Help identifying officers of the 2/5th LF Part 2 – “C” Coy, Ramsden, Simon & Harker

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

On 02/04/2024 at 12:18, PRC said:

I was trying to stay away from upsetting apple carts until we'd ruled 17 and 9 completely out

I quite understand!

As mentioned earlier in this thread (https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/309430-help-identifying-officers-of-the-25th-lf-part-2-–-“c”-coy-ramsden-simon-harker/#comment-3281433), I am guessing at Officer 17 for Packman at present. We have no other photos of Packman apart from the photo of the officers of the 5th Reserve in Southport, but there his height is about the same as that of my GF at 5 feet 7 1/4 inches, which roughly ties in with the height difference between Officer 17 and 2nd Lieutenant H. Waterhouse at 6 feet 3 inches. Also, I have noted that the eyes of Packman in the Southport photo are excessively shaded by the peak of his cap, and the same applies to the eyes of Officer 17, which might indicate a habit of wearing the cap tilted forward. I accept, however, that this is not much to go on. I did wonder whether we should have all Lieutenants in the middle row, and all 2nd Lieutenants in the back row, which by and large seems to be the case, but 2nd Lieutenant H. Waterhouse was definitely in the middle row, and Lieutenant N. Hall, my GF, was definitely in the back row, so I don't think that that should be regarded as a hard and fast rulle; maybe, instead, the back row of 2nd Lieutenants was "book-ended" by Lieutenants, while two or three 2nd Lieutenants were put in the middle of the middle row?

If Officer 17 is Packman, and Rothband is either 17 or 9, that would make him Officer 9. By the way, we still haven't got even a provisional identification for Officer 16. I'm not sure whether you were aware of that @PRC ? If Officer 16 is definitely not Lieutenant B.H. Rothband then maybe he is our mystery 30th man.

I have emailed Nigel Rothband to enquire whether he can help with the identification of his grandfather, and will report back if so.

 

Edited 5 April by A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy
To correct reference to Officer 7 to Officer 17 in penultimate para

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

Nigel Rothband has replied very promptly to my email, to the effect that he spotted his grandfather in the photograph immediately, and that he is Officer 13. 

It is great to have direct information from someone who knew Baron Harold Rothband personally, both in life and from other photos.

But, of course, the corollary is that we are going to have  to think again about which Officer is Lieutenant William Duckworth!

[PRC]

53 minutes ago, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

Nigel Rothband has replied very promptly to my email, to the effect that he spotted his grandfather in the photograph immediately, and that he is Officer 13. 

For completeness - here's Officer 13 alongside the known picture of Baron Rothband.

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

Thinking about Duckworth I went back to the Senlis picture and straightened it to make relative height easier to discern

All image rights remain with the current owner.

If Barnsdale on the right hand end as we look at it is 6'3", then it would appear Duckworth, (second left) is only marginally taller than than Harrington, (second right).

Harrington is currently down tentatively as Officer 6 in the Bedford picture, and even though he is leaning forward still looks to be one of the shortest men in the back row. Given the comparison to Barnsdale could we be looking at two individuals, Duckworth and Harrington, circa 5'6" - 5'7" in height?

Making Barwood on the left hand end "bantam" size!

Of all the officers in the front row, Officer 22, our current nomination for Barwood, seems to be having the greatest difficulty getting his feet to the ground even when sitting straight-legged. Possibly another reason why he made it to the front row rather than being stood with the other Lieutenants and Second Lieutenants further back.

Cheers,
Peter

[brianmorris547]

@A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy has asked me to post this picture on this thread. It is from the Bury Guardian 05/12/1914 and is a clearer image of the Officers of 5 LFs Reserve Bn than the one from the Bury Times on the other thread. She notes that the names in the middle rank are in a different order to those in the Bury Times picture. 

Courtesy Bury Archives.

Brian

[PRC]

3 hours ago, brianmorris547 said:

It is from the Bury Guardian 05/12/1914 and is a clearer image of the Officers of 5 LFs Reserve Bn than the one from the Bury Times on the other thread. She notes that the names in the middle rank are in a different order to those in the Bury Times picture. 

Courtesy Bury Archives.

Thank you Brian (and Bury Archives

I've tried playing around with the tonal qualities - I don't know if this helps at all.

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

The Bury Guardian, 5th December 1914, shows the middle row names as:-
Lieut. M. Evans, Capt. J.D. Barnsdale, Lieut. R.W. Kirkham, Lieut. W. Duckworth, Lieut. N. Kemp, Lieut. R.S. Ashworth, Lieut. G.C. Hutchinson, Lieut. R. H. Barnes, Lieut. M. Young, Lieut. and Adjnt J.P. Cummins.

The caption to the same picture in the edition of The Bury Times dated 5th December 1914 shows the middle row as:-
Lieut. M. Evans, Capt. J.D. Barnsdale, Lieut. R.W. Kirkman, Lieut. W. Duckworth, Lieut. R. H. Barnes, Lieut. M. Young, Lieut. N. Kemp, Lieut. R.S. Ashworth, Lieut. and Adjnt J.P. Cummins, Lieut. G.C. Hutchinson.

A crop of "Hutchinson" from this picture as identified by the caption in The Bury Times was used in the comparison montage - fortunately of such low quality that it probably didn't influence the decision as to who he might be in the Bedford picture.

Could those be medal ribbons on the officer second from right leaning on his cane? Is that more Officer 23 rather than Officer 25 from the Bedford picture?

Cheers,
Peter

[FROGSMILE]

40 minutes ago, PRC said:

Thank you Brian (and Bury Archives

I've tried playing around with the tonal qualities - I don't know if this helps at all.

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

The Bury Guardian, 5th December 1914, shows the middle row names as:-
Lieut. M. Evans, Capt. J.D. Barnsdale, Lieut. R.W. Kirkham, Lieut. W. Duckworth, Lieut. N. Kemp, Lieut. R.S. Ashworth, Lieut. G.C. Hutchinson, Lieut. R. H. Barnes, Lieut. M. Young, Lieut. and Adjnt J.P. Cummins.

The caption to the same picture in the edition of The Bury Times dated 5th December 1914 shows the middle row as:-
Lieut. M. Evans, Capt. J.D. Barnsdale, Lieut. R.W. Kirkman, Lieut. W. Duckworth, Lieut. R. H. Barnes, Lieut. M. Young, Lieut. N. Kemp, Lieut. R.S. Ashworth, Lieut. and Adjnt J.P. Cummins, Lieut. G.C. Hutchinson.

A crop of "Hutchinson" from this picture as identified by the caption in The Bury Times was used in the comparison montage - fortunately of such low quality that it probably didn't influence the decision as to who he might be in the Bedford picture.

Could those be medal ribbons on the officer second from right leaning on his cane? Is that more Officer 23 rather than Officer 25 from the Bedford picture?

Cheers,
Peter

Looks much more like officer 25 to me Peter.  Officer 23 has such distinctive facial features with the pale mass of his face very dominant - more so than with officer 25.

Edited 5 April by FROGSMILE

[PRC]

34 minutes ago, FROGSMILE said:

Looks much more like officer 25 to me Peter.  Officer 23 has such distinctive facial features with the pale mass of his face very dominant - more so than with officer 25.

Thanks @FROGSMILE - the difference in demeanour probably threw me a bit. Looking again at the medal ribbons, the light band on the ribbon on Officer 23 is to the left of the pocket button as we look at it, while on Officer 25 it is to the right.

On the 5th Reserve Officer Group photo it appears to be to the right. Thus if nothing else has been jumbled up, it looks like the name order as shown in the Bury Times may be the correct one - but I'll defer to @A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy on that before I lose the plot on who is where in the Bedford picture!

Cheers,
Peter

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

22 hours ago, PRC said:

If Barnsdale on the right hand end as we look at it is 6'3", then it would appear Duckworth, (second left) is only marginally taller than than Harrington, (second right).

Sorry PRC, this is my fault for not yet posting my resume including the heights etc. It is Hugh Waterhouse who we know to be 6 feet 3 inches, not Barnsdale. All we know about Barnsdale's height at the moment is that he was a tall man, that being gleaned from the "B" Coy photograph. Having said that, I think that you may well be right that Duckworth and Hartington would be average height, and Barwood "bantam" size. I will be able to look at the service record of all four men in the "B" Coy photo in June, and this may reveal more precise information about their heights.

For now, I am posting below a table setting out what we know so far about the heights and ages of the men, by company.

I agree that Officer 22, whom we believe to be Barwood, seems almost to be having difficulty reaching the ground with his feet, something I missed when we first began to talk about him on this thread. I think Officer 23, whom I am 99%, if not 100%, certain is Jimmy Bowd from another photo I have of him (which is why I was confident enough to name him right from the outset), will also be quite small, as his thighs seem to be sloping downwards towards the ground.

While on the subject of height, could the gangly legs of Officer 30, whom we are tentatively identifying as Simon, have folded under him in the neatly cross-legged position of the known photo of Simon at Arques? I attach copies of both photos below for ease of reference.

 

     

 

Here is the table of heights and ages:

Officers of the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers on 3 May 1915
	Name and rank	Height, if known, & source	Approx age, if known, & source
HQ	Hall, John Lieutenant Colonel, CO
	Milnes, Henry Nicholas Major, 2nd in Command		39 1911 census
	Cummins, John Joseph Pemberton Captain,  Adjutant		47 1911 census
	Bowd,   James Lieutenant, Quartermaster
	Abbotts, Whateley Lieutenant, Transport Officer	5 ft 9 ½ in Imperial Yeomanry Discharge papers	41 1911 census
	Hill, Claude Worsley Boyce Lieutenant, Machine Gun Officer	6 ft 2 ½ in NA Service record	28 1911 census
	Hall, Norman Lieutenant, Signals Officer	5 ft 7 ¼ in Travel warrant, ALFFWW*	23 dob 28/02/1892
“A” Company	Goldsmith, George Hartley  Captain		30 GRO records
	Ramsden, Edgar Robinson Captain		44? GRO records
	Gray, Gabriel Lieutenant		32 1911 census
	Waterhouse, Hugh 2nd Lieutenant	6 ft 3 in Lancashire Daily Post, 14/07/1933	23 1911 census
	Noton, Henry Hartley 2nd Lieutenant		18 1911 census
“B” Company	Barnsdale, John Davison Major	Tall Photo of “B” Coy ALFFWW*	37 1911 census
	Bloy, Laurence Henry Captain	5 ft 8 in approx. Exhumation report on CWGC website But small on both Southport and Bedford photos	22 1911 census
	Duckworth, William Lieutenant		21 1911 census
	Barwood, Arthur Vincent Lieutenant	Small Photo of “B” Coy; Nickname “Little” ALFFWW*	48 Find a Grave website
	Hartington, John Ernest 2nd Lieutenant		18 1911 census
“C” Company	Hutchinson, Geoffrey Clegg Captain		21 1911 census
	Kirkman, Reginald William Lieutenant		24 1911 census
	Rothband, Baron Harold Lieutenant		28 1911 census
	Young, Malcolm Henry 2nd Lieutenant	5 ft 9 in approx. Exhumation report on CWGC  website (but see comment re Bloy above)	20 1911 census
	Evans, Mansfield Priestley 2nd Lieutenant	Tall Southport photo	23 1911 census
	Packman, John Booth 2nd Lieutenant		18 1911 census
“D” Company	Waterhouse, Kenneth Captain		36 1911 census
	Hedley, Joseph Walton Captain		35 1911 census
	Simon, Eric Conrad Captain		27 Bedales archive
	Latter, John Cecil 2nd Lieutenant		18 1911 census
	Kemp, Norman 2nd Lieutenant		19 1911 census
	Harker, John Frederick 2nd Lieutenant		18 GRO Records

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

On 05/04/2024 at 07:14, brianmorris547 said:

It is from the Bury Guardian 05/12/1914 and is a clearer image of the Officers of 5 LFs Reserve Bn than the one from the Bury Times on the other thread. She notes that the names in the middle rank are in a different order to those in the Bury Times picture.

Thank you so much for retrieving and posting this photograph Brian. It is definitely much clearer than the Bury Times image. Pity they have jumbled the names, though, just to confuse us!

I think the order of names in the Bury Times is to be preferred, in that we can be confident that the man second from the right of the middle row is not 2nd Lieutenant Young, as I have another photograph of Young which made me confident enough to name him right from the outset, and he looks nothing like the man second from the right of the middle row, but does look like the man who is named as Young by the Bury Times reporter. On the other hand, the man second from the right of the middle row looks very like Officer 25, who is sitting exactly where you would expect Cummins, as Adjutant, to be sitting. Also, the Bury Guardian have got Kirkman's name wrong, while the Bury Times reporter has managed to spell it correctly. It is possible, of course, that both newspapers have got the order of the men in the middle row wrong, but for now I suggest that we adopt a working hypothesis that the names in the Bury Times are correct.

I am hopeful that the new version of the Southport photograph may enable us to make more progress with several of the men shown in it, notably Packman, Goldsmith, Evans, Duckworth and Hutchinson.

For a start, I am now certain that Goldsmith, third from the left in the back row of the Southport photograph, does not have a beard. As the fact that I thought I could see a beard was my main reason for suggesting that Goldsmith is Officer 21, that identification maybe needs to be rethought. Is it likely that a man would have grown a beard between the Southport photo and the Bedford photo, in other words, would that conceivably have been thought desirable or fashionable at that time? The only other man wearing a beard in the Bedford photo is Cummins, and he was from an earlier era, which makes me wonder whether Officer 21 may be Abbotts, who was from a similar era. Just a thought! At the moment we have Abbotts as one of the photo-shopped men, but only because it is credible that he missed the photo-shoot because, as Transport Officer, he was busy getting ready for departure that evening.

We can also now see clearly that Duckworth did not have a moustache in the Southport photo, though he had acquired one by the later newspaper image of him in August 1916, so he may or may not have had one at Bedford.

We can also see clearly that Evans did not have a moustache in the Southport photo.

Edited 8 April by A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy
To add final sentence

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

On 04/04/2024 at 18:00, PRC said:

For completeness - here's Officer 13 alongside the known picture of Baron Rothband.

Nigel Rothband has sent me another photograph of his grandfather taken in 1917, which he has given me permission to post on the Forum. I have inserted it below, together with an enlarged detail of the face.

   

[PRC]

6 hours ago, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

Nigel Rothband has sent me another photograph of his grandfather taken in 1917, which he has given me permission to post on the Forum. I have inserted it below, together with an enlarged detail of the face.

Hmmm - not sure if that makes it easier or harder to say they are all pictures of the same man. Chin yes, eyes probably, but ears, cheekbones and nose - even allowing for the impact of two years of soldiering and my attempts to tidy up the 1917 image?

No new IP is claimed for the above, and all image rights, if any, remain with the current owners.
Pictures a and b courtesy Nigel Rothband.

Cheers,
Peter

[FROGSMILE]

39 minutes ago, PRC said:

Hmmm - not sure if that makes it easier or harder to say they are all pictures of the same man. Chin yes, eyes probably, but ears, cheekbones and nose - even allowing for the impact of two years of soldiering and my attempts to tidy up the 1917 image?

No new IP is claimed for the above, and all image rights, if any, remain with the current owners.
Pictures a and b courtesy Nigel Rothband.

Cheers,
Peter

For what it’s worth I’d comfortably wager it’s the same officer in all three images.  Although his upper face varies according to expression, squinting, etc. his face below the nose is identical with a particularly distinctive feature at the centre point immediately below his lower lip.

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

Thank you, @PRC for putting the images side by side, which makes it so much easier to compare. I agree with @FROGSMILE that the three images are similar enough for it to be more likely than not that they are the same man. particularly as Baron Rothband's grandson was so immediately certain that his grandfather was Officer 13.

As mentioned on the "B" Coy thread, I have now posted on a separate thread my long awaited resume of where we have got to so far, and what further investigations might still be done. https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/310415-where-we-are-with-identifying-the-men-in-a-group-photo-of-the-25th-lf-on-151915-and-the-mystery-of-the-30th-man/ and I have also made it possible to download pdfs of the tables, where it should be slightly easier to read the entirety of the available information.

Meanwhile, relevant to this thread, I have been being thinking a little further about the four captains, Hutchinson, Simon, Ramsden and Goldsmith.

Is it possible that the photographer might have decided that he needed all the Company Commanders in the front row? That would be Goldsmith, Barnsdale, Hutchinson and K. Waterhouse. Banrdsdale and K. Waterhouse are definitely in the front row, and our first choice for Hutchinson is Officer 29, also in the front row. If all four were in the front row, then Goldsmith would be Officer 30, but at the moment we have him pencilled in as Simon. Could he be Goldsmith? The only known image that we have of Goldsmith is in the Southport photo. Is Officer 30 a possible match for Goldsmith?

Of course, that would then leave Simon floating. What do you think of the possibility that Simon might be Officer 20 (see my attempt at a side by side comparison below, using PRC's earlier side by side placement of the three known photographs of Simon), leaving Ramsden to be Officer 21? Ramsden being Officer 21 would fit with him being a rather older man aged 44, if he is the man born in Huddersfield in 1871 found by Brian Morris Help identifying officers of the 2/5th LF Part 2 – “C” Coy, Ramsden, Simon & Harker - Soldiers and their units - The Great War (1914-1918) Forum (greatwarforum.org)

P.S. If Simon was Officer 20 rather than Officer 30 it would also overcome my reservations as to whether the long legs of Officer 30 would tuck neatly into the cross-legged position as Simon's legs have in the photograph taken of him at Arques.

Edited 15 April by A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy
To add P.S.