The Men of Tooting Bec Asylum go to War 1914-1918
Part One

Pro patria mori

Many young men employed at Tooting Bec Asylum served in the forces during the First World War. Eleven of them did not return, and their names were once recorded on a memorial in the asylum’s rose garden. This memorial, the rose garden and the asylum are long gone and have been replaced by a large housing estate called Heritage Park.

Let us remember the stories of the men who gave their lives for their country.

Tooting Bec Asylum

In 1914 Tooting Bec Asylum (later Tooting Bec Mental Hospital) had been open for eleven years. It had been built by the Metropolitan Asylums Board to relieve overcrowding at other asylums and housed 1,066 mainly older people, many of whom were living with dementia or other chronic conditions. Life for the patients was confined within locked wards and high walls, and although just across the road from the asylum were the delights of Tooting Bec Common, access was forbidden. Even so, the patients might catch a glimpse of the common from the hospital’s grounds, or from the fire escape ‘bridges’ where they took the air on fine days.

Staff at the asylum worked long hours, were subject to strict discipline, and were expected to live on site unless granted special permission. In spite of this numerous young people were attracted to the regular indoor work on offer. They were also close to the shops, pubs and cinemas of Tooting, Streatham and Balham, with the West End only a short trip away on the electric tram. Although a strict no fraternisation rule was in place — men and women worked in separate parts of the hospital and lived in separate accommodation — it certainly did not stop romantic relationships forming between the staff. Proof of this is the frequency of their marriages.

War is declared

On 4 August 1914 the King announced that the country was at war, and almost immediately reservists were called up to swell the numbers of the regular army. It was common for soldiers who had signed up for a specific length of service to spend some of it on active duty and the rest working in civilian jobs, on the proviso that, as in this case, they could be called up when they were required. A number of these ex-soldier reservists worked at Tooting Bec Asylum. They were quickly mobilised — some eleven on the day after war was declared. Over the following weeks and months many others volunteered to join up.

The Metropolitan Asylums Board let it be known that those of their employees who signed up would not lose out financially. Not only would they receive their full civilian pay, minus military pay, but their jobs would be kept open for them on their return, and military service would count towards superannuation. By the end of 1914, from the staff of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, 265 men had been mobilised, 461 men had volunteered, and 51 nurses had joined the army nursing service.

The first to go, the first to die: Charles George Avenell Turner

Charles George Avenell Turner, who was Wandsworth born and bred, worked as a telephone erector or fixer after leaving school. He did not stick at this for long, and just before his sixteenth birthday he joined the army. Charles served eight years as a drummer with the Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) travelling as far as north China, Singapore and India. With four years left to serve he entered civilian life as a reservist, and on Tuesday 2 June 1914 he began working as an attendant, or male nurse, at Tooting Bec Asylum.

It was only nine weeks later, on 5 August, that he received orders to join the 1st Battalion of his old regiment, which was sent to France on 11 and 12 August to guard the lines of communication, and saw early action in the Battle of Mons and the Battle of Le Cateau. Perhaps, like many others, Charles thought that the war would be over by Christmas and sadly for him it was. On 21/22 October during the Battle of Armentières. 100 men from his battalion were killed and 64 reported missing. The War Office ruled that his official date of death was to be 31 October.

Private Charles George Avenell Turner L/11053, 1st Battalion, Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) is remembered on panel 8 of the Ploegsteert Memorial in Belgium, along with over 11,000 other soldiers who also have no known grave. He was 24 years old.

Hard labour: Walter Harold Savage

Walter Harold Savage was born into a large family from Milverton, a suburb of Leamington Spa, where he started work as a baker. In 1904, aged 18, he put civilian life behind him to join the 2nd Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment.

Seven years later he left the army. He lodged with his sister, Sarah Reynolds, at 31 Mellison Road in Tooting, and worked as a labourer until in August 1911 he secured a position as attendant at Tooting Bec Asylum, where he remained for the next three years. He was called up as a reservist on the same day as his colleague Charles Turner and was immediately deployed to fight with the 2nd Battalion on the Western Front, seeing action at Mons and the Aisne, and in other battles, too.

On Friday 18 September 1914, after days of fighting and heavy shelling, and having witnessed the deaths of fellow soldiers, Walter was put on guard duty. Shifts lasted only two hours as the danger of soldiers falling asleep was recognised, and yet for Walter two hours was unfortunately too long, and he was discovered fast asleep. This was an extremely serious offence, and was even punishable by death by firing squad, but Walter escaped with a sentence of six months imprisonment with hard labour, imposed by a field general court-martial. Not long after returning to general duties, he was appointed lance corporal. He may have felt the satisfaction of redeeming his reputation after his earlier offence, but if so, this was not to last.

Two weeks later, on 16 May 1915, the regiment was part of a planned nighttime attack on the German positions during the Battle of Festubert.

Owing to miscommunications about timing and the need for silence

surprise was now impossible. The German flares lit up the scene and the companies had some two hundred yards to traverse before they could close with the enemy. In the changing light of the flares control was difficult. Companies and platoons became disordered: officers and men fell in rapid succession under a hail of bullets: the survivors rushed onward in little groups up to the German wire entanglements. [From: H.F. Stacke. The Worcestershire Regiment in the Great War. p.71]

Walter was among the 250 men killed that night.

Lance Corporal Walter Harold Savage, 8593, 2nd Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment has no known grave and is remembered on panel 17/18 on the Le Touret Memorial in France. He was 29 years old.

Born in New Zealand: Charles John Coventry Packwood

A third army reservist called up on 5August 1914 was Charles John Coventry Packwood. Charles had been born in Dunedin in New Zealand, but his family relocated back to England, where he was working as a printer’s labourer when in 1898, at the age of 18, he signed up with the Rifle Brigade. He would go on to see service in South Africa and in Egypt before entering civilian life in 1906 working first at Croydon Borough Asylum and then as an attendant at Tooting Bec the following year. In 1909 he married Mary Rust in St Nicholas’, Tooting’s parish church, but they would not share a home until the following year when, after being promoted to deputy charge nurse, Charles was allowed to live out. The Packwoods resided with their two young children in three rented rooms at 23 Rookstone Road in Tooting.

Although his initial obligations as an army reservist were fulfilled by 1910, Charles signed up again as a reserve soldier in April 1914 — perhaps motivated by patriotism or by the extra money he received. Four months later, in August, he was mobilised. He was 34, too old, at this time, to volunteer.

Joining the 2nd Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment, he spent the first seven months of the war in England for training. He arrived in France on 24 March 1915 and was deployed on the Ypres Salient. At some point in the next ten days he was wounded, and on 3 April 1915, which was Easter weekend, he died.

In Memoriam (Easter, 1915) by Edward Thomas
The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.

Three months after his death, his youngest child, Charles Dudley Packwood, was born.

Sergeant Charles John Coventry Packwood, SR/6992, 2nd Battalion, East Surrey Regiment is buried in Dickebusch New Military Cemetery.

 He is also remembered on Carshalton’s war memorial.

Near misses: Edward James Collins 

Edward James Collins was born in Wandsworth and started work at Tooting Bec Asylum in November 1908 at the age of 19, first as an attendant and later, following promotion, as deputy charge attendant. He was one of the first staff members to volunteer. His medical took place on 27 August 1914 and he signed up three days later with the 1st Battalion Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) as a private, which was also Charles Turner’s regiment and battalion, but as he had no military experience, he stayed in England for training until July 1915.

Throughout the following year Edward fought as a member of the British Expeditionary Force, until on 16 July 1916 he was wounded at the Battle of Bazentin Ridge, which was part of the Battle of the Somme.

The injuries to his buttocks were serious enough to see him sent back home for four months, but he was back on the front line from 24 November 1916 to 28 April 1917, when he was hit by shrapnel in his right leg, possibly during the Battle of Arras. This time he was sent to the Howard de Walden Auxiliary Hospital in Maidstone in Kent for two months before returning to fight.

In the following year, on 31 March, he returned to duty after a period of leave and took part in the Battle of the Lys:

Early on the 17th of April [1918] the R.A.F. reported that the French troops were on their objective south of Meteren. This proved to be false, for Middlesex patrols, sent into the village to ascertain the truth of that statement, were fired on by the enemy … Up to 12 noon the Battalion also suffered some sixty other ranks killed and wounded. [From: E. Wyrall. The Die-Hards in the Great War. Vol.2, p.230]

Edward was one of the men killed on that day but his body was never identified.

Private Edward James Collins G/2402, 1st Battalion, Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) is remembered on panel 113-115 of the Tyne Cot Memorial to the missing of the Ypres Salient.

The Roman Catholic medallion: Albert George Austin

On 2 September 1914 twelve men working at the asylum signed up: seven porters, three attendants, a deputy charge attendant, a stoker and a laundryman. The last of these, the laundryman, was Albert George Austin from Brixton, who had started work at the asylum as a porter in 1909 when he was 20. Five years later he was promoted to laundryman, a position that was not only more responsible, and higher paying, but also more physically demanding as 46,000 items were washed every week in a large on-site laundry. He was obviously a trusted employee, and was allowed to live out at 176 Derinton Road on the Totterdown Estate, close to the asylum.

Prior to about 1908 Albert had been a member of the 1st Company of the Garrison Artillery Volunteers, but his period of service had ended before 1914, and he was not mobilised. Instead, he signed up at Merton, and was posted to the 10th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. He also married Sarah Ann Read, who had been a ward maid at the hospital since 1911. Initially he remained in England for training — he must have performed well as he was appointed corporal in March 1915 — but on 21 July 1915 he left Folkestone for the Continent. It is likely that he experienced terrible fighting as well as the Christmas truce and awful winter conditions in the trenches.

In the summer of 1916 his medical records imply his health was suffering. In June he was diagnosed with neurasthenia — a nervous exhaustion caused by war that might manifest itself as depression, irritability and exhaustion — and was permitted two days away from the front line. Then in August he was treated for dental caries, a not uncommon experience among soldiers, who had poor diets and few opportunities for good dental hygiene. As he was off for nine days, he probably had teeth extracted, which in the days before penicillin would have been an unpleasant procedure. He returned to duty on 3 September 1916, but a few days after he was declared missing, and then dead. Sarah Ann Austin was sent his army disc and a Roman Catholic medallion.

The name of Corporal Albert George Austin, S/2053, 10th Battalion, Rifle Brigade is on the Thiepval Memorial, which honours the men who died during the Battle of the Somme.

Part Two of this article can be read here.