Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

age 39

John Frederick King

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J. F. King

Service no. 231178
Private, London Regiment, 2nd Bn. (Royal Fusiliers)
Died 21 March 1918, aged 39
Remembered at Chauny Communal Cemetery British Extension, Aisne, France

John Frederick King, a carman, joined the Army twice. First he volunteered for the Army Service Corps (Horse Transport) on 5 January 1915. His medical description paints a picture of someone short and stocky: 5 feet 2¼ inches tall with a 40-inch chest. He had a mole on the back of his neck and scars on the left side of his back and left leg. At the top of his form he has signed a note: “I am willing to allot from date of enlistment 6d. [sixpence] per day of my pay to support my wife and family.” He had left behind Jenny (née Hawkins), Frederick Ernest, 9, and Agnes Louise, 8.

This period of service lasted a mere three days. On 7 January he was discharged as “not likely to become an efficient soldier.” As the war progressed, however, this opinion may have been revised or King may have been subject to the compulsory draft. Whatever happened, he later joined the London Regiment and died near Aisne in March 1918.

Henry Williams

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H. Williams
Lance Corporal, London Regiment, 23rd Bn.
Service no. 4180
Killed in action on 18 July 1916, aged about 39
Remembered at Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery, Souchez, France

Henry Williams was born in Lambeth in about 1879. There are no clues to his early life apart from the fact he was named after his father, who was a soldier. Henry Williams was 19 when he married Frances Matilda Oliffe, a domestic servant of the same age, at St John the Evangelist, Walworth, on 10 Apr 1898. The marriage was not witnessed by relatives of either Henry or Frances, who was only able to make her mark at the time of the wedding. By the time of the 1901 census, Henry and Matilda had two young children, Frances 3 and Harry 1. They lived in a single room at 5 Northall Street, Stockwell. A property that housed ten other people in four rooms. ( https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map/18/-0.1235/51.4700/100/1 )

There were two more children in the Williams family when Henry completed his 1911 census return. Neatly listed by age, they were Elizabeth Franc [sic] Williams 13, Harry Williams 11, Ada Williams 8 and Thomas Williams just 10 months old. Henry appears to have misjudged the space on the form, shortening the middle name of both his daughter and his wife whose name was written as “Matilda Franc Williams”. Henry was now 32 and working as a “coal porter” and Matilda was 31. The family lived in just two rooms at 35 Lingham Street, Stockwell, a property which also housed an elderly couple living in one room and a family of six living in three rooms. Their youngest son was baptised “Thomas Edward George” at St Andrew, Stockwell Green, on 2 September 1914 when the family had moved to 7 Stockwell Cottages.

Henry Williams made the critical decision to volunteer in May 1915, a time when renewed recruitment campaigns across London were attempting to boost the dwindling numbers of volunteers. The campaigns often emphasised the pay and allowances for married men which may have swayed Henry. He went to 27, St John’s Hill, Clapham Junction on Wednesday 19 May 1915 to join the 23rd Battalion of the London Regiment, part of the Territorial Force. Henry was 38 years old, 5ft 6 inches tall with a 37 inch chest and physically fit. He signed the agreement to serve overseas which all TF soldiers were asked to make there and then at Clapham Junction and was posted to the 3rdreserve of the 23rdLondon as private 4180, Williams H. Henry was not drafted to France until October 1915, embarking from Southampton on Saturday 9th October andjoined his unit by 14 October 1915. Henry was one of 78 men noted to have joined the battalion on a day when they were in billets in the Loos sector. The battalion stayed in the Loos sector until they moved to the Souchez sector in May 1916. In July they were south of Lens near Vimy. The keeper of the battalion’s war dairy simply noted that 7 men were killed and 8 wounded when in the front line on 18 July 1916. Henry Williams had been promoted to unpaid Lance Corporal on 16.7.16, just two days before he was killed in action.

Henry’s pocket book with letters, cards and photos was returned to his wife in October 1916, a year after her husband had first gone to France. Frances Matilda Williams was now living at 4 Bricknell Place, an alley off the south-west side of Stockwell Road, close to the Plough Public house on the corner of Stockwell Road and Stockwell Green. Henry’s widow Frances Matilda was subsequently informed she had been awarded a weekly pension of 21 shillings for herself and her two youngest children with effect from 29 January 1917.

Matilda Frances and her son Thomas were still living at 4 Bricknell Place in the 1930s.

Ernest Alfred Wickes

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E.A. Wickes (listed on the Memorial as A.E. Wickes)
Private, The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), 1st Bn.
Service no. 4154
Died on 15 July 1916, aged 39
Remembered at Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, Longueval, France

Chris Burge writes:

Alfred Ernest Wickes was born in Aldershot, Hampshire in 1877, the first child of Alfred Henry and Amelia Wickes (née Wetton). Alfred was baptised on 13 May 1877 at St Michael the Archangel, Aldershot, when his father was still in the Army Service Corps.

Alfred’s parents were from London: Alfred Snr was born in Brixton and Amelia in Hammersmith. By the time Alfred’s sister Amelia Maud was born in 1879, Alfred Henry Wickes had left the Army and brought his family to Lambeth, where he found work as a railway porter. By 1881 the family were living at 26 Camellia Street in the shadow of the Nine Elms Railway works. William was  born in February 1881 and the Wickes family of five shared a property that housed two other families, a total of 14 people .

At the time of the 1901 census, the Wickes family were living at 16 Paradise Road. Thirteen-year-old Alfred had left school and was working as a newspaper boy. He was now the oldest of eight children. The family lived in four rooms of the property which also housed a family of three living in one other room. 

Alfred married Kate Letitia Thomas on 24 February 1906 in the parish church of Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire. By this time, Alfred was calling himself Ernest Alfred Wickes and working as a printer. He gave his address as 16 Paradise Road, Clapham. Kate gave her address as ‘The Barracks, Weedon’. (Weedon had a historical connection to the Royal Ordnance dating from the Napoleonic Wars.)

The marriage was witnessed by her half-brother Benjamin Robert Smith. (Kate’s mother Catherine Thomas had married Robert Smith in 1887 after her own father Edward Thomas had died when Kate was four.) Ernest and Kate’s first child was born in Lambeth on 18 December 1906 and baptised Edward Ernest Robert Wickes at the parish church of Weedon on 31 March 1907, when the family’s home address was 13 Dawlish Street, [location]. 

At the time of the 1911 census Ernest and Kate were living in Camberwell. The household consisted of Ernest, 33; Kate Letitia, 28; Edward, four; and Ernest’s parents-in-law Robert, a self-employed coal dealer, and Catherine Smith, 66 and 58. Ernest was now working as a shopkeeper of a general store with the assistance of his wife. The family of five were living in four rooms at 205 Cator Street, Peckham, southeast London. 

Ernest and Kate’s second child, Benjamin Joseph, was born on 19 March 1912 and baptised at St Anne’s, South Lambeth on 2 June 1912 by which time the family had moved to 36 Heyford Avenue, close to the Beaufoy Vinegar Factory. Their third child, Thomas Alfred, was born on 5 May 1914 and baptised at St Anne’s on 11 October 1914.

What motivated grocer Ernest Alfred Wickes to volunteer at the age of 37 years and 8 months is an open question, but he decided to leave his wife and three young children to join the Army, becoming Private 4145 Wickes E.A., having attested on 11 January 1915, and was recruited to the Royal West Surrey Regiment. The Regimental Medal Roll shows Private 4145 Wickes entering France on ‘9.2.15’ and joining the 1st Battalion, implying he had volunteered some months earlier in 1914. A date of ‘2.9.15’ seems more likely. A draft of 18 other ranks had reached the 1 RWS on 15 September 1915 near Bethune, just ten days before the Battle of Loos.

The Battalion remained in the Loos sector during the winter of 1915 into the following spring. They only started to move south to the Somme on 8 July 1916 and were close to Fricourt by the 13 July. They moved to positions close to High Wood in preparation for an attack on 15 July 1916. No significant gains were made and the 1 RWS withdrew after three-quarters of the officers in action that day were either killed or wounded; of other ranks 28 were killed, 52 were wounded and 207 were missing. Ernest Alfred Wickes was killed in action on that day.

The death of Ernest Alfred Wickes had tragic consequences for his family. His widow Kate Letitia suffered a breakdown in health and in 1917 her three young sons were taken into the care of the Lambeth authorities. In September that year, they passed from the Renfrew Road receiving ward to the Norwood School and nursery at Elder Road West Norwood. It was probably Ernest Wickes’ family who arranged for the name of the son and brother they had always known as Alfred Ernest to appear on the Stockwell War Memorial as A.E. Wickes. 

Kate Letitia Wickes was recorded as the anonymous female patient ‘K L W’ at Banstead Hospital in 1921 and again 18 years later in 1939 as the widow ‘Kate L Wicks’ born 1884, a female patient at London County Council Banstead Hospital, Sutton. She died at the hospital in 1946, aged 62. 

Edward Ernest Robert Wickes passed away in the district of Shepway, Kent in 1994, aged 87. Benjamin Joseph Wickes married in Islington in 1937 and was living in Essex when he died in 1992, aged 82. Thomas Alfred Wickes sought new a life in Australia, where he died in Hobart City on 4 September 1967, aged 53.

Thomas Protheroe

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T. Protheroe
Service no. 39017
Private, East Lancashire Regiment, 2nd/5th Battalion, formerly 233832, Royal Field Artillery
Born in Lambeth; enlisted in Lambeth; lived in Stockwell
Died on 26 March 1918, aged 38
CWGC: “Husband of F. M. Protheroe, of 108, Grantham Rd., Clapham Road, London.”
Remembered at Etaples Military Cemetery, France and St Andrew’s Church, Landor Road, London SW9

In 1911, Thomas Protheroe, 29, the son of Thomas James Protheroe and Ruth Carrington, newly married to Florence Maud Todd, 28, lived at 40 Honeybrook Road, Clapham Park, where they had four rooms. Thomas worked as a process engraver in the newspaper industry. They had no children. Both were from Newington, southeast London. Florence later moved to 108 Grantham Road, Stockwell. Thomas was born on 12 April 1881 and attended Harper Street School in Southwark. He was the eldest of six children. 

Arthur George Potter

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A. G. Potter
Service no. 12028
Private, Coldstream Guards, 3rd Battalion
Enlisted at Clifton Street; lived in Clapham
Died on 13 April 1918, aged 39
CWGC: “Son of Mr and Mrs J. B. Potter, of 6 Alexandra Mansion, Stonhouse Street, Clapham; husband of Louisa Potter, of  Larkhall Lane, Clapham, London.”
Remembered at Ploegsteert Memorial, Belgium

Information from the censuses

In 1911 31-year-old Arthur George Potter was working as a messenger for the Board of Education. He lived in three rooms at 86 Southville, Wandsworth Road, with his wife Louisa Ann Potter, 39. They were both born in Lambeth. A decade previously he lived with his parents, John Potter, a 53-year-old railway inspector born in Croydon, and Mary A. Potter, 54, originally from Sellack, Herefordshire. Arthur Potter’s brother Harold Potter, 17, was a railway engine cleaner. Henry Potter, 14, was still at school. The brothers were all born in Lambeth. The family lived at 19 Rosetta Street. The 1891 census shows that there was another brother, Walter, a year younger than Arthur, and born in Battersea.

Fred Cecil Payne

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F. C. Payne
Service no. 42266
Private, Manchester Regiment, 18th Battalion
Born in Westminster; enlisted in London; lived in Stockwell
Killed in action on 13 June 1917, aged about 39
Remembered at Perth Cemetery (China Wall), Belgium

Information from the 1911 census

Fred Cecil Payne, 33 in 1911, was a restaurant waiter. He lived with his widowed mother, Emily Payne, 66, from Iffley, Oxfordshire, and sister, Winifred Payne, 27, a dressmaker, in two rooms in 2 Thorne Road, South Lambeth. Fred and Winifred were born in Lambeth.