W. J. Williams
Service no. R/19181
Rifleman, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, “D” Coy. 11th Bn.
Born in Vauxhall; enlisted in Piccadilly, central London; lived in Lambeth
Died on 8 August 1917, aged 30
CWGC: “Son of James and Henrietta Williams, of 36 Kenchester Street, South Lambeth, London.”
Remembered at Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Ypres, Belgium
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.
H. C. Wickens
Service no. 238091
Driver, Royal Field Artillery, “C” Bty., 342nd Bde.
Born in Westminster; enlisted in Lambeth
Died on 22 October 1918, aged 29
CWGC: “Son of Mr and Mrs H. Wickens, of 28 Wyvil Road, London.”
Remembered at Brookwood Military Cemetery, near Pirbright, Woking, Surrey
After volunteering in 1914 and completing his training, Henry Charles Wickens served with ‘C’ battery. He became seriously ill (the details are unknown) and died in the military hospital at Millbank, London in 1918.
In 1911 Henry Charles Wickens, then aged 22, was an assistant in a fish shop. He lived with his parents, Alfred Wickens, 49, who worked for a jam maker and was born in Camberwell, and Harriett Wickens, 47, whose place of birth is unknown. Henry was one of three children (the other two lived elsewhere) and the family occupied three rooms at 123 Wandsworth Road.
In 1913 Henry married Clara Caroline (née Davison), a cap finisher, at St Anne’s, South Lambeth Road. Their child, Henry Charles, was born in 1916, when Henry, then working as a doorman, and Clara lived at 75 Hercules Road, Lambeth.
In 1920 Clara married Henry F. Glasgow and died in 1927, four months after the birth of their fourth child.
National Roll of the Great War 1914-1918
WICKENS, H.C., Driver, R.F.A.
After volunteering in 1914, and completing his training he served at various stations with his battery engaged on important duties. He was unsuccessful in obtaining his transfer overseas and falling seriously ill, died in hospital at Mill Bank in 1918.
“His memory is cherished with pride.”
27, Wyvil Road, Wandsworth Road, S.W.8.
Information from the censuses
In 1911 Henry Charles Wickens, 22, lived at 123 Wandsworth Road, Stockwell and earned his living as an assistant in a fish shop. He was born in Leicester Square. He lived with his parents, Alfred Wickens, 49, who worked for a jam maker, and was born in Camberwell, and Harriett Wickens, 47, whose birthplace was not known. Henry was one of three surviving children (two had died). The family shared three rooms. In 1901 they family lived at 116 York Road, Lambeth.
H. T. Weatherley
Service no. 4712
Private, London Regiment, 24th Battalion
Died on 24 January 1916, aged about 21
CWGC: “Son of Mr A. Weatherley, of 25 Aylesford Road, Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Noeux-les-Mines Communal Cemetery, France
This is a tentative identification. I have not seen any data that relates “H.T. Weatherley” on the memorial with Henry Thomas Weatherley living at 158 Larkhall Lane in 1911. However, they both have Mr. A. Weatherley as a father – and I have not found any other H.T. Weatherleys in the area at that time.
Information from the 1911 census
Henry Thomas Weatherley was 14 and out of work in 1911. He lived with his parents, Alfred Weatherley, 45, a painter from Uxbridge, and Elizabeth Jane Weatherley (née Taylor), 45, from Maldon, Essex, at 158 Larkhall Lane, where the family had five rooms. Three siblings lived at home (one was elsewhere; one had died): Alfred Henry Weatherley, 21, a gas fitter born in Brixton, William Edward Weatherley, 18, a boot repairer; Eva May Weatherley, 11. Jack John Weatherley, a married baker, father of nine, and brother to Alfred, lived with the family, as did Malcolm John Morgan, a 30-year-old married boot repairer from Clapham.
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.
W. P. Wallis
Service no. 153407
Private, Machine Gun Corps (Infantry), 200th Battalion
Died on 3 February 1919, aged 19
CWGC: “Son of Percy William and Sarah Naomi Wallis, of 9, The Mount, Bidborough, Kent.”
Remembered at Lapugnoy Military Cemetery, France
Information from the 1911 census
Only child Walter Percy Wallis, a 12-year-old schoolboy in 1911, lived at 11 Glendall Street, Stockwell with his parents, Percy William Wallis, 38, a railway riveter from West Malling, Kent, and Sarah Naomi Wallis, 40, from Rye, Sussex. Walter was born in Ashford, Kent. They shared their four-roomed home with John James Seckert, a single 44-year-old restaurant waiter from Mayence, Germany.