Scarborough 1914-18

Scarborough through the First World War remembered

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Davison, Stephen

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Name: Stephen Davison

Regiment/service: Yorkshire Regiment

Paul Allen writes:

Stephen was the youngest of five children of Martha (‘Pattie’) and Stephen Davison, who was variously employed as a ‘coal porter, labourer’, and by the turn of the century as a ‘greengrocer’, the family living in Scarborough at 54 North Street. [1]

The four brothers, Fred, Valentine, Albert and Stephen Davison, each served in the army: the Royal Engineers, Machine Gun Corps, the Leicestershire Regiment and the Yorkshire Regiment respectively. Albert Davison was killed in action but the other three brothers survived to return to Scarborough following their demobilisation in 1919.

[1] At the time of the 1901 Census the Davison family were residing in the house in North Street and consisted of Stephen (the eldest son of Rouse and Hannah Davison), aged 42 years, Martha, 39 years, Frederick, 16 years, employed as a ‘joiners apprentice’, Valentine, 15 years, employed as a ‘painters lad’, Amy aged 13, Albert aged 10, and Stephen aged 9. All were born in Scarborough except for Martha Davison, who was born in the Lincolnshire village of Glentworth.

Paul Allen

Bielby, John W

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Name: John William Bielby

Rank: Sergeant

Regiment/service: Yorkshire Regiment, 1st/5th Battalion

 

Paul Allen writes:

Tommy Bielby’s memorial also contains the name of Tommy’s younger brother John William Bielby.

More popularly known as ‘Jack’, he also served in the war, first as a Private [Regimental Number 1972] and eventually a Sergeant in the Scarborough-based Territorial Force 1st/5th Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. A veteran of the 5th Battalion’s so called ‘Baptism of Fire’ at St Julien (April 1915), Jack served throughout the remainder of the war with this unit until his de-mobilisation during 1919.

Married at Scarborough’s St Saviour’s Church on 25 August 1918 to Florence ‘Flo’ Clarkson (the youngest daughter of Hull confectioner J R Clarkson), Jack died in Scarborough at his home at 19 West Square (probably as a result of the effects of severe gas poisoning received during the war) on Tuesday, 11 May 1948. Aged 55 years at the time of his death Jack was the father of John Bielby. He was cremated at Hull following a service at St Saviour’s Church, which took place during the morning of Friday, 14 May 1948.

Paul Allen

Barker, John T (2)

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Name: John Thompson Barker

Rank: Private (assumed, to be verified)

Regimental No: 30495

Unit: Yorkshire Regt, thence Labour Corps

 

Paul Allen writes:

Jack Barker’s 40-year-old ex-Grenadier Guardsman father, John Thompson Barker, also enlisted into the Yorkshire Regiment, at the Regimental Depot at Richmond, on 16 June 1916. He served (with Regimental Number 30495) as a labourer on ‘Home Service’ with the 202nd Agricultural Company of the Regiment until 1917 when he was transferred to the Labour Corps.

Unlike his only son, he survived the war to return to Scarborough following his ‘demob’ in December 1918.

Paul Allen

Sellers, T H

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Thomas Henry Sellers was a private in the 5th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment. He died in captivity in East Prussia (now Poland) on 2 November 1918 of pneumonia.

He is now commemorated as one of the ‘Heilsberg 39‘.

He was awarded the Military Medal.

Thomas was born in Egton but lived at Grosmont.

A copy of his Pension Record Card (courtesy the Western Front Association) is below.

Sellers

The card shows that his brother, Robert W Sellers, was killed in action on 22 August 1915.

 

Pickersgill H

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Harry Pickersgill died in captivity in East Prussia (now Poland) on 8 October 1918 and he is now commemorated as one of the ‘Heilsberg 39‘

Harry’s pension record card courtesy The Western Front Association is shown below.

 

Pickersgill

Harry was originally from Bank Street Ossett, then Wesley Street, Ossett but is recorded as residing in Scarborough at the time of his enlistment.

 

Stabler, George F

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Name: George Frederick Stabler

Rank: Private

Service No: 240975

Date of Death: 17/09/1916

Regiment/Service: Yorkshire Regiment 5th Bn

Panel Reference: Pier and Face 3 A and 3 D. Memorial: Thiepval Memorial

CWGC reference

 

Paul Allen writes:

The Oliver’s Mount Memorial contains the name of 240975 Private George Frederick Stabler, who is commemorated as F Stabler.

‘Fred’ was born in Scarborough during 1897 and he was the only son of Hannah Mary and ‘compositor and press man’ George William Stabler, who resided in Scarborough at 75 Trafalgar Street at the time of their son’s death.

Killed in action on 17 September 1916 whilst serving with 5th Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment, the remains of 19-year-old Fred Stabler have never been recovered from the squalor of the Somme battlefield and his name is therefore commemorated amongst over 72,000 fellow missing of the Somme Offensive on the walls of the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. His name is located on Pier and Face 3A and D.

A former member of the congregation of Queen Street Methodist Chapel, Fred Stabler was amongst 23 members of the church who lost their lives during the Great War and who are commemorated by the Chapel’s ‘Memorial Organ’ which was unveiled before a packed audience during the evening of 8 October 1924.

Paul Allen

Sails, Joseph H

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Name: Joseph Henry Sails

Rank: Private

Service No: 23967

Date of Death: 20/01/1917

Age: 35

Regiment/Service: Yorkshire Regiment 12th Bn.

Grave Reference: C. 19. Cemetery: Rancourt Military Cemetery

CWGC Reference

Paul Allen writes:

Raised at Middlesborough, North Yorkshire, during January 1915 the 12th (Service) Battalion [Teesside] of the Yorkshire Regiment was unofficially a ‘Pals’ battalion. Possessing at the time only two officers (the Commanding Officer, Major (temporary Lt Colonel) H W Becher and Quartermaster, Honorary Lieutenant J W Best) orders were eventually received for the new battalion to be organised and trained as a Pioneer Battalion. Consequently those recruited for the unit were a mixture of men experienced with picks and shovels, miners, road men, and labourers, plus skilled artisans, such as fitters, carpenters, blacksmiths, engine drivers, tinsmiths, bricklayers, and masons.

According to the History of the Battalion:

‘The training quarters were especially comfortably established at Marton Hall Camp (on the outskirts of Middlesborough) and the battalion was in a measure fortunate in having come into existence somewhat later than the majority of the battalions of which the New Armies were composed, for by this time practically everything was forthcoming that was needed for the large numbers of soldiers that had been recruited’…[1]

After a few weeks at Middlesborough the battalion was moved to Gosforth, in Northumberland, where the unit was accommodated in billets. The battalion eventually numbered a 140 ‘all ranks’, and since recruits were still arriving it had been authorised to form a depot company that would eventually supply the parent battalion with reinforcements once they had ‘gone abroad’. On 13 August 1916 the battalion received orders to move to Cannock Chase, in Staffordshire, where they made camp on Penkridge Bank.

Whilst there the battalion built four new rifle ranges which  provided enough accommodation in butts and firing points to enable over 200 men to fire at any one time. From Cannock the ‘Teesside Pioneers’ were sent to Badajos Barracks at Aldershot where they joined the 40th (Bantam) Division as the Divisional Pioneer Battalion. In addition to their Pioneer duties the ‘Teessiders would be expected to fight if the need arose so, during December 1915 the Pioneers were moved to Pirbright, in Surrey, where they underwent musketry training. [2]

By the middle of May 1916 the 40th Division had completed training and were ready to ‘proceed abroad’. On 25 May the formation was inspected on ‘Laffans Plain’ by HM King George V. Two days later the Teesside Pioneers were mobilised, and sailed from Southampton in the Transport SS France during the evening of the 1 June 1916. The battalion arrived at Le Havre early the following morning.

Unlike infantry battalions which, on the whole, remained with their allotted divisions, the pioneer battalions, on account of their skills and expertise, were often transferred temporarily to other divisions from time to time. This was the case with the Teesside Pioneers. Shortly after the battalion arrived in France the 4 companies of the formation were sent to various divisions to work under the orders of the Royal Engineers on the front line trenches, making shelters, clearing the field of fire, making fire steps, etc.

Spared from the carnage of the early operations of the Somme offensive, the Teesside Pioneers arrived in the sector during November 1916. On 14 November the battalion arrived at Bayencourt where they were attached to the 31st Division that was in the Hebuterne sector. However, on the 20th of the same month the unit was again moved via Halloy, Autheulle, and Berneil to Ailly-le-Haut Clocher, where the men were at last afforded some rest.

Of this period the History of the Battalion says:

‘This quiet period only lasted until 8 December, when the battalion moved by rail and road and by Longpre, Pont Remy, Maricourt, and Bray to Maurepas, where it came under the orders of CRE (Commander, Royal Engineers) XV Corps for work and was chiefly employed in repairing the Combles-Fregicourt and the Combles-Rancourt roads, incurring here some few casualties, and on the 25th rejoining the 40th Division and going back to trench repair work, the trenches here being in places waist deep in mud and water.’ [1]

This work continued well into the year 1917, for it was 27 January before the 12th Green Howards went back to a camp about 3 miles from Bray. During this tour in the Bouchavesnes North and Rancourt Sectors the battalion lost 5 other ranks killed and 19 men wounded. Amongst them was 23967 Private Joseph Henry Sails.

Killed in action on Sunday 21 January 1917 at the age of 38, Joe Sails was born in Scarborough on 22 October 1879 (baptised at St Mary’s Parish Church on 3 February 1887) at 3 Wrea Street. He was the third of five children of Sarah (formerly Tindall) and ‘Bricklayer’ Thomas Brooksbanks Sails. [3]

A pupil of Scarborough’s Central Board School in Trafalgar Street West (now Genevieve Court), Sails left the school at the age of 12 to begin a Bricklayer’s apprenticeship with local builder John Jaram, and with whom he was working in 1899 at the time of the outbreak of the war in South Africa. Joe enlisted into the Second Volunteer Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment at their Headquarters in North Street and he volunteered for service in South Africa at the beginning of January 1900, joining the Regiment’s First Battalion at the Cape during April.

Sails served in South Africa until the end of the war in 1902 and eventually arrived back in Scarborough to live with his widowed mother and sisters Sarah and Maud at 6 Sussex Street. For his services in South Africa, Joe received the King’s and Queen’s Medals with the clasps: ‘South Africa 1900-1902’; ‘Pretoria’; and ‘Brandfort’.

Joe was married in Scarborough during 1905 to Miss Ann Gosling, the second daughter of ‘Bricklayers Labourer’ William and Ann Gosling. By the time of the 1911 Census the 31-year-old Joe Sails is described as being employed as a ‘Boarding House Porter’ and lived at 108 Nelson Street with wife Ann and their three children Frances Hannah, born 1906, George Henry, 1908, and Allan, 1910. Joe eventually secured a job with the General Superintendent’s Office of the North Eastern Railway at West Hartlepool, where he used his bricklaying skills to maintain the various railway bridges owned by the NER between Middlesborough and Stockton.

At the outbreak of the Great War Joe was working at Middlesborough where he enlisted into the Teesside Pioneers during 1915.

Ann Sails received the news of her husband’s death on Wednesday, 24 January 1917 in a letter that had been written by Joe’s former Company Commander (Captain A C Mildred), which stated that he had been killed 3 days before by ‘the bursting of a shell in a trench’.

Joe Sail’s name eventually appeared in a casualty list that was published in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday, 26 January 1917.

Officially recorded as being killed in action on Saturday, 20 January 1917, Joe Sails’ remains were buried in Rancourt Military Cemetery, which is situated in fields on the southern outskirts of the small Somme village of Rancourt, where his final resting place can be found in Section C, Grave 19 of the cemetery.

In addition to the Scarborough War Memorial, Joseph Henry Sails’ name can be found on a gravestone located close to the Columbus Ravine entrance to the town’s Dean Road Cemetery in Section A, Border, Grave 11, which also bears the name of Joe’s eldest daughter, Frances Hannah. Born in Scarborough during 1906, Frances was married in the town during 1928 to Charles H Rumford. However, this marriage was short-lived for Frances died on 29 May 1929 at the age of 23 whilst giving birth to son Charles Henry.

Born in Scarborough on 6 November 1881, Joe’s wife, Ann Sails, eventually remarried in the town during 1942 to Alexander Taylor, and lived for many years at 74 Nelson Street. Ann died on 4 March 1974 at the grand old age of 92; her name is also commemorated on the stone in Dean Road Cemetery.

Joe Sails is also commemorated on the North Eastern Railway’s Memorial located in Station Road in the City of York. Designed in 1921 by the renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, this fine memorial was unveiled in 1923 and commemorates the names of over 2,000 employees of the Company who lost their lives during the First World War. Joe’s name could at one time have also be found in a ‘Book of Remembrance’ in the foyer of the former NER Headquarters across the road. However, this building (in 2012) is now a hotel and the whereabouts of this book is not known to the author.

[1] Once a Howard Twice a Citizen by Colonel Wade Tovey MBE TD and Major Tony Podmore MBE TD

[2] The 40th Division was formed at Aldershot during September 1915 and included units recruited in England, Scotland and Wales. Most of the men of the division were under the regulation height (5 ft 3 in) required for enlistment into the British Army and were thus named ‘Bantams’.

[3] At the time of the 1891 Scarborough Census the Sails family consisted of Thomas B. aged 37, Sarah, also aged 37, John William aged 15, George Tyco Brooksbanks (born 10 September 1876) aged 14, Joseph Henry, aged 11, Sarah Frances Elizabeth (born 1 January 1884), aged 7, and Maud Mary Hannah, aged 2. All were born at Scarborough. (George, Joe, and Sarah were all belatedly baptised at St Mary’s Parish Church on the same day, 3 February 1887). John William died in Scarborough at the age of 18 during 1893.

Paul Allen

Nundy, Harold W

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Name: Harold William Nundy

Rank: Private

Service No: 241315

Date of Death: 22/04/1917

Regiment/Service: Yorkshire Regiment 7th Bn

Panel Reference: Bay 5. Memorial: Arras Memorial

CWGC reference

 

Paul Allen writes:

Clara Stonehouse’s 19-year-old brother, 241315 Private Harold William Nundy, was killed in action on 22 April 1917 whilst serving with 9th Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment.

The only son of Frederick and Elizabeth Nundy, Harry was amongst the 14 men from 9th battalion who were killed during the Arras Offensive between 9 – 25 April 1917. Much like brother-in-law, Herbert Stonehouse, Harry Nundy was initially been reported as missing in action, his parents receiving no news of their son’s fate until July 1917, when they were informed that he had been killed in action, probably on the date already quoted.

Like those of his brother-in-law, Harry’s remains have never been recovered from the field of battle to be given a decent burial, thus his name was later included amongst those commemorated on the Arras Memorial to the Missing (Bay 5). The young soldier’s name can also be found on Scarborough’s Oliver’s Mount Memorial, and on the ‘Rood Screen’ Memorial in the town’s St James’ Church, located in Seamer Road.

Paul Allen

 

Editor’s note: the CWGC reference states that Harold was part of 7th Battalion, the Yorkshire regiment, whilst Paul has him with 9th Battalion. To be clarified.

Lawrence, Henry

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Name: Henry Lawrence

Rank: Second Lieutenant

Date of Death: 17/01/1917

Age: 26

Regiment/Service:Yorkshire Regiment 5th Bn. attd. 6th Bn.

Commemorated: Pier and Face 3 A and 3 D. Memorial: Thiepval Memorial

Additional Information: son of the late James and Adeline Lawrence, of 71 Manor Rd, Scarborough.

CWGC reference

Image: © IWM (HU 123929)

Further information by Paul Allen:

Following their heroic attack and subsequent defence on the ‘Stuff Redoubt’ and ‘Hessian Trench’ at Thiepval Ridge the shattered remnants of 6th Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment (on 29 September 1916 the battalion had suffered nearly 400 casualties) were relieved during the night of 30 September by troops from the 25th Division. Shortly afterwards the battle-weary unit had made their way to the rear, to a rest camp at Bouzincourt a village 2 miles to the east of Albert, where the valiant band of survivors (including Captain Archie White who would eventually receive the Victoria Cross for his actions at Hessian Trench) had been afforded some rest.

The battalion eventually moved to the village of Beaumetz where it had received ‘drips and drabs’ of reinforcements throughout October 1916, and by the end of the month the unit had received 19 officers and 427 ‘other ranks’ from the BEF’s base camp at Etaples. Amongst the officers who had joined the battalion had been a 26-year-old who had been seconded to the 6th from the Yorkshire Regiment’s 5th (Territorial) battalion: Second Lieutenant Henry Lawrence.

Born in Scarborough at ‘Somerset Cottage’, No 6 Somerset Terrace, on 22nd November 1890 (baptised at St Mary’s Parish Church on 17 December) Henry was the youngest son of Adeline (formally Turner) and nurseryman James Sidney Lawrence, a widower by 1917 who was the proprietor of ‘Crescent Nurseries’ in Manor Road, and a florists shop in Valley Bridge Parade. [1]

Motherless from the age of 5, Henry was a pupil of Gladstone Road Board School at the time his mother died at the age of 43 on Wednesday, 1 May 1895. At the age of 13 Henry, popularly known as Harry, had been fortunate enough to secure a place at the town’s Municipal School (the equivalent of today’s comprehensive school) that was situated in Westwood. Arriving there in 1903, Harry remained at the ‘Muni’ until 1907 when he left the school to travel to Canada to study at Toronto’s Wycliffe College with a view to being ordained and becoming a missionary. During the summer of 1913 Lawrence travelled to the wilds of the Western Canadian Province of Saskatchewan to assist with missionary work amongst the 300 inhabitants of the small, and curiously-named, town of ‘Eyebrow’ He remained at the settlement until the outbreak of war.

During September 1914 Harry Lawrence enlisted at Montreal as a private into the Universities Company of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. The brainchild of wealthy Montreal businessman Hamilton Gault, the Patricias, named after Princess Patricia of Connaught, the Governor General of Canada’s daughter, was an extraordinary battalion of infantry which recruited mostly from the thousands of ex-British Army and Navy personnel who had settled in Canada in the years before the war.

By the time the battalion had completed its formation only 1 in 10 of the 1,100 recruits was born in Canada. 65 per cent of the recruits were English, 15 per cent Scottish, and 10 per cent were Irishmen. In addition 1,049 of the Patricias had served in the British Army or Royal Navy, and almost half of those had seen war service; between them they wore the ribbons of 721 campaign and service medals. By the time the formation was ready to leave Canadian shores it consisted of 2 sections of ex-Guardsmen, 2 of ex-Riflemen, and 2 of ex-public school boys.

With the minimum of training, Harry Lawrence and the remainder of the Patricias [even in official documents the unit was always referred to as ‘The Patricias’] with their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Buller DSO sailed from Quebec on 27 September 1914 to become the first of Britain’s Empire forces to land in the UK. The Battalion was eventually been sent to the Winchester area during November where it was considered good enough to be incorporated into 83 Brigade of the then forming 27th Division, a formation composed of 12 Regular Army infantry battalions recently arrived in Britain following service in India, Hong Kong, and China. The Division had crossed to France shortly before Christmas 1914 and was eventually sent to the waterlogged St Eloi sector of Flanders during February 1915, where they had existed in appalling trench conditions.

The Patricias subsequently took part in the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April – 24 May 1915) where they had faced repeated frenzied German attacks and suffered terrible losses during the most critical day of the Battle of Frezenberg Ridge on 8 May, when all that stood between the Germans and the capture of the town of Ypres had been a thin line of battle-weary troops drawn from their own 27 Division and the 28th Division (between 23 April and 8 May, 83 Brigade lost 128 officers and 4,379 men). The British line at Ypres was held together by the superhuman efforts of the defenders and shortly after the fighting at Frezenberg, the battle of Second Ypres fizzled out.

Harry Lawrence eventually served with the Patricia’s for 9 months. During that time he was promoted to corporal and he had experienced one or two close calls. On one occasion whilst in the trenches at St Eloi a shell had exploded nearby killing and wounding 5 soldiers who were standing nearby. Lawrence received but a few scratches from the shattered glass of a periscope lens.

Lawrence was promoted ‘in the field’ to Second Lieutenant during early 1916 and shortly afterwards asked for, and received, a transfer to the 5th Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, which contained many men from Scarborough, including Lawrence’s great friend, 37-year-old solicitor’s son, William Andrew Turnbull, who was serving as a Second Lieutenant with the battalion. The two officers served together until 17 July 1916 when Turnbull was killed in action in the Locre Sector of Flanders.

The 5th Battalion was eventually sent to the Somme Sector where they took part in the Battle of Flers/Courcelette (15-22 September 1916) and the capture of the village of Martinpuich on 16 September. Shortly after these engagements Harry took a short leave in Scarborough before returning to France during October where he eventually joined the 6th Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment.

Lawrence joined the 6th Yorkshires on the Somme near to the village of Beaucourt where, during the night of Wednesday, 17 January 1917, the young officer went out into no mans land with 2 others on patrol. One of this party shortly arrived back in the British lines. Badly wounded, the officer reported that Lawrence and his companion had also been injured. Search parties were duly sent into no man’s land to look for the 2 officers but failed to find the injured men. However, a few days later the remains of Harry Lawrence and his companion were located in a water-filled shell hole where their remains had been buried. Although marked on a trench map, by the end of the war Lawrence’s burial site had been lost and his remains have never been recovered from the battlefield.

Harry’s name was eventually added to the Pier and Face 3A and 3D of the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. In Scarborough the missing lieutenant’s name was included on a now (2003) fallen down and broken gravestone in the town’s Dean Road Cemetery (Section A, Row 8, Grave 2), which also bears the names of his Norfolk-born mother Adeline, and Scarborough-born father James Sidney Lawrence, who later died at his home at 71 Manor Road on 22 October 1922 at the age of 78 years.

Henry Lawrence was also commemorated in his old school in Gladstone Road on the ‘Roll of Honour’ that bears the names of 71 ‘old boys’ and 2 women who had lost their lives during the war. The memorial can be found in the hall of the present day Junior School. He was also commemorated on the ‘Roll of Honour’ at the Municipal School, which carries the names of 63 former pupils. Their memorial is now (2003) located in Graham Comprehensive School, in Woodlands Drive. and bears the inscription:

‘To the honoured memory of the old boys who fell in the Great War’
‘Erected by the Old Scholars Club’…

Harry was also a member of the congregation of the now defunct Holy Trinity Church in Scarborough’s Trinity Road, thus Harry Lawrence’s name (and that of his dear friend William Andrew Turnbull) was included on the church ‘Roll of Honour’ which was situated on the south interior wall and window of the church. (At the time of writing, 2003, the church is in the process of being converted into a unit of flats, and the whereabouts of the ‘Roll of Honour’ is not known.) The Inscription on this Memorial had read:

‘To the glory of God and in undying memory of the men from this church and parish who gave their lives in the Great War 1914—1919. This window and tablet have been placed here by their friends and fellow parishioners’…

Henry Lawrence’s is also commemorated in Canada on page 578 of the First World War Book of Remembrance, which is located in a memorial chamber in The Peace Tower, on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, which is maintained by Veteran Affairs Canada.

[1] At the time of the 1891 Census of the population of Scarborough, the Lawrence family resided at ‘Somerset Cottage’ and consisted of: James, aged 37, born at Scarborough; Adeline, aged 39, born Pulham, Norfolk; Arthur, aged 15, Ernest, aged 14, Frank, aged 11, and Agnes, aged 7, (all born at Doncaster); Flora, aged 3, and Henry, aged 4 months, both of whom had been born at Scarborough. Arthur Lawrence, a florist in the family business died at the age of 40 on 26 February 1916. Following a ‘heated argument’ with his father, Arthur had returned to his home at 138 Moorland Road where he committed suicide by hanging. His body was found by his wife, Minnie Theresa Lawrence. Arthur was subsequently buried in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery (Section O. Row 2. Grave O.) with first wife Jessie Lawrence (Arthur had married Jessie Plows at St Mary’s on 6 May 1899 and she had died on 25 April 1910 at the age of 36). Minnie Theresa Lawrence died on 10 April 1933 at the age of 63. This lady’s grave is located on the border of Section W, Grave 75. Henry’s eldest brother Ernest Lawrence died in Scarborough at the age of 93 on 3 August 1970, and he was buried in Manor Road Cemetery with his wife Elizabeth (formerly Alden) who died on 10 January 1958, at the age of 80.

Paul Allen

Johnson, Wiliam

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Name: William Johnson

Rank: Lance Corporal

Service No: 1696

Date of Death: 10/01/1917

Age: 16 (CWGC reference; true age 27 – see below)

Regiment/Service:Yorkshire Regiment 1st/5th Bn.

Grave Reference: II. B. 6. Cemetery: AIF Burial Ground, Flers

Additional Information: son of Mrs Grace Johnson, of 64 William St, Scarborough.

CWGC reference

 

Paul Allen provides further information:

Badly mauled during the Battle of Morval (25-29 September) the sorely depleted ranks of the 1st/5th Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, eventually withdrew ‘to rest’ at the Somme village of Bazieux where the Battalion began to receive the drafts of replacements to replace the over 300 casualties sustained in an assault on enemy trenches at Eaucourt L’Abbaye during the above operations. Remaining at Bazieux throughout the Christmas of 1916, training and repairing roads, the 5th Yorks returned to the front line in the Somme Sector at Mametz Wood on 1 January 1917. One can barely comprehend the miserable conditions facing the Yorkshiremen.

’The battlefield, under torrents of rain, had already assumed that forlorn and desolate appearance which ever after remained, burnt in upon one’s brain – a vision of living torture. The very earth stank of gas and was discoloured by the fumes of bursting gas shells. The countryside (if so it could be named) was a vast mass of shell holes overlapping each other in the tens of thousands; already they were full of noisome water, putrid from the dead bodies of friend or foe for whom a burial had been given. The fetid stench from the rotting carcasses of horses, or the poor remains of Briton or German torn from their hastily dug graves by shell fire and tossed here and there to await the mercy of fresh internment, filling the nostrils as one passed to or from the front line’…[1]

Under almost continual shell and sniper fire whilst in Mametz Wood, on 10 January 1917 the 5th Battalion lost 1696 Lance Corporal William Johnson.

Born in Scarborough at 60 Nelson Street during 1890, William was the 6th of 7 children of ‘tinsmith’ Joseph and Grace Johnson. William worked in Scarborough’s fishing industry as a fish curer and packer prior to the war. Whilst living with his parents at 64 William Street, William enlisted into the 2nd/5th (Territorial) Battalion of The Yorkshire Regiment at Scarborough shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914. After training. he eventually joined the 1st/5th Battalion in the Ypres Salient during November 1915.

Remaining in Belgium until August 1916 the 1st/5th Battalion left the dreaded ‘Wipers’ Sector to arrive in the equally murderous Somme Sector during September 1916 where, on 10 September the Battalion went first into the line at Mametz Wood. On 15 September, Johnson and the remainder of 2/5 Yorks was involved in an attack on the village of Martinpuich which, although captured with relative ease, cost the Battalion dearly. Relieved during the following day, Johnson and his battle-scarred comrades moved to Bazentin-Petit Wood where they occupied the old German front line there until they eventually took their places for the Battle of Morval later that month.

Killed by enemy shellfire, William Johnson was aged 27 at the time of his demise (the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database for some obscure reason incorrectly records his age as sixteen years) and unmarried. His remains were initially interred in a small battlefield burial ground known as ‘Factory Corner Cemetery’ located near the village of Flers in the Somme Sector. However, after the war, his remains, and those of a further 15 British and 13 Australian casualties were re-interred in the much larger AIF Burial Ground located some two kilometres to the north of the village of Flers. Containing the graves of over 3,000 casualties of the Great War [over 2,000 of which are unidentified] William Johnson’s final resting place is located in Section 2, Row B, Grave 6.

Included in a casualty list that was included in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday, 26 January 1917, William Johnson’s was subsequently included on Scarborough’s Oliver’s Mount War Memorial. Elsewhere in the town his name can be found on a large ‘Roll of Honour’ located on the north interior wall of St Mary’s Parish Church. [An impressive gravestone located in Scarborough’s Dean Road Cemetery [Section A/ Border/ Grave 31] bears the names of William’s parents: Joseph, who died on 19 April 1928 at the age of 75 years; and Grace Johnson who passed away at the age of 76 years on 2 March 1931. This memorial also contains the name of their second son, James Johnson, who died on 9 March 1920 at the age of 49 years. Sadly, William’s name is not recorded].

Paul Allen

[1] The Green Howards in the Great War 1914-1919; Colonel H C Wylly.

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