Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

France

Henry James Dighton

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H. J. Dighton
Service no. 8159
Private, Lincolnshire Regiment, 2nd/5th Battalion
Died aged about 22 on 29 April 1918
Son of Clara Dighton, of 68 Crimsworth Road, South Lambeth, London.
Remembered at Arneke British Cemetery, Nord, France

Information from the 1911 census

Henry (or Harry) Dighton was 15 and working as a grocer’s assistant in 1911. He lived with his family in 4 rooms at 35 a Crimsworth Road, off Brixton Road. His father, James Dighton, 46, who was born in Pimlico, worked as a caterer’s porter. His mother, Clara Dighton (née Baxter), 47, was born in Paddington. They had 6 surviving children (of 8):
William Dighton, 21, a railway van shifter, born in Hammersmith, west London
Isabelle Dighton, 20, a laundry ironer, born in Kensington
Dorothy Dighton, 18, a layer-on for a printer, born in Lee
Harry (Henry) Dighton, 15, a grocer’s assistant, born in Forest Hill
Albert Dighton, 10, born in Lambeth
Stanley Dighton, 7, born in Lambeth

Reginald Percy Dickason

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R. P. Dickason
Second Lieutenant, Middlesex Regiment, 6th Battalion attd. 1st Battalion
Died age 20 on 14 February 1917
Son of Harold Burfield Dickason, of 155 Clapham Road, London.
Remembered at Peronne Communal Cemetery Extension, France

British Army WWI Officers Service Records 1914-1920

Reginald Percy Dickason was educated at King’s College School and Pitman’s Metropolitan School. Pitman’s, opened in 1870, was the first school of business education in the world, and covered office routine, accounting and law, and shorthand and typing. Possibly Dickason was training to be a court reporter, for he transferred out of the 3/25th London Cyclists, which he joined as a private on 1 April 1915, to the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire.

This corps was originally part of the London Territorial Force and consisted mainly of men connected with the law courts. On 4 August 1916 he was accepted for admission to No. 8 Officer Cadet Battalion at Lichfield, and a little over three months later he left for France, serving with the Middlesex Regiment.

He survived for just under four months, dying near Clery-sur-Somme. In July 1920 the Army wrote to Dickason’s father Harold Burfield Dickason to tell him that his son’s body had been moved to the cemetery at Peronne, assuring him that the removal was done “carefully and reverently.”

Dickason, born on 3 December 1896 and an only child, was 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighed over 10½ stone and measured 40½ inches around the chest. He had the distinction of being the only man on the Memorial whose family included an elephant hunter.

Information from the 1911 census

Reginald Percy Dickason was 14 in 1911 and living with his family at 155 Clapham Road, where they occupied 10 rooms. Reginald was an only child. His father, Harold Burfield Dickason, 36, was an orchestral musician who was born in Highgate. His mother, Esther Dickason, 35, was from Lambeth. Harold’s brother, Percy Dickason, 34, an elephant hunter, and an aunt, Charlotte Hare, 69, lived with the family, along with a boarder, John Greenslade, 35, a stone and wood carver. Lily Cawley, 15, a general domestic servant born in Lambeth, lived in.

Information from the family
After Reginald died, his parents Harold and Esther went on to have another child, a son. This son later joined the Army and fought in World War 2. Esther died in the 1930s.

Ernest William Desaleux

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listing of desaleux brothers on stockwell war memorial
The Desaleux brothers are listed on Stockwell War Memorial

Amongst the names on the Stockwell War Memorial are three brothers, Ernest, Frederick and Alfred Desaleux. They all died in 1917 – Frederick in February, Ernest in April and Alfred in May. The brothers joined different brigades, although two, Ernest and Frederick, were riflemen. Alfred may have moved to Canada before the war: he joined the Canadian Field Artillery and his widow, Alice, is listed as living in Winnipeg in 1917. She was certainly in London during 1911. In 1911 the Desaleux family were living at Fountain Street (now gone), Stockwell.

E. W. Desaleux
Service no. S/14522
Rifleman, Rifle Brigade, 1st Battalion
Died age 23 on 15 April 1917
Son of Son of Jules B. and Edith Desaleux
Remembered at Arras Memorial, France

Brother of Frederick Desaleux and Jules Benjamin Alfred Desaleux

At least one other Desaleux brother served in the war: Albert. Dan Desaleux, his great-grandson, provided the following information.

You might like to know that my grandfather Reginald Desaleux is one of the children of Albert Desaleux who you have listed above. He too was born in Lambeth, as was my father, Barry.

I do have some more information on Albert Desaleux: Volunteering in March 1915 he embarked for France six months and served throughout the war. During this period he was engaged on light railway construction and in laying tracks for guns, and was present in the Battles of Arras, Albert and Vimy Ridge. He was buried by a shell explosion in the course of operations and on recovery served with the signal section until hostilities ceased. Demobilised in May 1919, he holds the 1914-15 Star, and the General Service and Victory Medals.

Jules Desaleux was a map publishing assistant who lived in 73 Tavistock Street, Westminster and married Edith (unknown maiden name). This information is from a census page. However, we have no information of what year the page is actually from.

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 the Desaleux family lived at 20 Fountain Street, Stockwell.

Jules Desaleux, the father, is listed as a 45-year-old warehouseman born at “St George, Hanover Square”, London. His wife, Edith Desaleux, was born in Dover, Kent.

Living with them were nine of their many children:
Albert Desaleux, 18, a general labourer with the railway, born at Pimlico (more details below)
Ernest Desaleux, 17, a warehouseman, later to die in the war
Frederick Desaleux, 14, also a warehouseman and also to die in the war, born in Lambeth
Bertha Desaleux, 12, still at school, born in Lambeth
Henry Desaleux, 11, born in Lambeth
Hilda Desaleux, 8, born in Lambeth
Emma Desaleux, 6, born in Lambeth
Ethel Desaleux, 4, born in Lambeth
Gertrude Desaleux, 2, born in Lambeth

Also, in the 1911 census, at 8 Pownall Terrace, Stockwell, Alice Eleanor Desaleux, 20, wife of Jules Benjamin Alfred Desaleux and her six-month-old son Alfred Hugh were listed as visiting Henry James Kemp (described as an “attendant”) and his wife Alice and their five children.

Information from the 1901 census
Ten years previously, in 1901, the family were living at 186 Upper Kennington Lane, in the parish of St Peter’s, Vauxhall, with eight children (the other four were not yet born), including:
Louise Desaleux, born 1886, then aged 15 (listed in the 1891 as ‘Edith’)
Alfred Desaleux, born 1888, aged 13 (listed in the 1891 census as ‘Jules’)
Ellen Desaleux, born 1890, aged 11
All were listed as having been born in Holborn.

Jules Desaleux’s parents Benjamin, born 1815, a journeyman lamp-maker and Maire (or possibly Eliza), born 1821, a corset-maker, came from France. In 1881, according to that census, they were living at 36 South Molton Street, “St George, Hanover Square” with their 24-year-old daughter, also called Maire and also a corset-maker. They had lived at this address for at least 20 years (they are there on the 1861 census). Meanwhile, Jules, then 22, was a Private in the Army Hospital Corps and living at the South Camp at Aldershot.

Conrad O’Neill Daunt

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Conrad O'Neill Daunt
Conrad O’Neill Daunt. Photo by kind permission of Will Daunt

C. O’N. Daunt
Lieutenant, Royal Air Force, South Lancashire Regiment, 8th Battalion
Died age 27 on 29 September 1918
Son of Francis Eldon Horsford Daunt, LRCP (Licenciate of the Royal College of Physicians of London), of 176 Clapham Road, Stockwell, London, and the late Annie Elizabeth Daunt (nee Vellacott).
Remembered at Bronfay Farm Military Cemetery, Bray-sur-Somme, France

Conrad Daunt appears to have been listed as Canadian – at least he is remembered as so on the Veterans Affairs Canada website. The RAF was established late in the war (1 April 1918).

Brother of Giles Vellacott Daunt

Conrad O’Neill Daunt, born in 1891, and his brother Giles Vellacott Daunt, born in 1895, were two of five children of Irish physician and surgeon Francis Eldon Horsford Daunt and Annie Elizabeth Daunt (née Vellacott) of 176 Clapham Road. Both boys were educated at City of London School.

Conrad returned to England from Canada to fight in the war and initially served as a Private with the Second Canadian contingent. He was offered a commission with the South Lancashires, and served with them through 1917. In 1918 he was transferred to the Royal Air Force (established in April) and promoted to Lieutenant.

Will Daunt, great-nephew to Giles and Conrad, writes: “Conrad and Giles Daunt were my great uncles, and, although we knew where they were buried (and have visited Conrad’s grave), we had not realised their names were on the memorial. My grandfather, Francis O’Neill Daunt, was their elder brother and, as a doctor (like his father), was probably a little safer (although he met mygrandmother on a hospital ship coming back from Gallipoli). Sadly, I never knew him because he died in the early 1950s. His two sisters, known as Dorothy and Peg, never married and, like him, spent most of their adult lives in Hastings/St. Leonards.”

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 Conrad O’Neill Daunt was living with his uncle, Walter John Vellacott at his farm at Tunnel House, West Thurrock, Essex. Walter Vellacott, 32, was born in Barnstaple, Devon. His wife, Elizabeth, 27 was from High Bickington, Devon. They had 2 children: Margaret Annie Vellacott, 4, born in Homehurst, Esex, and William Walter Vellacott, 7 months, born at West Thurrock. Conrad was 20 and working as a farm pupil. There was a visitor on the night of the census: Moss T. Reick, 44 and married, an evangelist from Berlin, Germany. The servants were Annie Suckling, a single 21-year-old domestic servant from Essex, and governess Ruth Florence Reynolds, 32, single and born in Singapore.

Meanwhile, Conrad’s family lived at 118 Newington Causeway (convenient for Guy’s Hospital). Physician and surgeon Francis Eldon Horsford Daunt, 51, born in Kinsale, County Cork, and his wife, Annie Elizabeth Daunt, 46, from Tavistock, Devon, had five children, including Francis Eldon Daunt, 22, a medical student, Giles Daunt, 14, Helena Margaret Daunt, 11. Frances Willmore, 40, a general domestic servant born in Lambeth, lived in.

Edward Arthur Cunningham

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E.A. Cunningham
Rifleman, London Regiment (City of London Rifles), 1st/6th Bn.
Service No. 3362
Died 15 September 1916, aged about 21
Remembered at Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France

Chris Burge writes:

Edward Arthur Cunningham was born in Stockwell in 1895, the only child of Arthur and Fanny. He was baptised in Kent, his mother’s place of birth, with the given names Arthur Edward Reuben on 20 October 1895.  In 1901, the family lived at 8 Burgoyne Road along with eight members of the Higgs family. 

In the 1911 census, the  Cunninghams were still with his parents at 8 Burgoyne Road, where they occupied three rooms.  Edward was a Law Stationer’s apprentice and his father Arthur worked as a weighbridge clerk for Lambeth Borough Council.  

In early 1915 Edward, then aged 20, went to the drill hall at 57a Farringdon Road to volunteer for the City of London Rifles (CLR), referred to as the ‘printers’ battalion’ because many of its members were recruited from Eyre & Spottiswoode’s printing works. The battalion was already in France but was recruiting for the 3rd line reserves. Edward was with a draft of men sent to France on 28 October, a month after the CLR had suffered terrible casualties at the Battle of Loos.  Periods of line holding were interspersed with rest and training. On 30 April the following year a mine exploded under their position near Vimy Ridge causing over 80 casualties. In July 1916 they moved south to begin training for the ongoing Somme offensive. On 15 September, 47th Division attacked High Wood to cover the left flank of the tank-led attack of the adjacent divisions at Flers. The 1/6th pressed on, but ‘whole waves of men were mown down in line’ by machine-gun fire.  Edward was killed in action on that day. 

Edward’s parents moved to Dulwich  after the war. Arthur is thought to have died in 1937, aged 67.  Fanny died in 1942, aged 69.

James William Cummins

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J. W. Cummins
Service no. 2033
Corporal, London Regiment, 22nd Battalion
Died age 31 on 20 May 1916
Husband of Edith Cummins, of South Lambeth, London.
Remembered at Bruay Communal Cemetery Extension, France

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 James William Cummins, then 26, born in Lambeth, was married and living with his family in 2 rooms at 191 South Lambeth Road. He was a foreman in a coffee husking mill. His wife, Edith Cummins, 25, was born in Battersea. Their baby son, Leslie Cummins, 4 months, was born in Lambeth. Margaret Stevens, a 29-year-old single domestic cook from Dundalk, County Louth, was visiting.

James and Edith had three further children, born between 1912 and 1916.