Today I’m staying with the First World War but heading over to the other side of the family. My mum is a Rushworth and I’ve been looking into the experiences of my great-grandfather Edward Rushworth, born in 1898, and those of his brothers who served during the war.
Edward was the third of eight children born to Charles Rushworth and his wife Mary Ann, nee Green. Charles worked in the leather trade: in 1911 he was a tanner and leather currier at the firm of J.W. Stocks in Leeds where his eldest son John, aged 17, also worked as a labourer. Two other sons, Charles Haydon and my great-grandfather Edward, worked as errand boys in the leather trade. The family were from Leeds and lived there in 1911 but seem to have moved around a lot, spending a few years in Northampton at the beginning of the century. They can’t have been well off: tanning was a notoriously unhealthy industry and according to the census return, in 1911 the ten of them were living in three rooms. They lived at no. 6 Gresham Street which was derelict by the 1950s, as seen in this photograph on the Leodis website, and was included in the slum clearance programme in the early 1960s.
I thought that Edward Rushworth would probably have served in the First World War due to his age: he would have been 18 in 1916 just as the National Conscription Act made military service compulsory for single men aged between 19 and 41. I found proof that Edward had served on his marriage certificate. He married Emily Ellis on 24 May 1919 and was still in the Army at that time: under ‘rank or profession’ his marriage certificate states ‘Private No 82975 M.G.C. (Boot Operator).
Unfortunately, as with many of those who served during the First World War, Edward’s official Army records don’t seem to have survived. His medal index card shows that he was entitled to the British War Medal and the Victory Medal, but I couldn’t find anything in the online family history sites to add to that.
My main sources of information for his war service are an entry in the National Roll of the Great War cut from a newspaper by someone in the family years ago, and family memories. I’m very grateful to whoever decided to cut this clipping from the newspaper presumably in the early 1920s.
I know it refers to the right Edward Rushworth as it gives his address, which is the same as that on my great-grandfather’s marriage certificate from 1919. I had imagined he might have been conscripted in 1916 but the clipping shows he actually volunteered a year earlier, when he was possibly only 17, though why he would have joined the Durham Light Infantry rather than a local Leeds regiment is something I have yet to explain. He served in the Middle East during the war – something else I need to research further. It also shows he stayed in the army after the war’s end and served in India, probably in the Third Anglo-Afghan War, though he must have come home on leave in May 1919 as that’s when he married Emily.
I was able to flesh out Edward’s story a little bit by talking to my uncle. Born in 1940, he and my grandma lived with Edward and Emily during the Second World War while my grandad was away. My uncle remembers Edward talking about his time as a Lewis gunner during the First World War. Edward had apparently talked about using guns cooled by water which got so hot that the water boiled and they could use it to make tea. In this instance he must have been talking about the Vickers, which was a water cooled gun used by the Machine Gun Corps (the Lewis gun was lighter, air cooled and was issued to infantry units because it could be carried and used by one soldier) though Edward probably used both. This photo from the Imperial War Museum collection shows a Vickers machine gun crew in action during the Battle of Menin Road Ridge in September 1917.
A Vickers machine gun crew in action. (c) IWM (Q2864).
Edward also talked about being at the Khyber Pass, which must have been during the Third Afghan War in 1919 (more on that from the National Army Museum here). My favourite anecdote, however, is about Edward’s tattoo. My uncle remembers him having a huge tattoo of a cross on his chest, big enough to stretch from neck to waistband. Edward said he got the tattoo in India but couldn’t remember how – he just woke up one morning and there it was. That must have been an impressive night out. I imagine there are squaddies still having similar experiences today.
In later life Edward was apparently a round, jolly man who liked a drink. The photos we have of him certainly fit that description. He died in March 1972.
In Search of Kings 