F. A. Jordan
(Frank Andrew Jordan)
Service no. 6/9524
Rifleman, Rifle Brigade, 2nd Battalion
Born in Camberwell; enlisted in London; lived in Stockwell
Killed in action 25 September 1915, aged about 23
Remembered at Ploegsteert Memorial, Belgium
Brother of Albert Edward Jordan.
A. H. Holman
Service no. 34678
Gunner, Royal Field Artillery, 182nd Bde.
Enlisted in Chelsea; lived in Clapham
Died of wounds aged about 23 on 11 May 1916
Remembered at Dud Corner Cemetery, Loos, France
Brother of John Orlando Holman, whose CWGC entry states that the family lived at 45 Jeffreys Road, Stockwell.
Information from the 1911 census
In 1911 Alfred Harold Holman, an 18-year-old warehouse porter, lived in 4 rooms at 45 Riverhall Street, South Lambeth with his mother Sarah Jane McQuillin, 49, her husband Stephen McQuillin, 49, and 4 of his 6 brothers. Sarah Jane was a domestic servant and was born in Yeovil, Somerset. Stephen was a fitter’s labourer, born in Walworth. Sarah’s children were:
Percy Holman, 24, a general labourer, born in South Lambeth (as were all the children)
Ernest Holman, 21, a gardener
Alfred Holman 18, a warehouse porter
John [Orlando] Holman, 15, a junior clerk
Bertie Holman, 13
In 1901 the widowed Sarah J. Holman lived at 10, Thorne Street, Lambeth with her 7 sons.
T.W. Gray
Lance Corporal, London Regiment, 1st/24th Bn
Service no. 1909
Died 22 April 1915, aged about 23
Remembered at Le Touret Memorial, Pas de Calais, France
Thomas William Gray was born in 1892 in Plumstead, southeast London, the second child of Walter and Helen Elizabeth Gray. As a child, Thomas lived in Hare Street, within sight of the Thames. It was a short walk downhill to the Woolwich ferry, with the vast complex of the Victoria and Albert Docks across the river. The area was home to the Woolwich Arsenal and a Royal Engineers barracks but still had the open space of Woolwich Common and Shooter’s Hill on its southern boundary.
By the time of the 1911 census, the family was living in the crowded environment of Lambeth. Walter and Helen were now in their fifties. Six of their eight children had survived into adulthood, but it was just Thomas, then 18, and his sister Annie, 17, who lived with their parents. The family included an elderly widowed aunt. Walter worked for a biscuit manufacture as a commercial clerk, Thomas was as a clerk at tourist agent and Anne was a costumier’s dressmaker. The family had four rooms at 16 Thorne Road, a house they shared with two other families.
Thomas was one of the thousands who volunteered in the first week of August 1914. He had gone to the drill hall in nearby Braganza Street (previously New Street), Kennington, where the 24th (County of London) Battalion (The Queen’s) was based. As part of the Territorial Force, battalion was mobilised on 5 August, but were under-strength and needed to large numbers of new volunteers from Lambeth and beyond.
Thomas was on the move in mid-August when The Queen’s marched to a camp in the St Albans-Hatfield area. Training continued through the autumn and winter until the battalion left for France, disembarking at Le Havre on the 16 March. Thomas had already been promoted Lance Corporal. Between March 28 and April 18 The Queen’s were mostly employed to dig trenches at Lapugnoy, near Bethune in northern France. A hot march on 19 April took The Queen’s into the front line trenches at Richebourg Saint-Vaast.Sporadic shelling wounded one man on 20 April, killed another and wounded two on 21 April. It was noted that ‘1 NCO was wounded from A company’ on 22 April 22. Thomas Gray’s war had been cut brutally short.
The wedding of Thomas’ sister Annie Alice May on 22 December 1917 to Robert Bessant, a former neighbour, must have brought some comfort to the family. Bessant had volunteered for The Queen’s in September 1914 but was discharged unfit in April 1916, having never served in France.
At the end of the war Thomas’s parents received a small pension. The REgister of Soldiers’ Effects shows that the war gratuity was split between his father and May Elizabeth Martin, a dressmaker from Southwark, who we can infer was probably Thomas’s sweetheart.
Members of the Gray family remained at the Thorne Road address until at least 1932.
The Queens’s memorial is in Kennington Park.
W. A. G. Fuller
Private, 17th Lancers (Duke of Cambridge’s Own)
Service no. L/4110
Died in hospital on 24 March 1917, aged XX
Remembered at Mazargues War Cemetery, Marseilles, Bouches-du-Rhone, France
William Albert George Fuller was born in Lambeth in 1893, the eldest of five children of Albert Arthur Fuller, a machinist from Battersea, and Rose Maud (née Everett), from Stockwell.
In the 1911 census the family of seven lived in two rooms at 1 Saunders Place in Saunders Street, which ran between Fitzalan Street and Lollard Street in Kennington. William, aged 17, worked as a labourer.
William attested at Kingston Upon Thames in 1914. He and his wife Annie Harris had two children before marrying in Hampstead on 12 November 1915.
Amongst the names on the Stockwell War Memorial are three brothers, Ernest, Frederick and Alfred Desaleux. They all died in 1917 – Frederick in February, Ernest in April and Alfred in May. The brothers joined different brigades, although two, Ernest and Frederick, were riflemen. Alfred may have moved to Canada before the war: he joined the Canadian Field Artillery and his widow, Alice, is listed as living in Winnipeg in 1917. She was certainly in London during 1911. In 1911 the Desaleux family were living at Fountain Street (now gone), Stockwell.
E. W. Desaleux
Service no. S/14522
Rifleman, Rifle Brigade, 1st Battalion
Died age 23 on 15 April 1917
Son of Son of Jules B. and Edith Desaleux
Remembered at Arras Memorial, France
Brother of Frederick Desaleux and Jules Benjamin Alfred Desaleux
At least one other Desaleux brother served in the war: Albert. Dan Desaleux, his great-grandson, provided the following information.
You might like to know that my grandfather Reginald Desaleux is one of the children of Albert Desaleux who you have listed above. He too was born in Lambeth, as was my father, Barry.
I do have some more information on Albert Desaleux: Volunteering in March 1915 he embarked for France six months and served throughout the war. During this period he was engaged on light railway construction and in laying tracks for guns, and was present in the Battles of Arras, Albert and Vimy Ridge. He was buried by a shell explosion in the course of operations and on recovery served with the signal section until hostilities ceased. Demobilised in May 1919, he holds the 1914-15 Star, and the General Service and Victory Medals.
Jules Desaleux was a map publishing assistant who lived in 73 Tavistock Street, Westminster and married Edith (unknown maiden name). This information is from a census page. However, we have no information of what year the page is actually from.
Information from the 1911 census
In 1911 the Desaleux family lived at 20 Fountain Street, Stockwell.
Jules Desaleux, the father, is listed as a 45-year-old warehouseman born at “St George, Hanover Square”, London. His wife, Edith Desaleux, was born in Dover, Kent.
Living with them were nine of their many children:
Albert Desaleux, 18, a general labourer with the railway, born at Pimlico (more details below)
Ernest Desaleux, 17, a warehouseman, later to die in the war
Frederick Desaleux, 14, also a warehouseman and also to die in the war, born in Lambeth
Bertha Desaleux, 12, still at school, born in Lambeth
Henry Desaleux, 11, born in Lambeth
Hilda Desaleux, 8, born in Lambeth
Emma Desaleux, 6, born in Lambeth
Ethel Desaleux, 4, born in Lambeth
Gertrude Desaleux, 2, born in Lambeth
Also, in the 1911 census, at 8 Pownall Terrace, Stockwell, Alice Eleanor Desaleux, 20, wife of Jules Benjamin Alfred Desaleux and her six-month-old son Alfred Hugh were listed as visiting Henry James Kemp (described as an “attendant”) and his wife Alice and their five children.
Information from the 1901 census
Ten years previously, in 1901, the family were living at 186 Upper Kennington Lane, in the parish of St Peter’s, Vauxhall, with eight children (the other four were not yet born), including:
Louise Desaleux, born 1886, then aged 15 (listed in the 1891 as ‘Edith’)
Alfred Desaleux, born 1888, aged 13 (listed in the 1891 census as ‘Jules’)
Ellen Desaleux, born 1890, aged 11
All were listed as having been born in Holborn.
Jules Desaleux’s parents Benjamin, born 1815, a journeyman lamp-maker and Maire (or possibly Eliza), born 1821, a corset-maker, came from France. In 1881, according to that census, they were living at 36 South Molton Street, “St George, Hanover Square” with their 24-year-old daughter, also called Maire and also a corset-maker. They had lived at this address for at least 20 years (they are there on the 1861 census). Meanwhile, Jules, then 22, was a Private in the Army Hospital Corps and living at the South Camp at Aldershot.
G.W.J. Dee
Private, 24th (County of London) Bn (The Queen’s)
Service no. Regiment 720356
Died on 15 February 1920, aged 23, after discharge
Chris Burge writes:
Geoffrey Dee was born on 26 November 1896 in Woolwich, southeast London, the first child of John Edwin and Emma Churchill (née Loftin) Dee, who had married earlier in the year. Geoffrey was baptised with the given names Geoffrey William John on 10 September 1897 at St Bride’s, Fleet Street on the same day as three of Emma’s younger siblings, when his parents’ address was 120 Ivydale Road, Nunhead, southeast London and his father worked as a licensed victualler (publican). Geoffrey’s younger brother Philip was born on 15 September 1898 and baptised Philip Walter Loftin Dee on 30 October 1898 at St Martin’s, Dorking, in Surrey, during the period his father was running the Red Lion Hotel.
Geoffrey’s father died in 1899, and the following year his mother, then living in the Walworth Road, near Elephant and Castle, married George Edward Holton at St Bride’s. Holton, a police constable, was based at the nearby Bridewell Place Station. At the time of the 1901 census George, Emma, Geoffrey and Philip were living at 6 Clock Passage (also known as Clock Place), off Hampton Road and close to Newington Butts, a densely populated area in the parish of St Mary Newington, Southwark. The property was home to three families totalling 11 people.
George and Emma’s first child Dorothy Ellen was born on 19 June 1901 and baptised at St Mary Newington on 25 August.
Ten years later, Geoffrey and family were living in Stockwell, at 13 Portland Place North, near Clapham Road in Stockwell. Geoffrey’s stepfather was had risen to the rank of serjeant in the City of London Police and he had listed their children in age order on the census form: Geoffrey Dee Holton, 14; Philip Dee Holton, 12; Dorothy Holton, nine; Stanley Holton, seven; Kathleen Holton, five; John Holton, two. Emma’s younger brother Walter Robinson Loftin, a 34-year-old stereotyper from Kent, boarded with the family. A total of nine people occupied the property’s seven rooms.
In May 1911 life changed abruptly for the Holton family when Emma died. Forty-year-old George Holton was married for a second time on 3 December 1912, to 23-year-old Constance Muriel Chapman at St Stephen’s Church, South Lambeth.By 1915, there would be three more additions to the Holton family.
Geoffrey Dee was working as a stereotyper at Spottiswoode & Co., Shoe Lane, in the City when war was declared. In the excited rush to volunteer many employees of the print firm joined the City of London Rifles at their Farringdon Road drill hall, but Geoffrey Dee made a different choice. On 6 August 1914 he went to the drill hall at New Street (now Braganza Street), Kennington on 6 August 1914, determined to join the 24th County of London Battalion (The Queen’s).
He added a year to his age, claiming to be 18 years and 11 months. At 5ft 9in in height with a 33in chest, no questions were asked and he was passed fit. Within days, Private 1894 Dee was in the St Albans area with the 24th Londons. The battalion was sent to France early in 1915, landing at Le Havre on 16 March, the beginning of Geoffrey Dee’s three years on the Western Front. He was wounded in the right leg around 15 June 1915 and treated at 4th Stationary Hospital at St Omer.
Geoffrey was an infantry observer and survived all of the 24th London’s actions until seriously wounded on 16 July 1918, again in the right leg. He was evacuated to the UK where he underwent an above-knee amputation. After the amputation, a medical board at the military hospital Denmark Hill judged his general health as ‘good’. When Geoffrey completed a statement of his own case, he said that he had been treated at Weir Hospital in Grove Road, Balham, which housed a section of Third London (T.F.) General Hospital. A final review was made at Charterhouse Military Hospital, Charterhouse Square, London, a specialist hospital for limbless men, on 8 March 1919. Geoffrey Dee was discharged six days later and awarded a pension of £2 7s 6d for 13 weeks and then 16s 6d for life. It was noted that his figure (frame) on discharge was ‘slight’ and he faced ‘uncertain’prospects of employment. Geoffrey’s address throughput this period was the Holton family home now at 262 Clapham Road.
Geoffrey died in Torquay, Devon, in 1920 of an infection in his right leg. He is not listed in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database. The military authorities may not have regarded him as a war casualty, but the Stockwell War Memorial committee thought otherwise.
Geoffrey’s younger brother Philip, also an electrotyper, was conscripted into the Army after 1916 and served in the Royal Fusiliers. Philip returned to Lambeth and in August 1924 sailed for Brisbane, Australia, seeking a new life. He died in 1991.
George Edward Holton, Geoffrey and Philip’s stepfather, was living in Streatham Vale when he passed away in 1930.
Geoffrey is not listed in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database as his death came after the cut-off date for inclusion. His story serves as a good example of the wider remit adopted by the Stockwell War Memorial Committee