Richard William Elcocks was born in Wellington, Shropshire, the second son of foundryman Thomas Elcocks and his wife Emma. Born in June 1883, he was one of nine children.
After initially becoming a printer’s apprentice, he enlisted in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in May 1903. After his initial training and service, Private Elcocks was transferred to the Army Reserve in 1911.
In January 1914, Richard married Charlotte Shenton. Charlotte was a widow ten years his senior, and had two children, Albert and Fred.
When war broke out, Private Elcocks was again called up and shipped to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. His records confirm that he received a gunshot wound to the left arm on 31st October 1914; the injury was enough for him to be shipped back to the UK for treatment.
He was treated in the Yeatman Hospital in Sherborne, Dorset, and appears to have been there for some time. His records state that he died on 26th June 1915 from an ‘intestical [intestinal?] obstruction following gun shot wound of left humerous’. He was 32 years of age.
Private Richard Elcocks lies at rest in Sherborne cemetery.
Some of the research on the Commonwealth War Graves has been fairly straightforward – information has been readily available on sites like Ancestry, or the death has been unusual or sudden enough for it to have made contemporary newspapers.
Other times, the search goes on for a while and only the tiniest of leads manages to turn up some information.
Private Stanley Sansom falls firmly into the second category.
Private Stanley Sansom
In a corner of Sherborne Cemetery stands a gravestone. It is dedicated to 20023 Private S Sansom of the Dorsetshire Regiment. He died on 31st March 1921, aged 27 years.
Searching just on a surname doesn’t turn up a great deal, even for one as seemingly uncommon as Sansom.
My default first sites for this research are the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Find A Grave. Both sites, however, list the soldier’s name as Sanson, even though the stone clearly says Sansom.
The FAG site provides no other information, although the CWGC page does name the soldier’s father, Thomas Sanson of Sherborne. Again, an Ancestry search does not bring anyone by that name in Dorset.
My next option is usually the British Newspaper Archive; no Sansons are recorded, but the surname Sansom does turn up just after the date on the stone:
Mrs Sansom desires to thank all friends who have expressed sympathy with her in the sad bereavement she has sustained by the death of her husband.
Western Gazette: Friday 22nd April 1921
Nothing conclusive, but it did suggest that Sansom may be the correct spelling.
Back on Ancestry, Thomas Sansom doesn’t turn up anything, but a random check on the surname and specific date of death did show a few family trees for a Stanley Sansom, born in 1892. Again nothing conclusive here, particularly as none of the trees include any military records or spouses, but there was enough information to collate an overview of his life.
Stanley Sansom was born in September 1892 in Sherborne. He was one of six children to Thomas Sansom, a glove cutter, and his wife Jane.
The cloth business was a large employed in the Dorset town, and after leaving school, Stanley became an apprentice tailor.
There don’t appear to be any records of Private Sansom’s military service. However, he enlisted in the Dorsetshire Regiment, and his Service Number identifies that he served in the 1st/4th Battalion.
According to the Dorsetshire Regiment records, this battalion sailed for India on 9th October 1914, so Private Sansom must have enlisted at the outbreak of hostilities.
After a year’s training, his battalion moved to the Eastern Front, where soldiers saw action against the Turks in what is now Iraq. From what records there are, it can only be assumed that Private Sansom survived the war pretty much unscathed and returned to England in 1918 to be demobbed.
There is no record of Stanley marrying, so whether the Western Gazette’s article relates to him, or to another Sherborne Sansom is unclear.
All that can be confirmed is that Private Stanley Sansom died on 31st March 1921, aged 27.
He lies at rest in the cemetery of his home town in Dorset.
As I was writing this post, I happened to notice an additional inscription at the bottom of Stanley’s gravestone:
Also of Private J Sansom, Dorsetshire Regiment. Died at Basra June 1916
Stanley had a younger brother, Jack, who also enlisted in the 1st/4th Battalion. The brothers were shipped to India and Mesopotamia together; while Stanley came home, Jack died in battle and is buried in Basra War Cemetery. He was just 20 years old.
Frederick James Cheal was born in Reigate, Surrey in July 1880. One of six children, his father Francis was an agricultural labourer and cowman, while his mother Ann looked after their children.
While born in the landlocked Home Counties, Frederick appeared to be drawn to a life on the open seas. He enlisted in the Royal Navy on 26th October 1897, for a period of 12 years.
Stoker Cheal served his time on a number of vessels over that time, ships with names like Hannibal, Warrior and Furious. Having completed his service, Frederick was discharged on 28th October 1910.
Frederick’s wanderlust remained, though, and it appears that his discharge was more of transfer. He immediately enrolled in the fledgling Canadian Navy for a period of five years, dividing his time between land-based instruction and service on the HMS Niobe.
War broke out, and Stoker Cheal’s service was extended beyond the initial five-year term. Again, rather than his service coming to an end, he transferred back to the Royal Navy in August 1916.
Promoted, Petty Officer Stoker Cheal was assigned to the HMS Bacchante, an armoured cruiser that served as an escort to the British convoys off the African coast.
Frederick was admitted to the Royal Naval Hospital in Chatham, Kent, in early 1919 with influenza and pneumonia. He passed away on 22nd February, aged 38.
He lies at rest in the graveyard of St Margaret’s Church in Rainham, Kent.
Here is where a mystery lies. There is no discernible link between Frederick Cheal and Rainham, other than that is where his widow lives.
A lot of Rose Anne Cheal’s life is sadly lost to time. There are no marriage records to link her to Frederick, and I have been unable to identify her maiden name or whether she was even English (the couple could easily have met during Frederick’s time in Canada).
From her later records, it is evident that she lived in Rainham, just around the corner from the church where her husband is buried. The 1939 register confirms that she was a couple of years older than Frederick; she was born on Christmas Eve 1878. The register also confirms that the couple had two children, Francis, who was born in 1914, and Kathleen, born two years later.
Some mysteries are not meant to be solved; Frederick lived a full life on the open seas, spending 22 years serving two navies. He died in the same way as many other returning soldiers and sailors, a victim of the Spanish Flu pandemic. He left a wife and two young children, a sad tale repeated countless times across the continent.
The year is 1897, and Edwin Holdstock has crammed a lot into his 38 years. Born in North Kent, he has travelled well, working as a grocer’s manager in south London. His first wife, Kate, gave him five beautiful children, four girls and a boy, before she died, aged only 35. Edwin married again, to Louisa, and they have already had their first child, a boy.
A new birth is on its way, though, and his third son – Herbert Frederick Victor Holdstock is born. They are living in Thornton Heath, Surrey.
The family up and move again, this time to Grimsbury, near Banbury, Oxfordshire. Edwin has new employment, as a superintendent for Kingsley Sewing Machines in the town.
Edwin appears to be an ambitious man; by the time of the 1911 census, he has moved the family from Oxfordshire back to Kent. He and Louisa have four children now and they live in Rainham, where Edwin works as a Political Agent.
Herbert was keen to make his own way in the world, however, and worked as an apprentice watchmaker and jeweller in both Rainham and nearby Sittingbourne.
He enlisted relatively late into the war; his service records show that Air Mechanic Holdstock started his Royal Air Force service on 20th June 1918. He was stationed in South London.
While there, he contracted pneumonia and was hospitalised. Within a week, Herbert had passed away. He was just 21 years old.
The local newspaper reported on his funeral:
Only so recently as November Mr EC Holsdtock of Orchard-street, Rainham, the Secretary of the Sittingbourne District War Pensions Committee, sustained a sad bereavement in the death of his wife [Louisa], who succumbed to an attack of influenza and pneumonia. Mr Holdstock has now suffered another bereavement in the death of his second son, Herbert Frederick Victor Holdstock, who died in the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich… A little over eight months ago he joined the Royal Air Force, as a mechanic, as was stationed at Kidbrook, near Woolwich. Never robust, he contracted pneumonia, and after a week’s illness succumbed. He was a bright, cheery young man, and much liked.
East Kent Gazette: Saturday 1st March 1919.
Air Mechanic Herbert Holdstock lies at rest in the graveyard of St Margaret’s Church in Rainham, Kent.
Harry Sidney Cook was born in April 1892, the youngest of six children. His parents John, a clay digger, and Ann lived in Rainham, Kent, and had two other boys and three girls.
By the 1911 census, the family seem to have gone their separate ways. John and his youngest son were boarding away from the rest of the family, and Harry listed himself as a fisherman. There is no immediate record of his mother, Ann, while his oldest brother Arthur had passed away, and his closest sibling Albert was working as a labourer in Essex.
Shortly after the census was taken, he married Alice Pearce. They lived in a house by Rainham Station and soon had a son, Frank Sidney.
Harry enrolled in the Royal Navy in March 1916, and served on a number of vessels during the war and in the months afterwards. Shortly after enrolling, he and Alice had twins, Daisy and Edith.
Deck Hand Cook was serving on HMS Hermione in February 1919. A guard ship in Southampton, towards the end of the war, she became the HQ Ship for motor launches and coastal motor boats serving the Solent.
It was while he was working there that Harry contracted pneumonia. He was admitted to the Haslar Royal Naval Hospital in Gosport, but passed away on 14th March 1919. At 26 years old, he had become a father for the fourth time just three weeks before; it is likely that he never got to meet his youngest daughter, Alice.
Deck Hand Harry Cook was brought back to his home town of Rainham to be buried. He lies at rest in the St Margaret’s Churchyard, Rainham.
Wilfrid David Baker was born in 1889 in Upchurch, Kent. One of ten children, to Charles and Margaret Baker, he followed his father into the brickmaking industry.
When the Great War came, Wilfrid signed up, enlisting in the Royal Navy in March 1917, as Stoker 2nd Class. During his training in Woolwich, he was promoted to Stoker 1st Class, before being assigned to the HMS Columbine naval base in Scotland.
During his work there, Stoker Baker came down with influenza and was transferred to the HMHS Garth Castle hospital ship. Wilfrid’s illness developed into pneumonia, and he passed away on 20th October 1918. He was 29 years of age.
Stoker 1st Class Wilfrid Baker is buried in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin in his home village, Upchurch.
Walter George Colchin was born in 1884 in Borden, Kent. His parents, Herbert and Frances, moved the family – three sons, including Walter, and a daughter – to the village of Iwade, where they ran the Woolpack Inn.
There isn’t a great deal of information about Walter’s life. He married Bertha Sparks from the neighbouring village of Milton in 1916.
Walter joined the war effort at some point after that – I have been unable to find an exact date – and enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps, before transferring to the Agricultural Company Labour Corps.
Private Colchin was on active service in Steyning, West Sussex, when the war came to a close. On 23rd December 1918, he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died. He was 34 years old.
Walter Colchin is buried in the graveyard of All Saints Church in his home village of Iwade.
Thomas Clements was born in St Helen’s, Lancashire in 1877. He was the youngest of ten children to George Clements and his wife Martha.
George worked as an engine fitter, and he seems to have follow the work wherever it went – consecutive censuses list him in Middlesex, Staffordshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire, although he disappears from 1891 onwards.
Thomas lived with the family up until his mother’s death in 1911, mainly in Burnley, Lancashire, where he worked as a grocer’s assistant. The last available census shows him living in the Salvation Army Home in Chorlton-upon-Medlock, to the south of Manchester city centre.
Tom’s military records are sparse – he enlisted in the 6th (Reserve) Battalion King’s Royal Rifles, who were based in Sheerness, Kent, for the entirety of the conflict. It is unlikely, therefore, that Rifleman Clements saw active service on the Western Front.
Sadly, the cause of Tom’s death is also absent from the records. He does not appear in any contemporary newspapers, so it is seems likely that he succumbed, as many did, to some form of illness, perhaps influenza or pneumonia. The Register of Soldier’s Effects give his next of kin as his father, George; the latest information on him was that he was an inmate of the Union Workhouse in Burnley, Lancashire.
Rifleman Clements died on 14th June 1915; he was 37 years old. He lies at rest in the graveyard of All Saints Church, Iwade in Kent, presumably close to where he was based, in Sittingbourne.
Stuart William Arthur Mercer was born in February 1890, one of seven children to William and Eliza Mercer. The family lived in the village of Upchurch, Kent, where William worked as an agricultural labourer.
Stuart followed in his father’s footsteps, and by the time of the 1911 census, he and his brother Bert were working as fruit plantation labourers with William.
He married the delightfully named Elsie Lily Singyard who was also from Upchurch, in 1914, but the couple didn’t have any children.
It was not until towards the end of the Great War that Stuart signed up for service. He enlisted in the Royal Navy on 27th September 1918, and was assigned to the HMS Pembroke II training base in Chatham.
Stoker Mercer’s service was short, however; he had contracted bronchial pneumonia within weeks of the war ending and was admitted to the Royal Navy Hospital in Chatham. He passed away there on 28th November 1918. He was 28 years old.
Stoker Stuart Mercer lies at rest in the St Mary the Virgin churchyard in his home village, Upchurch in Kent.
Harry Austin was born in the small Kent village of Bobbing in 1890. One of nine children to Richard and Emma Austin, his father was the village blacksmith, a trade two of his brothers followed after leaving school. Harry, however, became a general labourer in the coal industry.
Sadly, most of Harry’s wartime service is lost to time; we know that he enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery and served as a driver. The RFA was responsible for the medium-calibre guns and howitzers deployed close to the front line; Harry’s role, therefore, was likely to have involved driving the horses to and from the sites where the guns were needed.
Again, Driver Austin’s military records are somewhat lacking when it comes to his passing. However, where they mark him as ‘dead from disease’, a contemporary newspaper in memoriam gives a little more detail.
In ever loving memory of Driver Harry Austin, RFA… who passed away November 10th 1918, in the 1st Southern General Hospital, Birmingham, from influenza following Gun Shot wounds, aged 29 years.
East Kent Gazette – Saturday 23rd November 1918.
An untimely death for Harry, but particularly poignant, given that he passed the day before the Armistice was signed.
Driver Harry Austin lies at peace in the graveyard of St Bartholomew’s Church in his home village of Bobbing, Kent.
Death and Service 