Nathaniel Gooby was born on 28th October 1897, the only son of William Gooby and his third wife, Margaret. Both of William’s previous wives – Tryphena and Amelia – had died before their time, but Nathaniel had six half-siblings, up to forty years older than him.
William was a carpenter, who had been born in England, but had moved to Newfoundland when he was young, and this is where he lived and raised his families.
Sadly, very little documentation remains to evidence Nathaniel’s life. He enlisted as a Seaman in the Royal Naval Reserve, potentially after war was declared (he would have been 16 years old at the outbreak of the conflict). By the summer of 1917 he was based at HMS Pembroke – the Royal Naval Dockyard in Chatham, Kent.
That summer was a busy time for the Dockyard, and temporary accommodation had been set up for the influx of military personnel based there. Seaman Gooby was billeted at Chatham Drill Hall and was sleeping there when the first night air raid was carried out by the German Air Force on 3rd September 1917. The Drill Hall received a direct hit, killing 98 servicemen – Nathaniel included. He was just 19 years of age.
Nathaniel Gooby was laid to rest in the Woodlands Cemetery in nearby Gillingham, along with the other victims of the Chatham Air Raid.
William Alfred Stanley is one of those names that seems destined to be lost to the annuls of time. Little documentation exists for his early life, but what there is gives some hints at a determined young man.
William was born in London to an Annie Stanley, who lived in the Kentish Town area of the city. At some point, he emigrated to Canada as, according to his wartime enlistment papers, he joined up in Ontario.
William enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force on 5th November 1915, and was initially assigned to the 44th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry. His troop embarked for England in July 1916, and, on his arrival he was transferred to the 98th Battalion.
It was at this point that things too an unusual turn. With a few months, Private Stanley was again transferred, this time to the 19th Battalion, and then again to the 4th Reserve Battalion from where he was discharged from the Canadian Infantry in February 1917 for being underage.
At this point, William seems to have been undeterred.
The next record for him – in fact the memorial to him – is his headstone. This confirms that he had enlisted in the Royal Naval Canadian Voluntary Reserve as an Ordinary Seaman. He was based at HMS Pembroke, the shore establishment at Chatham Dockyard, but there is no other information for him.
Ordinary Seaman Stanley died on 28th December 1917, at the age of 21. (His previous military discharge might suggest that he was, in fact, younger than this, but that is conjecture on my part.) There is no record of a cause of death and nothing in contemporary newspapers to suggest anything out of the ordinary.
William Alfred Stanley was laid to rest in the Woodlands Cemetery in Gillingham, Kent, not far from the Naval Dockyard where he had been based.
William Frederick Ridley was born on 7th April 1887 in the New Brompton area of Chatham/Gillingham, Kent, one of eight children to John and Elizabeth Ridley. John was an engine fitter in the nearby naval dockyard and, as the key employer in the area, William followed in his father’s footsteps.
Sadly, John died in 1904, and this seems to have been what spurred his son on to a better life. In 1907 William emigrated to Canada, settling in the town of Wentworth, on the banks of Lake Ontario.
It was in Ontario that William met his future wife. Edith Wass was the daughter of a local labourer; the young couple married on 5th June 1909, and went on to have two children, John, born in 1910, and Wilfred, who was born five years later.
During this time, William was putting his engineering skills to the test; his marriage banns confirm he was a machinist. While there is nothing to confirm any specific trade, given his proximity to the coast, dockyard employment seems probable.
On the other side of the Atlantic, war was breaking out; keen to do his part for King and Country, William enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force on 28th July 1915. Initially enlisting in the 76th Overseas Battalion of the Canadian Infantry, he was shipped to England a year later and transferred across to the 4th Battalion.
Once on the Western Front, Private Ridley was thrown right into the thick of things. His battalion fought at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette – part of the Battle of the Somme – and it was here, on 18th September 1916, that he was wounded.
William received shrapnel wounds to his head, hand and right leg. Initially treated on site, he was quickly evacuated back to England, and admitted to the 2nd London General Hospital in Chelsea. Sadly, however, his wounds appeared to have been too severe; Private Ridley passed away from them on 30th November 1916, aged just 29 years old.
With his widow and children still in Canada, William’s body was taken back to Kent. He lies at rest in the Woodlands Cemetery in Gillingham, close to where his mother was still living.
George Palmer Carpenter was born in Worthing, West Sussex, in 1881, one of fourteen children to James and Elizabeth Carpenter. James ran the Steyne Hotel on the seafront, and sent his boys off to the Lucton Boarding School in Henfield for their education.
A regimented life seems to have suited George. When he left school, he enlisted in army, joining the Royal Engineers as a Sapper. The 1901 census found him billeted at the Elphinstone Barracks in Portsmouth.
Sadly, there is little further documentation on the life of Sapper Carpenter. He served through to and during the Great War, attaining the rank of Serjeant. He was sent to France in May 1915, though there is little to confirm his role there, or how long he stayed.
Serjeant Carpenter was subsequently attached to G Depot Company of the Royal Engineers, which received men returned from Expeditionary Force and also men enlisted for Tunnelling Companies, Special Companies and other specialist units. By this time – presumably later on in the conflict – he was based back in England, at the regiment’s barracks in Chatham, Kent.
When the war came to a close, George continued with his army career. With conflict in Europe coming end, he was shipped to Singapore in 1917, where he served through to 1920. A Sussex newspaper picked up his story from there:
Much sympathy will be extended to Mrs Carpenter and her family, of the Steyne Hotel, consequent upon the death of Sergeant George Carpenter, of the Royal Engineers, another of our Worthing boys whose life has been laid down in his country’s service. He arrived home in a bad state of health on the 25th of February last from Singapore, where he had been on duty for three years. Suffering from gastric influenza, it was found necessary that he should undergo an operation, which was carried out at midnight on Saturday. But he sank from weakness, and died at half-past eight on Sunday morning. This is the second son of whom Mrs Carpenter has been bereaved within a year, and there is pathos in the words addressed to us by her: “I have again the sorrowful task of sending the news of the death of one of my sons this morning.
Worthing Gazette: Wednesday 24th March 1920
George Palmer Carpenter was 39 years old. He was laid to rest in the Broadwater Cemetery of his home town, Worthing, in West Sussex.
The other brother referred to in the report was George’s younger brother Norman.
He had emigrated to Canada in 1906, but returned to Europe as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force when war broke out. Wounded in battle in May 1917, he returned to the UK for treatment and recuperation, and remained on home soil for the rest of the war.
In the spring of 1919, he was admitted to hospital with pleurisy and anaemia, and seems that he never fully recovered, succumbing to the conditions in August of that year. He was just 32 years old.
Charles William Dyer was born on 12th May 1895, the youngest of seven children to Harry and Mary Dyer.
Harry was a farmer, who brought his family up in the village of Kewstoke, just to the north of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. He seems to have been keen to try new things because he and Mary lived for a while in Australia, and their first two children were born there. They then moved back to the UK in around 1887, settling back in Somerset.
By the time of the 1911 census, Charles was 16 years old, and all of the family were helping out on the farm. He seemed to share his father’s sense of adventure; in 1913, he emigrated to Canada, setting himself up as a farmhand in Winnipeg.
War was coming to Europe, however, and Charles joined up. He enlisted in October 1917, joining the Canadian Infantry. Leaving Canada on a troop ship on 19th February 1918, he arrived back in England on 4th March.
Private Dyer was soon installed at the Canadian Infantry camp at Bramshott in Hampshire. Within weeks of arriving in England, however, he had contracted influenza; this developed into pneumonia, and was admitted to the camp’s Military Hospital on 22nd May. Sadly, a week later, Private Dyer was dead. He was just 23 years old.
Charles William Dyer was taken back to Weston-super-Mare and laid to rest in the Milton Cemetery there.
Charles Dyer (on right) in Canada (Courtesy of ancestry.co.uk)
William John Neads was born on 16th December 1892, the middle of three children to cab driver and groom William Neads and his wife Ellen. Both William Sr and Ellen were from Somerset, although William Jr and his brother Charles – who was eleven months older – were both born in the Monmouthshire village of Cwmcarn.
William’s parents soon moved the family back to Clevedon in Somerset, and, when he left school, he found work as a farm labourer. He was eager to see more of the world, however and, in April 1913, he emigrated to Canada.
After working as a labourer there for a year or so, back in Europe war was declared. Keen to do his bit for King and Country, William enlisted in the 1st Battalion of the Canadian Infantry in January 1915. He soon found himself caught up on the Front Line.
In October 1916, he was involved in the Battle of the Somme – either at Le Transloy or The Battle of the Ancre Heights – and received a shrapnel wound to his left shoulder. Initially admitted to the Canadian General Hospital in Etaples, he was subsequently evacuated to England and the Northern General Hospital in Leeds. He spent three months recovering from his injuries, and was back on the Western Front in January 1917.
Later that year, William – now a Lance Corporal – was involved in the fighting at the Second Battle of Passchendaele (part of the Third Battle of Ypres). He was wounded again, this time receiving a rather unceremonious gunshot wound to the right buttock. Treated at the scene, he was evacuated back to England and admitted to the Fusehill War Hospital in Carlisle on 17th November.
Sadly, despite treatment, Lance Corporal Neads’ health deteriorated, and he passed away from his injuries on 16th December 1917, his 25th birthday.
William John Neads was brought back to his family’s home of Clevedon, and buried in the clifftop churchyard of St Andrew’s, overlooking the sea.
Tragically, William’s father had died in May 1917, at the age of 51. While no details of his passing are recorded, it meant that Ellen had, in just over a year, seen her son wounded, her husband die and her son wounded again and die as a result.
Arthur Webb Butler Bentley was born on 1st January 1884 to Dr Arthur Bentley and his wife Letitia. The oldest of five children, they were a well-travelled family. Dr Bentley had been born in Devon, but his and Letitia’s first two children were born in Singapore, while their second two were born in Ireland, where Letitia herself had been born.
By the time of the 1891 census, the family were living in Paddington, London, where Arthur’s father was a medical practitioner.
Arthur Jr looked set to follow in his father’s footsteps; becoming a student of medicine in Edinburgh, although it seems his life was destined to take a different route.
By 1905, his father was working at a practice in Egypt. It was around this time that his mother made the newspaper headlines.
VICTIM OF CHROLODYNE
A painful story was told at the Clerkenwell Sessions when Letitia Bentley, the wife of a doctor holding an official position in Cairo, pleaded guilty to the theft of a diamond and ruby ring from the shop of Messrs. Attenborough, Oxford Street [London]. It was stated that Mrs Bentley was addicted to the drinking of spirits and chlorodyne, and that 240 empty bottles which had contained the latter drug had been found in her rooms in Bloomsbury.
Dr Bentley said he would keep his wife under strict supervision in the future, and she was bound over.
Shetland Times: Saturday 3rd June 1905.
The ring concerned was valued at five guineas (around £700 in today’s money), and another report confirmed that her husband “supplied her with ample means” [financially].
In the 19th century, chlorodyne was readily used as a treatment for a number of medical conditions. Its principal ingredients were a mixture of laudanum (an alcoholic solution of opium), tincture of cannabis, and chloroform, it readily lived up to its claims of relieving pain and a sedative.
Letitia does not appear in any other contemporary media; sadly, however, she passed away “at sea” in June 1907, presumably on the way to or from Cairo, where Arthur Sr was still working. She was just 47 years old.
Arthur seems to have taken the decision to move away, and he emigrated to Canada, settling in Winnipeg. Leaving England behind, he left the idea of medicine with it, finding work as a lineman instead, constructing and maintaining telegraph and power lines.
Arthur’s father is the next member of the family to appear in the local newspapers. Working in Cairo during the winter and Llandrindod Wells in the summer, he travelled to Wales in April 1911. One evening he collapsed and died while in the smoking room of his hotel. The media reported that he was “formerly Colonial Surgeon to the Straits Civil Service, Singapore” and that “he was going to deliver a lecture at Owen’s College [now the Victoria College of Manchester] on tropical diseases, upon which he was an expert.“
Arthur Jr was now 27, and had lost both of his parents. War was on the horizon, though, and he seemed keen to become involved. He enlisted in December 1915, joining the Canadian Expeditionary Force. His sign-up papers gave him as just short of 32 years old, standing at 5ft 8ins (1.72m) tall, with a fair complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. The document also recorded his next of kin as his brother, William, who was living near Cairo.
Arthur arrived in England on 25th September 1916; during his time in the army he remained on English soil, primarily at a signal base in Seaford. Transferred to a reserve battalion in January 1917, he was eventually discharged seven months later.
His records suggest that his services were no longer required, but t is likely that Arthur’s discharge was his transfer to the Yorkshire Regiment, complete with a commission.
The now Second Lieutenant Bentley was assigned to the 3rd Special Reserve Battalion but never saw action in Europe. The troop’s main duties were to train men for service overseas and to provide coastal defences. While there is no confirmation of exactly where Arthur was based, there were units in and around Hartlepool, County Durham.
Sadly, there is little further information about Arthur. By the end of the war, he was living in Taunton, Somerset, where his younger sister Eileen had settled. Second Lieutenant Bentley survived the war, but passed away not long afterwards, on 2nd December 1918. There is no cause given for his death. He was just 35 years old.
Arthur Webb Butler Bentley lies at rest in St Mary’s Cemetery in Taunton, Somerset.
Gerald Montague Brine war born in October 1897, the youngest of seven children to John and Annie Brine. John was a potter, and, while the children were born in Dorset, the family soon moved to the Somerset village of Binegar.
Gerald’s three older brothers all went to work in a local stone quarry, as an engineer, breaker and foreman respectively. When Gerald left school, he found work with the local blacksmith as a striker. It was while employed there, in 1912, that his mother Annie passed away, aged just 50 years old.
War was on its way however, and where his brothers enlisted in the army, Gerald was bound for the sea. He enlisted in the Royal Navy on 3rd November 1915 and, as an Ordinary Seaman, was assigned to HMS Iron Duke. He was aboard the vessel when it became embroiled in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, and was subsequently transferred to HMS Discoverer.
Promoted to Able Seaman in April 1918, the Discoverer headed back to Chatham a couple of months later. A Somerset newspaper picks up on Gerald’s sad tale from there.
When one of His Majesty’s ships was returning to port, and her crew were looking forward to “leave”, an unfortunate tragedy occurred by which Gerald Montague Brine, a young Able Seaman [and] a native of Binegar, lost his life. It appears that in the course of storing gear, a loaded revolver was removed by mistake to the armourer’s room, instead of to the officer’s cabin, and was placed on a table.
Curiosity led Peter Macfarlane, another able seaman, to handle it, and as he was bringing it to his side from an upward position, he, to use his own words, unconsciously pulled the trigger. It fired, and the bullet entered Brine’s body just under his left shoulder, fracturing his spine and producing paralysis of his lower limbs.
Wells Journal: Friday 12th July 1918
Gerald’s parents had a telegram to say that he was seriously wounded and in the Royal Naval Hospital, Chatham. They travelled at once to Chatham and found him very ill, but conscious. They remained with him until he died a week later, on 1st July 1918. He was just 20 years of age.
At the inquest, Macfarlane described Brine as his best chum, and all witnesses agreed that “the best possible relations existed between the members of the crew.” According to the doctor’s evidence at the inquest, Gerald was unable to be saved. The jury reached a verdict of Accidental Death.
Able Seaman was brought home to Binegar, and lies at rest in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church.
Gerald’s grave also acts as a memorial to two of his older brothers.
Arthur Brine, who had been the stone breaker in the quarry, emigrated to Canada after his mother had died, finding work there as a fireman. The Great War brought him back to European shores, however, and he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, joining the 188th Battalion.
Private Brine arrived in England in October 1916; he transferred to the 28th Canadians, and set off for France the following January. He was caught up in the Battle of Arras and was hit and killed by a piece of shrapnel on 15th April 1917. He was just 29 years old.
Arthur Brine lies at peace in the Ecoivres Cemetery to the north west of Arras in Northern France.
Herbert Brine had been the foreman at the stone quarry He married Sarah Lucy James shortly before his mother’s death in 1912; the couple went on to have two children, Arthur and Kenneth.
Herbert was mobilised in July 1917, initially joining the 3rd Reserve Battalion. He was drafted, as an Able Seaman, to the Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division (RND) in November 1917, before re-joining his RND Battalion at Flesquières, near Cambrai, two months later.
In early March 1918, the Germans started bombardments in preparation for a major offensive. For ten days from 12th March, the Flesquières salient was drenched with nearly a quarter of a million (mostly mustard) gas shells, There were over 2,000 resultant casualties in the RND. After this preparatory shelling, the Germans attacked in enormous numbers.
By the end of the day, the situation was precarious and the Division was forced to retreat in steps, through Bertincourt, Ytres and the Metz lines, through the old Somme battlefields.
Able Seaman Brine was first reported missing on 24th March, but was only accepted as having been killed in action on that date nine months later. As such, Herbert is commemorated by name on the Arras Memorial; his name also resides on Gerald’s gravestone back home in Binegar.
The Great War took its toll on the Brine family. Three of the four brothers died during those tumultuous years, leaving only John’s oldest son, Wallace, to carry on the family name. John himself died in 1942, aged 84, and lies with his wife and youngest boy in the small Binegar churchyard.
Oliver Job Chubb was born on 3rd December 1884 in the village of Smallbridge in Devon. He was one of six children to Job Chubb, who was an agricultural labourer, and his wife Louisa. Oliver did not seem to be one for settling down; after his parents had moved the family to Ilminster in Somerset when he was just a child, by 1901 he was living in Lyme Regis, working as a carter in a market garden.
In 1902, at the age of 17, Oliver enlisted in the Somerset Light Infantry. Eighteen months later he transferred to the Royal Navy, serving as a Stoker on a number of ships during what would become twelve years’ service, including the Royal Oak, Skirmisher and Newcastle.
In 1906 he married Rosina Keirle, a brickmaker’s daughter from Somerset. The wedding was in Bridgwater, and the couple went on to have three children, Olive, Albert and Cecil.
There is a sense that Oliver either had perpetually itchy feet, or that he was always running from something. The 1911 census found him aboard HMS Suffolk in the Mediterranean, where he listed himself as single. By the end of his naval service in November 1915, however, Stoker Chubb disembarked in the port of Victoria, British Colombia, and immediately signed up for military service with the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
Again, however, indecision seems to have set in. He listed his marital status as ‘single’ and confirmed his next of kin as his sister Elsie, but on his military will, he left everything to Rosina.
Private Chubb was assigned to the 29th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry; they served on the Western Front from early in 1915 through to the end of the war. He was involved in the fighting at Ypres, and, in September 1916, was treated in England for an inguinal hernia. After three months’ recover, he returned to the front.
While Private Chubb seems to have had a good overall manner, there were blips in his character. In May 1917, he was sentenced to three days’ field punishment for being absent without leave for 21hrs. In March 1918, he was sentenced to another five days’ field punishment for going AWOL for 48 hours. On 11th April 1918, Private Chubb received 14 days’ field punishment for drunkenness on duty.
In December of that year, Oliver was invalided back to England for medical treatment; he was admitted to the Fort Pitt Military Hospital in Chatham with lymphatic leukaemia. Sadly, Private Chubb passed away shortly after being admitted, dying on 17th December 1918. He was 34 years old.
Oliver Job Chubb lies at rest in St John’s Cemetery in Bridgwater, where his family still lived.
Robert Roberts was born in Liverpool in November 1887 the youngest of two children to Robert and Alice Roberts.
The New World beckoned for the Roberts family, and they set sail for Canada when Robert Jr was just 4 years old. The family settled in the city of Regina, Saskatchewan.
Little is recorded about Robert Jr until October 1911, when he married a Quebecois woman called Edna Webber. The young couple went on to have two children, a daughter, One, and a son, George.
In April 1916, he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. His trade was noted as a Lumberman, and his record notes that Robert had already served as part of the 95th Saskatchewan Rifles.
Joining the 224th Battalion, Robert was shipped to England in May 1916. He transferred to the Canadian Forestry Corps in November, reaching the rank of Staff Sergeant, and was assigned to the company’s Base Depot in Sunningdale, near Windsor.
When the war ended, demobilisation was still a way off for a lot of soldiers, particularly those from the Commonwealth. Robert was transferred to Stirling, and was appointed Quartermaster Sergeant (responsible for supplies and stores) for 121st Company.
On 28th January 1919, Robert was admitted to the Royal Infirmary in Stirling with influenza and double pneumonia. Sadly, he passed away just over a week later, breathing his last on 6th February 1919. He was 33 years old.
Robert Roberts lies at peace in the Wembdon Road Cemetery in Bridgwater, Somerset.
There is no evident connection between Robert and Bridgwater, so why this was chosen as his place of rest is a mystery. It is likely that there was some sort of family connection, but that cannot be definitely established.
Death and Service 