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

Part One of this article can be read here.

We shall meet again where partings are no more: George Henry Cottam

George Henry Cottam was born in Plymouth in 1887, and as a teenager he worked with his father, who was a house decorator. By his early twenties George had moved to south London, where in 1911 he was employed as a newsagent’s assistant, and lived at 77 Hazelbourne Road in Balham. A year later he began working as an attendant at the asylum.

George signed up in Battersea and was assigned to the 8th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards). He attained the rank of sergeant, and was in England until August 1915, when the battalion was sent to France. In the course of the Battle of the Somme, George took part in the assault and capture of the village of Contalmaison on 10 July 1916, and was among the many men killed on that day. The following is the account of the part taken by the Green Howards as given in the Battalion Diary:

The Battalion advanced to the attack at 4.50 p.m. from the Horseshoe Trench and came under shrapnel fire from Contalmaison Wood. As the Battalion advanced further, and when within about five hundred yards from the village, heavy machine-gun and rifle fire was opened on them by the enemy from the front and left flank. On reaching Trench 23-41 the wire was found to be practically intact and proved a serious obstacle, while a second obstacle in the shape of a hedge and wire netting held up the line outside the village and fifty per cent. of the casualties occurred between the trench and hedge. This obstacle was, however, surmounted and the line advanced to the village, firing on the enemy who were now retreating. At this point unexpected machine-gun and rifle fire took the men in rear and caused some further casualties, not more than four officers and one hundred and fifty men reaching the village. [From H.C. Wylly. The Green Howards in the Great War. p.255]

Sergeant George Henry Cottam, 15093, 8th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards) is buried in the Serre Rd Cemetery no.2.

His gravestone bears the words ‘We Shall Meet again Where Partings are No More — Mother’.

Researching George Henry Cottam has not been straightforward: his service records do not survive and he shares a name with another serviceman. The other George Henry Cottam joined the Royal Navy on 2 August 1914 and worked as an administrator at Chatham before he was discharged on the grounds of ill health in 1915. Although initially I thought that they were the same man, records from the asylum clearly show that ‘our’ George enlisted in the army on 2 September 1914.

Two broken watches, a notebook and some photographs: Robert Langley

Robert Langley, the son of a policeman, was born in Putney in 1889. In October 1909, at the age of 20, he joined the staff of Tooting Bec Asylum as an attendant. He was later promoted to deputy charge nurse. He enlisted in central London and was posted to the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade.

For the first five months of the war Robert was based in England. Then on 2 February 1915 he embarked for France to fight on the Western Front. Later that year, in November, his battalion travelled as part of the 24th Division to Marseilles, where they boarded a destroyer for the four-day crossing to Salonika, an undertaking made especially perilous by the activities of German submarines.

The troops had been sent to try to halt the advance of the Bulgarians, who had already conquered Serbia, and Robert would be there for the next year until on 20 December 1916 he was sent home. He was seriously ill with trench nephritis, a very common wartime condition that resulted in kidney infections, high blood pressure, bronchitis, and breathlessness. Having receiving treatment at Leeds War Hospital, he remained in England until March 1917, when he joined the 10th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade.

He made another trip to Blighty after being wounded in the stomach on 26 June 1917, and he married a near neighbour, Violet Gibbs, at their local church, St Michael’s Southfields, on 6 October 1917. However, he was not to survive the war, and on 18 May 1918 he died of wounds at the 1st Canadian Casualty Clearing Station. The list of belongings sent home to Violet makes poignant reading: two broken watches, a religious book, some photographs, a knife, notebooks, letters, a dictionary, two discs, scissors, some mirrors, a wallet and a purse.

Lance Corporal Robert Langley z/1527, 1st Battalion, Rifle Brigade was buried in Pernes British Cemetery with the inscription ‘Safe in God’s keeping’. He was 29 years old. He is also named on the war memorial in the church in Southfields where he married. Five years later his widow remarried, again in St Michael’s, and one of the witnesses was his father.

Tooting to Greece: Herbert Thomas Leonard Currey

Herbert Currey, who was born in Portsmouth in 1888, joined the asylum’s staff on 17 January 1907 as a general porter. His sister, Susan Hester Currey, also worked there. He would remain there for the next seven and a half years, until he enlisted in the army at Wandsworth on 4th September 1914, joining the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry as a private. He would later be appointed lance corporal and then acting sergeant.

Herbert was on the Western Front from February 1915 and probably fought in the Second Battle of Ypres. Later in the year his battalion was transferred to Salonika, where they endured extremely challenging conditions, as illustrated in this extract from the diary of another soldier.

Very bad night — no shelter from the cold and wet. I had a rotten passage round the line, falling and stumbling about in snow drifts up to my shoulders in some places. The snow kept on falling yesterday evening and part of the night, and then changed to a most intense frost. This morning everything is frozen hard and every track is too slippery to walk on … Our overcoats are frozen hard, and when some of the men tried to beat theirs to make them pliable to lie down in they split like matchwood. The men can hardly hold their rifles as their hands freeze to the cold metal. Everyone is falling and tumbling about in the most ludicrous way … We had an enormous sick parade this morning nearly 150 men reporting. There are many bad cases of frost bite in hands and feet. (Diary of Captain Noel Drury, 6th Battalion, The Royal Dublin Fusiliers 27-28 November 1915)

On the day in 1916 that his former colleague Robert Langley was invalided home with nephritis, Herbert died from his wounds, aged 25. Acting Sergeant Herbert Thomas Leonard Currey 13691, 2nd Battalion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry is buried in Struma Military Cemetery in Greece in a grave with the inscription ‘In Loving memory of our son who died for King and country’.

Only a single day of fighting: Frederick Henry Chapman

Frederick Henry Chapman was born in Battersea in 1883. He worked as a general labourer before joining Tooting Bec Asylum in March 1908, and no doubt found the conditions and pay of £26 a year more appealing than working outside in all weathers. After six years he was promoted to deputy charge attendant, and on 9 September 1914 he enlisted as a corporal in the 8th Battalion of the East Kent Regiment, known as The Buffs. Shortly afterwards he married a fellow nurse called Minnie — Marie or Mary — Mitchell.

Frederick’s battalion was part of Kitchener’s Third New Army and was wholly made up of volunteers. Arriving in France in August 1915, the men appeared to be ill-equipped to cope with trench warfare. Their first experience of a major encounter was on 26 September 1915 at the start of the Battle of Loos:

At 10.30 a.m. orders came for the division to attack at 11, and then this unit of the regiment went “over the top” to take its part in a severe action only three weeks after arrival in France and without having gone through the apprenticeship and instruction under fire in the trenches, which was the rule in all cases of fresh troops arriving in the country.

There was a steady and persistent shelling on all these battalions as they advanced, and when our men got down to the depression running south of Hulluch they came under enfilade fire from several guns and machine guns, and the further they advanced up the eastern slope the more severe became the fire. All the battalions of the 72nd Brigade reached the trenches which were their objective. There they found the wire entanglement still quite intact, the wire being abnormally thick and difficult to cut. Endeavours were made to get over or under this obstacle, but to no purpose. [From: R.S.H. Moody. Historical Records of the Buffs East Kent Regiment. P.96]

The Battalion suffered heavy losses and Frederick Chapman was reported missing on the same day. But Minnie Chapman, who was five months pregnant at the time of her husband’s disappearance, did not give up hope, and as his body had not been found or identified, she wrote to the Red Cross to enquire if he had been taken prisoner. Unfortunately the answer was no.

Corporal Frederick Henry Chapaman G/1721, 8th Battalion, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) is remembered on Panel 15-16 of the Loos Memorial. He was 32. His posthumous child was born in February 1916.

Killed repairing a trench:  Richard Coles

Richard Coles had worked as an attendant at Tooting Bec asylum since 1910. When war was declared, he did not immediately sign up, and there were many possible reasons. He had a young family, he may have believed that the war would be over quickly, he may not have supported the war, or perhaps he was needed at the asylum.

During the autumn of 1914 the family lived at 17 Foss Road in Summerstown, while Richard continued to work at the asylum, and his two young daughters were both baptised at St Mary’s. But despite this semblance of normality it cannot have been an easy time for the Coles. As a man of fighting age who was not in uniform, Richard may have been subject to public shaming and perhaps even received the white feather that denoted cowardice, and his wife, Lily, would have been known of the men who lived nearby who had signed up. No doubt there was gossip about the Coles.

But in January 1915 Richard decided to enlist. He went to Kingston and joined the 7th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment as a private, leaving England five months later, and taking part in the Battle of Loos in September. Six months later, on 8 March 1916, he died. The battalion war diary reports that while men were repairing the previously damaged Northampton trench, the Germans attacked with field guns, howitzers and heavy trench mortars. No specific deaths are mentioned but Richard is likely to have been killed during this attack.

Private Richard Coles, 7049, 7th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment is remembered on panel 65/67 of the Loos Memorial.

The oldest man: William Henry Francis Martin

William Henry Francis Martin was born in 1877 in Gravesend in Kent. In 1901 he was employed as a railway carriage cleaner and was living at home with his parents. Three years later William began working at Tooting Bec as a general porter. Asylum records suggest that he was a reliable member of staff. He willingly covered a vacant fireman’s post for three months without extra pay, and by 1911 was permitted to live off site at 18 Coverton Rd in Tooting with the family of Alfred Bostwick, one of the Asylum’s boiler stokers.

When war first broke out, William Martin was unable to enlist, as he was 37. Initially, in August 1914, only men between the ages of 19 and 30 could join up, although the cut-off age was raised to 35 by the end of the month and then to 38 by the end of September. In October William took on the duty of night gate porter, and the asylum was no doubt glad to have retained the services of such an experienced member of staff. Interestingly, his younger brother, Henry, had been mobilised as a reservist into the Royal Army Medical Corps.

 Members of the RAMC were unarmed and were not expected to take part in combat, although owing to their proximity to the front line, and their role as stretch bearers and ambulance drivers, significant numbers were killed. Many had religious or moral beliefs that would not allow them to fight.

But on 19 February 1915, in Gravesend in Kent, William joined the Somerset Light Infantry as a private. After a few months training in England, he was sent to France with his battalion, arriving on 1 June 1915. Three weeks later he was killed in action on the Ypres Salient. Although he experienced no major battles in his brief time at the front, William was one of many men killed during continuous bloody trench warfare. His youngest brother, Frederick, was also killed in the war, on 27 October 1918. The middle brother Henry served with the RAMC from August 1914 until March 1919, when he returned home.

Private William Henry Francis Martin, 17334 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry is buried at Talana Farm Cemetery.

After the war

The eleven men from the Tooting Bec Asylum who died in the Great War were named on the official Metropolitan Asylums Board war memorial, which last seen in the old County Hall building. Printed images of the memorial were also placed in asylum chapels. However, nowhere are their death’s referred to in the asylum sub-committee minutes, an omission that was possibly dictated as a matter of policy in order not to damage morale. Colleagues who were wounded and returned to work are mentioned.

On 21 March 1919 a memorial service was held by the Metropolitan Asylums Board at St Bride’s in Fleet Street. In total 153 men had died and 234 returned wounded.

I would be interested to hear from anyone with additional information about these men. Please get in touch if you know what happened to the rose garden memorial after the closure of Tooting Bec Asylum.

Resources used

Numerous resources were used to research this article. Of particular note are the websites of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, The Imperial War Museum and The Long, Long Trail. Published regimental histories and diaries were also consulted. Military and genealogical records were found on Ancestry, Findmypast and the British Newspaper Archive. These are all ‘paid-for’ resources, but most public libraries provide free access to registered library users.