Help identifying officers in group photo of 2/5th Lancs Fus in Bedford, 1/5/1915, "B" Coy, Hill, Abbotts, H. Waterhouse

[Mark Hone]

I've had another good look at the photo. I venture to suggest that John Hartington is actually Number 6. (Shades of 'The Prisoner'!) I would draw a particular comparison with the Senlis photograph: looking slightly down rather than straight at the camera in both, similar expression, albeit smiling a bit more in the large group picture.

Edited 11 March by Mark Hone

[brianmorris547]

1 hour ago, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

Hello @SamCurt I'm really sorry to have appeared to have ignored your efforts in searching the Retford School library. I thought that I had replied the same day, though possibly a little after midnight, as I see that the quotes below begin with "On 09/03/2024", suggesting that I did not select them on 9 March. Anyway, I suspect that what happened was that I pressed "submit reply" after I had already been signed out, or signed out before the reply had been properly uploaded, so nothing happened. Anyway, the text was preserved, and came up as soon as I clicked on the reply box. It will be seen that my reply also includes a response to Brian's post of 9 March. The odd thing is that my draft reply didn't come up when I began responding to Brian's post of yesterday, but I think I must have been on a different browser. Anyway, I will leave my replies just as I typed them originally, though we can now ignore the bit about waiting for @PRC to comment on the likeness or otherwise of the man in the Retford photographs to Officer 15. Thank you, Peter. for your comments.

 

 

Actually, I still think that Captain G.W. Abbotts may be a brother to Guy rather than a son, because there is already a full complement of six sons named as "the boys" who gave floral tributes without including him (three Captains and three civilians); also the attenders at the graveside included "five sons, Mr G,W, Abbotts ..." etc.; if  G.W. Abbotts had been a son you would expect the report simply to have recorded that six sons attended at the graveside. 

It only matters if the Captain Whateley Abbotts who fought in South Africa and was 41 in 1915 turns out not to be "our" Whateley Abbotts; potentially if G.W. Abbotts was the brother of the Guy Abbotts whose funeral was in July 1919 he might have had another son who was Transport Officer with the 2/5th LF, but that would have meant two cousins with the same name, which is surely unlikely; or, in theory, it could just about have been a man from the next generation down, but that would most likely be a bit young for a Transport Officer.

So it is probably more likely that the Captain Whateley Abbotts who fought in South Africa is "our" Whateley Abbotts. The only things that might be against him are if he was bankrupt and therefore disqualified from being an officer and/or if we can't find an eligible man in the photograph who could be aged 41.

 

These are the reports in the 1910 Bankruptcy of Whateley Abbotts from the Derbysdhire Advertiser and London Morning Leader and the obituary of G W Abbotts in the Burton Observer in 1935. G W Resigned his Commission in 1901, no mention of service in South Africa.

BNL via FMP

Brian

Edited 11 March by brianmorris547
typo

[PRC]

7 hours ago, Mark Hone said:

I've had another good look at the photo. I venture to suggest that John Hartington is actually Number 6. (Shades of 'The Prisoner'!) I would draw a particular comparison with the Senlis photograph: looking slightly down rather than straight at the camera in both, similar expression, albeit smiling a bit more in the large group picture.

So you think:-

Rather than:-

At first glance I'd say John Ernest Hartington from the comparison pictures wasn't the sort who would find humour in being in front of the camera, but as I can't work out if they are just blemishes on the picture or Officer 6 has cut himself shaving and stuck bits of tissue on to stop the bleeding, maybe he didn't take himself so seriously.

I would also say colouring looks wrong - as in eyebrows and hair but that is always something that can be difficult to discern.

And then there is the nose - the hardest part to match up for Officer 9 to the comparison pictures. If it was just a comparison of the Senlis picture and officer 6 vs officer 9, then I guess officer 6 wins, but the other pictures in this instance muddy the waters.

No new IP is claimed for the above, and all image rights, if any, remain with the current owners.

Picture sources
[a] Bury Grammar School Roll of Honour. http://bgsarchive.co.uk/Filename.ashx?tableName=ta_boys_rollofhonour&columnName=filename&recordId=58
[b] This Great War Forum Thread, owner @A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy
[c] Lives of the First World War. https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/lifestory/1579527

Cheers,
Peter

 

Edited 11 March by PRC
Typos

[Mark Hone]

Thanks, Peter.  I have to say that the more I look at Number 6 , the more convinced I am that it must be John Hartington. To me, No 9 bears no resemblance to the other photographs of him and I can't see anybody else in the picture who does, either. I'll bow to the wisdom of others but I'm putting my money on 6. Thank you for all of your expert work on this fascinating photo. 

Regarding smiling on photographs, my experience is that people rarely do so in pictures before the Great War. This was presumably a hangover of long exposure times, with serious expressions thought easier to hold. In the photograph of the 1911-12 1st XI football team, amongst the most successful in the school's history, from which one of the pictures of John Hartington is extracted, no-one is smiling and some of them look as miserable as sin. The same is true of all full school and team photographs taken in the period. The situation changes (as so much does) after the war. In the first post war school photograph I am aware of, from 1925, there is a slightly bizarre mixture of the deadly serious and the broadly grinning amongst pupils and staff. 

Edited 12 March by Mark Hone

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

21 hours ago, brianmorris547 said:

These are the reports in the 1910 Bankruptcy of Whateley Abbotts from the Derbysdhire Advertiser and London Morning Leader and the obituary of G W Abbotts in the Burton Observer in 1935. G W Resigned his Commission in 1901, no mention of service in South Africa.

Thank you, Brian. It does look as though G.D. Whateley was from the same generation as the deceased. That's a splendid picture of him accompanying his obituary - oh for some similarly detailed photos of some of our "unknowns" from the group photograph! It's good to see that George's son, G.D.M. Abbotts of the Sherwood Foresters, who was in hospital with a gunshot wound in February 1916 according to the clipping you posted earlier, recovered.

One thing that is clear is that "Whateley" was very much a family name of the Abbotts clan. Strange that the parents apparently didn't bother with an additional name for our man. It is just possible that our man may come from the next generation to the bankrupt man, but I think unlikely, as in 1915 the grandchildren of Guy Abbotts and George Whateley Abbotts would probably have been too young to become Transport Officer of the 2/5th LF.

So I tend to think that the bankrupt Whateley Abbotts is indeed our man, the only things against him being his bankruptcy and possibly whether his age at 41 matches any eligible candidate in the group photo, though, if he was one of the photo-shopped men, it's quite difficult to form a definite view of their ages. Does anyone have a view as to whether either of them could either of them have been 41?

17 hours ago, Mark Hone said:

Thanks, Peter.  I have to say that the more I look at Number 6 , the more convinced I am that it must be John Hartington. To me, No 9 bears no resemblance to the other photographs of him and I can't see anybody else in the picture who does, either. I'll bow to the wisdom of others but I'm putting my money on 6. Thank you for all of your expert work on this fascinating photo. 

Thank you, Mark, for your input. You are certainly well placed to form a view as to which of the men in the group photo is the best match for John Hartington, having spent a lot of time over the years with known images of him, both on school trips and preparing the school's online Roll of Honour.

In the light of your comments I too have had another look at the photograph, and also at Peter's comments and invaluable side by side comparisons. I am not nearly as familiar with the appearance of John Hartington as you are, but, as a result of the doubts you have expressed, and my second look, I do wonder how John Hartington's eyebrows. the shape of which is clear in the known photographs of him before the war, could have formed the bushy, almost triangular, shape of those of Officer 9, and also the top eyelid in the known photos seems to slope down towards the outside of his face, making his eyes almost almond shaped. So I am certainly open to persuasion that Officer 6 is Hartington.

[SamCurt]

Hello all,

Attached is a pdf of transcribed entries from KEGS magazines (The Retfordian), which mention Hugh WATERHOUSE.  Apologies for any typos which may have snuck in.  Quotation marks have only been used at the beginning and end of each article.

It includes his arrival from Manchester Grammar School, Scouts, Debating Society, Cricket, Nature Studies, Football, Hockey, Games Master, House Master, Sports Day, Gymnastics, Paper Chase, previous athletics at Manchester Grammar School, Speech Day, Canada/US trip (1913), School Orchestra, 1914 Board of Education Inspection Report, departure to Cambridge, in 5th Batt, Extracts From Letters From The Front, 1915/16 activities in France, UK Training, return to Cambridge and "putting the weight" in 1920.

Also added at the end are a few text extracts from several other bits and pieces found regarding this gentleman.  URL links given in the pdf for original documents apply when used, and/or signed in, from a library.  Home use may differ.

Hope these are of some interest.

Sam
(a lover of black pudding!)

Waterhouse.pdf

[PRC]

1 hour ago, SamCurt said:

Attached is a pdf of transcribed entries from KEGS magazines (The Retfordian), which mention Hugh WATERHOUSE.  Apologies for any typos which may have snuck in.  Quotation marks have only been used at the beginning and end of each article.

Thank you Sam - a true labour of love fortified I hope by black puddings

(Our standard requests from expats is M&S Teabags and jars of jam. I hope Hugh and Gilbert didn't resort to posting like we have to!)

Cheers,
Peter

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

7 hours ago, SamCurt said:

Attached is a pdf of transcribed entries from KEGS magazines (The Retfordian), which mention Hugh WATERHOUSE.  Apologies for any typos which may have snuck in.  Quotation marks have only been used at the beginning and end of each article.

Thank you so much Sam, your transcription makes absolutely fascinating reading. It must have taken you ages to type, and I love the way you slip in, right at the end "While I had a few minutes to kill ...". Anyway, your efforts really are very much appreciated. Like PRC, I hope you are well supplied with black puddings in Retford, though I can't recall Nottinghamshire having a very strong black pudding tradition. Black pudding is, of course, like the 2/5th LF, very strongly associated with Bury, and no doubt Pendleton, just outside Clitheroe, where Hugh was baptised, also had its own recipe. Interesting, too, to see that Hugh chose to talk about Tripe to the debating society in 1913, another dish that I have always thought of as being more associated with the north than the south. It can't have been taken for granted as a staple part of the diet for the boys of Retford in view of the fact that Hugh considered it worthy of forming a subject for his address.

Anyway, returning to the Retfordian, I thoroughly enjoyed, in particular, reading the pieces written by Hugh himself, including the camping trip and the trip to Montreal and the States. Some of the observations are, of course, very much of their time, but interesting from a historical perspective nonetheless, and many of his stories still retain their humour today. I presume that it would also have been Hugh himself who wrote the piece about his sliding down a muddy bank into a pond while hunting for "new tenants" for his aquarium, while Robinson lay collapsed on the ground with laughte. He clearly had a good sense of humour as well as regarding himself as generally having a "philosophic temper" in the face of diffiulties, and I'm sure that these qualities would have helped him to get through the war, being one of the few officers crossed to France with the 2/5th LF in May 1915 who was still with them in France at the time of the Armistice, as witness the Irchonweltz thread.

As mentioned above, my GF writes about the patrol on Christmas Eve 1915, and also mentions Hugh's subsequent "well-earned rest in the south of France" after he went to hospital on 4 January 1916 "with 'flu and generally jiggered up". Actually my GF says that Hugh himself wasn't wounded in the Christmas Eve patrol, presumably becasue the wound to the hand turned out to be more serious than at first thought, perhaps turning septic.

Hugh was ordered to hospital ill once again on 30 July 1916 "much against his will". The 2/5th LF had in fact only just arrived in the Somme area on 26th July 1916, and did not go up to the front line until 3 August 1916, following which they were involved in engagements where they took heavy casualties in front of Guillemont and Ginchy on 8 August and 9 September 1916 respectively, the first real battles the unit had seen; so it was being rather economical with the truth for the Retfordian to say that Hugh fell victim to gastritis "after taking part in the Somme battle for the first two or three dreadful weeks", but I do not begrudge the man this slight distortion of events, as he was clearly a brave and caring officer, and it was not of his choosing that he was not fit to take part in the Somme battles of August and September 1916.

My GF was himself taken out of action with a serious wound in the engagement on 9 September 1916, and returned to England. Once he was on the road to recovery he was sent to Ripon, where he mentions that Long Waterhouse was their bombing instructor.

And finally, I gave some thought to who the other four schoolmasters would be, leading the Retfordian to declare the 5th Reserve Battalion to be a "happy" one. Before the war Joe Hedley taught at Copthorne School while Gabriel Gray taught at Cheltenham. Reginald Kirkman was teaching after the war at Rye Grammar School (from 1921). As he was 24 in 1915 perhaps he was already teaching before the war. Freddy Harker became a teacher after the war, but he was too young to have been teaching pre-war, and I can't immediately think of any other candidate. Having said that, it is perfectly possible that the fourth teacher in the 5th Reserve Battalion apart from Hugh Waterhouse may have been a Home Service man who didn't go to France in May 1915.

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

On 20/02/2024 at 18:31, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

And, in fact, looking at the heights in that way also helps with something else, in that, if I had any doubt at all about the identification of Bloy, it was on the grounds of height;; clearly he is the smallest man in his row, but, if six of the others are average height and four exceptionally tall, he is only just a bit below average height, which confirms that height is not a reason for doubting what otherwise is an overwhelmingly positive identification of Officer 19 as Bloy.

In the course of preparing a resume as to what we know about each man so far I had cause to look again at Captain Bloy's entry on the CWGC, and for the first time realised that there is an exhumation report for him dated 18 January 1923, which records his height as approximately 5 feet 8 inches.

By my reckoning that would make every other man in the middle row at least 6 foot tall, and he would be only 7 inches shorter than Hugh Waterhouse, against whom the top of his head seems to come only to about the top of Waterhouse's shirt collar.

I am just wondering how accurately the grave exhumation team could have estimated height after a man had been 6 1/2 years in the ground. Not to be ghoulish about it, but with muscle wastage etc., might it be thought that the bones would have spread somewhat?

Lieutenant Young also has an exhumation report carried out on the same day, and his height is estimated to be 5 feet 9 inches, whereas, if you look along the back row, he seems to be, if anything, slightly smaller than my GF at 5 feet 7 1/4 inches.

I remain fairly confident of the identifications of Captain Bloy and Lieutenant Young, at least 75%, but just want to check that the heights estimated in the exhumation reports don't necessarily prove me wrong.

 

[FROGSMILE]

23 hours ago, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

In the course of preparing a resume as to what we know about each man so far I had cause to look again at Captain Bloy's entry on the CWGC, and for the first time realised that there is an exhumation report for him dated 18 January 1923, which records his height as approximately 5 feet 8 inches.

By my reckoning that would make every other man in the middle row at least 6 foot tall, and he would be only 7 inches shorter than Hugh Waterhouse, against whom the top of his head seems to come only to about the top of Waterhouse's shirt collar.

I am just wondering how accurately the grave exhumation team could have estimated height after a man had been 6 1/2 years in the ground. Not to be ghoulish about it, but with muscle wastage etc., might it be thought that the bones would have spread somewhat?

Lieutenant Young also has an exhumation report carried out on the same day, and his height is estimated to be 5 feet 9 inches, whereas, if you look along the back row, he seems to be, if anything, slightly smaller than my GF at 5 feet 7 1/4 inches.

I remain fairly confident of the identifications of Captain Bloy and Lieutenant Young, at least 75%, but just want to check that the heights estimated in the exhumation reports don't necessarily prove me wrong.

 

Just my unscientific two pennorth, but I think that in cases where you have good facial matches you shouldn’t fret on it too much Tricia.  As you’ve implied, there are imponderables and room for error when measuring a skeleton even assuming one is 100% complete. Also, even though there might have been some written guidance issued to exhumation teams regarding physiological measurements, I doubt that they’d have been pursued in a devotedly scientific manner by the teams of men concerned, regardless of their general attention to the task.  Forgive me if you were indeed only thinking of those with any doubts facially.

Edited 18 March by FROGSMILE

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

21 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

Just my unscientific two pennorth, but I think that in cases where you have good facial matches you shouldn’t fret on it too much Tricia.

Thank you, Frogsmile

[SamCurt]

Hello Tricia & Peter,

Thanks for the kind words, I know from experience how sometimes just a little nugget of information which seems incidental to one person can open up a whole new avenue to another.

Good luck with further research into the photo.

Sam

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

On 21/03/2024 at 09:54, SamCurt said:

I know from experience how sometimes just a little nugget of information which seems incidental to one person can open up a whole new avenue to another.

You are right, Sam, thank you. By the way, in the notes at the end of your transcription you had mentioned that the 1939 Register showed only Hugh and his son, Edward, at the address in Clifton Road, Lytham, at that point, but I think that he and his wife must still have been together, as a little while ago when the British Newspaper Archive were offering free access for a day I found an article in the Ramsbottom Observer for 14 July 1944 reporting on the Golden Wedding celebrations of Hugh Waterhouse's in-laws, Mr and Mrs Edward Crabtree of Andsell (he was President of the Lancashire Cricket League). The article mentioned their daughter, Betty, and that she was married to Hugh Waterhouse, headmaster of Chorley Grammar School, without suggesting that there was anything untoward.

On 20/02/2024 at 21:22, PRC said:

I was so busy looking at facial features this time that I forgot to look down. Bowd, (23), Cummins, (25) and Hall, (26) are wearing medal ribbons of the correct size and in the correct place for the Great War era.  But Officer 22, the man you believe to possibly be Lt Abbots, seems to wearing an oversized medal ribbon, possibly even two, and attached on the skew. If they are medal ribbons then I don't recognise them, but definately not an area where I have any expertise. Doesn't appear to have anything in common with those worn by the other 3, so may well be a unique identifier.

I've taken a crop so you and others can compare and contrast the ribbon size, (if indeed that is what it is), and the cognescenti can possibly pitch in with what medals they might represent.

I have also been giving a bit more thought to the question of the medal ribbons visible on the breast pockets of the men in the front row.

Now that we are fairly certain that Officer 22 is Lieutenant Arthur Vincent Barwood, aged 48 at the time of the photograph, who had been a bandsman with the 1st Royal Berkshire Regiment and the 9th KLR, who does not feature in the  online record of men who served in South Africa,  but who had been on the Sudan and Nile expeditions 1882 to 1885, am I right in thinking that he would therefore have had the two medals pictured in this article https://davidgibbins.com/journal/2013/10/7/pharaoh-medals-of-the-1884-5-nile-campaign , the Egypt medal and the Khedive's Star, and do they completely account for what we can see of the ribbons, or might he also have had a Coronation Medal?

As for the others, Lieutenant Bowd, Captain J.J.P. Cummins, and Lieutenant Colonel Hall (Officers 23, 25 and 26), could all these have both the Queen's and King's RSA medal, and is that consistent with what we can see of the ribbons? I have had a look on this site https://www.angloboerwar.com/name-search , and have found two J. Bowds, one in the 1st Battalion Suffolk Regiment, and the other in the 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, both having been awarded QSA and the KSA. Looking for J.J.P. Cummins revealed no hits, while John Cummins, J. Cummins, J.J. Cummins, and J.P. Cummins between them yielded about 30 hits, many having both QSA and KSA medals. It occurred to me that Bowd and Cummins might have served in South Africa together, as my GF often mentions them being in each other's company, including saying that they both went to see an old friend together in Bedford, so if I narrowed the search to the Suffolk or Bedfordshire Regiment I got none for Suffolk, and 3 for Bedfordsire, all 2nd Battalion, one J. Cummins, one J.J. Cummins, and one J.P. Cummins. The J.J. Cummins had been QMS, and had won the DCM (could this ribbon be present on Officer 25?) and been MID. The other two had both QSA and KSA medals.

Regarding John Hall, there were, of course, plenty of hits for J. Hall and John Hall, including one from the 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment who had both QSA and RSA medals.

I suppose that matter should become clearer when I look at the service records of the three men, all of which survive.

Edited 31 March by A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy

[FROGSMILE]

You are quite correct Tricia that the Egypt medal and the Khedive's Star generally came as a pair.  The latter was linked to the former in terms of issue.

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

 

Thank you Frogsmile, for your reply.

43 minutes ago, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

Regarding John Hall, there were, of course, plenty of hits for J. Hall and John Hall, including one from the 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment who had both QSA and RSA medals.

I have reminded myself that John Hall had the letters VD after his name, which I understand to mean that he had the Volunteer Officer's Decoration, so presumably that would have accounted for a ribbon. Might that be the only ribbon that we see above his breast pocket?

[FROGSMILE]

17 minutes ago, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

 

Thank you Frogsmile, for your reply.

I have reminded myself that John Hall had the letters VD after his name, which I understand to mean that he had the Volunteer Officer's Decoration, so presumably that would have accounted for a ribbon. Might that be the only ribbon that we see above his breast pocket?

Yes it did indeed attract a ribbon.  It was later replaced by the TD (Territorial Decoration) to reflect the replacement of the Volunteer Force (VF) by the Territorial Force (TF) in 1908.  In both cases the ribbon was dark green as a historical lineal thread to the predominantly dark rifle green uniforms of the original Volunteer Rifle Corps, whose genesis had been the French invasion scare of 1859.  The outline shape and the ribbon remained consistent, but the detail of the design changed according to the monarch.

Edited 31 March by FROGSMILE

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

Thank you, Frpgsmile. Is it the case that there is simply insufficient detail in the photograph, the relevant part of which can be seen on this link  https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/309235-help-identifying-officers-in-group-photo-of-25th-lancs-fus-in-bedford-151915-b-coy-hill-abbotts-h-waterhouse/page/2/#comment-3276055 , to express any view as to which medals the officers are wearing?

 

Edited 1 April by A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy

[FROGSMILE]

On 31/03/2024 at 18:57, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

Thank you, Frpgsmile. Is it the case that there is simply insufficient detail in the photograph, the relevant part of which can be seen on this link  https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/309235-help-identifying-officers-in-group-photo-of-25th-lancs-fus-in-bedford-151915-b-coy-hill-abbotts-h-waterhouse/page/2/#comment-3276055 , to express any view as to which medals the officers are wearing?

 

Tricia, I’m sorry for the delay in replying to your question, I have been trying to find some B&W photos of the Egypt related medals to compare, and I now enclose some clipped images that focus on the ribbons and how they look in old film.  Unfortunately, although they are quite informative (they are side-by-side far right of the medal arrays), the photos of our subjects are simply not of a sufficiently high definition to match in any conclusive way.  It was a good thought methodology-wise though.

Edited 5 April by FROGSMILE

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

7 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

Tricia, I’m sorry for the delay in replying to your question, I have been trying to find some B&W photos of the Egypt related medals to compare, and I now enclose some clipped images that focus on the ribbons and how they look in old film.  Unfortunately, although they are quite informative (they are side-by-side far right of the medal arrays), the photos of our subjects are simply not of a sufficiently high definition to match in any conclusive way.  It was a good thought methodology-wise though.

No need to apologise for taking some time to look out these images, Frogsmile.

I suppose that all we can say is that the medal ribbons on Officer 22 are potentially consistent with that man having the Egypt medal and a Khedive's Star, provided the former ribbon was either very faded, or the light was falling on it in such a way as to disguise the stripes. If he did have those two medal ribbons, it seems to me that he also had another medal ribbon to the right of them (our right).

[FROGSMILE]

22 minutes ago, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

No need to apologise for taking some time to look out these images, Frogsmile.

I suppose that all we can say is that the medal ribbons on Officer 22 are potentially consistent with that man having the Egypt medal and a Khedive's Star, provided the former ribbon was either very faded, or the light was falling on it in such a way as to disguise the stripes. If he did have those two medal ribbons, it seems to me that he also had another medal ribbon to the right of them (our right).

Yes, visual evidence suggests that the striped ribbon of the Egypt Medal ribbon commonly showed pale in photography, as it was dominated by the white parts.  The other ribbon might well be a Coronation or Durbar medal.

Edited 5 April by FROGSMILE

[Walker21]

I think the following photo may be of help to you.

I am the granddaughter of CWB Hill. My daughter having just reading about ww1 decided to look him up and then found your forum and passed it on to me. 
the information you have found on Claude is all correct (and information I did not know) Claude had 3 children. The youngest was born in Canada. My mother was his 2nd child.

I hope this helps you. I think you are right that he is number 14 on the photo!

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

I am absolutely delighted to hear from you @Walker21 . Your grandfather was one of the first people I tried to research. My grandfather clearly didn’t know what had happened to him after he was injured, though I worked out that he must have survived as I couldn’t find him on the CWGC site. Nothing that I read mentioned any children, but I am glad that he had children, not least because it must have been a great comfort to his widow when your grandfather died at such a comparatively young age.

Often those who were injured like your grandfather but survived did not receive the same recognition of their sacrifice as those who died, and I hope that the years that he had left to him after the war ended were not unhappy ones, despite his injuries.

I looked at your grandfather’s service record at Kew, and will send a PM (private message) to you in the next few days.

Best wishes

Tricia

[PRC]

Hi @Walker21 and a belated welcome to the forum

What a wonderful first post, although it has rather put the cat amongst the pigeons. I'm not sure we ever firmly identified officer 14 as Claude - it was one of several suggestions for that officer based on height and size. As height is becoming a bit of an obsession\theme on this thread I'm surprised this group of very interesting men didn't call themselves the Lancashire Guards!

I've tried doing a side by side comparison and while ears, (size and position on head), look okay and overall shape of the head may simply look like a mis-match caused by the angle of the head in the studio portrait, there are some other bits that give me concern. Those come from some of the facial features of officer 14, particularly his right eye, although both eyes aren't a great match, and his top lip, which appears to lack the cupid bow of the picture of Claude.

No new IP is claimed for the above, and all image rights, if any, remain with the current owners.

Of course the photographer may have caught Officer 14 in the act of blinking, which may over-emphasise the top eyelid and the apparent fall away of the right eye socket.

Because of how Officer 14 is wearing his cap it's difficult to be sure that he has the relatively thin eyebrows of Claude.

And while Officer 14 doesn't have a moustache I'd suggest that could be simply down to the passage of time. I suspect having a studio portrait taken was part of the process of going to the outfitters to pick up your new uniform, (officers had to buy their own uniform but received an allowance to compensate them for it), and so your picture of him as a rather dandy Second Lieutenant probably stems from that occasion. The picture Officer 14 comes from was taken on the eve of the Battalion setting off for France, so almost certainly comes later.

I'm wondering if there are any other pictures of Claude you'd care to share with us, so we can try and rule officer 14 in or out as a match.

Thanks in advance,
Peter

[FROGSMILE]

I think that they are different officers in this particular case Peter.  I don’t see many similarities.  Ears, mouths, noses and even eye sockets are all quite different.

[SamCurt]

Tricia,

re your comments on Hugh WATERHOUSE and his entry on the 1939 Register.  It has to be remembered that this was just a snapshot of the population's circumstances on the evening of Friday, 29 September 1939, the day war was declared.  Nothing was implied by his wife's absence, and following a quick look-see:

For the same Register, Betty Ellen WATERHOUSE was a patient at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, Private Patient's Home, Lorne Street (DoB 19 MAR 1902).  She died 2 MAY 1974 with Probate effects to the value of £63,472 - home address 27 East Beach, Lytham.

Sam