Stockwell War Memorial

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Thomas William Gray

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T.W. Gray
Lance Corporal, London Regiment, 1st/24th Bn
Service no. 1909 
Died 22 April 1915, aged about 23
Remembered at Le Touret Memorial, Pas de Calais, France 

Thomas William Gray was born in 1892 in Plumstead, southeast London, the second child of Walter and Helen Elizabeth Gray.  As a child, Thomas lived in Hare Street, within sight of the Thames. It was a short walk downhill to the Woolwich ferry, with the vast complex of the Victoria and Albert Docks across the river. The area was home to the Woolwich Arsenal and a Royal Engineers barracks but still had the open space of Woolwich Common and Shooter’s Hill on its southern boundary. 

By the time of the 1911 census, the family was living in the crowded environment of Lambeth. Walter and Helen were now in their fifties. Six of their eight children had survived into adulthood, but it was just Thomas, then 18, and his sister Annie, 17, who lived with their parents.  The family included an elderly widowed aunt. Walter worked for a biscuit manufacture as a commercial clerk, Thomas was as a clerk at tourist agent and Anne was a costumier’s dressmaker. The family had four rooms at 16 Thorne Road, a house they shared with two other families.

Thomas was one of the thousands who volunteered in the first week of August 1914. He had gone to the drill hall in nearby Braganza Street (previously New Street), Kennington, where the 24th (County of London) Battalion (The Queen’s) was based.  As part of the Territorial Force, battalion was mobilised on 5 August, but were under-strength and needed to large numbers of new volunteers from Lambeth and beyond.  

Thomas was on the move in mid-August when The Queen’s marched to a camp in the St Albans-Hatfield area. Training continued through the autumn and winter until the battalion left for France, disembarking at Le Havre on the 16 March.  Thomas  had already been promoted Lance Corporal.  Between March 28 and April 18 The Queen’s were mostly employed to dig  trenches at Lapugnoy, near Bethune in northern France. A hot march on 19 April took The Queen’s into the front line trenches at Richebourg Saint-Vaast.Sporadic shelling wounded one man on 20 April, killed another and wounded two on 21 April. It was noted that ‘1 NCO was wounded from A company’ on 22 April 22. Thomas Gray’s war had been cut brutally short.

The wedding of Thomas’ sister Annie Alice May on 22 December 1917 to Robert Bessant, a former neighbour, must have brought some comfort to the family. Bessant had volunteered for The Queen’s in September 1914 but was discharged unfit in April 1916, having never served in France. 

At the end of the war Thomas’s parents received a small pension. The REgister of Soldiers’ Effects shows that the war gratuity was split between his father and May Elizabeth Martin, a dressmaker from Southwark, who we can infer was probably Thomas’s sweetheart.

Members of the Gray family remained at the Thorne Road address until at least 1932.

The Queens’s memorial is in Kennington Park.

George Harry Glover

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G. H. Glover
Service no. 11773
Private, Border Regiment, 2nd Battalion
Died of wounds age 20 on 31 March 1915
Born in Lambeth; enlisted in London; lived in Stockwell
CWGC: “Son of George Harry and Mary Jane Glover, of Stockwell, London.”
Remembered at Wimereux Communal Cemetery, France

At six foot two, George Harry Glover was one the tallest of the men on the Stockwell War Memorial. He would have towered over most of his fellow soldiers. He was well built too, for the time. 140 pounds, with a 36 inch chest which he could expand by 2 inches. Hazel eyes, brown hair and fresh complexion, complete a picture of an attractive, fit and healthy young man. He enlisted early in the war – 4 September 1914 – at the age of 20. Before the war, Glover was a furniture salesman. He had spent 2½ years in the National Naval Cadets (Wandsworth Battalion) and was discharged in 1910.

Glover was on the home front until 16 February 1915, joining the British Expeditionary Force on 17 February. He lasted just over a month on the Western Front, and after only 210 days as a British soldier succumbed to a gunshot wound to the shoulder sustained on 15 March 1915. After transferring to a hospital in Boulogne, he was deemed on 22 March he was deemed to be “improving”, but he died on 31 March.

His effects, sent to his parents, included
2 leather purses
1 keyring
5 keys
1 chain
1 watch key – broken
I combination ?
1 cigarette case containing 7 cigarettes
1 Gospel acc St John
4 letters
6 postcards
3 photos
Other items are unreadable – the records are badly damaged.

On 3 April 1915 Glover’s mother, Mary Jane, wrote to the Officer in Charge at the Record Office in Preston from her home at 19 Hargwyne Street, Stockwell, London SW:

Sir
I beg to ask if you can give me any information as to the whereabouts of Private G. H. Glover, No 11773, A Company, 2nd Batt. Border Regt, with the Expeditionary Force…

The rest of the letter is missing, but on 11 April Mary Jane wrote again:

With reference to your letter No 19550/17 of 6th April 1915 addressed to Mr Lee I wrote on behalf of my son death. He died died of wounds 31st March. Private George Glover 11773 of the Border Regt. I beg most respectfully to ask as I am his mother would you kindly say when I can have any further news regarding his death. I am sir your Obediant Servant M. J. Glover

The letter has all the appearance of having been written through tears. Even allowing for the damage to the original document, her expressions are garbled.

The army replied on 16 April: “If you write to the Officer in Charge of the hospital where your son died giving his Regiment, full name, Regiment [sic] and date of death they may be able to give some further information.”

Her son was buried at Wimereux Communal Cemetery, Grave No 303.

Benjamin James George

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B. J. George
Service no PS/2124
Private, Middlesex Regiment, 16th Battalion
Died of wounds age 25 on 15 July 1916
Born in Thornton Heath, Surrey; lived in Stockwell; enlisted in Lambeth
CWGC: “Born at Coulsdon, Surrey. Son of David John Gingell George and Emily George, of 76, Southview Rd., Southwick, Sussex.
Remembered at Hamburg Cemetery, Germany

British Army WWI Service Records 1914-1920

Benjamin James George went missing on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. His status changed to “Killed in action” on two weeks later. However, this was wrong. He was, in fact, a prisoner of war in Germany and he was suffering from gunshot wounds to the left side of the chest and pneumonia. He died in the hospital of a German prisoner of war camp (Gefangener Lager Lazarett) at Minden, a city west of Hannover and over 600 kilometres from the Front.
A document translated from the German in George’s file (transmitted to the War Office through the Red Cross) states that he was visited by a clergyman adn buried in the French Cemetery at Minderheide, Grave 145, and gives his precise time of death – 12.30am.

His effects were sent to his family: French dictionary, torch, holdall, notebook, steel mirror. These items were presumably in his dugout. It is unlikely he would have had them with him when captured.

The other details we have on George are that he was 5 feet 6 inches, with a 34½ inch chest (which he could expand by 2½ inches). He weighed just over 9½ stone. There were small moles on the left side of his neck. He had fair hair. He gave his address as 46 Hemberton Street, and his occupation as salesman. He was 25 years and 9 months old and was born in Thornton Heath. He enlisted at Lambeth. He was hospitalised at Tidworth, Hampshire for 3½ weeks in October 1915 with impetigo on the chin. Impetigo, a highly contagious skin disease, was common in soldiers, although rarely reported in the field, as soldiers would wait until it became infected before seeking health. An article in the British Medical Journal of 2 February 1918 claimed that of 1800 military patients in one of the London General Hospitals over 1400 had the condition. Treatment was long and tedious.

Information from the censuses

In 1911 Benjamin James George, then 21, was living with his brothers and sisters at 71 Stanley Street, South Lambeth:
Claude William George, 30, was designated head of the household. He worked as a sorter for the G.P.O. (General Post Office). Born in High Wycombe. Buckinghamshire.

Mabel Adelaide George, 29, was a military tailoress working for the Royal Army Clothing Department. She was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire
Elsie Annie George, 25, had no employment. She was born in Hammersmith, west London.
John George, 23, was a railway porter. He was born in Hammersmith.
Benjamin James George, 21, was a shop assistant in the book trade. He was born in Thornton Heath, Surrey.
Emily White, 25, was a cashier in a restaurant. She was born in the City of London.
Their father was a police sergeant (1901 census).

Henry Frost

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H. Frost
Service no. 2/9508
Private, East Surrey Regiment, 7th Battalion
Died on 24 March 1916, aged 29
Remembered at Calais Southern Cemetery, France

This identification was made by Chris Burge, who writes:

Henry Frost was born at the end of 1886 in Lambeth, the second youngest of what would be eight known children of parents Thomas and Letitia (née Knight) Frost. Henry’s mother died in 1897 and the family home had broken up by 1901. Henry (Harry), then 14, worked as a ‘carman’ and lived with his older brother Joseph’s family in Stockwell.

The idea of six months initial training, followed by annual camp with bounty, was attractive enough for Henry Frost to join the newly formed ‘Special Reserve’ of the East Surrey Regiment on 16 January 1908. He was described as being 5ft 2ins (1.6m) tall, weighing 114lbs (51.5kg) and with brown eyes and dark brown hair. Part way through his initial training, Henry Frost decided his future lay in the Army and he transferred to a regular battalion of the East Surrey Regiment, becoming private 9508, Frost, on 25 April 1908. After two years in the UK, his battalion was posted overseas in 1910 and Henry Frost would not return to England until late in 1914 after the outbreak of the Great War.

After a short period of acclimatisation and re-fit the the 2/East Surreys, arrived in France on 19 January 1915. Henry Frost suffered a bad case of frostbite to both feet due to the squalid conditions in front line trenches. He was invalided back to England on 17 February 1915. He returned to duty on 8 April 1915, posted to the 3/East Surreys at Dover to regain fitness before returning to France on 14 December 1915, in time for another winter. Henry Frost did not rejoin his old battalion but was posted to the 7/East Surreys, part of Kitchener’s New Armies.

In March 1916, Henry Frost’s battalion manned trenches opposite the infamous Hohenzollern Redout, which had been the scene of bitter fighting in 1915. Between 7 and 18 March, the 7/East Surreys were subjected to intense enemy shelling, suffering 34 killed, 22 missing and 243 wounded. Another 39 were hospitalised with shell shock. Henry Frost was likely to have been wounded around this time and evacuated to one of the hospitals at Calais before he succumbed to his wounds on 24 March 1916.

At some stage Henry Frost had nominated as next of kin both his bother Joseph Frost living at 11 Moat Place, Stockwell, and his brother George who lived in Norwood. It was Joseph Frost who received Henry’s medals in 1920. In the absence of a sole legatee, the war gratuity was paid in equal shares to his six brothers and two married sisters.

The creation of the Stockwell War Memorial was their chance to the honour the name of a lost brother.

John Morgan French

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J. M. French
Service no. 668
Gunner, Royal Garrison Artillery, 1st/5th Glamorgan Bde.
Born in Lambeth; enlisted in Cardiff
Died of wounds aged 25 on 31 August 1916
CWGC: “Son of John W. French, of 282, South Lambeth Rd., London.”
Remembered at Richmond Cemetery, Surrey

Information from the 1901 census

In 1901 the French family lived at 59 Mawbey Street, South Lambeth. John French, 41, was a brakesman. He was born in Little Baddow, Essex. Sarah French, 41, was born in Glamorganshire, Wales. Rose A. French, 12, John M. French, 10, Frederick French, 7, were all at school and all were born in Lambeth. Lawrence Swan, 25, a 25-year-old single steam engine maker from Burntisland, Fifeshire, Scotland, and William Freeborn, 21, a railway porter from Turweston, Northamptonshire boarded with the family.

John Morgan French, who at some point moved to Cardiff and worked for the Western Mail as a compositor, is also remembered on the Roath Local History website Western Mail Roll of Honour, where you can find further details.

Frederick Thomas Elson

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F. T. Elson
Service no. 62188
Lance Corporal, Royal Fusiliers, 4th Battalion
Died of wounds, age 32 on 11 May 1917
Son of Thomas and Louisa Elson, of London. Husband of Laurel Elson, of 5, Grove Rd., Brixton, London.
Remembered at Etaples Military Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France and on the war shrine at St Michael’s Church, Stockwell Park Road, London 0DA.

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 Frederick Thomas Elson, 25, was living with his family in 6 rooms at 74 Victoria Avenue, Plashet Lane, East Ham. His mother, Louisa, a 56-year-old widow born in Stepney, had 6 children surviving (of 7). Five of these were on the census.
Frederick Thomas Elson, born in Leyton, Essex
Alice Rosina Elson 23, a draper’s clerk, born in Leyton, Essex
Henry Charles Elson, 22, an invoice clerk, born in Leyton, Essex
Herbert James Elson, 20, a motor mechanic, born in Leytonstone, Essex
Florence May Elson, 18, a shorthand typist, born in Leytonstone, Essex

On 21 November 1915 Frederick married Laurel James at St Michel’s Church, Stockwell. Laurel lived at 5 Grove Road.