Last time I wrote about my great-uncle Fred King who was killed during the First World War. One of the more moving aspects of Fred’s story for me is the response of his family, particularly his mother Katherine, to his death. We know nothing of her private grief, but she did include information about his family in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission register. Families had to pay to include this information and Fred’s mother, who was widowed and not well off, included information about his family. She also commissioned the words ‘Ever Remembered’ on his headstone.
In my grandfather Leo’s papers we have an autograph book containing entries from June 1918 when Leo was conscripted into the RAF. Among them are a number of messages and poems from his mother.
When I first read this I didn’t know that Leo’s older brother had been killed a year earlier. At the time I thought the messages were sentimental; now I know the circumstances I find them very moving.
Recently the genealogy website Ancestry.com released some new First World War records: the UK Army Register of Soldiers’ Effects. This documents the money owed to soldiers serving in the British Army who died between 1901 and 1929. The records list the soldier’s name, rank, battalion and his date of death, plus his next of kin and who the money was owed to.
When I searched for Fred’s record I was expecting to find that his effects had gone to his mother Katherine. Fred had been married, but his listing on the CWGC website indicated that his wife Emily had died before him. I had imagined that, because Emily was dead, Fred’s mother would now be his next of kin. However, the record doesn’t show that. Fred’s ‘wife and sole legatee’ Emily is indeed noted as ‘deceased’, but instead of Katherine receiving Fred’s effects the grantee was listed as ‘Herbert Westerby Tate’, who I know from the census was Emily’s brother. If I’ve read the record correctly, Herbert received the sum of £11 and 10 shillings. I wonder if he also received the ‘death penny’ sent to bereaved families, and Fred’s war medals.
I wonder what Katherine made of this. I can’t even guess at her relationship with her son’s brother-in-law. In the 1911 census Herbert was 32, worked as a tailor’s machinist and lived with his widowed mother, as did Emily and their younger sister Eleanor. In August of that year he married Annie Fenton at the Oxford Place Methodist Chapel in Leeds. Emily was a witness at their wedding.
Perhaps Herbert contributed to the cost of Fred’s CWGC listing. Maybe he helped Katherine out if she was still in financial difficulty (the family were not well off, which I’ll explain in a separate post). It’s impossible to know.
In Search of Kings 