Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

Chris Burge

John or Jack Jordan

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J. Jordan
Private, Royal Fusiliers, 2nd Bn.
Service no. L/12725
Died on 25 April 1915, aged 31.
Remembered at Helles Memorial, Turkey

Brother of Albert Edward Jordan and Frank Andrew Jordan

Chris Burge writes:

John (aka Jack) Jordan was born in Hammersmith in 1883, the fifth child of parents George Thomas and Mary Ann Jordan. John’s father was a self-employed jeweller. In the 1891 census the Jordan family were living in two rooms at 4 Broomgrove Road, off Stockwell Road, an area described as ‘very poor’ in social surveyor Charles Booth’s 1890s map of London. 

The family’s fortunes had not improved in the following decade with the birth of a further six children. When John’s youngest sibling Violet was baptised in April 1900 at St John the Divine, Kennington, the family were living at 7 Thompsons Avenue, in one of the poorest parts of Camberwell. John’s father George, aged 42, died later in the same year leaving Mary Ann to support seven young children with the help of her four children of working age. In the 1901 census, the Jordan family were still living at 7 Thompsons Avenue; Mary was working as a collar ironer and the family of 12 lived in just three rooms in a property which housed two other families in four other rooms, making a total of 23 people at this address. The family’s situation deteriorated to the point that some of Mary’s youngest children were briefly taken into care and John’s younger brother Frank, aged 11, was sent to the Training Ship HMS Exmouth where he stayed for three years. 

By the time of the 1911 census, the Jordan family were living in three rooms at 4 Nealdon Street, Stockwell, a property which also housed a greengrocer’s family of seven in five other rooms. When Mary, now aged 49, completed the census return her household consisted of: Alfred, 26, a self-employed fishmonger; Frank, 19,  who was in ‘Army Reserves (Private 6th Rifle Bde)’; Albert, 17, a carman; Letty, 13; and Violet, 11. and Albert was a carman for the L.P.D. company. 

Jack was over 4,000 miles away in India. He had joined the regular Army around 1907, serving as Private L/12725 of the Royal Fusiliers whose 2nd Battalion had been posted to India in 1908 and were based at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. In the 1911 census, Jack was counted as in the Hugh Rose barracks at Jabalpur. Jack’s battalion did not return to England until December 1914. By March 1915 orders were received to move to an eastern destination as the battalion was to be part of the ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign. 

The 2nd Bn. Royal Fusiliers were the first to land on beach ‘X’ on 25 April 1915. Unlike at other beaches, they faced little opposition until after scrambling up the cliffs and moving inland. For several days there was no respite in the fighting. The battalion had started with 26 officers and 948 other ranks but by 30 April 1915 were reduced to 12 officers and 481 other ranks. Jack Jordan was killed in action on the day he landed on Gallipoli. He is listed in the records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as ‘Jordon’.

1915 was a bleak year for the Jordan family. John’s younger brother Frank was killed in action on 25 September 1915 in Belgium and his brother Albert was killed in action in France on 19 October 1915. 

By the end of the war, Mary Jordan was had returned to the familiar surroundings of Broomgrove Road and lived with Alfred, Letty and Violet at number 19, which remained their home into the 1930s.

Geoffrey William John Dee

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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

Edward George Cox

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Chris Burge writes:

E.G. Cox
Rifleman, London Regiment (London Irish Rifles), ‘B’ Coy.
Service no. 590198
Died in hospital in the UK on 18 February 1919, aged 22
Remembered at West Norwood Cemetery and Crematorium

Edward George Cox was born on 10 May 1896 and baptised at Holy Trinity (demolished in 1953), Vauxhall Bridge Road in Pimlico on the north side of the Thames, on 7 June 1896 when his parents Edward Charles and Harriet Cox were living at 32 Ponsonby Terrace in Pimlico. Edward’s father worked as a moulder in a brass foundry. Four years later, when Edward’s sister Mabel Johanna was born the family lived at 30 Garden Street [where?]. At the time of the 1901 census, the Cox family were living in two rooms at 54 Romney Buildings in Erasmus Street, just behind the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain). 

At the age of five, in 1902, Edward George Cox attended the newly-opened Millbank School, across the street from the Romney Buildings. The school, and Edward’s early home, were part of the Millbank Estate, an ambitious housing scheme built between 1897 and 1902 by the London County Council. Two years later, when their third child, Ivy Georgina, was born, the Cox family had moved again, to 11 Hunter Buildings on the recently built London County Council Borough Road Estate.  

By 1911, Edward and family were living in more suburban surroundings at 5 Hill Street, Peckham, near the corner with Bird in Bush Road and close to the Surrey Canal. The Cox household then consisted of: Edward Charles, 40, and Harriett, 44; Edward George, 14; Mabel Johanna, 10; and Ivy Georgina, seven. In 16 years of marriage, Edward’s mother had borne four children, of whom three had survived. Edward had followed his father and now worked in a brass foundry. The Cox family lived in four rooms, the fifth room being occupied by Dora Saunders, a 74-year-old widow in a receipt of her old-age pension. 

Edward George Cox was already a member of the part-time Territorial Force at the outbreak of war. His original service number 1349 corresponds to those joining the London Irish Rifles towards the end of 1913, qualifying him as a recipient of the Territorial Force War Medal. (Note: The CWGC information refers to the wrong TF medal. The criteria for the Territorial Force War Medal is explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_War_Medal.)The medal roll of the 18th (County of London) Battalion (London Irish Rifles) was annotated with the dates and theatres Edward George Cox served in, and this corresponds with soldiers in the 2nd Battalion who served in France, Salonika, Egypt and Palestine 

Captain Ernest May wrote the story of the 2/18th London Regiment (2nd Battalion), London Irish Rifles during the Great War, a work started in 1926 but not completed and published until 1972. It explains how the battalion was disbanded in Palestine around June and July 1918 and the men drafted to other battalions in their Brigade. But the medal roll entry for Edward George Cox shows him leaving the theatre months earlier, on 6 March. Although wounding or sickness are possible explanations, there are no surviving records to say why or when Edward George Cox returned to the UK. The Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects merely records that Edward George Cox ‘died in hospital’ on 18 February 1919. His death was registered in the district of Weymouth and he was buried on 25 February 1919 at West Norwood Cemetery.

The Cox family were living at 48 Stockwell Park Crescent when Edward’s father passed away in 1934, aged 64. Edward’s mother Harriet moved to Sutton to live with her married daughter Ivy. Harriet Cox died in Sutton in 1942, aged 75. 

John Henry Burns

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J. Burns (listed on the Memorial as J. Burns)
Corporal, Royal Army Medical Corps, 15th Field Ambulance
Service no. 6003.
Died on 20 April 1918, aged 28
Remembered at Tannay British Cemetery, Thiennes, France

Chris Burge writes:

John Henry Burn was born in 1890 and baptised on 15 January at St Mary the Less, Lambeth, the first child of Henry Thompson Burn and Elizabeth (née Castle) who had married on 11 May 1886 at St Paul, Walworth.  By 1901 there were five children and the family lived at 39 Neptune Street (Seaham Street in 1912) along with two other families, totalling 16 people. 

In the 1911 census, John, then 21, is shown living in three rooms at 35 Dashwood Road with his parents and six younger siblings. John’s father Henry worked as a bill poster,  while John worked as a cellarman. By then Elizabeth had given birth to 13 children, seven surviving. 

Dashwood Road, sandwiched between the Longhedge and Nine Elms locomotive works and criss-crossed by the lines of the competing railway companies, was an area of social deprivation.  John’s home was a few yards from both St Andrews Church and the Bolingbroke Public House. It  was never silent and always grimy. 

John’s service number is within the range of men who joined the RAMC early in 1912, when initial training took place at Aldershot.  To the Army he was 6003 Burns.

John was sent to France on 20 August 1914, one of four men attached to the Regimental Medical Officer’s team for the 5th Divisional Ammunition Column. At some later date he was transferred to the Division’s 15th Field Ambulance, a mobile medical unit with orderlies, bearers, horse and motor transport.  It had been a long war and on 14  April 1918 the 15th  FA moved near Boeseghem.  Five days later, a party of 20 men was sent to assist the 13th  FA, based at Thiennes, who were hurriedly moving their advanced dressing station to the safety of a cellar, after their farmhouse location was shelled.  The keeper of the 15th  FA war diary noted on 20 April that ‘1 man Cpl. Burns killed by shell at CROIX MORRAISE ref map 36A 1/40000 J.21.C.10.2’ (50°38’49.5”N 2°32’03.4”E Rue de Tannay France).          

John’s parents wanted an inscription for their son’s headstone at Tannay British Cemetery, making sure his name was correct.  It seems possible the evidence they provided to those dealing with the Stockwell War Memorial led to his name being spelt as he was known to the Army. 

Henry Thompson and Elizabeth Burn were living at 55 Gaskell Street by 1918, remaining there for several years after the war.

John Edward Brown

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J. E. Brown
Private, Middlesex Regiment, 18th Battalion
Died 22 June 1916, aged 23
Service no. PW/2950
Remembered at Gorre British And Indian Cemetery

Chris Burge writes:

John Edward Brown was born in Peckham in 1893, one of five children and the only son of Mark Edward and Alice (née Spash) Brown, who were married in 1891 at St Agnes, Southwark. The family later moved to Lambeth.

In the 1911 census,  John was living with his mother and three of his younger sisters.  Then 18, John worked as a warehouseman for a dealer in glass and china.  Five people shared four rooms at 68c Hackford Road. The family had moved to 20 Nealdon Street by 1914. 

John volunteered on 25 May 1915, enlisting in London. Just three sheets of his original service papers have survived; they describe him as a labourer who was 5ft 6in tall and weighed 124lbs. John’s vision without glasses was only good enough for a ‘non shooting unit’. He found himself posted to one of the Middlesex Regiment’s three pioneer battalions. By July 1915, the 18th Middlesex had moved to the Clipstone Camp near Mansfield, home to thousands of soldiers in training. The final months before departing for France were spent on Salisbury Plain. Private Brown landed at La Havre on 15 November 1915.

By June 1916, John’s battalion had suffered fewer than 20 casualties. In the third week of the month they were working on the construction of dug-outs and shelters, with one company ‘mining under no-mans lands’.   On the 21st at 2am the enemy blew several large mines destroying part of the front line where C and D companies were working. Total casualties were: seven killed (including John), one officer and 20 men wounded and one missing.  

John’s parents remained at 26 Hargywne Street until at least 1930.  

Mark Harry Briggs

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H. Briggs
Private, London Regiment, ‘A’ Coy. 23rd Bn.
Service no. 701038
Died on 5 April 1918, aged 19
Remembered at Martinsart British Cemetery, Somme, France

Chris Burge writes:

Mark Harry Briggs was born in Lambeth on 14 May 1898 and was baptised at All Saints’, South Lambeth on 12 June. He was named after his father, and his parents Mark Harry and Elizabeth Jane Briggs were living in three rooms at 5 Madrid Place, off Dorset Road, which was still the family home in 1911. Six of Elizabeth’s eight children had survived infancy and in the 1911 census, Mark’s father had placed his son, now aged 12, above all his sisters names in the census return. They were: Elizabeth Jane, 17; Esther Amy, 11; Phyllis Winifred, six; Florence Gertrude, five; and Ruby Ellen, just eight months old. Mark’s father was working as a house painter and his sister Elizabeth as a domestic servant. There was one final addition to the family when Ernest John Briggs was born in 1912. 

Mark was 16 at the outbreak of war and was underage when he volunteered at St John’s Hill, Clapham Junction on 18 April 1915, the administrative base of the 23rd London Regiment. He claimed to be over 19 and at 5ft 6in in height passed the medical with ease.  He was posted to the 2/23rd London Regiment as 3556, Pte. Briggs. His parents informed the authorities of his true age and prevented him from going overseas until he was over 19. Mark spent time in the 108th Provisional Battalion before being sent to France on 29 September 1916. In the summer of 1917 he was hospitalised in France with pleurisy, suffered an arm wound in November 1917 and was unfit for duty for a month. He was granted home leave in January 1918. In March and April 1918 the 1/23rd London regiment were on the old Somme battlefield near Aveluy Wood, north of Albert. They were in the path of the enemy’s spring offensive and suffered hundreds of casualties at the end of March and particularly on 5 April 1918.  

In early May 1918 Mark’s parents received notice that he had been reported missing and his name subsequently appeared in British Red Cross & Order Of St John Enquiry List of missing or wounded on 2 August and 20 November 1918. When the military authorities presumed Mark’s death had occurred on, or since, 5 April 1918, the Briggs family were left to come to terms with their loss

It was Mark’s father who completed Army Form W5080 naming himself before his wife and children in order of precedence of the relatives of a deceased soldier. It was witnessed and countersigned at St Anne’s, South Lambeth, on 27 October 1919.The family’s address was now 2 Madrid Place. In another blow to the family, Mark’s father died late in 1921, aged 48. Mark’s mother Elizabeth only received her son medals after providing evidence of her husband’s death. 

Mark’s mother Elizabeth remained at 2 Madrid Place into the 1930s before moving to Tooting. She passed away in 1946, aged 71.