defence Command. Commonwealth forces entered Cologne on 6 December 1918, less than a month after the Armistice, and the city was occupied under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles until January 1926. Alfred’s death was not combat-related and he may have passed away during the third wave of influenza pandemic in 1919 while serving in the army of occupation.

Alfred’s parents remained at 267 South Lambeth Road with Ellen Laura Powell until about 1930.

George Robert Henry Wedderburn

by

G. Wedderburn
Private, London Regiment, 19th Bn.
Service no. 611750
Died of illness in early 1919, after discharge, aged 26
Buried in Southwark 6 March 1919

Chris Burge writes:

George Wedderburn (left) and a friend. Courtesy of Elaine Collins.

George Wedderburn was born on 30 August 1892, the first child of George Wedderburn and Clara Wilmott  of 5 Chapel Street (since renamed Mowll Street), Stockwell. George was baptised on 18 October 1892 at Christ Church, North Brixton, with the given names George Robert Henry. George Snr, originally from Newcastle, worked as a stable groom for the Waine furnishing company at 131-139 Newington Butts, close to the Elephant and Castle. Clara was born and raised in Lambeth. When George’s younger brother Joseph Alfred was born in 1896, the family were still in Chapel Street and George’s father was described as a ‘comedian’, a hint of another side to the lives of the Wedderburn family. 

By 1901, eight-year-old George was one of four children and the Wedderburn family were living at 14 Buff Place, Camberwell. George’s father was described as a horse dealer. Three families making a total of 17 people were living at the same address. Although close to Camberwell Green and the surrounding amenities, Buff Place was one of a group of side alleys described by the social surveyor Charles Booth in 1899 as comprising ‘shoddy three storey buildings’.

In the 1911 census, George was now one of eight children. His parents were both 37 and the children’s details were set out in the clear hand of their father: George, 18; Joseph, 15; Robert, 13; Clara, 10; James nine; Isabella, seven; Samuel, four; and Gladys, two. Their father was still working as a domestic groom, while Joseph was a newsboy and George Jnr was a labourer. Large families were the norm, but in this case the family of ten were crammed into just four rooms at 21 Ely Place, South Lambeth, was one of a group of turnings off Dorset Road that were all marked as a poor area when visited ten years earlier by Booth. 

Towards the end of 1915 with conscription looming, it was clear that both George and his brothers Joseph and Robert would not escape service. In the case of George, only his discharge papers have survived. They tell the story of a man broken in mind and body, revealing that before the war George had wholly, or in part, earned his living as a variety artist, performing for around five years in various Moss Empire theatres. His family later said he was known to perform comical songs and dances in a double act with his father.  

George’s Army life began at the end of November 1915 when he chose to attest under Lord Derby’s Group Scheme in which men enlisted under the promise that unmarried men in their group would be called up first. He joined the reserve of 19th London Regiment, a Territorial Force unit whose administrative base was in Camden Town, near St Pancras Station. George was given the service number 5116. Perhaps it was no coincidence that music-hall artists brother Henry Arthur and Ronald Gladstone Moon joined 19th London Regiment at the same time. Brixton and the surrounding area was popular with variety artists for its good transport links. Henry Moon gave a Brixton Road address when he attested in Lambeth on 30 November 1915. His service number was 5100, and his brother Ronald’s was 5121. 

George was given compassionate leave to marry Mabel Jane Wright on 28 May 1916 at St Paul’s, Lorrimore Square, Southwark, which was close to Mabel’s home in Lorrimore Road. After this, George returned to his unit and within four months was sent to France.

He landed at Le Havre on 13 August, spent nearly a month at the infantry base and finally reached the 1/19th London on 23 September 1916. It was the height of the Somme offensive and his battalion, which had already suffered heavy casualties attacking High Wood, were briefly out of the front line. Back in the Line, intense shelling buried men alive or dead. In October the battalion withdrawn from the Somme only to be sent north to the Ypres sector. Trench conditions were always at their worst in winter and sporadic shelling invariably added to the casualty lists. George was admitted to a Field Ambulance on 14 January 1917 with a high fever and was in hospital in Boulogne a week later before being transferred to England on 30 January.

George’s health deteriorated to the point that on 8 June he was sent to convalesce at Summerdown Camp near Eastbourne. His condition worsened and by August 1917 he was transferred to the 1st London General Hospital after displaying the classic symptoms of neurasthenia, an illness now renamed dysautonomia, an imbalance of the autonomic nervous system. It may have been what is commonly known as shell shock. After 32 days George was moved to the Tooting Grove Military Hospital where he stayed for 148 days and was described as ‘nervous and excited at the least thing’. In February 1918, George was moved again, this time to the 4th General Hospital at Denmark Hill were he stayed for 51 days, still suffering from neurasthenia. Finally on 29 March 1918 George was transferred to the Maudsley Neurological Clearing Hospital, Denmark Hill and appeared before a medical board on 19 April 1918. The board found him to be permanently unfit for service and awarded him a pension, but only for six months. He was discharged on 10 May 1918 after spending 41 days at the Maudsley, free to return home to Mabel at 81 Lorrimore Road, Kennington. When completing his discharge papers, George wrote ‘Variety Artiste (if possible) Gardening or Farming’ in the section asking about what kind of work he desired.

It is not known if George had found employment by the time his pension expired, but there was a new beginning when he became a father in 1918. Following family tradition, George and Mabel named their son George Bruce Wedderburn. 

George Wedderburn died in early 1919, he was laid to rest in Southwark [where?] on 6 March 1919. The authorities refused Mabel’s claim for a war pension.

Mabel was still living at 81 Lorrimore Road in 1945 when her son George Bruce Wedderburn was a ‘service voter’ at the same address in the 1945 election. He had been in the Army since 1939. Mabel was living in Norwich when she passed away in 1984, aged 89. George Bruce Wedderburn died in Norwich in 1998, aged 79. 

Walter Percy Wallis

by

W. P. Wallis
Service no. 153407
Private, Machine Gun Corps (Infantry), 200th Battalion
Died on 3 February 1919, aged 19
CWGC: “Son of Percy William and Sarah Naomi Wallis, of 9, The Mount, Bidborough, Kent.”
Remembered at Lapugnoy Military Cemetery, France

Information from the 1911 census

Only child Walter Percy Wallis, a 12-year-old schoolboy in 1911, lived at 11 Glendall Street, Stockwell with his parents, Percy William Wallis, 38, a railway riveter from West Malling, Kent, and Sarah Naomi Wallis, 40, from Rye, Sussex. Walter was born in Ashford, Kent. They shared their four-roomed home with John James Seckert, a single 44-year-old restaurant waiter from Mayence, Germany.

George Pearcey

by

G. Pearcey
Service no. 202274
Private, London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers), 1st Battalion
Enlisted at Handel Street
Died on 19 January 1919 (theatre of war is given as “home”), aged 34
CWGC: “Son of Mrs Ada Pearcey, of 104 Stockwell Road, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Lambeth Cemetery, Blackshaw Road, London SW17

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 George’s mother Ada, 54, a charwoman, lived in two rooms at 2 Tachbrook Street, Pimlico with two of her daughters: Roseline, 14, a dressmaker’s apprentice, and Dorothy Pearcey, 12. Both were born in Pimlico. Ada had six children, five of whom survived. George Pearcey does not appear to be on the census. In 1901 the family, including George’s father William Pearcey, lived at at 36 Aylesford Street, near Hanover Square. George, then 14, was working as an errand boy.

Henry Langford

by

H. Langford
Private, Royal Sussex Regiment, 11th Bn.
Service no. 36921
Died on 8 May 1919, aged about 39
Remembered at Murmansk New British Cemetery, Russia 

Chris Burge writes:

Henry Langford was born in 1879 in the village of Midgham, Berkshire, the second child of Jemima Hannah Hunt and master brewer Alfred Langford, who had married four years earlier. Henry’s sister Emma was born in 1877. Alfred died in the winter of 1881 and Jemima married Charles Goodman the following year.

By 1891, Emma was 14 and in service, while schoolboy Henry was living with his parents and stepsiblings in Three Chimneys Lane, Thatcham. By the time of the 1902 census, aged 22, he was a serving soldier. 

Henry joined the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment Militia on 3 December 1895, aged 17, when he was described as 5ft 2in tall, 103lbs, with a fresh complexion, blue eyes and fair hair. He served in the militia until 3 February 1897, transferring to a regular battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment. He served in both Boer Wars and Egypt for two years and was decorated before extending his home service from 1905 to 1909. 

Shortly after leaving the Army, Henry moved to London. In 1910, he married Louisa Elizabeth Eyles in Lambeth. In the 1911 census, they were living in two rooms at 83 Jeffreys Road, off Clapham Road. Louisa was expecting their first child and Henry worked as a cook. The property was shared by two other families, with 11 other people occupying the eight remaining rooms. Phyllis Louisa Langford was born on 3 November 1911. 

Henry Langford appears to have been conscripted late in 1917 or early 1918. Records show that he enlisted in Battersea but not how he came to be in the 11th Sussex. The battalion he joined had returned from France to England in June 1918 after suffering heavy losses during the enemy’s spring offensive. After many compulsory transfers to the battalion, the 11th Sussex departed from Leith, sailing to north Russia on 19 September to support the White Russian forces against the Bolshevik Red Army in the Russian Civil War. We can speculate that Henry may have experienced the novelty of skiing lessons during the winter months, before the weather permitted them to move to Murmansk in March 1919. On 8 May it was reported that ‘36921 L. Cpl H. Langford had died from burns at Murmansk’. No details of his accidental death were given. Henry was buried in the English sector of the Russian cemetery at Murmansk on 10 May 1919.

Henry’s widow Louisa started a new life when she married William Henry Hunt on Christmas Day 1920 at St Jude’s, Kensal Green in north London. William was Henry’s second cousin, and the marriage was witnessed by Henry’s sister Emma Hider. Tragedy struck in the 1940 Blitz when a high explosive bomb dropped near Louisa and William’s home in Marmion Road, Battersea. Louisa died in the Bolingbroke Hospital on 12 September 1940. Henry’s married daughter Phyllis Turner passed away in Wandsworth in 1985, aged 73. 

John Herriott

by

J. Herriott
Lieutenant, Machine Gun Corps, 41st Coy.
Died of wounds, age 26 on 17 February 1919
Awarded Military Cross
Son of John and Mary Herriott, of 50 Milton Road, Herne Hill, London. Native of London.
Remembered at Etaples Military Cemetery, France

Two of John Herriott’s brothers, Andrew Herriott and Archibald Herriott, also died.
For information from the 1911 on the Herriott family, see Andrew Herriott’s entry.

Military Cross citation, Supplement to the London Gazette 30 July 1919

For conspicuous gallantry and good work. During a counter-attack on September 29th, 1918, near Menin, the infantry with whom he was co-operating withdrew to a line 400 yards behind him. He covered their withdrawal; then, seeing that he could inflict casualties from where he was, he decided to remain in position. For two hours he was well in front of the infantry and engaged the enemy on two sides. From his position, to which he brought a second gun for the purpose, he was able to cover the infantry advance when the situation was restored.