Bodies bought home; several cases officers

[tharkin56]

Having researched 457 polo players some of whom we're well connected, a few of them died in France and they bodies were bought home for burial.

Was this purely to do with connections or they were on the way home when they died.

A case clearly states died in France;

was this rare or did it happen in the early parts of the war until it was seemed 'unfair' and the practice stopped.

[headgardener]

My understanding is that it was rare, but it did occur in the earlier years of the war, and could only be afforded by those with enough money to spend on having their next-of-kin's body embalmed and shipped back to the UK. I've come across a case of an RMLI officer who was wounded at Gallipoli (August 1915, I think?), evacuated to Egypt, had his arm amputated, but died the following day. His parents (his father was a well-to-do local solicitor) instructed the authorities to have his body embalmed and shipped back to the UK. His funeral was held in Essex in, I think, November 1915. The local newspaper had previously reported his death in Egypt, and the report on his funeral details the fact that his body had been embalmed and returned. This was presented in the paper as being an appropriate tribute to a British hero (he didn't receive any gallantry decorations, btw, so he was as much a hero as any other man who died as a result of war service).

The CWGC wasn't fully in operation until about 1916 or 17, I think. I suspect that before this it was impractical to have bodies shipped back unless the family concerned had the money and connections to enable them to do so. I knew it was rare, but your findings seem to confirm that there are several cases of wealthy families doing so.

As an aside, I came across a case from WW2 when visiting a war cemetery in Italy - the family had taken legal action against the government/CWGC to allow them to exhume their relative's remains from a military cemetery near Bologna and have it reburied in a family plot in the UK. I seem to remember that the family were from Wales. The story was recorded briefly in the CWGC register and the empty grave was left as it was.

What period of the war do your cases relate to?

[SiegeGunner]

Terry Denham collects cases of repatriation that occurred after it was prohibited. Many families, including that of Prince Maurice of Battenberg, who could have afforded and arranged repatriation chose not to. I have always thought that the 'ban' would not withstand legal action by a determined family and would be interested to hear (by PM as it's 'off-topic') details (links to?) of the WW2 case.

[Sue Light]

This is one of the many threads that expands on the subject:

 

Sue

[tharkin56]

OK Lt Maurice Alfred Alexander Darby Grenadier Guards kiled Neuve Chapelle 11/3/1915. Buried Shropshire.

[Perth Digger]

I believe that a fuss was caused when the body of William Gladstone's grandson was repatriated in 1915 and that this brought the issue to a head, with the government subsequently stopping the practice.

Mike

[headgardener]

In the interests of clarity, does anyone know exactly when the government ordered that the repatriation of bodies was to stop?

I've just come across the case of Capt. David McConnell Kerr, RAF. He was a South African, travelling back on a Japanese passenger ship which was torpedoed in St George's Channel on 4th October 1918. His body was washed ashore in Pembrokeshire and was buried with full military honours at the Congregational Methodist burial ground in Fishguard with members of his family in attendance. However, he now appears to be buried in a cemetery in CAPE TOWN. The CWGC burial report is dated 1930, but it doesn't confirm that this was the date on which his body was reinterred. Either way, it looks like his body was exhumed and reinterred long after the practice was stopped.

Edit: The fact that he was buried in the UK would have meant that his family would have had to obtain the permission of, I think, the Home Secretary. So if exhumation of war graves was effectively blocked in about 1916 then I'm wondering how Kerr's body came to moved.

[Andrew Upton]

On 17/01/2015 at 03:03, headgardener said:

In the interests of clarity, does anyone know exactly when the government ordered that the repatriation of bodies was to stop?

 

"In The Unending Vigil, his history of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Philip Longworth notes that Marshal Joffre made an order in March 1915 that banned exhumations for the duration of the war. Shortly after, in April 1915, Fabian Ware obtained an order from the Adjutant-General that forbade exhumations on the dual grounds of hygiene and equality between rich and poor. It was the egalitarian principle that the commission later upheld against very strong opposition, particularly at the end of the war."

[CGM]

In the interests of clarity, does anyone know exactly when the government ordered that the repatriation of bodies was to stop?

.................buried with full military honours at the Congregational Methodist burial ground in Fishguard with members of his family in attendance. However, he now appears to be buried in a cemetery in CAPE TOWN....

I believe the exhumation being discussed here was just removal from battlegrounds overseas and re-burial in the UK.

[headgardener]

I believe the exhumation being discussed here was just removal from battlegrounds overseas and re-burial in the UK.

Philip Longworth notes that Marshal Joffre made an order in March 1915 that banned exhumations for the duration of the war. Shortly after, in April 1915, Fabian Ware obtained an order from the Adjutant-General that forbade exhumations on the dual grounds of hygiene and equality between rich and poor. It was the egalitarian principle that the commission later upheld against very strong opposition, particularly at the end of the war.

Thank you both for clarifying the situation. I wonder how closely the rules were followed, though. I've just checked my notes regarding the case that I mentioned in post #2 - the man in question was evacuated from Gallipoli to Alexandria in May 1915, and died following the amputation of an arm on 18th May 1915. Initially his body was buried in Chatby Cemetery, but when his parents were informed of his death they somehow managed to have his body exhumed, embalmed, and shipped back to the UK (no mean feat at that time, I would have thought). It would have required the assistance of the local military authorities, and I find it difficult to imagine that he could have managed to get the body on a ship back to the UK, and through Customs, without their support and assistance. He was buried at the family's local church just outside Colchester in September 1915. All of this occurred well after Joffre and Ware's orders, of course.

[Old Owl]

In the interests of clarity, does anyone know exactly when the government ordered that the repatriation of bodies was to stop?

I've just come across the case of Capt. David McConnell Kerr, RAF. He was a South African, travelling back on a Japanese passenger ship which was torpedoed in St George's Channel on 4th October 1918. His body was washed ashore in Pembrokeshire and was buried with full military honours at the Congregational Methodist burial ground in Fishguard with members of his family in attendance. However, he now appears to be buried in a cemetery in CAPE TOWN. The CWGC burial report is dated 1930, but it doesn't confirm that this was the date on which his body was reinterred. Either way, it looks like his body was exhumed and reinterred long after the practice was stopped.

Edit: The fact that he was buried in the UK would have meant that his family would have had to obtain the permission of, I think, the Home Secretary. So if exhumation of war graves was effectively blocked in about 1916 then I'm wondering how Kerr's body came to moved.

Although I cannot answer your question with an exact date, I do know that it must have been after 17th June,1915. I think also that we are talking about different aspects of exhumation and repatriation, because I believe that two officers whom I have researched in depth were not buried in Belgium prior to repatriation but were shipped home soon after their deaths and buried in family plots in the UK. Captain Kerr was more than likely moved after the war, and thus the exhumation and re-burial may not have been governed by the same constraints as those in place during the war.

The officers whom I have researched are:

1) Capt. Idris Havard Joseph Williams, 3rd Bn Royal Fusiliers, died 3rd June,1915, from wounds received near Ypres at the end of April,1915. His body was shipped home and he was first laid to rest in the churchyard at St.Donats Castle (the family home) on 8th June,1915. When the family sold St Donat's Castle in 1922 and moved to Aberpergwm, his body was exhumed and reburied in the family plot in Aberpergwm (St Cattwg) Churchyard, Neath Higher, South Wales.

2) Capt & Adj Hon. Claude Henry Meysey Meysey-Thompson, 3rd Bn The Rifle Brigade, died 17th June,1915, from wounds received near Ypres the same day. His father, Lord Knaresborough, was at his bedside when he died and his body was shipped home and buried in the family plot at Little Ouseburn (Holy Trinity) Churchyard, North Yorkshire.

Obviously these were the sons of wealthy and influential families which would have made repatriation of the bodies a simpler matter than it should have been. It was also most probably seen as an uneccessary privilege by many and may have caused much resentment in certain quarters, which inevitably would have led to the practice being banned.

[tharkin56]

Heres another example NICHOLSON, Lieutenant, Laurance Cail, D.S.O. 3rd Bn., attd. 1st Bn., Royal Berkshire Regiment formerly 14th Hussars. 2nd November 1914. Age 32. Mentioned in Despatches. Grave Ref. 581. Shiplake (SS. Peter and Paul) Churchyard, Oxfordshire.

Died in France

[edwin astill]

And Hubert Hamilton, GOC 3 Div.

Edwin

[Liz in Eastbourne]

How was the ban on repatriation in mid-1915 legally enacted? Was it a new law or an Army regulation? I can't find this information on the various threads but apologies if I've missed it.

Liz

[Perth Digger]

I can't find any firm regulation either, Liz, but in the Dundee Daily Telegraph for 10 August 1915 there is an article on Lt Col Stewart Macdougall, CO 10/Gordon Highlanders, who was killed in the trenches near Vermelles on 21 July. It states that "As soon as the necessary formalities are gone through", the body would be repatriated, to be buried in the cemetery at Kilvoree, next to his son Ian who had been killed in France in September 1914. Yet the CWGC data show that he was buried at Houchin Communal Cemetery, Pas de Calais. Perhaps the "necessary formalities" were quietly dropped?

Mike

[Terry_Reeves]

Vernon James Austin, son of Herbert Austin, founder of the Austin car company:

http://www.hambo.org/kingscanterbury/view_man.php?id=119

TR

[alantwo]

David Crane's 'Empires of the Dead - How One Man's Vision Led to the Creation of WW1's War Graves' covers the subject, published by William Collins 2013. In my opinion an excellent and well written book, I have no connection with author or publisher.

Regards

Alan

[Perth Digger]

HI Alan

Crane's book does give a partial answer, but it still remains vague about the promulgation and working of the regulation. In February 1915 Sir John French had issued instructions that exhuming bodies should not be done, but (p.68) "if it is carried out it must be distinctly understood that it is not done with the approval of Sir John French" (Adjutant-General Macready to Ian Malcolm, late February 1915). Joffre then banned all exhumations in France, on health grounds, but whether his authority ran in the areas controlled by the BEF is moot.

Crane discusses Ware's anger over the Gladstone case, which involved the king supporting repatriation of the body, but says nothing about new instructions being issued thereafter.

Clearly, Sir John French's instruction was not always being heeded in the following months, as the examples above demonstrate. I can find no discussion of this issue in Hansard, but I presume French's instruction can be found in the War Office files somewhere. It still seems to me that this issue was not confronted head-on, but probably dealt with on a case by case basis. Asquith subsequently set an example when he rejected the idea of his own son's body being repatriated in September 1916.

The whole question of rights over dead bodies in English law is an interesting one. Before the Anatomy Act of 1832 common law said that there was no ownership of a dead body (so bodysnatchers could not be guilty of theft if they stole a body), but from 1832 the government took responsibility for unclaimed bodies (in order to pass them on to schools of anatomy). In 1915, if a family whose request to repatriate a body had failed had gone to the courts, a whole can (or coffin) of worms would have been opened. No wonder a softly softly approach was taken.

Mike

[alantwo]

Hi Mike

I would agree with the points you make, particularly that Asquith appears to have set the tone for repatriations. I think there is an interesting actuality raised by Crane in that it was only the wealthy who could bring their Sons home and only the same who could easily afford to visit their graves after the end of the war.

Regards

Alan

[Liz in Eastbourne]

Apologies for this late reply to the comments on my query. As Mike says, it's the question of actual regulations that interested me and that isn't explicit in what I've read so far. Since I raised the question I have acquired Crane's book (and also sent for Longworth's at the same time - that hasn't come yet because I decided to be virtuous and buy it direct from CWGC, while the other came two weeks ago). Even the instruction from Sir John French that exhumation was banned doesn't cover everything - what about picking a body off the battlefield and repatriating it before it had been buried?

The case which has roused my interest is that of Lt Maurice Darby of the Grenadier Guards (already mentioned above), who was killed at Neuve Chapelle and whose uncle, Sir George Arthur, Kitchener's personal private secretary, is said (on Darby's tombstone in Little Ness, Shropshire) to have walked the battlefield to find his nephew's body where it had lain for four four days, and returned it to his family. This was of course four months earlier than the case you quote, Mike, of Lt.Col MacDougall, and I gather that the rule hardened during 1915, so perhaps it was as you say, a necessarily softly-softly approach, to avoid legal challenge from wealthy families.

Liz