Following on from Sherbet Liquorice’s post regarding her family moving between London and Norfolk, I thought I’d mention a rather interesting member of my family.
He was born in Hoxton, London in 1880 (yes, I have a very old family!) His regular trade was as a carpenter and painter and he married in 1901. My grandfather was born in 1902 and was the oldest of 5 children. Those are the boring bits out of the way!
He was a member of the City Imperial Volunteers that fought in the Boer War. ‘Black week’, when the British army suffered three defeats and nearly 3000 men were killed, injured or captured, caused those in charge to think hard about what they needed to do to win this war. The idea of a mounted light infantry that could match the manoeuvrability of the Boers had already been brought up previously, and so the City imperial volunteers was born in December 1899. It was advertised in the press and really caught the imaginations of the public, with thousands eager to sign up as volunteers, my great grandfather included. The song ‘Goodbye Dolly Gray’ became very popular around this time and really caught the spirit of these men volunteering to fight for their country.
On the 17th January 1900 my great grandfather along with the rest of his regiment was awarded the honorary freedom of the city of London, which is usually only awarded to distinguished members of society, a few being Florence Nightingale, Churchill and Nelson.
The city imperial volunteers were crucial to the capturing of Doornkop on the 26th May 1900. They were given the place of honour in the front line and supported by the Gordon highlanders. The highlanders did the usual slow walk towards the enemy, who were entrenched on the high ridge and lost around 100 men in 10 minutes. The inexperienced volunteers however, made their advance in small rushes, each group covering the next. They soon reached the enemy with very few casualties.
Doornkop was subsequently taken from the Boers and the surviving City imperial volunteers returned to London in October 1900. At the end of the month they made a state entrance into the city. The celebrations were so great that just one newly built railway carried 250,000 passengers in that day alone.
He also fought in the first world war in the army reserves I believe, but I need to do some more research into what regiment etc he was in. We’ve found some old papers signed by him, including his attestation of his one year’s service in the special reserves aged 38. In the section ‘have you previously been in the army, navy…’ he states that he was in the 22nd Middlesex regiment and that it was disbanded. I’ve discovered that it was indeed disbanded in 1916 in England. Other documents show that he was enlisted in September 1914 as a private, was posted in Oct ’14 as a Lance Corporal and promoted one month later to Acting corporal. He was then promoted again in April 1915 to (paid) Lance sergeant and promoted again two months later to Sergeant, which seems to be the rank he stayed at. One thing that I find quite amusing is that he has one offence listed for November 1917, which was that he disappeared while on active service from 9:30 pm to 7:45 am the following day. For this he was ‘severely reprimanded’ by his Captain. Dad has already told me he was something of a ladies man (even after marriage) and so it’s not difficult to imagine where he could have been!
I have yet to find out exactly what regiment he was with after 1916, as some documents do not have it listed or are illegible. When I do find out more information on this and perhaps even what battles he took part in I will do an update post.
Till then!
Vintage Rose x
Sherbet Liquorice 