Bugg’s Life, Death and Family Tree reunited

Mal Padgett, part of the Arthur Bugg family tree,  passed me some photographs of their family reunion of 26 descendants around the staff memorial tree at Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne on 19 November 2015.

It is 70 years this year  since the Brush Box tree was planted in Bugg’s memory.

Courtesy of Mal Padgett.

 

Their relative Arthur William Bugg of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne staff died on 2 November 1915  in Egypt during the Gallipoli campaign.

Bugg and staff member Flight Sergeant E W Hiskins of the RAAF (died 1944) are remembered  by a Brush Box tree planted by Ernest Henry Bugg, Arthur’s brother on 10 September 1946.

The Bugg Family reunion at the staff memorial tree, Melbourne Botanic Gardens  19 November 2015 (photo courtesy of Mal Padgett)

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/buggs-life-and-death-royal-botanic-gardens-melbourne-staff-memorial-tree/

 

Press cuttings from previous reunions and the 1946 planting:

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/54606/

 

1996 reunion press cutting (courtesy of Mal Padgett)

 

 

Assembling for the reunion around the Memorial Tree (courtesy of Mal Padgett)

 

Arthur Bugg’s entry in the family bible (courtesy of Mal Padgett)

 

Arthur William Bugg’s entry in the Bugg family bible.  According to Elaine Upton, granddaughter of Ernest, both Arthur and his brother Ernest worked at their Gardens with their father Isaac.

From the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne / State archives

 

 

If you want to find the Tree in the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne:

Brave men remembered by their families many years on.

Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo gardens project, Newquay Zoo.

 

 

Gallipoli evacuated 8 January 1916

On the 8th and 9th January 1916 the final British and French troops were quietly and successfully evacuated from the Gallipoli beaches of Turkey.

They left behind blazing stores and some surprised Turkish enemies.

They also left behind thousands of dead comrades, many who have no known graves and are remembered on the Helles Memorial.

Helles Memorial to the missing of the Gallipoli campaign, Dardanelles, Turkey. (Image: CWGC website)

Amongst these casualties were several naturalists and botanic garden staff from Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Edinburgh and Melbourne.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/04/25/remembering-the-lost-gardeners-of-gallipoli-2015/

Some individual stories are mentioned here of art gallery curators, soldier naturalists, Wisley gardeners, all careers cut short by Gallipoli.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/09/13/remembering-c-f-ball-of-kew-glasnevin-killed-gallipoli-13-september-1915/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/gilbert-ramsay-art-gallery-curator-killed-gallipoli-12-july-1915/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/buggs-life-and-death-royal-botanic-gardens-melbourne-staff-memorial-tree/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/colonel-neville-manders-fes-fzs-zoologist-killed-gallipoli-9-august-1915/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/remembering-william-gordon-dickson-and-isaac-bayley-balfour-rbge-gallipoli-1915/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/06/13/remembering-private-duncan-smith-of-the-royal-botanic-gardens-edinburgh/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/remembering-george-fallow-from-royal-botanic-gardens-edinburgh-to-gallipoli/

https://www.rhs.org.uk/education-learning/blogs/libraries/april-2015/the-fallen-of-wisley

Remembered.

 

Remembering Driver Arthur William Bugg died 2 November 1915

Arthur William Bugg’s picture.Source: from The WW1 Pictorial Roll of Honour, http://www.vic.ww1anzac.com/bu.html

Remembering Australian Arthur William Bugg of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne staff who died on active service on or around  2 November 1915.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/buggs-life-and-death-royal-botanic-gardens-melbourne-staff-memorial-tree/

Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne staff memorial tree (Photo by Graham Saunders via Monuments Australia website)

His Bugg family relatives met at the memorial tree earlier this year:

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/54606/

Arthur died at Heliopolis, Egypt on 2nd November 1915 aged 20 as a result of meningitis.

Cairo War Memorial Cemetery (image CWGC website)

He is buried in the Cairo War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt and is also remembered on the headstone of his maternal grandparents, William and Ellen Currell, in St. Kilda Cemetery, Melbourne. He is also remembered on panel Number 181 of the Australian National War Memorial.

Arthur William Bugg, remembered.

Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne staff memorial tree plaque (Photo by Graham Saunders via Monuments Australia website)

Posted on 4 November 2015 (2 days late due to a scheduling error) by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.

Remembering C.F. Ball of Kew & Glasnevin, killed Gallipoli 13 September 1915

C.F. Ball, Dublin Fusiliers, killed at Gallipolli, pictured in The Garden obituary, October 16 1915.

Charles Frederick Ball, 13 September 1915 Private Charles Frederick Ball, service number 16445, 7th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers (Pals Battalion), died Gallipoli on 13/09/1915, aged 36.

“A delightful companion, unassuming, sincere and a most lovable man…” quoted from a short and touching obituary and portrait was also published in The Garden (October 16, 1915, p.514) by his friend and fellow soldier , the editor Herbert Cowley (who had been invalided out of the army)

C.F. (‘Fred’) Ball now has his own full biography by Brian Willan, published in 2022.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/charles-frederick-ball-new-biography-by-brian-willan-kew-gardens-glasnevin-dublin-and-gallipoli-ww1/

Ball is buried at Grave Reference II. A. 8, Lala Baba Cemetery, Turkey. This cemetery was created from smaller burial grounds after the Armistice on a low hill between the southern side of Suvla Bay and a salt lake. The hill was taken in the fierce fighting of August 1915 during the Gallipolli campaign against the Turks, a doomed amphibious landing which was the brainchild of Winston Churchill.

Lala Baba cemetery, Turkey. Image copyright CWGC

Charles was the son of the late Alfred and Mary Ball, of Loughborough and husband of Alice A. Ball, of 15, Percy Place, Dublin, whom he married in Dublin on December 16, 1914. This was one of many such wartime marriages mentioned in the Wedding Bells section of the Kew Guild Journal.

Ball had left Kew in August 1903 to work as Assistant and later Foreman at the Royal Botanic Gardens Glasnevin in Dublin. He was also editor of Irish Gardening and a friend and fellow travelling companion to Bulgaria with Kew collegue and Alpine plant enthusiast Herbert Cowley, injured in the First World World War (see previous Blog post on Cowley). His wife Alice chose the Biblical inscription on his headstone: “Greater Love Has no Man than This”.

A Life Member of the Kew Guild, there is a lengthy tribute to Charles Ball in the Kew Guild Journal including a final sighting of him just before he died, sheltering behind a rock under fire, digging away at ‘weeds’ with his bayonet to send back home seeds to his botanic garden colleagues. From the tone of the account, this seemingly strange behaviour had happened several times!

His obituary notes that: ” Even while on active service in Gallipoli his love of collecting persisted, and numerous seedlings are growing on at Glasnevin from seeds he sent home, gathered in the vicinity of Suvla Bay.” Oak seeds were sent back by a Kew officer from Gallipoli for cultivation at Kew (see W.H. Morland’s entry).

Later entries in the Kew Guild Journal 1921 are from Old Kewites who had travelled across this area, noting as botanists and gardeners would, what native plants were found there, soil types and climate along with the planting by the then Imperial War Graves Commission (now CWGC). Kew staff and Old Kewites were involved for many years as horticultural advisors to the Commission.

A cultivar of the South American shrub Escallonia is named ‘C.F. Ball’ in his memory, a beautiful shrub with dark green leaves and bright red flowers, excellent for bees. It is available from many nurseries.

There is more about C.F. ball on the ‘Flower of the Dublin Fusiliers’ message board.

C. F. Ball, died Gallipoli 13 September 1915, remembered.

2022: a full biography of C.F. (Fred) Ball has now been published by his relative Brian Willan:

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/charles-frederick-ball-new-biography-by-brian-willan-kew-gardens-glasnevin-dublin-and-gallipoli-ww1/ 

Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.

Remembering George Fallow from Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh to Gallipoli

19th August 2015 is the 100th anniversary of Sergeant George Fallow’s death in Egypt from wounds received at Gallipoli serving with the 5th Royal Scots. This was very much the local regiment for many others on the staff at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.

Leonie Paterson the RBGE archivist has produced another timely Botanics Story and blogpost about Fallow http://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/16849 

Sergeant George Cruickshanks Fallow No.1739, died on 19 August 1915 aged 24 from wounds received whilst serving with the 5th Royal Scots at Gallipoli. He is buried at Grave Reference: K. 4. of Port Said War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt. Many other Gallipoli casualties are buried here too.

Port Said War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt where George Fallow and many Gallipoli casualties are buried. (image: CWGC)Buddleia fallowiana

The CWGC holds the additional family information that he was the son of Margaret Fallow, of Rosebank, Carluke, Lanarkshire, and the late Archibald Fallow.

On his headstone is the inscription chosen by his mother “Till The Day Dawns” (and the shadows flee away) based on a biblical inscription from the Old Testament Song of Solomon.

Botanics Stories 

Leonie Paterson the Archivist and colleagues  at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh uncovered in 2014 a strange aspect of Fallow’s story about why he does not appear on the RBGE staff war memorial:

RBGE at War – Hume and Fallow’s stories

“As a fan of eminent plant collector George Forrest (1873-1932), I’d long known that two of his plant introductions had been named after former RBGE gardeners killed in the First World War; Roscoea humeana, named for Private David Hume and Buddleia fallowiana for Sergeant George Fallow.

What I found curious was that Hume’s name appears on RBGE’s war memorial, now situated in the foyer of the Science Buildings on Inverleith Row, despite him having given up horticulture in 1906, whereas Fallow’s name doesn’t appear at all. Why? What are their stories?

George Fallow’s story is perhaps less mysterious, but no less tragic. The reason for his name not

Buddleia fallowiana from the RBGE plate negative archive.

being included on the memorial is a simple one – he had left the staff of RBGE during the summer of 1914.

The reason for this was recalled by Henry (Harry) Howden Bryce in the RBGE Guild News Sheet, March 1980: “Some of the ‘lads’ joined the Territorials. The ‘Terriers’ were quite an attraction during this time. Apart from the drills and parades there was the big attraction of the Summer Camp”… “In July 1914 the Prof [Isaac Bayley Balfour] supervised the arranging of a demonstration of exhibits in the Laboratory… The whole layout was like a cross-section through the field of Botany.” All this was for a surprise oral examination for Balfour the following evening – the probationers would have to study the exhibits in order to talk about any subject Balfour asked them to. After the exam, “the Prof then asked if anyone would volunteer to talk on any of the subjects… only one stood up and that was George Fallow.

The following morning George was called up to the Prof’s office.” Balfour had been asked to recommend someone for the post of Subinspector in the Horticulture Branch of the Board of Agriculture, London. Fallow was recommended and selected for the position. “Now, George was a member of the Territorials and he decided to go to camp with his fellow students, then after camp he would proceed to his new appointment. Alas, the ‘best laid schemes’…” Fallow was still at camp on the 4th August when war was declared. The ‘Terriers’ were immediately put on active service training rather than return to their jobs.
As Fallow had left his post just prior to the outbreak of war he does not feature on the RBGE memorial nor the Roll of Honour, but the footnote to the description of Buddleia fallowiana states: “The specific name is given to keep in memory Sergeant George Fallow, 5th Batt. The Royal Scots, a former gardener on the staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, who died 19th August 1915, in Egypt, of wounds received in action at Gallipoli.”

The shrub collected by George Forrest is shown in the RBGE negative archive.

There is more about the plant at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddleja_fallowiana

Colonel Neville Manders FES FZS zoologist killed Gallipoli August 1915

One of the Gallipoli casualties was Colonel Neville Manders DPMS, FZS, FES killed in the Dardanelles on 9 August 1915.

Neville Manders (image source from the RAMC WW1 website)

An entomologist and expert on butterflies, he was on the Headquarters staff of the ANZAC Army Medical Services as Deputy Director of Medical Services DDMS.

Colonel Neville Manders died 9th August 1915, aged 55 serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps D.D.M.S.(Anzac) Army Medical Staff. He is remembered on a Special Memorial  20, New Zealand  No. 2 Outpost Cemetery, Gallipoli, Turkey.

No 2 Outpost Cemetery, Dardanelles – Neville Manders special memorial 20 is just to the front right of the cross (image : CWGC)

CWGC lists him as the Son of Maj. T. Manders, late 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabineers) and  husband of Mrs. M. B. Knapp (formerly Manders), of 77, Fellows Rd., Hampstead, London.

On his death he left a widow and daughter.

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/606131/MANDERS,%20NEVILLE

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/35845#page/217/mode/1up article: Entomologists Record XXVII, 1915: A Day in The –

and his obituary p239.  http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/35845#page/323/mode/1up

 

IN MEMORIAM – THE DEATH OF A BUTTERFLY COLLECTOR IN THE TRENCHES OF GALLIPOLI – Obituary of Colonel Neville Manders from Entomology Monthly, Nov 1915
Colonel Neville Manders, A. M.S., F.Z.S., F.E.S. Born 1859. Died gloriously, 1915.

The death roll of British officers who have fallen in the Gallipoli Peninsula is long, and it contains the names of many friends who have given up their lives for King and country in a cause which we believe, and they believed, to be good and noble. Among them no name is better known to, or has been more highly esteemed by entomologists than that of Neville Manders, long time a Fellow of the Entomological Society of London, and recognised also as an expert in our Science as well as the best of good comrades.

He fell at the beginning of August, and although the official notification of his death, and the telegram from the General Officer commanding the Division with which he was serving at the time, does not inform us of the way in which he met his death, we have no difficulty in supposing that it was in the trenches where the wounded Australians and New Zealanders were his first and constant care. It is pleasant at least to reflect that he retained his interest in the wild life of that blood-stained field of many battles to the last, and that in his letters to his friends, down to within a few days of the end, he found time to observe the butterflies and birds haunting the limestone hills of the Peninsula, and to send home notes upon them. Undiminished, gay in life, even while the great guns were booming, and the air thick with the smoke of conflict.
Born at Marlborough fifty-six years ago, the youngest son of Major Thomas Manders, 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabineers), he was educated at the College which has given us at least another entomologist of the first scientific rank. I do not possess the Transactions of the School Natural History Society, but Colonel Manders often talked with me of his early love for the Lepidoptera of the neighbourhood, and how his first inclinations to entomology were fostered under the beech trees of Savernake. From Marlborough he proceeded to walk the London Hospitals, eventually qualifying as F.E.C.P. and M.E.C.S., preparatory to entering the Army Medical Service, being almost immediately ordered to the Soudan, where he served in the Suakin campaign, and was awarded the Khedive’s Star, with medal and clasp.

Thence he proceeded to Burma where he was severely wounded, and at the close of the war which added Thebaw’s country to the British Empire, received a second medal with two clasps. At the time of — and after — the South African War, he was in Ceylon and Mauritius, whence he began to write the series of interesting papers relative to insect migration and mimicry, published froom time to time in the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, his latest contribution appearing in the ” Proceedings ” of March 3rd, 1915.
His catalogue of the butterflies of Mauritius and Bourbon (1907) considerably enhances his entomological reputation, and our knowledge of the islands’ fauna, and actually added a species, Nacaduba mandersi Druce ; and a new sub-species, Antanartia mauritiana Manders, to the list.

He was also a frequent contributor to the entomological magazines, even finding time for communications despite his multifarious duties in Egypt, where he was stationed when hostilities began, with the rank of Deputy-Director of the Medical Service.

Here he was joined later, and after the declaration of war with Turkey, by Mr. P. P. Graves, and at the beginning of the present year published ” The Butterflies of Lower Egypt” (Ent. Record, XXVII, pp. 60-65).
Colonel Manders was married. He leaves a widow and a daughter, to whom we offer our sincerest sympathy.

Some idea of the reputation he held in his profession, and the respect with which he was held by the entire Command at the Dardanelles front may be gathered from the following telegram receivedby Mrs. Manders from the G. O. C. the New Zealand and Australian Division — units of the immortal Anzac brigade: “On behalf of both myself and the New Zealand and Australian Division, I send our sincerest condolences. Your husband’s work here and devotion to duty make his loss irreparable both to me and to the Division.”
For him, as for the many thousand heroes who have perished in the great enterprise of freedom, may surely be reserved the glorious epitaph of Simonides upon the dead at Plataea :— ” These men, having set a crown of imperishable glory on their own land were folded in the dark cloud of death ; yet being dead
they have not died, since from on high their excellence raises them gloriously out of the house of Hades.” — H. Rowland-Brown.

 

Neville Manders, entomologist, remembered.

Gilbert Ramsay art gallery curator killed Gallipoli 12 July 1915

I have been reading a very interesting book by Gaynor Kavanagh, Museums and the First World War published by Leicester University Press, the product no doubt of Leicester’s excellent Museum Studies Programme.

Gaynor Kavanagh’s book is an interesting parallel to what I have been researching about how institutions such as zoos and botanic gardens survived the challenges of both world wars. Staffing challenges and casualties, evacuation of collections, closure or requisition of buildings, air raid precautions and damage  – there are many similarities between the wartime stories of museums and zoos, or between galleries and botanic gardens and other ‘places of entertainment’.

Describing them all as places of entertainment seems a little frivolous. However as the zoologists at London Zoo or botanists at Kew, camoufleur artists from galleries and the art world or geologists and scientists from museum collections found, they often had extremely useful skills in wartime ranging from geology to sanitation, cryptic camouflage to food production, pest control to code-breaking and intelligence work.

Early on in my research I read the story of how Britain’s Art Treasures were hidden away underground, whilst more recently I have been reading Gerri Chanel’s remarkable story Saving Mona Lisa about how the treasures of the French museums and galleries (including the Mona Lisa) were saved and hidden in occupied France during WW2. A staff war memorial for the Musee Nationaux casualties exists in Galerie Denon, Louvre for both WW 1 and WW2

Sadly one recurrent theme across many sites, especially in the First World War, was the casualty lists.

One of the Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery staff, its director Gilbert Ramsay, was another 1915 casualty at Gallipoli. The previous director James Paton, who had retired in 1914 aged 71, stepped back into the post until 1919.

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/687342/RAMSAY,%20GILBERT%20ANDERSON

Lance Corporal Gilbert Anderson Ramsay, No. 2253 died in Gallipoli on 12 July 1915 aged 35, serving with the 6th Battalion (City of Glasgow) Highland Light Infantry (Territorials) in Gallipoli.

Helles Memorial to the missing of the Gallipoli campaign, Dardanelles, Turkey.
(Image: CWGC website)

He has no known grave and  is remebered on Panel 174 of the Helles Memorial to the missing of the Gallipoli campaign. The Additional Information listed by CWGC describes him as the “son of Mr. G. A. Ramsay, of Glenlee, Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire. A Director of Glasgow Art Galleries.”

Ramsay also features on the Glasgow Art Club war memorial, pictured here: http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/warmemscot-ntopic3063.html

and on the Glasgow School of Art War Memorial where he was a student.

De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour gives further biographical details: Born on 7 June 1880 in Greenock, educated at Greenock Academy and Glasgow School of Art before becoming an architect. He was director of the Whitechapel  Art Gallery from 1911-14, before being appointed to be Superintendent (Director) of Glasgow Corporation Art Galleries in May 1914. By Oct 1914 he had enlisted and arrived in Gallipoli in May (medal card says July) 1915. He was killed “whilst charging with his regiment” on 12 July 1915.

Lucinda Matthews-Jones’ blog A Historian’s Tears notes of Ramsay’s involvement with the Toynbee Hall university settlement in the East End, during his Whitechapel Gallery years.

http://lucindamatthewsjones.com/2013/07/29/the-historians-tears-toynbee-hall-first-world-war-obituaries/

“Most of these men were unmarried and childless. As the obituary of Gilbert Anderson Ramsay commented on his death in July 1915 ‘he was struck by a shell, and instantly killed. So died, in his thirty-sixth year, childless and unmarried, one of the most gifted, and surely one of the most lovable of Toynbee men’. Ramsay was instrumental in the decorative schemes of Toynbee in the Edwardian period and he worked tirelessly at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. His weekend jaunts with fellow settlers to Essex were remembered with fondness together with his ability to cook chops. For Francis Gordon Shirreff, Ramsay’s death forced him to ‘look upon an empty world’ and ask ‘Can anything, however, high and holy, repay the loss of such a life? So we ask ourselves in our utter desolation? But the measure of our loss, is in reality, the measure of our reply. All we loved is in the dust: all we loved has laid it there’ (December 1915)…

His time at Whitechapel Art Gallery http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/history/ was at an interesting and exciting time for British art:

“However, in 1914 proposals for an exhibitian of Twentieth Century Art, organised by Aitken and Gilbert Ramsey, who had become Director when Aitken moved to the Tate, caused Henrietta Barnett to write to plead with them “not to get too many examples of the extreme thought of this century, for we must never forget that the Whitechapel Gallery is intended for Whitechapel people, who have to be delicately led and will not understand the Post impressionist or futuristic methods of seeing or representing things”

Letter to Ramsay by Barnett, 7 Feb 1914 (Whitechapel Art Gallery archives) Quoted from the Passmore Edwards website. http://www.passmoreedwards.org.uk/pages/history/Libraries/Whitechapel%20art%20gallery/history%202.htm

This 20th Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements summer  exhibition did eventually open at Whitechapel Art Gallery from 8 May to 20 June 1914, by which time Ramsay was heading for Glasgow. Just over a year later Ramsay was dead at Gallipoli. The Toynbee Art Club exhibitions ran from 1911 to 1915 and then continued postwar.

The  20th Century Art summer exhibition is widely covered in many books including an article (11)  by Juliet Steyn p. 212. – 230 entitled “Inside Out: Assumptions of ‘English Modernism’ in the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Summer 1914” in  Art Apart: Art Institutions and Ideology Across England and North America  (edited By Marcia R. Pointon) and  also  London, Modernism, and 1914 by Michael J. K. Walsh.

The tiny number of paintings in the exhibition  by the few Futurists and Cubist artists received disproportionate coverage out the 494 works of art featured, but these featured artists such as Bomberg, Nevinson and Wyndham-Lewis are now seen by some as prophetic of and highly influenced by the coming war. Their war art regularly  features in visual representations of the dehumanised battlefield, industrial slaughter and mechanised warfare of the First World War.

Gilbert Ramsay, art gallery curator, remembered amongst the dead of Gallipoli.

Posted by: Mark Norris, Newquay Zoo, World War Zoo Gardens project

In future blog posts I will feature the British Museum staff war memorial names starting  this centenary anniversary  with the death this week in 1915 of  E. George Gentry.

Remembering William Gordon Dickson and Isaac Bayley Balfour, RBGE, Gallipoli 1915.

William Gordon Dickson, a Gardens Labourer at the  Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE)  in 1914, enlisted as a Private 5th Royal Scots and was killed in action at Gallipoli 28 June 1915.

Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery, Gallipoli (Image: CWGC)

The same day, ‘ Bay’ Balfour, the son of Isaac Bayley Balfour, RBGE’s Regius Keeper throughout the war, was also killed as part of the same Battle of Gully Ravine in Gallipoli on 28th June 1915. He was serving as a Lieutenant with the  1st King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) and is buried in Twelve Tree Copse cemetery.

Helles Memorial to the missing of the Gallipoli campaign, Dardanelles, Turkey.
(Image: CWGC website)

Private William Gordon Dickson, No. 2170 died aged 44 at Gallipoli on 28 June 1915 whilst serving with the 5th Battalion Royal Scots 5th Bn. (Queen’s Edinburgh Rifles), a regiment in which many of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh staff served and several were also killed at Gallipoli.

See: Leonie Paterson’s excellent botanics stories blog for Dickson’s story:  http://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/16027

and for ‘Bay’ Balfour: http://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/16015

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/04/25/remembering-the-lost-gardeners-of-gallipoli-2015/

Unlike Balfour, Dickson has no known grave and is remembered on Panel 27 of the  Helles Memorial to the Missing of the Gallipoli Campaign.

CWGC lists him as the “Husband of Margaret Dickson, of 85, Hanover St., Edinburgh.” Dickson was born and enlisted in Edinburgh on 4th September 1914. He began work at the Botanics only on 3 August 1914. The following day, Britain’s ultimatum to Germany ran out and it became involved in the First World War.

Dickson is also remembered on the staff memorial at the ‘Botanics’ in Edinburgh, erected in memory of the RBGE men and Isaac Bayley Balfour who died c. 1922 http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/warmemscot-ftopic4114.html

Two very different men, one young, one old, one an officer, another a gardens labourer, strangely linked in memorial by a workplace and a grieving Balfour family.

Both remembered.

Remembering Private Duncan Smith of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh

Remembering Private Duncan Smith of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh 5th Royal Scots killed at Gallipoli 11th to 13th June 1915

http://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/15680

Remembering the Lost Gardeners of Gallipoli 2015

ANZAC day on 25 April 2015 is the centenary of the landings at Gallipoli.

Helles Memorial to the missing of the Gallipoli campaign, Dardanelles, Turkey.
(Image: CWGC website)

On the day and over the next few months of bitter fighting, several zoo related and botanic gardens staff were killed at Gallipoli.

C.F. Ball, Dublin Fusiliers, killed at Gallipolli, pictured in The Garden obituary, October 16 1915.

Kew Gardens lost Charles F. Ball and Walter Morland from amongst the former  Kew trained staff. Charles Ball was based at Glasnevin, now part of the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland.

Walter Morland in his 5th Royal Scots uniform (Source: RBGE archives)

Private Charles Frederick Ball, service number 16445, 7th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers (Pals Battalion), died at Gallipoli  on 13 September 1915, aged 36. He is buried at Lala Baba Cemetery in Gallipoli, Turkey.

C.F. Ball lies amongst the top left hand side row of graves  to the west of this picture Lala Baba cemetery, Turkey. Image copyright CWGC

C.F. Ball, Gallipoli casualty, is remembered in the hedging plant Escallonia ‘C.F. Ball’.

Kew trained gardener Walter Morland of the 5th Royal Scots was killed at Gallipoli. Married in 1909 whilst serving at Cambridge University Botanic Gardens, Morland enlisted on August 31 1914 in the 5th Battalion Royal Scots (Queen’s Edinburgh Rifles) at Edinburgh where he was (CWGC entry) “on staff at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh as a Rose Specialist“..

Morland survived the landings on April 25th 1915 (the date on his entry to Theatre of war on his WW1 medal record card) but died on 2nd or 7th May – records vary – during:

“an assault on a wood below Krythia on May 7th. For three weeks no traces of him could be found, and it was supposed he had been taken prisoner; then his chums, during an advance, found his body.”

Walter Morland has no known grave and is remembered with many other missing men on panel 26-30 of the Helles Memorial at Gallipoli in Turkey.

Ball and Morland’s stories are told more fully on the Kew Gardens WW1 War Memorial blogpost: https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/such-is-the-price-of-empire-the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-in-the-first-world-war/

RBGE Gallipoli Casualties

The Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE) had many former staff serving in the local regiment  the 5th Battalion Royal Scots including Kew trained Walter Morland.

Several of the 20 RBGE staff casualties were killed at Gallipoli. Archivist Leonie Paterson has uncovered the service stories behind their Roll of Honour and the RBGE War Memorial.

Private Duncan Smith, RBGE Gardener 1909, served in the 5th Royal Scots in Gallipoli and was killed in action after three months on 11 June 1915.

William Gordon Dickson, Labourer RBGE 1914, Private 5th Royal Scots  killed in action Gallipoli 28 June 1915.

Sergeant George Fallow, 5th Batt. The Royal Scots, a former gardener on the staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, died 19th August 1915, in Egypt, of wounds received in action at Gallipoli. Fallow had a Buddleia fallownia plant named after him by RBGE staff http://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/12442

Private John Mathieson Brown, served 7th Royal Scots  Egypt and Galliopoli 1 year, killed in action Gallipoli 24 November (1917?)

RBGE Gallipoli Survivors

Others served and survived Gallipoli like Private William Dykes employed at RBGE as a Boy (junior staff) in 1914. Dykes served at Galliploi and France for 2 years with the 5th Royal Scots, being wounded once and demobilised in 1919.

Corporal Horace Elwood, RBGE Probationer 1913, also served with the 5th Royal Scots for  1 year 1 month at Gallipoli, twice wounded, demobilised 1919.

Henry Johnstone (RBGE Labourer) served in Egypt, Gallipoli and Flanders for three years, 9 months, being once wounded and demobilised 1919. Charles Lamont (RBGE Probationer, 1914) also served for these periods and places, again once wounded.

John McMillan Lugton, RBGE Park Keeper 1913, served as a Squadron Sergeant-Major in the Scottish Horse for three years Gallipoli, Egypt, Balkans and France, being twice wounded.

Alexander McCutcheon, RBGE Gardener 1907 returned on demobilisation to become a Foreman in 1919. He had served as a Sergeant in the Royal Scots for three years ten months in Gallipoli and Flanders.

James Maxwell Hampson, RBGE Labourer 1914, served as a Private, 5th Royal Scots at Gallipoli for one year,  only to be killed in action two years later in France on 8 March 1918.

Dublin Zoo RZSI – Frank Brendan O’Carroll

Zoo families were affected by the loss of staff but also of the members of staff families on active service. Sons, brothers, grandsons and heirs of zoo and botanic gardens staff were lost in WW1. The wealthy citizens and Dublin Zoo council members living in Merrion Square in Dublin had their own family losses. One such was Frank Brendan O’Carroll, the son of Dublin Zoo RZSI council member Joseph O’Carroll MD FRCPI of 43 Merrion Square, Dublin.

Second Lieutenant Frank Brendan O’Carroll, 6th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers died on 10 August 1915, aged 20 as part of the Gallipoli and Dardanelles campaign. He is remembered on panel 190-196 of the Helles memorial to the missing, Turkey.

The circumstances of his death are recorded in the 6th Battalion war diary: http://www.dublin-fusiliers.com/battaliions/6-batt/war-diaries/1915-08/1915-08-trans-htm

7 August Suvla Bay. Made landing at C Beach on Anafarta Bay at 18.00. Battalion in reserve under Brig General Hill. Took up position at Entrance to Salt Lake. 6th and 7th Dublins attached to 31st Brigade.

8 August Suvla Bay. Battalion on water and ammunition fatigue for the Brigade

9 August Suvla Bay. Battalion attached to 33 Brigade (General Maxwell), Moved from beach about 02.30 to Hill 50. A Coy detached to support the right flank of the Brigade. Battalion ordered to support firing line near Ali Bay Chesme point 105-H-8.

Officers killed Lt Doyle, wounded believed killed 2nd Lt Stanton, 2nd Lt Mc Garry. Wounded and missing Major Jennings. Wounded Capt Luke, Capt Carrol, Lt Martin, 2nd Lt Carter, 2nd Lt Mortimer, 2nd Lt O’Carroll. Missing Lt Clery. Killed wounded and missing Other Ranks 259.

The Europeana website has a poignant letter from father Joseph as he worries over four sons including another fighting in Gallipolli. http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributions/3619

O’Carroll’s name on the memorial is pictured on http://www.irishmedals.org/irishmen-at-gallipoli.html

 

Melbourne Botanic Gardens Australia staff memorial tree.

Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne have a staff memorial tree which remembers Driver Arthur William Bugg AASC who died in hospital in Egypt  in 1915 as part of the AIF. Members of his family have been involved in the Shrine at the ANZAC service in Melbourne. We have posted more about this memorial on our previous blogposts.

You can hear more of the survivor’s voices (including Alexander Burnett of the Royal Scots) from Gallipoli on the IWM WW1 centenary Podcast No 14 

You can also read more on the CWGC website: http://www.cwgc.org/anniversaries/gallipoli.aspx

Remembered

Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo