Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

Chris Burge

William Henry Wilson

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W. H. Wilson
Service no.66127
Bombardier, Royal Field Artillery, “A” Bty. 109th Bde.
Died 28 August 1916, aged 24
Remembered at Heilly Station Cemetery, Mericourt-L’Abbe, France
Husband of A. F. Wilson, of 17, Chantrey Rd., Brixton, London.

This identification was made by Chris Burge, who writes:

William Henry Wilson has born on 25 June 1892, one of the five children of parents Thomas Reeves and Ellen Agnes Wilson. William was baptised on 21 August 1892 at St John, Hoxton, when the family lived in Wenlock Street, where they remained for twenty years.

By the time of the 1911 census, William’s mother had died and he shared the home with his father Thomas, sister Florence Agnes and younger brother George Albert. They had just three rooms at 65 Wenlock Street. William worked as a ‘carman contractor’.

William volunteered around the end of 1914 at Holloway, joining the Royal Field Artillery and was eventually posted to the 109th Brigade who were equipped with howitzers. He was married while a soldier on 4 April 1915 to Alice Florence Edwards, a local girl, at St Matthew’s Church, Islington, giving their address as 21 Morton Road. Just four months later, 66127 Wilson was sent to France, disembarking on 29 August 1915.

Almost a year later to the day, William was in action on the Somme as his ‘A’ Battery shot to support British advances. The batteries of the 109th Brigade were under constant shelling themselves, losing eight men in the week before 25 August. When they moved to new positions north of Montauban, on the 25 August, three more men were wounded and another killed. On 28 August, in bad weather, another man was killed and three others wounded. William Henry Wilson died of wounds on this day.

By the end of the war, William’s widow Alice was living at 17 Chantrey Road, Brixton, were she remained until 1934 when she married Frederick Muspratt who had been a ASC lorry driver in the war. She was widowed for a second time when Frederick died in 1946.

Alice Florence was living at 34 Kemerton Road, Camberwell, when she passed away on 21 July 1981, aged 86.

Alfred Willis

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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.

Stanley Herbert Williamson

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S. H. Williamson
Service no. TF/265478
Private, Royal Sussex Regiment, 2nd/6th battalion
Died 29 August 1917, aged 21
Remembered at Rawalpindi War Cemetery, Pakistan

This identification was made by Chris Burge, who writes:

Stanley Herbert Williamson was born on 5 January 1896, the sixth child of George and Matilda Williamson. Stanley was baptised at St.Gabriels, Pimlico, on 4 March 1896 when the family lived at 7 Clarendon Street and Stanley’s father worked as a dairyman. By 1901, the Williamsons had moved nearer to Westminster and the family had grown by one.

In the 1911 census the family had moved south of the river, living at 105 Kennington Road, Southwark. Stanley and five of his siblings lived with their parents, occupying eight rooms. Stanley’s father was now a wharfman. Stanley, then 15, was a ‘forwarder’ (he undertook the processes following sewing and including covering) and older brother Walter a ‘finisher’ in the bookbinding trade.

Stanley volunteered in the first days of November 1914, travelling to Brighton to join a newly formed cyclist battalion, the 2nd/6th battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment. His original service number was 920. The battalion had converted to infantry by November 1915 and on 4 February 1916 sailed from Devonport to India. Stanley’s death in 1917 was not combat related.

He had nominated his father as next of kin and sole legatee. George Williamson received his son’s war gratuity and medals in 1919 and 1920. Stanley’s parents lived at 4 St Martin’s Road, close to the site of the Stockwell Memorial, for around a decade after the Great War.

Sidney Williams

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S. Williams

Rifleman, “D” Coy., London Regiment (Queen’s Westminster Rifles)
Service no. 556984
Died on 11 May 1918, aged about 36
Remembered at Cologne Southern Cemetery, Germany

Chris Burge writes:

Sidney Williams was born in 1881, the youngest of Charles Richard Williams and Mary Ann Ford’s 10 children. Sidney spent his formative years in the heart of Southwark, living near London Bridge Station in Borough High Street above his father’s successful clothier and tailor shop. At the time of the 1901 census, Sidney was not quite 20 and working as an auctioneer’s clerk. 

On retirement, Charles Richard and Mary Ann Williams moved to the relative quiet of 86 Gauden Road, North Clapham, where they rented four rooms. In the 1911 census, Sidney, 29, was living there with his parents and two sisters, 45-year-old Emily and 35-year-old Ada Lily, a schoolteacher. Sidney’s parents were now 73 and his father Charles lived on a masonic annuity (he had joined the Royal Jublia masonic lodge in the year before Sidney was born). Sidney was still working as an auctioneer’s clerk. Six other rooms at the same address were home to the family of Sidney’s older brother Mark Albert Williams, his wife Ellen and their three children. 

Sidney Williams married Ethel Mary Edwards, a dressmaker originally from Dorset, in the spring of 1914 in a civil ceremony, which took place near the home of Ethel’s married sister Florence Richards who lived near Acton Green, west London. The couple lived in Jefferys Road, Clapham after their marriage. Ethel died soon after the birth of their son Frederick Charles Sidney Williams on 27 October 1916 and was buried in Wandsworth cemetery. 

Sidney Williams may have been put on Army Reserve due to his personal circumstances, but around August 1917 he was called up and processed at the Central Recruitment Office in Whitehall, joining the 16th Bn. London Regiment as rifleman 556984 Williams, leaving baby Frederick in the care of his late wife’s sister, Florence Robinson. He entered France on 2 January 1918, and was one of around 50 reinforcements who joined the Queen’s Westminster Rifles in the first week of 1918. 

They moved to the Gravelle sector in February where they remained during March. It was Sidney’s misfortune to be in the forward zone on 28 March 1918 when they suffered the full force of the enemy’s spring offensive, and was among the many killed, wounded and missing. After suffering a wound to his right leg, he was taken prisoner and held in the Friedrichsfeld POW Camp, near Wesel in Germany. Poor camp conditions and the lack of good medical care led to his death from sepsis on 11 May 1918, as reported on the camp’s ‘Toten-List’ (death list), dated 21 May 2018. 

When taken prisoner Sidney had given his 80-year-old father Charles as his next of kin and he would have been the first to be informed of their youngest son’s death. Both Charles and Mary Ann died in 1919, and it was left to other family members to arrange for Sidney’s name to be added to the Stockwell War Memorial. 

Sidney’s son Frederick remained with his aunt Florence and her husband and died in 1988, aged 72.

S. Williams. Rifleman, “D” Coy., London Regiment (Queen’s Westminster Rifles). Service no. 556984. Died on 11 May 1918, aged about 36. Remembered at Cologne Southern Cemetery, Germany

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.