Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

Chris Burge

Joseph Rogers

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J. Rogers
Private, Hampshire Regiment, 2nd Bn.
Service no. 27971
Died on 6 May 1918, aged about 22.
Remembered at Remembered at Cinq Rues British Cemetery, Hazebrouck, Nord, France

Chris Burge writes:

Joseph Rogers, born in Lambeth in 1896, was the youngest of six siblings. He was baptised together with his two-year-old brother Edward on 16 December at St Stephen’s Church, South Lambeth. His parents, Frederick James and Annie Maria (née Seeds) Rogers, gave the family address as 18 Beech Street, off Dorset Road, Stockwell, and his father worked as a ‘carman’. By the time of the 1911 census there had been four additions to the Rogers family and Joseph was now one of ten children whose ages ranged from eight to 21. Joseph’s father now worked as a ‘fitters labourer’. Three of Joseph’s brothers worked in various jobs for the London & South Western Railway and two of his sisters worked as packers, one in a chemical factory and another in a preserves factory. Joseph, 14, worked as a ‘printers boy’. The 12 members of the Rogers family lived in four rooms at 18 Beech Street, a property which also housed another family of six in four other rooms. 

By the outbreak of war in 1914, both of Joseph’s older sisters had married. His brother Edward had married in 1913 and had two children when he was conscripted in May 1916. Because he had longstanding health problems, Edward was placed on the Army Reserve and became a worker at Vickers munitions factory in Erith, Kent. 

Joseph was conscripted towards the end of 1916 and served only in the 2nd Hampshire once in France in 1917 and in 1918. The 2nd Hampshire were present at the Arras offensive in 1917 and at 3rd Ypres, notably in August and October 1917. In March 1918 they were still in the Ypres Salient but were moved south in early April when the enemy offensive between Ypres and Bethune threatened the import centres of Armentières and Hazebrouck. The situation was only stabilised by the end of April when they were digging the reserve line around La Motte, some three miles to the south of Hazebrouk. A tour of duty in forward positions between the 6 and 13 May was described as ‘quiet with few casualties’. Enemy planes had overflown the nearby Bois d’Aval strafing and dropping bombs each afternoon with little effect, something that might have made Joseph think of his brother Charles who was in the RAF back in England in 1918. With no other detail, the casualties for the 6 May 1918 were listed as ‘3 killed, 3 wounded, 3 sick to hospital, 3 reinforcements, 1 died of wounds’. Joseph Rogers was one of those killed in action on that day.

The Rogers family were still living in Beech Street after the end of the war. Joseph’s father Frederick James Rogers died in 1929, aged 64. Annie Maria Rogers was 81 when she passed away in 1948.

Alfred Rodgers or Rogers

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A. Rodgers (on the memorial as Rodgers, in the Commonwealth War Memorial database as Rogers)
Private, East Surrey Regiment, 1st Bn.
Service no. 11158
Killed in action on 25 September 1916, aged 21
Remembered at Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France

Chris Burge writes:

Alfred Rodgers was born in November 1894 in Pimlico on the north side of the Thames, the second child of Frederick William and Mary Ellen (née Mulcahy). His older brother Frederick was born in Pimlico in 1890, in the same year that their parents had married at St John’s, Worlds End, Chelsea. By the time of the 1901 census, the four members of the Rodgers family lived at 55 Dalyell Road in Stockwell, in just one room in a property that housed two other families. The family faced considerable hardship as Alfred’s father Frederick was unable to work after the amputation of his right leg. His mother Mary was a packer in a laundry. 

In the 1911 census, brothers Frederick and Alfred Rodgers were still living with their parents, who were now both 43. The family had moved a few doors away to 40 Dalyell Road, where they lived in just two rooms of the three-storey building which also housed a family of six in four rooms, a widow in one room and a young mother and child in another room. Alfred’s father had found work as a beer bottler while his mother was working as an ironer in a laundry. Alfred’s brother Frederick, now 20, was an attendant in a cinema and Alfred, whose age was given as 18, was a shop boy for a bookmaker (betting shop). 

Frederick volunteered at the very beginning of the war, on 9 September 1914 at Marylebone, joining the Buffs (East Kent) Regiment. Within a week, as private 2176 Rodgers he was posted to the 8th Battalion at Shoreham, Sussex. His disciplinary record started to deteriorate in the spring of 1915; on six occasions between April and June he is absent without leave. The last of these was on 18 June 1915, when he was absent for over four days. On his return, he was given 14 days confinement to barracks and hauled before the Commanding Officer for a second time. On the 26 June he was posted as a deserter. He was reputedly the father of a child born in the Hastings area around March 1916 but his parents had no knowledge of his whereabouts, and may never have heard from him again. 

In mid 1915, the mayors of London boroughs were encouraged to boost the dwindling numbers of volunteers by launching new recruitment campaigns to raise local battalions. In Lambeth the designated battalion was the 11th battalion of the Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey), established on 9 June 1915. In neighbouring Wandsworth, it was the ‘Wandsworth Regulars’, the 13th (Service) battalion of the East Surrey Regiment. Alfred Rodgers chose to volunteer at Wandsworth on the 9 July 1915, giving his address as 74 Paradise Road, Clapham and stating his age as 20 years and nine months. At his medical he was recorded as 5ft 1in tall, weighing 7st 7lbs, and with a 32in chest. His recorded occupation was ‘vanguard’. His mother Mary was his next of kin. 

The battalion made a series of farewell route marches around Wandsworth in late August 1915 before moving to Witley in Surrey and to Blackdown near Aldershot by February 1916. Alfred was not with the battalion when it finally departed for France in June 1916 as he had been transferred to the 14th Reserve Battalion in May and then the 10th Reserve Battalion. on 24 June. He was finally sent to France in a draft of men supposedly destined for the 9th Battalion, who sailed from Folkestone on 27 July. 

Once in France, Alfred and others were diverted to the 1st East Surrey, joining them at the Somme front on 7 August. August was spent out of the line in a period of training and practising bombing and firing on the ranges. They returned to the trenches in very wet weather on 31 August. September was spent in and out of various support trenches in continuing bad weather until a Brigade attack on enemy position took place on 25 September. Among the many casualties was Alfred Rodgers, killed in action on that day.

When Alfred’s mother Mary Ellen took Army Form W5080 to be witnessed and countersigned at St Barnabas vicarage on 18 August 1919, she had written just her own and her husband’s names on the form as the sole relatives of her dead son. Mary Ellen received her son’s medal in August 1921. 

Alfred parents Frederick William and Mary Ellen Rodgers were still living at 74 Paradise Road in 1938. They passed away within a few months of each other in 1944, both aged 77.

Charles Rhodes

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C. Rhodes
Private, Worcestershire Regiment, 14th Bn.
Service No. 26775
Died on 19 September 1918, aged about 28
Remembered at Bac-Du-Sud British Cemetery, Bailleulval, Pas de Calais, France

Chris Burge writes:

Charles Rhodes was born in 1890 and baptised as Charles Ernest at St Peter’s Church, Norbiton in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey on 29 October 1890, when his family was living in nearby Washington Road. The 1891 census shows Charles to be the second youngest of Henry and Rossetta’s seven children. Charles’s mother died in January 1894 at the age of 34 and he lost his older sister, also named Rossetta, who died in 1899 aged 16. Charles’s widowed father Henry and four of the children were still living at Washington Road at the time of the 1901 census: Kate Louisa, 20; Frederick, 15, a van boy; Charles, 13, an errand boy; and schoolboy Frank, 11. Kate had helped bring up her younger brothers and effectively became the head of the family when Charles’s father died in the middle of 1901, aged 43. 

By the time of the 1911 census, Kate was living in Battersea and working as a general domestic servant. Frank had found work as a groom in Patcham, near Brighton. Frederick and Charles were living in one room at 12 Kimpton Road, close to Camberwell Green in southeast London. The property housed six other people in five additional rooms. Charles, now aged 22, was working as a carman for a ‘Fruiterers & Greengrocers’. Frederick, aged 25, completed the census return, giving his own occupation as ‘soldier’ and describing himself as ‘boarder’ which was later changed to ‘head’ of household. 

Charles married Ellen Butler on 15 February 1914 at St Andrew’s, Stockwell Green, opposite Hammerton’s Stockwell Brewery. Ellen had grown up in Stockwell Green and had been working as a domestic servant before her marriage. Frederick was one of the witnesses at the wedding and the couple gave 9 Moat Place as their address. Their daughter Ellen Rose was born on the 23 June 1914 and baptised on 19 August 1914 at St Andrew’s, just two weeks after the outbreak of war when Charles and Ellen were living in Louth Road.

Charles Rhodes’ service number and war gratuity imply an enlistment around December 1915, under Lord Derby’s Group Scheme. He was probably called up some time between January and March 1916. He may not have been considered A1 fit and was either posted initially to the Worcestershire Regiment’s 1st (Reserve) Garrison Battalion or directly to the ‘Severn Valley Pioneers’, the 14th (Service) Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment. The battalion landed at Le Havre on the 21 June 1916. They were on the Somme between July and November 1916, at Arras in April 1917, again on the Somme March to August 1918, and near the Hindenburg Line between September and October 1918. The battalion often worked close to the front line and acted as infantry during the fighting when the 63rd Division were forced to retreat across the old desolate Somme battlefields in March 1918. 

Charles Rhodes’ death in September 1918 was not combat-related and he was buried at Bac-Du-Sud British Cemetery at Bailleulval where a number of Casualty Clearing Stations were based. 

Charles’s Ellen and her daughter Ellen Rose were still living in Moat Place when Ellen Rose married William Crease in 1938. Three years later, Ellen married for a second time in 1941. She passed away in 1967, aged 72. Ellen Crease passed away in May 1971, aged 56.

Harry Norris

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H. Norris
Gunner, Royal Field Artillery, 6th Ammunition Col.
Service No. 70166
Died as a prisoner of war on 24 September 1916, aged about 23
Remembered at Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery, Iraq 

Chris Burge writes:

Henry (known as Harry) Norris was born in 1893 in Stepney, east London, the first child of parents of Thomas Henry and Edith (née Hollole) who had married the previous year at St Mark’s Church, Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets. Harry’s father was a serving Metropolitan Police Constable, born in Chelsea, and his mother Edith was originally from Cornwall. Harry’s younger brother Arthur was born in Chelsea in 1898 and in the 1901 census the Norris family were living in Stepney. Another child, Rose, was born in 1900 in Stepney but died as an infant and a second brother, Charles, born in 1901 and baptised at St Anne’s on South Lambeth Road on 5 August 1904, died in 1906. Henry’s third brother Albert was born Lambeth in 1905. 

In 1904 the family’s address was 39 Coronation Buildings, opposite Vauxhall Park on South Lambeth Road (since demolished and replaced with offices). In the 1911 census, Thomas and Edith Norris were living with their three sons in four rooms at 26 Radnor Terrace, off South Lambeth Road, a property that also housed two other people in one other room. Henry’s father was now 44 and his mother 46; they had been married for 18 years. Thomas listed all their children on the census return including the deceased Rose and Charles. Harry was working as a waiter at the War Office. 

Just a year later, Harry had decided to join the Army. His enlistment is recorded in the pages of the Surrey Recruitment Register. He had attested on 26 April 1912 at Kingston, Surrey, joining the Royal Horse Artillery. His stated age was 19 years 5 months and he was 5ft 9¾in in height, weighed 10st 6lb and had blue eyes. His occupation was described as ‘light porter’ and reference was made to Charles Dawes, a cheesemonger who lived with his family at 237 Wandsworth Road.

Harry was in India, serving in the Anglo-Indian Army at Kirkee (now known as Khadki) when war broke out. When the 6th (Poona) Division was mobilised in September 1914, Harry was posted to the 6th Ammunition Column of the Royal Field Artillery. On 16 October the division sailed from Bombay for Mesopotamia (an area encompassing present-day Iraq and Kuwait, and parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey), ostensibly to protect the Anglo-Persian oil pipeline and the refinery at Abadan in the Persian Gulf. Oil was vital to the British Navy. The Anglo-Indian force landed in the Shattl-Al Arab waterway in November 1914 and Harry Norris was recorded as disembarking on the 20th.

Beyond the marshlands of the lower Tigris was flat desert with no roads and no water, except in rivers. In an ill-fated advance to capture Baghdad, the Anglo-Indian forces were repulsed at Ctesiphon (Tusbun, or Taysafun) on 24 November 1915. Pursued by Ottoman forces, 6th (Poona) Division retreated to Kut-al-Amara but were surrounded and cut off after digging in on 7 December 1915. On 29 April 1916, after 147 days, the siege of Kut-al-Amara ended in a humiliating surrender. An estimated 10,061 troops and 3,248 followers were taken captive. Already weakened by hunger and disease, thousands of men were forced marched across the Syrian desert to the mountainous region of Anatolia. The survivors were mostly used as forced labour on railway construction and tunnelling work. According to the March 1916 returns taken at Kut before the surrender, the 6th Ammunition Column numbered two officers, 37 British and 96 Indian other ranks, a total of 135 men (see E.W.C. Sandes (Major E.W.C. Sandes M.C., R.E.), In Kut and Captivity: With the Sixth Indian Division, London, Murray, 1919, p.475).

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission database lists the names of 37 British servicemen who served in the 6th Ammunition Column and died as prisoners of war. Most of the men had been scattered among the camps that sprang up around the railway works in half a dozen different places in Anatolia, in both the Amanus and Tuarus Mountains. The majority perished at Baghtche and its associated camps. Among the identified deaths at the Tarsus camp was Harry Norris who died on 24 September 1916. He was not the only man from the 6th Ammunition Column at the Tarsus camp. Gunner 91160/26927, Henry Christopher Lovegrove died three days later, on 27 September 1916. Although recorded as a Gunner in the RFA by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, his entry in the Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects, 1901-1929, shows Lovegrove was in the 6th Ammunition Column and had died as a prisoner at Tarsus. Gunner Lovegrove was born in Wandsworth and his family lived near Clapham North at the time of the war, and later in Balham. His brother Harold Courtney Lovegrove was also killed in the war. 

The date at which Harry’s parents were informed of their son’s death is unknown. An official report into the treatment of British Prisoners of War in Turkey presented to Parliament in 1918 and printed by HMSO led to newspaper articles that could only have brought great distress to the families of these men. More than 60 per cent of the British troops taken prisoner at Kut were known to have died as prisoners of war. 

The Norris family had moved to 5 Meadow Road near Vauxhall Park during the war and remained there until at least 1930.

Arthur John Newman

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A.J. Newman
Rifleman, Rifle Brigade, 2nd Bn.
Service no. S/15670
Missing in action on 23 October 1916, aged about 26
Remembered at Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France

Chris Burge writes:

Arthur John Newman’s origins were in north London. He was born in Highgate, the third child of Alfred and Mary Elizabeth Newman (nee ????), and baptised at St John Holloway in Islington, on 20 April 1890; his older brother Alfred Edward was baptised on 6 January 1884 at the Archway Road Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, and his sister Edith Charlotte was baptised 16 October 1887 at St John Holloway, Islington. The family were living in Kentish Town at the time of the 1891 census and had moved to Pimlico by the time of the 1901 census. Arthur’s brother Alfred Edward was married in 1905 and set up home in Kent. 

By the time of the 1911 census, Arthur, Edith and their parents had moved to south London and were living at 19A Goldborough Road, off Wandsworth Road. Arthur‘s father was now 51 and his mother 50 and had been married 28 years. Arthur was working as a clerk, and both his parents and Edith were employed as office cleaners. The Newmans lived in four rooms of a sub-divided property that housed another family of six living in three other rooms.

Fragments of Arthur’s service papers have survived and show that he volunteered under Lord Derby’s Group Scheme on 4 December 1915, attesting at the Lambeth recruitment centre. He was not called up until 15 February 1916 and was processed at Whitehall, when he was posted to the 6th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, a reserve battalion who were based at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey, off the northern coast of Kent. On 14 June 1916, after four months of basic training, Private S/15670 Newman was sent to France in a draft of men destined for the 2nd Battalion. He reached the front on 9 July 1916. The keeper of the battalion’s war diary noted on 11 July that a draft of one officer and 50 other ranks reported for duty and were posted to C and D companies.

Arthur Newman joined the battalion when it was in billets after moving north from the Somme to the Loos sector. Several periods of trench duty in the Hohenzollern sector followed during the rest of July, August and September. By mid-October the battalion had returned to the Somme and took part, in deteriorating weather and ground conditions, in a divisional attack during the final stages of the offensive. Their assault on enemy position near Le Transloy on 23 October resulted in a loss of eight officers either killed or wounded and 230 other ranks killed, wounded or missing. Arthur was reported missing and his next of kin informed within a few weeks. In August 1917, ten months later, Arthur’s family were informed that he was officially presumed to have died on, or since, 23 October 1916. 

After the end of the war it was Arthur’s father Alfred who completed Army Form W5080 which listed the relatives of a deceased soldier in order that he could receive his son’s medals, plaque and scroll. Alfred took it to All Saints Church, XXXXXXXXX, to be witnessed and countersigned on 30 May 1919. 

Arthur’s parents were still living at 19A Goldsborough Road when the Stockwell War Memorial was unveiled in 1922. 

George Sidney Miller

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G.S. Miller
Petty Officer Stoker, Royal Navy, HMS Vanguard
Service no. 311632
Died in an explosion on 9 July 1917, aged 27
Remembered at  Chatham Naval Memorial, Kent

Chris Burge writes:

George Sidney Miller was born in Willesden, northwest London in 1892, the second child of parents George Henry and Elizabeth Miller, who were both originally from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. At the time of the 1901 census, George, 33, and Elizabeth, 29, lived in four rooms at 47 High Street Clapham with their three children: Irene, 12; George, nine; and Samuel, five. George Snr, a police sergeant, died in 1903, aged 36. On 16 January 1909 Irene married Talbert Vincent Wilcocks at St Mark’s Church, Kennington, giving their addresses as 74 and 76 Clapham Road. The marriage was witnessed by Talbert’s sister and Frederick Staughton.

By the time of the 1911 census, Irene was living in four rooms at 26A Mandalay Road, Clapham, with her husband and their two baby daughters. George Sidney Miller appeared in the census at the Royal Navy Torpedo School Ship HMS Vernon, Portsmouth, listed as ‘Stoker 1st Class’. He was listed as 22 and single, both of which were untrue. 

George Sidney Miller had joined the Navy on 1 May 1907, signing for 12 years. He claimed to have been born in Willesden on 25 November 1888. He was described as 5ft 6in tall with dark brown hair, brown eyes and a fresh complexion. He married Laura Hazelden on 17 November 1910 at St Barnabas, South Lambeth, where Laura had been baptised as a child. Her family home was at 8 Horace Street. At the time of the wedding George gave his true age, which was 18, and HMS Vernon as his place of residence. Frederick Staughton was one witness of their marriage. George and Laura’s first child, George Frederick Sidney Miller, was born on 25 April 1911 and baptised on 10 May 1911 at St Stephen’s, South Lambeth, at which time Laura gave her address as 76 Clapham Road, where she lived in one room and had been working as a laundress. 

In the 1911 census, policeman Frederick Staughton was living at 74 Clapham Road with his wife ‘Amy’ and 15-year-old stepson John Miller, born in Harlesden, northwest London. Amy Staughton was 38 and from Great Yarmouth. Frederick had married an ‘Amy Miller’ in 1906. While it’s not certain that George’s mother Elizabeth and Amy were the same person, his younger brother was baptised Samuel John Miller, which suggests Frederick Staughton may have been more than a family friend.

At the of outbreak of war, George Miller had risen to Leading Stoker and already educationally passed for Petty Officer; he was at the Pembroke II shore station. Between July 1914 and May 1916, he served on HMS Stour, part of the 9th Destroyer Flotilla that patrolled home waters. George and Laura’s second child, Eileen Laura,  was born on 7 December 1915 and baptised at St Stephen’s, South Lambeth, on two weeks later, when their home address was 35 St Stephen’s Terrace, which was virtually opposite the church.

A year later George Sidney Miller was involved in an incident that threatened to end his naval career. He appeared in court accused of the manslaughter of Herbert Jones. George Sidney Miller, 24, stoker, had been bailed in a police court on 23 November 1916 after a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Herbert Jones. The case was heard by Justice Avory on 13 December 1916 at the Old Bailey where George pleaded guilty, and was reported in newspapers soon after:

A NAVAL WHIRLWIND. A naval stoker, aged 23, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to-day to the manslaughter of Herbert Jones, whom he was said have struck outside a public-house. It was alleged that an insulting remark had been used to him and he ran amok. Mr. Justice Avory said that he doubted whether the prisoner intended to hit the deceased. You were the victim of that mistaken kindness which people show men in the services home on leave. I wish it could be made a more serious offence than is now to treat soldiers and sailors. You were mad with drink for the time being, and you ran amok. “I understand that someone called you a coward. Anything more calculated to irritate a man like you I don’t know. You ran about waving your arms like a whirlwind, striking anyone and not caring who it was.” Prisoner was bound over.

Justice Avory’s sympathetic hearing saved George from disgrace and worse. Whether it was chance or the Navy deliberately keeping George out of further trouble, he found himself sent far from London to the Fleet at Scapa Flow where he joined the crew of HMS Vanguard on 1 January 1917 and by April was an acting petty officer (stoker). HMS Vanguard was the Royal Navy’s seventh dreadnought battleship when launched in 1909, part of the Naval Arms Race that had preceded the war when the public were associated with the chant ‘We want eight and we won’t wait!’ The only time HMS Vanguard fired her guns in anger was during the battle of Jutland in 1916. In the Fleet anchorage in Scapa Flow on the evening of Monday 9 July 1917, it was overcast, with a gentle northeasterly. Vanguard and her neighbours carried out their usual evening routines until about 11.20pm when, without warning, flames became visible abaft Vanguard’s foremast, followed immediately by two heavy explosions, and the battleship disappeared under a pall of smoke. When the smoke lifted the great ship had gone. Of the 845 onboard, only two survivors were found. George Sidney Miller had died that day. 

The Naval Court of Inquiry was unable to determine any definite cause to the explosion. It was only able to conclude that it may have been due to the ignition of cordite from an ‘avoidable cause’, or the deterioration of perhaps unstable cordite. No blame was attributed to any one person. 

By the time the loss of the Vanguard was widely reported in the British press on 14 July 1917, the next of kin had been notified and Laura Miller was still at St Stephens Terrace, South Lambeth Road, SW8. When the Stockwell War Memorial was unveiled in 1922, Laura had been living at 111 Gaskarth Road, near Clapham South since 1918. It was the home of George’s married sister Irene, whose husband Talbert had served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the war. 

Laura Miller was married for a second time in 1925 to Edward Henry Gardener, an older man who had served in the Royal Navy between 1897 and 1906 and during the war. They lived in Boyd Road, Colliers Wood, from 1925, where Laura was still living when Gardener passed away in 1954. Laura passed away in Merton in 1971, aged 78. 

George and Laura’s daughter Eileen Laura Miller died in 1934, aged 18. His son George Frederick Sidney Miller died in 1989, aged 78.