How terrifying must it have been to be the parents of five adult sons on the eve of war in 1914?
James George Webb and his wife Bertha lived a comfortable life at 117 Bath Road where in 1911 they stated on the census returns that they had been married for 25 years. They answered the questions– how many children born alive 5; children still living 5; children who have died nil. Not every family in this period was so fortunate.
Four of James and Bertha’s sons still lived at home with them in 1911. Their eldest son Vere was employed as a draughtsman in the Loco, Carr & Wagon Dept at the Wolverhampton railway works.
Then in 1914 second son Algernon Ewart Webb enlisted in the Army Service Corps, eight months before the outbreak of war. However, his military service was brief as he was found to be medically unfit when mobilization took place on August 6, 1914.
How relieved his parents must have been to welcome him home. Algernon and three of his brothers went on to live long lives. It would be their youngest son Cyril Gordon Webb who went away to war.
A former student at the North Wilts Technical College in Victoria Road, Cyril is remembered on the college’s stained-glass window war memorial. The window, restored and renovated by stained glass window craftsman Richard Thorne, was moved to Swindon College at the North Star campus in 2010.
Pte C.G. Webb of the 52nd Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment died on June 7, 1918 at his home 37 Okus Road. His cause of death was Pulmonary Tuberculosis contracted during his military service.
Cyril’s father James died in October that same year, a few months after his son. Bertha died in 1934. They are both buried with their boy in Plot D402.
Continuing a series remembering Swindon’s sons who served in the First and Second World Wars.
Reginald Arthur Cook was born in Swindon on September 8, 1896 the son of William and Selina Cook. Reginald entered the employment of the GWR shortly after his 14th birthday and stayed with the company until his retirement. His only absence was during the First World War when he served on the Western Front and was promoted for an act of gallantry.
Swindon Soldier Promoted for Gallantry
Pte. R.A. Cook, the only son of Mr. W. Cook, Cemetery Superintendent, Radnor Street, Swindon, has been promoted to the rank of lance-corporal for gallant conduct.
Major-General H.D.E. Parsons, Director of Ordnance Services, British Armies in France, has written to Pte. Cook, dated October 19th, as follows: “Your name has been brought to my notice by your Commanding Officer for ‘gallant conduct in snatching an enemy stick-grenade, that had become ignited, from another man, and throwing it into a shell hole some ten yards away, thus saving the man’s life at grave risk of your own. The report reflects credit on yourself and the Army Ordnance Corps.”
Lce. Copl. Cook is 21 years of age, and is a native of Swindon. On leaving school he entered the GWR Works as a clerk. He joined the Army on October 6th, 1915, and proceeded to Woolwich for training, but after being there three weeks he was transferred to France, where he has been ever since. He is now home on leave, and will return to France on December 21st.
North Wilts Herald, Friday, December 14, 1917.
Reginald returned home to Swindon at the end of the war and lived with his parents at 63 Kent Road where he died on March 31, 1972. Reginald never married and was buried with his parents and his only sister Winifred Gladys, in the cemetery where his father once worked as Cemetery Superintendent.
With a fresh complexion, brown hair and brown eyes, Percy Walter Dyer weighed 129 lbs (9st 3lbs) and stood 5ft 5ins tall when he enlisted in the army. This poignant description of 19 year old Percy was written more than 110 years ago when his ambition was to serve with the Wiltshire Regiment.
Percy was born on April 13, 1888 in Lea, a small village 1½ miles east of Malmesbury. He was the son of John and Sarah Dyer and one of 11 children.
By 1901 the family were living at 141 Beatrice Street, Gorse Hill. Still living at home were Percy’s elder brothers Charles, Frank and Lewis who all worked as general labourers. His sisters Alice and Edith both worked as laundry assistants while Kate was employed in one of the towns several clothing factories. Younger siblings George, Ernest and Florence were still of school age but at 13 Percy stood on the threshold of adulthood.
When he filled in his attestation papers in Devizes on August 13, 1907 he was already serving in the Militia. What was his driving force – patriotism, or did he see a career in the army as an opportunity to travel, to escape.
As a serving soldier with seven years’ experience Percy was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) when war broke out in 1914.
During action at Armentieres on December 14, 1915 Percy received a gun shot wound to his right elbow. Although he survived, the injury caused permanent damage and limited the movement of his arm. In 1917 Percy was declared physically unfit for military service and was transferred to Avonmouth to work in an ammunitions factory.
A medical examination made in May 1918 declared that the injury to his arm rendered him 30% disabled and limited his prospects of employment on the open labour market. But this was not the extent of his poor physical condition. Percy was also declared 100% disabled by tuberculosis with ‘Sanatorium treatment’ recommended. But it was too late. Percy died on September 22, 1918. He was 30 years old and had spent eleven years in the army, three of those fighting in France and Flanders.
Sarah buried her son in Radnor Street Cemetery on September 25. Was there any consolation for her in having her boy back home? This was not the first of her sons to die as a result of the war but her elder son Frank had no known grave.
The military service records of Frank Edward Dyer do not survive, destroyed when an incendiary bomb hit the War Office Record Store in September 1940 during the Second World War. We do not know if Frank had been a volunteer when war broke out or whether he had been ‘called up’ following the introduction of conscription in 1916. Frank’s name is recorded on the Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgium, which bears the names of almost 35,000 officers and men whose graves are not known. The memorial was unveiled in 1927 – it is unlikely Sarah was ever able to visit it.
Percy was buried on September 25, 1918 in grave plot B2756. He was buried with his younger brother Ernest who died in 1911 and the boys’ father John who died just weeks after Percy joined the army. In 1933 Sarah Ann Dyer, the boys’ mother, joined them.
Mark Sutton had a life long interest in the Swindon men who served in the Great War, researching, writing and recording their service and sacrifice in his book – Tell Them of Us.
Mark made numerous visits to the battlefield cemeteries in France and Belgium, laying wreaths on the graves of Swindon men on behalf of their families back home. Mark also worked with Swindon’s schools, showing items from his vast military collection. He knew instinctively how to talk to children about a war that was beyond living memory but intrinsic to our town’s history. For many years he conducted guided walks at Radnor Street Cemetery, visiting the Commonwealth War Graves and remembering the men buried there. He was a popular speaker on the Swindon history circuit, his talks selling out immediately they were announced. He was also co-founder of Swindon Heritage, a quarterly history magazine published between 2013 and 2017. Sadly, Mark died in 2022 but his memory and his legacy will live on, in the same way he made the story of Swindon’s sons who served in the Great War endure.
I begin with the story of Arthur North who is mentioned in Mark’s book Tell Them of Us and is told here in the words of Kevin Leakey, local historian researching the history of Queenstown and Broadgreen.
Gorse Hill Memorial rescued by Mark Sutton and displayed in the Radnor Street Cemetery chapel.
Arthur was a younger brother of one of my Great Grandmothers – Kate Leakey.
He was 7 months old and living with his family at 62 Bright St. on the 1891 census, so I would guess he was probably born at that address.
By the 1901 census the North family were living at 69 Cricklade Rd and by 1911, were at 139 Cricklade Rd, where Arthur’s parents lived until they passed away.
The 1934 funeral of his Mother, Mary Ann, took place at Trinity Methodist Church (139 Cricklade Rd being a few doors away from the church), which I think was the church the WW1 memorial came from.
Arthur emigrated to Australia in 1909 and worked as a farmer, living with his Uncle Samuel North and his family at a small place called Batchica near Warracknabeal, Victoria.
He joined the Australian Army in January 1915, and after going to Gallipoli in Sept. 1915, he seems to have been ill from the end of October until June 1916, then spending the next 7 months in the UK, before being sent to France in Feb. 1917.
He was killed on the 3rd May 1917 on first day of the second battle of Bullecourt. As far as I can tell his body was never recovered.
The Red Cross files give info about his death from other soldiers that saw him on the day it happened. I don’t suppose it was at all unusual, with the men being in the middle of a battle at the time of his death, but their reports as to his whereabouts etc. seem to contradict each other.
Apart from his name being on the Gorse Hill memorial, it is also on the Warracknabeal war memorial in Australia.
Sadly, we have no photos of Arthur and aren’t in contact with any of his brothers and sisters families, but I always put a cross down at the cenotaph every year in remembrance.
The sheer number of bodies left lying on the battlefields of the Great War is today beyond belief and by 1915 the situation was already becoming reprehensible. Burials were frequently made without any planning or organisation with graves marked by a simple wooden cross, sometimes with the name scratched on in pencil.
Major General Fabian Ware, who commanded a mobile ambulance unit during the First World War, quickly recognised that this could not continue. Ware believed that the war dead should all be treated alike with no distinction between wealth and status. The headstones should all be uniform, displaying name, rank and regimental badge with an inscription chosen by the family.
It was Reginald Blomfield who designed the memorial, the Cross of Sacrifice, which is now familiar worldwide. The design was delegated to a team of architects and when disagreements occurred among the team Blomfield had the final say. Blomfield’s design became so popular it was adopted everywhere from battlefield cemeteries to churchyards where there were more than 40 war graves.
Messrs B. Turvey and Sons, of Bath, have been successful in securing contracts for headstones at the British Military Hospital, at Ovillers, France, and also at Swindon. They have also been commissioned to supply the War memorials at Swindon (Radnor Street Cemetery), and at Arnos Vale (RC) Cemetery Bristol. The former will take the form of a Cross of Sacrifice, with a bronze sword* on the face of it, and the latter will be a Screen Wall, with moulded panels bearing the names of the soldiers who were interred in the cemetery.
Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette Saturday 22 August 1925
*the sword is now a resin replacement
Join us tomorrow, Sunday November 10, 2024 for a Service of Remembrance. Meet at the Cross of Sacrifice for 2 pm.
Military and local historian Mark Sutton spent a lifetime dedicated to the research of the Swindon men who served in the First World War. In 2006 he published Tell Them of Us – Remembering Swindon’s Sons of the Great War 1914-1918 – a go-to book for anyone researching their Swindon ancestors who served.
Among the many stories Mark tells in his book is that of Jesse Bray.
Born on November 13, 1897 in Aldbourne, Jesse was the son of Albert, a Windsor chair maker, and his wife Honor Bray. He was baptised on January 30, 1898 at the parish church of St. Michael’s and grew up in Castle Street and South Street, Aldbourne.
Taking up the story in Tell Them of Us, Mark writes how Jesse Bray enlisted at the age of just 17 and served with the 4th Battalion Wiltshire Regiment, attached to the Signal Service Royal Engineers. Jesse kept a diary recording his movements during the war, which Mark was allowed access to and which he reproduced in his book.
Jesse enlisted with the 4th Wilts on April 24, 1915. He returned to Aldbourne for a brief holiday before being sworn in at Princes Street, Swindon. On September 3 he joined the Signal Service and was moved to Winton, Bournemouth where he was billeted with “Mrs Best 33 Somerly.”
On March 14, 1916 Jesse embarked on HMS Saturnia at Devonport. “Set sail at noon. Destination unknown.” On April 3 he arrived at Alexandra Docks, Bombay. From 13-17 April he marched more than 60 miles from Jelicote to Chanbattia. On July 7 he visited Ranikhet, the Indian hill station, which made such an impression on another Wiltshire man, the Hammerman poet Alfred Williams.
Jesse spent 3 years serving in India recording his movements and memorable incidents in his diary. He recorded the marches, the outbreaks of fever and a minor wound. And then on November 11, 1918 Jesse Bray, signaller for 37th Brigade HQ, took the historic telegram that announced the armistice and an end to hostilities.
On August 29, 1919 Jess writes: “Transferred to departure camp.” On September 22 he enters “Warned for England.” The following day he left Deolali to begin his journey home. October 14 and he writes “Arrived Plymouth and entrained for Fovant.” Oct 16 – “Handed in rifle and left for Swindon.” On April 1, 1920 he is able to write “Final Discharge.”
Jesse returned to Swindon where he married Teodolinda Stefani in 1922. Despite the dangers and deprivations of his military service, Jesse lived to the grand age of 95. He died on March 24, 1992 at 26 Tiverton Road, Swindon and lies buried in St. Michael’s churchyard, Aldbourne.
Perhaps without Mark’s dedicated research we would never have known about Jesse Bray’s Great War Service.
Tell Them of Us – Remembering Swindon’s Sons of the Great War 1914-1918 by Mark Sutton.
In the Spring of 1915, a new disease was observed on the battlefield. It would cause 35,000 British casualties and many hundreds of deaths. Symptoms included breathlessness (leading to bronchitis), a swelling of the face or legs, high blood pressure, headache and sore throat along with albuminuria (abnormal levels of the protein albumin in the urine). When the disease was first observed in 1915 doctors were at a loss as to know the cause. It was first thought it was caused by infection, exposure and diet (including poisons) although it was later suggested it may have been caused by hantavirus, a virus carried by rodents. This disease was named trench nephritis* and it killed 18-year-old George Henry Wilkinson on May 5, 1915.
George was born in Milton, Berkshire the second of John and Emma Wilkinson’s large family of ten children. He enlisted with the Duke of Edinburgh’s (Wiltshire) Regiment in Swindon where his mother had grown up and where his grandfather worked in the GWR Works.
George died on May 5, 1915 in the Weymouth Sydney Hall Hospital. He was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery on May 11 in grave plot B1599, a public grave. The burial registers record that his last address was 28 Butterworth Street. The Commonwealth War Graves Headstone includes an inscription chosen by his grieving father – Ever in Memory.
His mother Emma had died the previous year and was buried in another public grave, number B1559, close to where her son would eventually lie.
*nephritis – inflammation of the kidneys
Image of funeral account kindly supplied by A.E. Smith & Son, Funeral Directors.
We do not know the date that Ladas Tom Hacker enlisted. He could have served but a few months as by December 1915 he was dead. Still hardly a man, just a boy. Recruitment officers bent the rules, boys lied about their age, patriotism was high.
Ladas Tom Hacker was born during the early summer of 1899, the only son of Tom Hacker and his wife Ada. He was baptised at the Independent Church that once stood on the corner of Victoria Road and Bath Road and he lived all his short life at 16 Belle Vue Road.
All we know about Ladas Tom Hacker is that which is inscribed on his headstone, his military records were destroyed in September 1940 when a German bombing raid struck the War Office repository in Arnside Street, London where they were stored.
2730 Driver L.T. Hacker
Royal Field Artillery
24th December 1915.
We know where he died from a short entry that survives in the UK, Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects, 1901-1929 and the Radnor Street Cemetery Burial Registers. He died on Christmas Eve 1915 at Tidworth Military Hospital. His cause of death was Cerebro Spinal Fever, contracted as a result of his military service. He was 17 years old.
Hacker, L.T.
Driver 2730 3/3 Battalion Wessex Brigade, ammunition column, Royal Field Artillery.
John James Kendall was born in Bromsgrove in about 1884, the son of John Kendall, a nail maker, and his wife Ellen.
He married Agnes Winifred Jasper in the December quarter of 1906. At the time of the 1911 census they were living at 61 Hillfield Road, Sparkhill, Birmingham. They had been married for four years and during that time three children had been born, however, sadly two had died. John’s brother Bertie lodged with the couple and he and John both worked as ‘bread deliverer’s.’
Again the loss of military records hide the full story of the tragic death of John James Kendall. What action had he already seen, if any? Was it the fear of what lie ahead that caused his mental breakdown, or was it due to the recent seizure he had suffered and a lack of treatment for his epilepsy? Perhaps the death of his two young children years previously had led to undiagnosed depression.
Soldier’s Suicide
Followed Epileptic Fit
“Death from haemorrhage through cutting his throat while insane” was the verdict of a Swindon jury on Wednesday respecting the suicide of John James Kendall (34), a private in the Worcester Regiment, billeted at 24, Winifred Street, and whose wife and children live at Sparkhill, Birmingham.
Mr G.H. Russell was foreman of the jury. Evidence of identification was given by a brother, Lance-Corporal Bertie Walter Kendall, Machine Gun Corps, who had the “wounded” stripe and leaned heavily on a stick. In reply to the Coroner he said there was no strain of insanity in the family.
Frank Arthur Jackson, another private in the same battalion as deceased in the Worcester Regt., said he was billeted at 24, Winifred Street. On Monday Kendall was going on leave, and he went from the house to catch the 4.15 p.m. train. At 9.55 he returned to the house, and surprised to see him, the landlady asked how it was that he had not gone home. He said “I don’t know: I’ve lost my mind. I’ll think in a minute.” He sat down and had supper and asked witness for a cigarette. About a quarter to eleven he went out into the garden. Ten minutes later witness went out to look for him. He called, and at the second call of “Jack, where are you?” he heard a murmur. He went down to the end of the garden and found Kendall lying on the ground, smothered in blood and with a razor by his side.
“No one could get into the yard except through the house?” asked the Coroner.
“Not so far as I know,” replied the witness.
Lieut. Francis William Hartley, RAMC said he was called to the house close on midnight and found Kendall in a precarious condition, with his throat badly cut. First aid had been rendered. He died as the ambulance from the camp hospital arrived at the door. Death was due to the haemorrhage.
“Had you attended the man?” asked the Coroner?
“Yes, frequently,” said the doctor. “He was often complaining of illness – rheumatism, pains in the head, indigestion, and other small ailments. On Saturday, after he had been on light duty, he came to me and said that he felt a lot better and would I put him on full duty. I asked him if he thought he could stand it, and he replied “Yes.”
“There was no symptom of insanity, then?” the Coroner asked.
“Not at the moment,” the doctor replied. “He had an epileptic fit on August 8th, and his brain was affected for some time afterwards.”
You saw him in the fit? – Yes.
The jury returned the verdict, as stated, that the man cut his throat while insane.
North Wilts Herald, Friday, August 24, 1917.
John was buried in a public grave, plot B1883 on August 25, 1917. The interment was conducted by an army chaplain.
Two years after this tragic event Agnes and her two daughters, Hilda May aged 9 and Winifred aged 2, born just months before her father’s death, left Britain for a new life in the USA. On October 8, 1919 they boarded the White Star Liner, the Adriatic and set sail for New York. Agnes died in Monmouth County, New Jersey in 1941.
John Henry Puzey was born on August 10, 1895 at Upper Stratton, the youngest of four sons. By the time of the 1911 census his parents John and Sarah with younger sons Alfred Robert and John Henry were living at 165 Redcliffe Street, Rodbourne. Three elder sons had followed their father into the GWR Works but John Henry had taken a different career path and at 15 was an apprenticed house decorator. A bit of a lad was John, so say those who remembered him.
John Henry Puzey enlisted at Swindon on October 7, 1915 with the Wilts (Fortress) R.E. (T) and was later transferred to the 3/1 Wessex Field Coy. R.E. serving in Salonika. On August 1, 1919 John Henry Puzey was examined at Tiflis prior to being demobilised. He signed the following statement: I do not claim to be suffering from a disability due to my military service. His signature reveals a shaky hand. On September 14, 1919 he was discharged from Fovant in Wiltshire, No. I Dispersal Unit. His Medical Category was described as A1. But John was clearly not in good mental health.
“His illness was not diagnosed as shell shock but merely a worsening of his mental state before WWI,” says his great niece, Mary. He was clearly suffering from what would now be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Whatever the terminology, whatever name you want to give it, John’s mind was destroyed by war.
John Henry Puzey was admitted to Roundway Hospital, the former Wiltshire County Lunatic Asylum, in Devizes, Wiltshire. His family visited him regularly, his brother Alfred taking over the responsibility after their mother’s death. Alfred would bring his little granddaughter Mary to see his brother. Mary recalls how when he was in good health he shopped in Devizes for the staff and went out with the staff football and cricket teams.
“During visits if he was well, we saw him in the canteen/visitors room. I remember one Christmas one of the inmates had painted an alpine scene around the walls. It was wonderful. In summer months we would walk around the grounds, which he helped to maintain. He always took us to the garden tool store room under the main hospital. He called this his dugout. To him it was a safe area the same as his dugout in Salonika,” said Mary.
John Henry Puzey died at Roundway Hospital on July 25, 1962. He was 66 years old. He left administration of his will to the brother who had visited him in hospital for all those years, retired boilermaker Alfred Robert Puzey. John Henry was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery on July 31, 1962. He shares plot D636 with his parents, John who died in 1928 and Sarah Ann who died in 1947.
Radnor Street Cemetery 