Estate Worker Batmen

[Rob Chester]

Hello All,

I am researching soldier servants and am interested to know if anybody has come across actual examples of wealthy men keeping one of their civilian servants as their soldier servant/batman on joining up. There is an assumption that this happens - after all it happened on Downton Abbey! but did it happen for real. does anybody know of any actual examples where it happened?

Rob

[kevinrowlinson]

Rob,

I am not sure that there is an assumption that this did happen. Did Mr. Bates serve as his valet before serving as a batman with the Earl of Grantham, or was he given a job after serving with him as his batman? It's a fine distinction but possibly more likely he served later, in real life at least.

Having viewed thousands of RGA mens records it is rare even to see what a man actually did. His rank, of course, is shown but rarely what work he did in the battery, unless he had an appointed trade or skill. The nearest I have seen, which may be relevant, is when a mans employer has written a reference, or letter of introduction, trying to get the man in to a particular regiment. One I made a note of was;

4487 Dominick Rogers, 1st Life Guards, and later RGA 200651. He was a footman and I am unsure whether he would have been accepted by the Life guards without his employers help (ex Capt. Scots Guards). He was later KIA and there is a letter from the OC's wife of the battery requesting that a letter be forwarded to his mother as she had visited his grave. Whether he was the Batman to the OC is not clear, but may be of interest.

Kevin

[centurion]

There is certainly a long literary history of fictional characters leaving the forces and taking a fellow soldier/sailor into their service Lawrence Sterne's Captain Toby Shandy (Tristram Shandy's uncle) has Corporal Trim as his manservant in 1759. Some of Tobias Smollet's characters have a similar relationship, Captain Frederick Marryat's Napoleonic period sailor Mr Midshipman Easy takes the wardroom servant Mesty with him when he leaves the sea to take over his father's estate and other characters in Marryat's many books do something similar. The tradition continues with authors well into the 20th century so that Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (Dorothy Sayer's fictional detective) employs Sergeant Mervyn Bunter (who saved Wimsey's life in the trenches) as his gentleman's gentleman and C S Forrester's Horatio Hornblower employs his Cox'n Brown as a Butler. Whether any of this reflects reality I cannot say (but both Smollet and Marryat saw active service in he Royal Navy so perhaps they knew of what they wrote)

[Scalyback]

Would yeomanry officers be the best to target and research for this? Landed gentry connected with the army before the war so plenty of time to enlist the butler as a private so he can go along to camp to be Jeeves.

[centurion]

Yeomanry officers tended to be from the "squirearchy" relatively wealthy but not really in the butler employing class.They tended to have tenant farmers whose sons usually became the troopers. Aristocratic owners of the big estates and stately homes were more likely to send their sons into the regular cavalry.

[Scalyback]

Pembroke yeomanry springs to mind. From regimental museum had the inpression of very wealthy officers.

Glamorgan yeomanry................poor as church mice!

[Rob Chester]

This is very interesting. Thanks everyone.

Kevin: Mr Bates served with Earl Grantham in the Boer War, and became Valet afterwards, and you are right to point out that this is an important distinction and it seems more likely, and there is evidence for, Officers employing their soldier servants after the war. I was actually referring to Mathew Crawley who took the footman from Downton with him as his servant when he joined up. It was this scenario where the servant and employer join up together and serve together in the same relationship that they had before the war that intrigues me (although I am interested in experiences of servants who joined up and the relationship with their employers as a result, so thanks for the information about Mr Rogers.

Since initially posting I came across this, which says that the Batman came from his Officer's parent estate.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2229740/Letter-reveals-guilt-Downton-Abbey-army-officers-servant-death-master-shot-WW1.html

[Doctord84]

Rob

You might want to check out the service record of one John Addy, 2/1st ERY - I only got some of it due to problems loading the images. He was a Beverley lad actually, so very locally relevant. He is described as an officer's servant. He first signed up in 1909 and only served at home. When disembodied in February 1919, he applied for a pension on the basis of "haemorrhoids, commenced June 1915, caused by continually lying on wet saddle" and also "kick on right shin bone by horse, August 1918." His claim was rejected......

David

[Rob Chester]

Thanks David,

I shall look for him on Ancestry.

[centurion]

Researching the men from my local parish who served a good number of them followed the local land owner on whose estate they worked and in whose cottages their parents and wives lived into the local regiment but I've seen no evidence that any of them were officer's servants for him - still proving a negative is always a thankless effort.

[Moonraker]

In the 1900s, standing orders for Salisbury Plain camp-sites banned all women. A Territorial colonel who brought along his own female cook for the officers' mess at Perham Down, near Tidworth, in 1913 was quickly required to replace her. There was only tented accommodation at the camp.

Moonraker

[Rob Chester]

Thanks Centurion, do they have an estate memorial or are the estate workers commemorated on the parish memorial? Let me know if you find any servants.

Moonraker, that is brilliant. I am giving a talk on soldier servants - do you mind if I use it? Do you have the name of the colonel?

[centurion]

Thanks Centurion, do they have an estate memorial or are the estate workers commemorated on the parish memorial? Let me know if you find any servants.

Moonraker, that is brilliant. I am giving a talk on soldier servants - do you mind if I use it? Do you have the name of the colonel?

On the Parish roll of honour and on the local school roll of honour both now in the church (there are some on both) no officers servants so far found out of eight estate workers

[Moonraker]

... Moonraker, that is brilliant. I am giving a talk on soldier servants - do you mind if I use it? Do you have the name of the colonel?

No problems, go ahead and use it. Sadly I have no further details; it's something that I came across in the late 1990s, possibly from a report in The Times on the summer camping-season on the Plain.

Moonraker