Joseph Wilkinson was born in the village of Greystoke, Cumbria in the summer of 1888. His parents were John and Margaret Wilkinson, and he had two siblings, also called John and Margaret. Joseph’s father worked as a railway signalman, and the industry employed a large number of people in the village.
Joseph’s life was to take a different turn, however, and it was likely the railway that took him there. He next appears on the 1911 census, boarding in a house in the village of Wedmore in Somerset. At 23 years old, he is listed as a Solicitor’s Cashier.
As with so many other fallen men and women, Joseph’s trail goes cold. There is not enough evidence to detail his military career – he joined the Royal Army Service Corps as a Driver and was promoted to Sergeant.
The UK Army Register of Soldiers’ Effects show that he was married to a woman called Ethel, although there are no records of their wedding. The document also confirms that he died at the Union Hospital in Winchester, Hampshire on 17th October 1918, but there is no cause of death given. He was 31 years old.
“He did his duty” says his impressive gravestone, but it is tragic that that duty is lost to time.
Sergeant Joseph Wilkinson lies at rest in the churchyard of St Mary’s in Wedmore, the Somerset village that came to be his home.
William Collard was born in August 1891, the youngest of two children to William and Agnes Collard from Wedmore in Somerset. William Sr was a carter for a local miller and his son followed him into labouring when he left school.
William’s life seems to have been a tragic one. His mother died in 1910, while his sister Mabel passed a year later.
William married Eva Heal, a woman from the same village, in April 1914. The couple didn’t go on to have any children.
There is limited information relating to William’s military service. What is apparent is that he enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps, presumably at some point after the start of the Great War.
Private Collard’s battalion, the 3rd South Midlands, were based in Essex and were shipped to France in March 1915. There is, however, no evidence that William went with his troop. His training must have gone well, however, and he was promoted to Lance Corporal.
Details of his death are vague; William’s gravestone confirms he passed on 18th April 1915; the cause of his death was not reported. He was 23 years of age.
A brief notice in a local newspaper gives a little more information:
Mr W Collard [Senior], of Wedmore, one of the patients at the Country Sanatorium, received last week the news of the death of his soldier son. The funeral took place on Thursday at Wedmore in the same grave as the mother and only other member of the family, a sister of the deceased.
Shepton Mallet Journal: Friday 30th April 1915
William Collard lies at rest in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church in his home village of Wedmore, Somerset.
William is remembered in on a plaque in Bristol Cathedral; this commemorates the fourteen members of the 3rd South Midland Field Ambulance who fell during the war.
Comment should also be made of William’s father. In the space of four and a half years, he had lost his wife and both his children. He was already in a sanatorium when his son died. He too passed away, in December 1924, at the age of 58.
William’s widow, Eva, never remarried. She went on to live the age of 96, and passed away in Poole, on the Dorset coast.
William Cottrell was born in April 1885, the third of twelve children to Henry and Annie Cottrell from Bampton, Devon. When William left school, he became an assistant to the village baker, but new opportunities lay ahead.
In May 1907, William married Maria Wall, the daughter of a stonemason from Wedmore in Somerset. With weeks, the young couple had embarked for a new life, boarding the Empress of Britain in Liverpool, setting sail for Canada.
Emigrating to Manitoba, William became a labourer, and he and Maria had three children – Leslie, Ronald and Kathleen.
War came, and William enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in August 1915. Shipped to England in the spring of the following year, Annie followed suit, returning to Somerset with the three children.
Private Cottrell was assigned to the 44th Battalion Canadian Infantry, setting off for France in August 1916, just weeks before his fourth child – Ruby – was born.
The battalion was involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, and it was during the Somme Offensive that William was shot in the left arm. Initially treated in the field, he was soon shipped back to England to recover in a military hospital in Epsom. Discharged after three months, he was returned to his battalion in early 1917.
The fierce fighting continued, and Private Cottrell was wounded again in October 1918. Further treatment back in the UK was needed, and he was admitted to the 1st Eastern General Hospital in Cambridge.
Details of the William’s injuries at the Somme are readily available, but information on his second lot of injuries is scarcer. They must have been pretty severe, however, as he was not discharged. He lost his final battle after four months, succumbing to his wounds on 9th January 1919. He was 33 years old.
William Cottrell lies at rest in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church in his widow’s home village of Wedmore, Somerset.
William’s gravestone is also a memorial to his eldest son, Leslie, who was killed during the Second World War.
Details of his military service are sketchy, but he enlisted in the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment. His battalion – the 1st – was involved in the fighting in Italy, and it was here that he lost his life. He was killed on 8th February 1944 and is buried in the Sangro River War Cemetery, in Abruzzo.
Thomas Baker was born in 1877, the youngest of four children – all boys – to John and Anna Baker from Meare in Somerset. John was a farm labourer, and it was rural trades that his four sons followed, Thomas himself also becoming a farm worker.
Thomas married in August 1896; Phoebe Ann Willis was also from Meare and was just seventeen when the couple married. While I am sure there was love involved, something more practical might have prompted such a young marriage as, six months later, the couple had their first child, Henry.
Thomas and Phoebe went on to have four children, three of whom – Henry, Florence and Amy – survived. By the time of the 1911 census, the family were living in their home village of Meare, with Henry following in his father’s – and grandfather’s – line of work.
Full details of Thomas’ military services are not available. He enlisted in the Devonshire Regiment as part of the 13th Works Battalion and, while there is no documentation to confirm when he joined up, it was probably early in 1917.
Thomas and Phoebe’s son Henry had enlisted in 1915, joining the Gloucestershire Regiment. It seems likely he fought on the Somme, and he was killed in action in November 1916, aged just 20 years old. It may have been this loss that prompted Thomas to do his duty, albeit on the Home Front.
Whenever it was that Private Thomas Baker had enlisted, it was Phoebe that was to suffer the ultimate price. Having already lost a child young, her boy had died in the fields of France, and her husband was also about to add to that loss.
Thomas contracted pneumonia in the winter of 1916-17, and passed away in a military hospital on 22nd February 1917. He was 40 years old.
Thomas lies at rest in the graveyard of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary & All Saints in his home village of Meare in Somerset.
James Patch was born in 1882, the third of four children – all boys – to Albert and Jane. Albert was a farm labourer in the village of Meare, Somerset, and this is something that, once leaving school, the Patch boys also went into.
Albert passed away in 1904, so James stepped up and stayed living with his mother. By the time of the 1911 census, they were living near the Grape Vine Pub in Meare, both working as agricultural labourers, and had a John Lee boarding with them.
No firm details remain of James’ military service, although it is evident that he enlisted in the Devonshire Regiment and, from the Army Register of Soldiers’ Effects, this can be narrowed down to the 7th Infantry Works Company.
While Private Patch’s military records are sparse, his name crops up a lot in the newspapers around the time of his death, with headlines like “Mysterious Death of Meare Soldier”.
On the evening of the 25th March 1917, James was found lying across the tram tracks in Horfield, a suburb to the north of Bristol. He was in a semi-conscious state, and was taken to the nearby barracks.
An inquest was held and the story unfolded.
Witness statements confirmed that Private Patch was on a tram and had asked the conductress to let him know when they reached the barracks. The tram halted at the allotted stop, but, when nobody alighted, the driver started up again.
James apparently asked the conductress if that had been the stop for Horfield Barracks and, having confirmed that it was, and that he had wanted to get off there, she pressed the bell for the driver to pull up at the next stop. She then went up to the top deck of the tram, and it appear that James had decided he couldn’t wait for the next stop and jumped off the moving tram.
It seems that James fell from the tram and hit his head when he landed; this was when a passer-by found him.
The morning after his fall, the camp doctor identified the extent of James’ injury and he was moved from the barracks to the Royal Infirmary in Bristol. Private Patch died an hour after being admitted, having suffered an extensive fracture of the skull. He was 35 years of age.
The inquest into his death returned a verdict of “accidental death, due to a fall from a tram-car, caused by stepping from the car while in motion”.
James Patch lies at rest in the ground of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and All Saints in his home village of Meare in Somerset.
Born in September 1896, John Russell was one of thirteen children to Henry and Ellen Russell. Henry worked as a turf cutter on the Somerset levels, and the family lived in the village of Meare, near Glastonbury.
By the time of the 1911 census, John, aged 15, had left school and joined his father’s business.
When war broke out, John joined up; sadly, his military records are absent, but what we do know for certain is that he enlisted in the West Somerset Yeomanry, and was based at the Stanway Camp near Colchester in Essex.
Sadly, much is written of Private Russell’s death. He was acting as a sentry at the camp on the morning of Tuesday 19th October 1915 when he was hit by a car; taken to the military hospital in Colchester, he passed away the following morning.
An inquest was held into the incident, and the following was ascertained:
Vera Coysh, aged 19, was driving near the camp with two friends and her gardener; as she was approaching the entrance, a horse-drawn military wagon ahead of her turned and she swerved to avoid it. In doing so, she hit Private Russell “and carried him some way along the ground”.
John’s injuries were significant. When admitted to hospital, he “was suffering from bruises on the back of the head and haemorrhage from the right ear and nose. His left hand and the lower part of his left arm were swollen from bruising. He was semi-conscious and restless…”
The inquest identified some discrepancies in what happened.
Witnesses in the military wagon and a second one following it all saw a turning signal being given, although not necessarily in time for Vera to slow down or stop. All of the army witnesses stated that she was driving at a quick speed, possibly as much as 35mph.
Vera and her passengers all stated that they saw no signal, saying that the wagon pulled across without indication. They also stated that they were not travelling at speed.
The inquest was a lengthy one, but the final verdict was one of accidental death, with a recommendation that signs were put up on the road to warn of the entrance to the camp.
John Russell was just 19 years old when he died. He was laid to rest in the graveyard of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and All Saints in his home village of Meare, Somerset.
It’s worth also having a look into the life of the driver of that fated motor car.
Vera Murdoch Coysh was born in September 1896, the eldest child of Commander William Henry Coysh and his wife Beatrice Murdoch. The family lived in Yorkshire and, by the time of the incident, William and Beatrice had had four other children – Humphrey Cecil (who became a Commander), Geoffrey Ernest (who went on to be Sub Lieutenant), John William and Barbara Daphne.
Three months after the accident, Vera married Second Lieutenant Trevor Davidson, of the Essex Regiment, and the couple soon emigrated to Mozambique.
All was not well, however, as, by 1924, Vera has moved back to England, the couple had divorced and she had remarried, to a Douglas Stuart-Jervis. The couple went on to have two children.
Meanwhile, Vera was also making a bit of a name for herself in the literary world, writing a number of novels under the name of Jane England. While rarely seen nowadays, she wrote books with such ‘pulp fiction’ titles as Red Earth, Romantic Stranger, Flowering Harvest, Stormy Passage and Winter Jasmine.
It’s bittersweet to see that Vera made a life for herself, in the way that John Russell was sadly unable to.
Hubert Wilfred Labdon was born in the spring of 1896, to Alfred and Elizabeth Labdon, bakers in Ashcott, Somerset. One of five children, with two older brothers and two older sisters, he lost is mother at a very early age; Elizabeth died in 1901.
Hubert had left home by the time he was fifteen, but had not gone far – the 1911 census found him learning a trade from Edgar and Betsy Vining, farmers in the village.
When war came, Hubert enlisted – he joined up in February 1916, aged 19 years and five months. Private Labdon was initially assigned to the Somerset Light Infantry, but he must have quickly shown aptitude, because he was soon transferred to the Machine Gun Corps. After initial training, he found himself on a ship to France, arriving in Camiers, to the south of Boulonge, on 25th September 1916.
Private Labdon’s military records survive and are quite detailed – after an early mishap, where he was docked two days’ pay for losing part of his kit ‘by neglect’, he also spent time in hospital in June 1917.
By August of that year, he was based permanently at Camiers, where he was acting as a stretcher bearer. This was a role he continued to execute until he was demobbed at the end of the war.
His records show Hubert was granted two periods of leave; it was on the second of these, in November 1918, that he married Eva May Acreman. She was two years his senior, a farmer’s daughter from Ashcott as well, although the couple married in Ealing, London.
By mid-December, Private Labden was back in France, and here he stayed until February 1919, when his unit was finally demobilised. On returning to England, the young couple moved back to Ashcott, to be close to his family.
Sadly, Hubert seems to have succumbed to illness as many of his returning colleagues did. The local newspaper gave details of his passing:
The deceased, who was only 23, was recently married. He had served his country during the late war, part time as stretcher bearer. He had suffered from trench fever, which considerably injured his constitution and left him with a weak heart, which, no doubt, was the cause of death.
He had left his home for a short walk, and having been away rather longer than usual [a] search was made for him, and he was found sitting in an unconscious state. He died in a short time after reaching his home.
Deceased was of a very quiet and inoffensive disposition, and was much respected.
Central Somerset Gazette: Friday 2nd January 1920
While the end result was the same, Private Labdon’s military records adds the cause of death as ‘heart failure following influenza and acute diarrhoea’.
Hubert Wilfred Labdon lies at peace in the graveyard of All Saints’ Church, in his home village of Ashcott in Somerset.
Eva remained in Somerset after her husband’s death. In 1930, she married William Langford, a baker, and the couple went on to have a daughter.
Arthur James Latcham was born in 1889, the oldest of five children – all boys – to Walter and Matilda Latcham. The family lived in Street, Somerset, where Walter worked as a carpenter in the Clark’s shoe factory.
Initially following his father into shoemaking, Arthur was quick to enlist when war broke out. Details of Gunner Latcham’s military service is scarce, but documents confirm that he joined the Somerset Royal Horse Artillery on 8th October 1914. He did not see active service abroad, but had been stationed on the east coast for his training.
While little remains of his service records, contemporary media of the day includes a lot of information about both his passing and his subsequent funeral.
On Sunday, December 5th, having a few hours’ leave, he visited his parents at Street, and while at home complained that he was feeling unwell. On the following Wednesday, December 8th (which, by a coincidence, was his twenty-sixth birthday) Mr and Mrs Latcham received a post-card from him from Taunton [where the Somerset RHA was based] stating that he was very ill. They immediately engaged a motor car, and went to Taunton, where they found him in an extremely weak state, and on the point of collapse, he having had to walk to a hospital nearly a mile away three times a day for his medicine. Having obtained the captain’s permission, they brought him home in the motor car, and at once put him under the care of Dr MacVicker. He was then found to be suffering from pneumonia and congestion of the lungs… In spite of the greatest care, and best of nursing, however, he gradually grew worse, and never rallied.
Central Somerset Gazette: Friday 24th December 1915.
The following week’s newspaper included nearly a whole column on Gunner Latcham’s funeral, including two tributes, one from his captain and another from the local MP.
I am writing to tell you how very sorry all the officers of this battery are at your loss. Your son was the first member of the Somerset RHA to give his life for his country, and although he did not have the satisfaction of being killed in action, the honour is the same. I’m afraid the last few months he was in this battery were not very happy ones for him, owing to his trouble with his finger; but he bore the trouble and pain well. I had him with me for more than a year, so I can fully appreciate what a good fellow he was and how great your loss is.
Captain M Clowes (Central Somerset Gazette: Friday 31st December 1915)
I am very sorry indeed to learn of the sad loss you have suffered through the death of your son. I know that he was a fine fellow, an example of what an Englishman should be, and respected by all who knew him. I am sure you must feel proud to know that he has done all that a man can do, and has died serving his country.
Ernest Jardine MP (Central Somerset Gazette: Friday 31st December 1915)
Arthur James Latcham lies at rest in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church in his home town of Street.
Arthur was the third son Walter and Matilda had lost. Their second-born, Herbert, passed when a little over a year old. Their third son, William, died a year before Arthur, when he was just 15 years old.
Martin Kiddle was born in 1871, the oldest of four children to Joseph and Annie Kiddle. Joseph was a butcher in the Somerset town of Street, and the family lived above the shop on the High Street.
When Joseph died in 1886, Martin took on the role of shopman, before taking over the business entirely.
In 1895, aged 24, Martin married Eleanor Freeman, four years his senior from the nearby town of Ilminster. The young couple had five children and, by the time of the 1901 census, they were running the business as a family, employing an assistant in the shop and a domestic servant.
It is evident that Martin left the butchery business behind him, though. Ten years later, on the 1911 census, he is listed as a Stock Room Manager in a local rug factory.
Martin joined up when war broke out, initially serving in the Somerset Light Infantry, before transferring across to the Royal Defence Corps.
While there is no date for his transfer, it is likely to have been at some point in 1915. Private Kiddle’s wife, Eleanor, passed away in May of that year, so it is reasonable to assume that he requested a transfer to support her before her death, or to support his children afterwards.
Sadly, however, Martin was also to succumb to illness. His pension ledger shows that he passed away on 5th March 1917, dying from carcinoma of the liver. He was 46 years old.
Martin Kiddle lies at rest in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church in his home town of Street. The gravestone gives dedications to his father, Joseph, and his brother, John, who had died as just over a year old.
Guardianship of Martin and Eleanor’s five, now orphaned, children – Eleanor, Martin, John, Rachel and George – passed to Martin’s mother, Annie.
Thomas James Buckley Fowler – known as James – was born in 1872, the eldest of eleven children to Tom and Ellen Fowler.
Much of his early life is lost to time, but we do know that James married Emily Ann Gregory on December 26th 1898, and the couple went on to have four children – Wilfred, Harold, Violet and Ivy.
On his marriage certificate James lists himself as a shoemaker and, given the family were living in the Somerset town of Street, it is likely that he was employed at the Clark’s factory there. By 1911, however, the family had moved to Glamorgan, where he had taken work as a timber man in the coal mine in the village of Nelson.
Private Fowler enlisted when war broke out, joining the 10th Battalion of the Welch Regiment in October 1914. During his time with the regiment, he was promoted, first to Lance Corporal and then to Acting Sergeant.
He transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps just under a year later. In November 1915, he was admitted to hospital with enteritis, which led to him being shipped back to England for treatment.
Once he had recovered, Private Fowler was enlisted in the Provisional Company of the RAMC, transferring again to the 7th Company in 1916. He then operated on home soil for the next few years.
James was admitted to the Royal Military Hospital in Bristol on 28th October 1918 with influenza and bronchial pneumonia. He sadly passed away a few days later, on 2nd November 1918. He was 46 years old.
James Fowler lies at rest in the cemetery in Street, Somerset.
Death and Service 