Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

Chris Burge

William Henry White

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W. H. White
Service no. 41697
Private, Leicestershire Regiment, 8th Battalion; formerly 11013, Royal West Surrey Regiment
Born in Stockwell; enlisted in Lambeth; lived in Stockwell
Killed in action on 27 May 1918, aged 19
CWGC: “Only son of William Henry and Matilda White, of 13, Mordaunt St., Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Soissons Memorial, Aisne, France

Chris Burge writes:

William Henry White, a private in the Leicestershire Regiment, was Home (that is, in England) until 3 May 1916 when he sailed for Le Havre. The records show that he returned to London on 22 August 1916 and was admitted to the 3rd London General Hospital at Wandsworth, where he was treated for trench fever. This disease (variously known as Wolhynia fever, shin bone fever, quintan fever, five-day fever) is caused by an organism transmitted by body lice, and conditions at the front were ideal for its spread.

Soldiers serving on the front line lived in squalid, damp and cold conditions. In the fire trench – that is the foremost of three zig-zag trenches, the others being the support trench and the reserve trench – soldiers frequently lived amongst corpses and body parts, and faeces. These were ideal conditions for rats (they were said to have been as big as cats) and flies, for transmitting dysentery, and lice. In the freezing conditions (only the hottest summer days produced balmy nights), men huddled together for warmth, and thereby enabled the lice to pass from one human host to another.

Even when not in the fire trench the men stayed close to one another for they were not allowed to light fires. These would attract shellfire from the enemy or, later in the war, fire from enemy aircraft.

Soldiers did not stay indefinitely in these conditions: generally, four days’ service in the fire trench was followed by four in the support trench and eight in the reserve. The rest of the month was spent ‘in rest’ during which they performed other services, such as supplying the trenches with rations, water and ammunition. Opportunities for bathing and washing clothes were limited – the aim was to take a bath every 10 days but this was not always possible.

Lice infested the seams of the soldiers’ uniforms. To kill them required heat – either hot irons, steam or very hot water. At the front, these methods were out of the question, and the only option was to run a candle up and down the the seams or to pick them off by hand. This process was done in while sitting round in groups and became known as “chatting up”, giving rise to a new term for conversational banter. Lice eggs attached to body hair were killed using a paste of naphthalene (once used in mothballs and moderately toxic).

From 1915 to 1918 between one-fifth and one-third of all British troops reported ill had trench fever, and it is estimated that 97% of men, including officers, had lice.

Trench fever, while rarely fatal, was an unpleasant disease. Symptoms come on suddenly and include high fever, severe headache, painful eyeballs, soreness of the muscles of the legs and back, and hyperaesthesia of the shins. The patient may relapse frequently and recovery usually takes about a month. Even so, White’s 47 days in hospital were, however, probably a welcome respite from the horrors of the front and a spell at Home may have saved many others from death or mutilation when in the line of fire.

White, a messenger in civilian life, claimed to be just over 19 when he enlisted on 13 August 1915, although he was probably only just over 16. Recruits had to be 18 (and 19 before they could be sent abroad). White’s file does not indicate that his deception was discovered. He was 5 feet 4 inches tall, with a 34 inch chest (expandable by 4 inches), and a scar on the middle finger of his right hand. His physical development was judged to be “good”.

He went missing on 27 May 1918 and was later declared dead.

Information from the 1911 census
William Henry White was a 12-year-old schoolboy in 1911. He lived at 8 Rattray Road, Brixton with his parents, William Henry White, 40, an assistant in a bootmaker’s shop, born in South Lambeth, and Matilda White, 33, from Battersea. The family had four rooms. He was one of four children, all born in South Lambeth, the others being: Annie Matilda White, 13; Doris Ella White, 9 and Ethel Alice White, 1.

Henry Ingham White

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H. I. White
Service no. 550898
Rifleman, London Regiment, 12th Bn (Queen’s Westminster Rifles)
Died 15 August 1917, aged about 30
Remembered Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Belguim
Son of William George and Emma White, of 11, Stirling Rd., Stockwell, London.

This identification was made by Chris Burge, who writes:

Henry Ingham White was born in 1887, the youngest of William George and Emma White’s two sons. He was baptised on 20 July 1887 at St Barnabas, Pimlico, where William and Emma had been married seven years before. The family lived at 3 Union Street, Pimlico Bridge. Henry’s father worked as a ‘shopman’.  Within a decade the White family had moved to 11 Stirling Street, off Clapham Road. Young Henry was still at school, this brother William John, then aged 17, assisted their father who managed a trunk shop.

In the 1911 census, the four members of the White family were living in relative comfort as occupants of the seven-room property at 11 Stirling Street. The census revealed that only two of William and Emma’s six children had survived into adulthood. William John, then 28, and Henry, then 22, were part of the family business. Henry’s father was the manager of a trunk and bag manufacturer, his brother William John was the secretary, while Henry was a ‘fancy leather worker’. The location of their premises and full extent of their business is not known.

The key surviving document in understanding the war service of Henry Ingham White is his entry in the Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects. A low service number of 3308 was added beneath the 550898 number and his war gratuity amounted to £13. The 3308 service number may not appear on Henry’s medal records, but the Soldiers’ Effects information indicates someone who joined in 1914.

When Henry Ingham White decided to volunteer, his links with Pimlico drew him to 58 Buckingham Gate, Westminster, home of the Queen’s Westminster Rifles, the 16th Battalion County of London Regiment. The QWR had departed for France on 1 November 1914 and were recruiting for their reserve. Perhaps Henry met Frederick Watson Haggett from Clapham as he stood in line on 7 November 1914. New recruits were posted to the battalion’s 2nd or 3rd reserve for training. Henry White became private 3308, and Frederick Haggett private 3309. Frederick Haggett and men with similar numbers were drafted in France at the end of June 1916, soon to be on the Somme. It is possible Henry was held in England for other duties. It is certain that Henry was in France by 19 April 1917, a replacement for men lost in the Arras offensive.

The QWR were in action in July and August 1917 near Ypres in what is commonly known as Passchendaele. Henry was wounded on, or shortly before, 15 August after trenches held by the QWR were heavily shelled. He was evacuated to the 3rd Canadian Casualty Clearing Station at Remy sidings, some five miles behind front lines. Hundreds of casualties passed through the Station between 14-16 August. Henry Ingham White was one of the five deaths noted on the 15 August 1917.

It was a bitter blow for Henry’s father who had lost both his wife Emma and sister Caroline in 1916. William George White passed away in 1924, aged 65. An image of Henry’s CWGC headstone and the White family grave may be found here: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10778460/henry-ingham-white.

Albert Victor Owers White

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A.V.O. White
Private, The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), 1st Bn
Service no. G/3438
Died on 25 September 191, aged 22
Remembered at Loos Memorial, France

CWGC: “Son of Mrs. Florence White, of 66, Wilcox Rd., South Lambeth Rd., London.”

Albert White was born in 1894 in the village of March, Cambridgeshire. His parents Edward White and Florence Mary Owers had married in 1875 and Albert was the youngest of nine children when he was born. In the 1901 census the White family were living in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in Fen Country, where both his parents and the majority of his siblings had been born. His father was working on steam-driven threshing machines. 

Florence Mary White first appeared in Lambeth on the Electoral Rolls of 1907 and 1908 living at 58 Walnut Tree Walk in Kennington. By the time of the 1911 census, Florence was living nearby at 123 St George’s Road, Southwark, a busy thoroughfare running from Westminster Bridge Road to the Elephant and Castle. Florence was now 49 and in 25 years of marriage had borne 13 children, three of whom had died as infants. Florence neglected to state the ‘relationship’ of the individuals she named on her census form, but two were clearly her youngest children, Albert Victor White, 17, and Mildred Victoria Landlord White, 13. The enumerator later pencilled in the relationships, wrongly identifying widow Florence Clarissa Hayhoe as Florence’s sister; she was Florence’s daughter, who had married horse dealer Harry Hayhoe in 1898. He died in 1909 when the couple were living in Borough Road. 

Florence White earned her income as a landlady. Her own father and brothers had been piano-tuners. Perhaps it was her love of music and the theatre which led her to seek ‘theatrical types’ as her guests. Her boarders in 1911 were two actors and a music-hall artist. Albert had also been attracted to the world of theatre and Florence described her son’s occupation, confusingly, as ‘super-theatrical’. The White family and their three guests lived in six rooms of the property with a young couple and their baby son in three other rooms. 

An entry in the Queens Royal West Surrey Regiment Rough Register of Recruits shows 3438 Private White A. aged 21 enlisted on 16 November 1914. Albert volunteered in central London and probably trained with the 3rd Royal West Surrey Reserve based at the Chatham Lines before he was sent to France on 11 March 1915. A draft of 50 men reached the 1st RWS on Sunday 14 March when the battalion was in billets in the Bethune area. The battalion was held in reserve and on standby during March and April. More routine work followed in May. One man was killed and five wounded in a party helping to collect the wounded and bury the dead during the night near Givenchy on 26 May. June and July were months of providing various working parties before the battalion entered trenches near Cuinchy in the last week of July, sustaining small numbers of casualties on most days before returning to billets on 15 August 1915. More trench duty followed before the battalion prepared for their part in the offensive on 25 September. They advanced under cover of smoke wearing rudimentary gas helmets. Counterattacked, they were forced to retire under heavy machine-gun fire. Nine officers were killed or wounded, a total of 226 other ranks were killed, wounded or missing. Private 3438 White A. was posted missing that day.

Florence made enquiries via the Red Cross, hoping that Albert was a prisoner of war. The related card record showed her son had served in ‘D’ company, but there was no trace of the missing soldier who had ‘disparu [disappeared] 25 Sept 1915’. Florence gave her address as ‘Mrs. F. M. White, 3 Lansdowne Gardens, Stockwell, London S.W.’. The reply was ‘rien [nothing] 17.11.15’. After some months, Albert White was officially presumed to have died on or since 25 September 1915.

After 1918 Florence moved from Lansdowne Gardens to 66 Wilcox Road where she remained until 1928. There are no existing public records that show Albert’s initials as A.V.O.; to the Army he was plain Albert. Florence may have added two initials to make her son’s name more prominent on the Stockwell War Memorial. chris burge 

a.v.o. white. Private, The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), 1st Bn. Service no. G/3438. Died on 25 September 191, aged 22. Remembered at Loos Memorial, France

George Robert Henry Wedderburn

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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. 

Gilbert Roland Webb

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G.R. Webb
Service No. 5768
Gunner, Royal Field Artillery, 45th Bty
Died on 6 April 1916
Remembered at Dickebusch New Military Cemetery, Belgium

Chris Burge writes:

Gilbert Roland Webb was born in Bristol in 1893, the first child of Francis James and Emily Charlotte Webb. Gilbert was baptised on 1 March 1893 at St Clement’s Church, Bristol. By the time of the 1901 census, Gilbert the was oldest of four siblings. His father worked on print machines. By the time of the 1911 census, Francis James Webb had brought his family to London and was living in Lambeth. When Gilbert’s father completed his census return, the household consisted of Francis James Webb, 44 ; Emily Charlotte Webb, 41; Frederick George Webb, 17; William Edward Webb, 15; Lilian Emily Webb, 13; Frances May Webb, 11; Arthur Frank Webb, 8; Albert Joseph Webb, 6; Ernest James Webb, 4; Thomas John Webb, 2; and baby Emily Charlotte Webb, 1. In 25 years of marriage, Gilbert’s mother had borne 15 children, with 10 surviving infancy. The family of 11 were living in six rooms at 3 Wheatsheaf Lane, a subdivided property housing 11 other people at 3a Wheatsheaf Lane, close to the Mission Hall, the Wheatsheaf Public House and Wyvil School.

Gilbert was not in Lambeth in 1911 as he was by now a serving soldier, a gunner in the 133rd Battery of the Royal Field Artillery, counted on census day as in barracks at Ewshot near Farnham, Hampshire. Mobilised at the beginning of the war, Gunner Webb was part of the 45th Battery of the 42nd Brigade RFA attached to the 3rd Division of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) which landed in France on 18 August 1914. Gilbert Webb’s battery supported all the 3rd Division’s actions in 1914, at Mons, on the Marne and on the Aisne and was present in the Ypres salient in 1915. In late March and early April 1916 the six 18-pounder guns of Gilbert Webb’s battery fired in support of operations at the St Eloi Craters, a nasty place, three miles south of Ypres where there had been much mining and counter-mining activity. The explosion of three large mines by the British on 27 March led to a gruesome struggle for control of the craters. The 42nd Brigade had fired 11,063 rounds in the week prior to 2 April. As the British barrage continued, the batteries near the Dickebusch Road and Lake were badly hit by counter-battery fire, including gas shells, on 6 April 1916. Gunner Gilbert Webb died of his wounds on this day.

Members of the the Webb family were living at 2 Horace Street, off Wilcox Road at the end of the war and up to 1925. Gilbert’s mother had died at the beginning of 1914 in Kent, aged 43. Gilbert’s father Francis James Webb passed away in Lambeth in 1934, aged 67.

Frederick Walter Warman

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F.W. Warman
Lance Corporal, Royal Irish Rifles, 15th Bn.
Service no. 44903
Died on 22 November 1917, aged about 32
Remembered at Cambrai Memorial, Louverval, France

Chris Burge writes:

Frederick Walter Warman was born in Kent in 1885, the third child of John and Ellen Eva Warman. By 1891, John and Ellen lived with their five children close to the seafront at 2 Pleasant Villas, Victoria Road, St Lawrence, Ramsgate in Kent. John Warman, who worked in a public house as a barman and cellarman, died in 1894. By the time of the 1901 census widowed Ellen was running her home as a boarding house, with the assistance of her 21-year-old daughter Lilian. Frederick, 15, was employed in a local hotel, possibly the nearby Granville Hotel on Victoria Parade.

In the 1911 census, Ellen had moved a short distance to 1 Avenue Villa, Avenue Road. Her three-storey home, one of four in the terrace, was adjacent to Holy Trinity Church and the open space of Arklow Square. Ellen now lived with three of her five surviving children: Lillian, 31, John, 27, and Ernest, 23. Both of Frederick’s brothers worked as hotel porters. The six-room property was also home to two male boarders. Frederick Warman was living at 83 Carter Street, Walworth, south-east London, renting one of Annie Smith’s five rooms, and was working in London hotels.

He married Florence Agnes Rowland early in 1915, in Southwark. She was the daughter of confectionery maker James Rowland who had premises in Borough High Street, Southwark, and a family home in 247 South Lambeth Road, Stockwell. The couple’s son, John Metcalf Warman, was born on 21 July 1915. Frederick’s brothers Ernest and John had both volunteered by the end of 1915, but Frederick waited to be conscripted. 

He was called up in the second half of 1916 and sent to France in February 1917 as Lance Corporal 8838 Warman of the 1st/8th London Bn (The Post Office Rifles). At some stage in 1917, he was transferred to the 9th Royal Irish Rifles and renumbered L/Cpl. 9/44903. He received medical treatment for a bad case of trench fever, a lice-borne infection, in August 1917 at the 18th General Hospital in France, which was then run by the US Army. The 8th and 9th RIR were amalgamated at the end of August 1917. 

Late in 1917, Frederick Warman was with the 15th RIR who were part of a major offensive near Cambrai, when tanks were used en masse for the first time. Their assault on part of the Hindenburg line on 22 November was met with stiff resistance and the 15th RIR suffered many casualties. Soon after, Frederick’s wife Florence received news that her husband had been posted missing that day. Florence made enquiries through the Red Cross in the hope that Frederick was still alive. A search was made but the response was ‘négatif envoyé’, Frederick had not been found as a prisoner. 

Six months later, in July 1918, Frederick Warman was officially presumed to have died on or since 22 November 1917. Florence was awarded a weekly widow’s pension of 13 shillings and 9 pence on 27 July 1918. She was still at her Stockwell address in 1920 when she made the decision to emigrate to America with her young son John. 

Ernest Petley Warman

In 1915, Frederick’s brother Ernest Petley Warman volunteered in Ramsgate. Ernest landed in France on 14 November 1915, as private 53284 of the 18th Royal Fusiliers. Just a few weeks before, he had married Folkestone-born Annie Elizabeth Standing in central London. The couple had first met when Annie was working at the Granville Hotel, Ramsgate, before the outbreak of war. At the end of April 1917, Ernest’s wife Annie learnt that her husband had been posted missing. Not giving up hope, Annie made enquiries via the Red Cross in July 1917. A search was made but nothing was found, and in late 1917 Ernest Petley Warman was presumed to have died on 1 April 1917. Mrs Annie E Warman was awarded a widow’s pension on 29 December. 

Ernest Petley Warman is remembered on a grave of the Standing Family in Folkestone and on the Arras Memorial. His widow, married Charles Ernest Boddy in 1929 at St Luke, Berwick Street, Westminster. 

John Philip Warman 

In 1915, Frederick’s brother John Philip was working as head porter at the Royal Bath Hotel, Bournemouth and he married local-born Hilda Constance Hembury on 16 June. John decided to attest at Bournemouth under Lord Derby’s Group Scheme, under which men could enlist on the understanding that unmarried men would be called up first, in November 1915, hoping to defer his service. He would have been issued with a grey armband and have his National Registration card stamped, “ATTESTED 24 Nov 1915”. John was finally called up on 25 January 1917. At 5ft 10in and weighing 15 stone, John P Warman found himself posted to the 3rd Grenadier Guards for initial training. When medically examined, it was noted he was ‘not fit for marching’. John was sent to France in April 1918, after the death of his brother Ernest and fearing the worse for his missing brother Frederick. He survived the war and returned to his family in early 1919.