Stockwell War Memorial

Friends of Stockwell War Memorial & Gardens

Lambeth

Albert Tom William Cook

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A. T. W. Cook
Service no. Z/447
Rifleman, Rifle Brigade, 1st Battalion
Died on 11 July 1916
Remembered at Lambeth (Tooting) Cemetery, London SW17

National Roll of the Great War 1914-1918

COOK, A. T. W., Rifleman, Rifle Brigade.
He volunteered in 1914 and was drafted to the Western Front the following year. During his service in France he fought at Ypres and was severely wounded in the Battle of the Somme. He was invalided home to hospital and subsequently succumbed to his injuries in July 1916. He was entitled to the 1914-15 Star, and the General Service and Victory Medals.
“Whilst we remember, the sacrifice is not in vain.”
23, Brooklands Road, South Lambeth, S.W.8.

Frederick Harold Capewell

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The Capewell headstone in West Norwood Cemetery
The Capewell headstone in West Norwood Cemetery

F. H. Capewell
Service no. G/75140
Private, Royal Fusiliers, 17th Battalion
Died age 18 on 1 April 1918
Son of Brian Charles and Lily Rosina Capewell of 35 Union Road, Clapham.
Remembered at West Norwood Cemetery and Crematorium

Brother of Brian Harvey Capewell

Information from the Capewell family

“Fred was due to take over his father’s business and his father never got over their deaths. Their sisters did well – Isabel read Geography at University, quite something for a working class girl of that time, and went on to become a headmistress in Palmer’s Green. The other boys became bank managers or civil servants. The last survivor, Richard Thomas, died in 1986. Their second cousin was Sir Malcolm Sargent, the famous conductor via their grandmother.
The family originated form Fradswell, near Stone in Staffordshire and their grandfather Brian Capewell came down to London and worked in a variety of jobs including as a muffin man.”

Information from the censuses and from the family headstone in West Norwood Cemetery

In 1901 Frederick Harold Capewell was living with his family at 68 Paradise Road, Lambeth. By 1911 they had moved to 24 Union Road, London SW4 where they had 7 rooms.

In 1911, Frederick’s father, Brian Charles Capewell, was a 47-year-old master plasterer born in Finsbury. The headstone states that he died on 20 October 1939, aged 76.

Frederick’s mother, Lily Rosina Capewell (also shown on the headstone) was 47 in 1911. She was born in London. The children listed on the census were:
Isabel Capewell, 20, a college student, born in Battersea. She died 8 April 1963, aged 72.
Brian Harvey Capewell, 17, born in Clapham. He is shown on the headstone: “BRIAN HARVEY CAPEWELL. KILLED IN 1914-1918 war (NAVY) AGED 22”
Harry James Capewell, 15, born in Clapham. He died 27 November 1965, aged 70. (The headstone includes Harry’s wife Grace, who died 8 July 1988, aged 93.)
Frederick Harold Capewell, 12, born in Clapham. He shown on the headstone: “FREDERICK HAROLD CAPEWELL. KILLED IN 1914-1918 WAR (ARMY) DIED 6 APRIL 1918. AGED 19”
Richard Thomas Capewell, 2, born in Clapham.

The 1901 census also lists
Lily E. Capewell, 3, who died aged 7 October 1904.
Daisy Capewell, 8

The headstone includes
Sidney G. Capewell, who died 10 February 1905, aged 7 months.

William George Callen

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W. G. Callen
Service no. 12089
Rifleman, King’s Royal Rifle Corps
Died age 24 on 29 August 1920
Son of Mr W. H. Callen, 100 Dorset Road, Clapham Road, London.
Remembered at Lambeth (Tooting) Cemetery

Information from the censuses

In 1911 William Henry Callen, then 45, born in Eastleigh, Hampshire, was living with his wife Ada Elizabeth, 47, born in Woolwich, at 100 Dorset Road, where the family occupied 4 rooms. Callen was a railway porter. His children, all born in South Lambeth, were Jessie Marion, 17, no occupation listed; William George, then 15, who was to die in 1920, presumably of wounds sustained in the war; and Florence Elizabeth, 13. The 1901 includes a third daughter, Margaret, born in 1900. At that time the family was living at 12 Walberswick Street.

The 1911 census shows that William Henry and Ada Elizabeth had had 5 children, 3 of them surviving to 1911.

Auguste Cadot

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A. L. C. Cadot
Service no. 127954
Gunner, Royal Garrison Artillery

A. L. C. Cadot’s name is not in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database, nor is he listed in the Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919 database. Although there was an Auguste Cadot listed in Streatham and an Adolphe Cadot in Lambeth, I could not be sure which one was on the war memorial and was inclined to accept that Cadot was likely to remain a mystery to us.

Quite a few names on the memorial are difficult to trace, but this is usually because their names are so common and a connection with Lambeth or Wandsworth cannot be proved. Generally, the more unusual the name, the easier it is to identify the man.

The National Archives hold a medal card for an Auguste Cadot (he was given the Victory Medal) as well as service and pension records.

British Army service record shows that on 11 December 1915 Auguste Cadot, then living at 17 Tregothnan Road, Stockwell SW9, enlisted at Clapham. He was 34, married to a Marion (nee King), to whom he agreed to send 6 shillings of his army pay.

Cadot was just over 5ft 6inches (1.68m) tall and his chest measured 37 and a half inches (90cm), with an additional 4 inches when expanded.

Auguste and Marion married at St Stephen’s Church, South Lambeth on 1 August 1912. There was one child, Dennis Auguste Cadot, born 30 April 1915.

The 1901 census showed that Auguste was one of three children of Laure Erzberger, a Frenchwoman. When Auguste was 20 and she was 51, she was married to Charles Erzberger, a 47-year-old German, a banker’s clerk. The family lived at 63 Gleneldon Road in Streatham. Both Auguste and his 27-year-old brother Henry Cadot were employed as manufacturer’s clerks. The household included a 15-year-old sister, Florence, born like her brothers in Kennington, and Alice Miller, 20, a general domestic servant who was born in Poulton, Gloucestershire.

The 1911 census shows Auguste was living alone in one room at 261 Clapham Road. The census describes him as a “cashier, book keeper, patentee and manufacturer” but by the time Cadot enlisted in the Royal Garrison Artillery in December 1915, he was describing himself as an accountant and book-keeper.

Cadot served in a Seige Battery of the Royal Garrison Artillery (these were batteries equipped with heavy howitzers, sending massive shells to neutralise the enemy artillery and destroy dumps, stores, roads and railways behind enemy lines). He was a signalman but there are two parts to the abbreviation and I cannot tell what the first part is (Senior? Leading?). In any case, the records show that he passed 1st class in telephony, that his character was “good” and that he spent time in France and in Italy.

Cadot was hospitalised several times and sent home for leave, but after a 16-week stay in hospital, he was discharged on 12 February 1919, three months after the end of the war. He had served his king and country for three years and 64 days and his health was ruined. His record was stamped “No longer physically fit for war service” because was suffering from chronic nephritis “caused by service”.

The medical problems Cadot complained of included loss of sight (retinitis) and headaches. Nephritis, diagnosed by the doctors, is an inflammation of the kidneys. However, many soldiers suffered a specific type of the disease known as “trench nephritis” or glomerulonephritis, which was caused by living conditions in the trenches. The symptoms included breathlessness, swelling of the face or legs, headache, sore throat, and the presence of albumin and renal casts in urine. It affected 15,837 (1.8%) First World War pensioners.

The doctors examining Cadot noted the loss of sight and headaches, albumin traces, high blood pressure and cardiovascular changes. Nevertheless, when assessing Cadot for pension one doctor judged that “he will get work”, he was 80% disabled and that his symptoms were likely to last one year.

Alas, this prediction proved to be true, as Cadot died in Lambeth just under a year later, on 25 January 1920. He was 39.

The mystery of his absence from the standard databases of the First World War is solved. He died of the war, but too late to be included. Not too late to be memorialised in Stockwell, which he had called home and where he had started to raise a family.