19-year-old Private Hubert Simpson was killed in action on 10th August 1917, serving with the 11th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was born in Birmingham in 1898, and was the youngest of the two children born to parents Joseph (a machinist) and Emily (née Davis) who had married at St Paul’s Church, Birmingham in October 1886. Their eldest child, Clarisse, was born in 1895.
9th April 1917
Former Marston Green Cottage Homes residents, Samuel Richardson and Frederick Stevenson both died in France on Easter Monday, 9th April 1917, serving as Privates in the Armed Forces. Private Richardson was with the 78th Battalion Canadian Infantry, whilst Private Stevenson was serving with the 2/7th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Both men are commemorated on the Marston Green Cottage Homes war memorial.
12th October 1916
Two men with a local connection and who were both serving in the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire, were killed in action on 12th October 1916. Neither Private Ernest Lockley nor Acting Corporal Matthew Forrest has a known grave, and so both are commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.
Continue reading “12th October 1916”15th September 1916
Four local men are known to have died on 15th September 1916 as a result of their war service: Private Edmund Dixon, Coldstream Guards, was killed in action and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, as are Rifleman Arthur McKenzie, King’s Royal Rifle Corps and Captain Eric King Parsons, Rifle Brigade. Lieutenant Euan Louis Mylne MC, 2nd Battalion Irish Guards also died of wounds on the same day.
11th September 1916
Private Thomas Davis, 10th Battalion Canadian Infantry, died on 11th September 1916 serving in France. He was born in Birmingham c. 1890. By 1901, it appears that his father had died and he was living in a three-roomed back-to-back house (1 Court 4, Pickford Street) with his widowed mother, Ann, and three siblings, aged 8-15. Ann was working as a charwoman, and also had three boarders living in the house with her and her children.
29th August 1916
36-year-old Private Thomas Walter Haynes, 4th Battalion King’s (Liverpool) Regiment, and 22-year-old Corporal Horace Timmins, 15th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment (1st Birmingham Pals) both died on 29th August 1916.
Both men were born in Birmingham, although Thomas Haynes was living in Knowle before joining the Army. Horace Timmins’ local connection is that he spent time living at Marston Green Cottage Homes where his mother, Emma, was a foster mother.
19th August 1916
19-year-old Christopher Henry Cranmer died of wounds in Salonika on 19th August 1916 whilst serving as a Corporal with the 7th Battalion Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry. On the same day, Lance Corporal Arthur Busby died of wounds in France whilst serving with the 1st/5th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
16th June 1916
Three local men lost their lives on 16th June 1916:
- Corporal Henry Elliott, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
- Bombardier Edward Henry Prince, Royal Field Artillery
- Sergeant Leonard Wilson, Royal Field Artillery
Henry Elliott is buried at the Fauborg d’Amiens Cemetery in Arras, France. Edward Prince and Leonard Wilson are both buried at Hebuterne Military Cemetery in the Pas de Calais, about 20 km south-west of Arras.
1st June 1916
Two local men lost their lives on 1st June 1916. Private Harold Hackett, aged 25, serving with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and Stoker 1st Class Charles Simmons, aged 21, serving aboard H.M.S. Tipperary.
1st May 1916
Private Horace Yorke, a former resident of Marston Green Cottage Homes, died on 1st May 1916, serving with the 13th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. He was born in London and was living at the Cottage Homes in 1911, when he was aged 16. We haven’t been able to discover how he came to move from London, or why he ended up in the Cottage Homes (these were built to house children who would otherwise have gone into the workhouse).
It looks as if he originally joined the Royal Navy in December 1914 for the “period of hostilities”. However, he was discharged to sick quarters in April 1915 suffering from “Diptheria Neura[s]thenia” and invalided out of the Navy.
Solihull Life 