Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

age 18

Horace Thomas Pelling

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H. T. Pelling
Service no. CH1/8111
Private, Royal Marine Light Infantry, H.M.S. “Bulwark.”
Died on 26 November 1914, aged 18
Remembered at Chatham Naval Memorial

Information from Royal Naval Division

Horace Pelling was born on 9 December 1895 in Clapham. He enlisted on 3 July 1913, embarked on H.M.S. “Bulwark” on 22 October 1914, but, as the service record says bluntly, “discharged dead” on 26 November 1914, killed by an internal explosion of his vessel, off Sheerness. His father, Horace John Pelling of 174 Wandsworth Road, received a Star medal issued on 27 July 1919.

The explosion left all of the Bulwark’s officers dead, and out of her complement of 750, only 14 sailors survived; two of these men subsequently died of their injuries in hospital, and almost all of the remaining survivors were seriously injured. There is a good account at www.nhcra-online.org

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 Horace Thomas Pelling, 15, was a labourer working in the manufacture of ammonia. He was born in Clapham. His father, Horace John Pelling, 40, as a general gas fitter from Steyning, Sussex; his mother, Hanna Elizabeth, 41, was from Walworth. Horace had one sibling: Albert Edward Pelling, 7, born in Battersea. Three other siblings had died. The family lived in two rooms at 3 Garnies Street (now gone, although there is a Garnies Close off Sumner Road), Camberwell.

Leonard William Oakes

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L. W. Oakes
Service no. 50044
Private, Royal Fusiliers, 26th Battalion
Assumed dead 2 April 1918, aged 19

Leonard William Oakes was baptised at All Saints, Devonshire Road, South Lambeth on 26 August 1898, the son of John Thomas Oakes and Mary (née Spearing).

The service medals and awards rolls show that Leonard William Oakes first joined the 10th Battalion, was moved to the 23rd and then the 26th. For unknown reasons, his name is not included in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database.

Information from the censuses

In 1911 Leonard William Oakes, 12, lived at 64 Paradise Road, Clapham with his widowed father, John Thomas Oakes, 56, a platelayer for the railway from Burton-on-Trent, and four of his five siblings. Lillie Anna Oakes, 28, born in Wilton, kept house. Alfred John Oakes, 22, was a welder in a wheel works. Allan Henry Oakes, 21, railway porter. Leonard Gosmay, a single 24-year-old carpet salesman from Kidderminster, boarded. The latter three were born in London.

In 1901 Oakes lived with his family at 10 Riverhall Street, South Lambeth. His mother, Mary Oakes, 47, was from Stowell, Somersetshire.  In 1891 the family lived at 170 Wandsworth Road with two lodgers: James Gillard, 23, a fitter’s assistant from Drayton, Somerset, and Ernest H. Stenning, 21, an engine cleaner born in Lambeth.

The household also included Maurice G. Spearing, a 14-year-old engine cleaner described as “stepson” (ie Mary’s son from a previous marriage) born in Hambridge, Somerset. The 1881 census reveals that at the age of four, Maurice was with his step-grandparents, carpet weaver Samuel and Ann Oaks, and their two sons, William and John, in Burcombe, Wiltshire.

Reginald Nicholson

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R. Nicholson
Signalman, Royal Navy, HMS ‘Vehement’.
Service no. J/32529. Died 2 August 1918, aged 18
Remembered at Chatham Naval Memorial, Kent

Reginald Nicholson was born on 6 May 1899. After he was deserted as a baby he was admitted into the care of the Hammersmith Board of Guardians where he remained until 1917. Baby Reginald was initially fostered by  a ‘Mrs Neal of Southbrook Street’ before he was moved to the Milman Street Receiving Home For Children in Chelsea, west London. On 1 August 1903, four-year-old Reginald was sent to the ‘District Schools, Ashford’ whose records show that he was fostered on 20 July 1904.

In the 1911 census, Reginald, aged 11, is a boarder in the six-room home of George and Elizabeth Noyes and their son Earnest, aged nine, at Stockwell Furlong, Haddenham, Buckinghamshire. George Noyes was a ‘coach smith’  (blacksmith) and was originally from Lincoln. Elizabeth Noyes (nee ?????) was born in Brixton and Earnest was born in Streatham. The Noyes’ stay in Haddenham may have been a brief interlude. George and Elizabeth had previously lived in Streatham for the decade after they were married at St Leonard’s Church in 1900.

On 13 September 1911, Reginald was sent to the HMS training ship Exmouth, moored in the Thames off Grays. He was 4ft 8in tall and weighed not quite 5 stone. Over the next three years, Reginald led an active life, excelling at swimming and gymnastics. His conduct was always rated as ‘VG’. Reginald’s expectation was to join the Navy as a boy sailor when he left the Exmouth on 7 September 1914 and he went straight to the shore-based HMS Ganges at Shotley, near Ipswich. Reginald was trained in the signalling methods of the time, a mixture of flag, semaphore, and Morse code, sent both by wireless telegraphy and searchlight. 

On 6 May 1917, the day that the Hammersmith Board of Guardians ceased control of his life, Reginald Nicholson signed for 12 years service in the Navy. He was still small in stature, a little over 5ft, and described as having fair hair, brown eyes and a fresh complexion. The records show that he had been onboard the battle cruiser HMS Inflexible for two years when he was transferred to the destroyer HMS Vehement in November 1917. Close to midnight on 1 August 1918, during mine-laying duties in the North Sea, HMS Vehement struck a mine. One officer and 47 ratings were killed in the resulting explosion which partly destroyed the ship. The remaining crew abandoned ship at 4am on 2 August when all hope of saving HMS Vehement was lost and she began to sink. 

The Noyes family had moved to Stockwell by 1918. Naval records show Reginald’s next of kin as ‘Mother: – Elizabeth. Goldsboro’ Rd, Lambeth, S.W. 8’. George and Elizabeth Noyes were still at the same address in 1934. 

Frederick Albert Marsh

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F.A. Marsh
Rifleman, Royal Irish Rifles, 12 Bn.
Service no. 43355
Died 15 August 1917, aged 18
Remembered at Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium

Chris Burge writes:

erick Albert Marsh was baptised on 26 February 1899 at St Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, where his parents, Frederick Edwin Marsh, a railway goods shunter, and Frances Ellen Banks, had married just over a year earlier. By the time of the 1901 census, Frederick’s younger sister Ellen Frances was five months old and the family of four had moved to 8 Gaskell Street, off Union Road, in Stockwell. Engine driver William Meads’ family of eight lived at the same address. 

The 1911 census shows Frederick and Ellen Marsh had three children: Frederick Albert, 12, Ellen Francis, 10 and John Edwin, six. The family lived in five rooms at 37 Priory Grove. A family of four occupied two other rooms at the same address. Frederick’s father described his occupation as railway servant. 

Frederick Snr  had been employed by the London & South Western Railway since 1888, working as a shunter at Nine Elms. He was promoted yard foreman by 1907 and by 1912 his weekly wages were 38 shillings. The railways would be vital to the war effort and employees of the L&SWR were issued with a special war service badge. 

If Frederick and Ellen thought their son Frederick was too young to fight in this war, they were mistaken. With or without their consent, in the first week of June 1915, aged just 16, he volunteered at 9 Tufton Street, the administrative headquarters of the 2nd London Regiment. New recruits joined the 4th/2nd Battalion, the training reserve. Frederick was now private 4616 Marsh. 

Some underage recruits were weeded out before transfer to the 1st/2nd, or reported underage on landing in France, but Frederick seems to have remained in the Regiment, in England, until November 1916, when he was part of a large transfer of men to the 12th Irish Rifles and renumbered rifleman 43355 Marsh. A draft of around a hundred men sailed from Southampton to Le Havre on 11 November 1916, joining the 12th Royal Irish Rifles at the front near Messines two weeks later. After months of trench-holding, Frederick was with the 12th Royal Irish Rifles during the attack at Messines in early June and at Ypres in July and August, when heavy rain and constant shelling turned the battlefield into a hideous morass. On 15 August the battalion was readying for a 4.45am zero-hour attack the following day. Frederick was killed when their position was shelled.

Frederick’s parents were still at 37 Priory Grove when his father died in 1934. His mother passed away in 1949, aged 77. 

Samuel James

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S. James
Service no. 14197
Private, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), 7th Battalion
Born in Stockwell; enlisted in Lambeth; lived in Stockwell
Died of wounds on 10 August 1918, aged 18
Remembered at Tincourt New British Cemetery, Somme, France

British Army WWI Service Records 1914-1920

When Samuel James joined the Army he gave his next of kin as his father, also called Samuel. However, the Army form has been amended. The elder Samuel has been deleted and “Miss D. A James – sister” has been added – her 65-year-old father had died of a cerebral haemorrage on 19 October 1918, just a few weeks after his son perished in the war.

Eighteen-year-old Samuel James went missing at the Front on 30 June 1918. Later, it turned out that he had sustained a gunshot wound in his chest and been taken prisoner and that he had died on 10 August 1918 in the field hospital at Peronne.

James, who described himself as a decorator’s assistant, had signed up at Lambeth on 6 January 1917 and joined the Training Reserve of the Royal Sussex Regiment, transferring to the regular battalion on his 18th birthday, and then joining the East Kents. Standing only 5 feet 4 inches and weighing 7½ stone, with a 34-inch chest to which he could add 3 inches, his physical development as judged to be only “fair”. James committed only one recorded misdemeanour: being slack when on sentry duty at Colchester on 22 October 1917.

Information from the 1911 census
In 1911 Samuel James was an 11-year-old schoolboy. He lived at 37 Burgoyne Road with his parents and sister. Samuel James, 56, was a bricklayer, born at Ludchurch, Pembroke. His wife, Catherine James, 35, was born in Lambeth. They had 3 children:
Dorothy James, 13, born in Lambeth
Samuel James, 11, born in Lambeth
Catherine James, 3, born in Lambeth

Service records – died as POW (GSW)