Remembrance and the World War Zoo Gardens Project

November and Armistice / Remembrance is always a bit of a sombre period for the World War Zoo Gardens project.

Although the allotment side has now finished (2009-2019) and some of the research and education materials on wartime food, wartime gardening and wartime life have been moved on to good homes for educational use such as at our local Bodmin Military Museum in Cornwall,

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2023/10/09/the-end-of-our-wartime-zoo-garden-allotment-plot-autumn-2023/

Our wartime zoo keeper’s allotment ready to be re-landscaped back to lawn, 2023/4

we intend to keep this  World War Zoo Gardens research blog online partly for its Remembrance section on zoo and botanic gardens war memorials.

Like many public places,  at Newquay Zoo we offer staff and visitors the chance to observe the national Two Minutes Silence on 11th November and on Remembrance Sunday morning.

The rare zoo with a staff war memorial –  London Zoo still has a gathering of staff who lay wreaths at 11am on Armistice Sunday at their ZSL Staff War memorial.

The Lost Keepers of London Zoo WW1 and WW2 

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/%e2%80%9clost-in-the-garden-of-the-sons-of-time%e2%80%9d-remembering-the-fallen-zoo-staff-from-wartime-zoos-onremembrance-sunday-and-armistice-day-2010-in-the-wartime-zoo-gardens/

This is the rough listing of dates of death of these ZSL London Zoo staff and Belle Vue Zoo staff. If you read through the past blogs, you will find that we wrote individual blog posts for many  of the London Zoo and Belle Vue Zoo  around the centenary of their death on active service.

This formal laying of wreaths  may not happen at the damaged war memorial to the  Belle Vue Zoo staff in Gorton cemetery in Manchester, but I hope a few poppy crosses are left.

This Victorian ‘theme park’ or leisure gardens  creation of  Belle Vue Zoo closed in the mid 1970s.

Botanic Gardens often had an animal or zoo element, so we widened our search and found some interesting examples from Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, Melbourne , Birmingham and  Kew Gardens amongst others https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/ww1-and-botanic-gardens/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/ww2-in-zoos-and-botanic-gardens/ 

Header panel, Kew Gardens staff war memorial. Image: Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project

 

The Lost Gardeners of Kew WW1

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/such-is-the-price-of-empire-the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-in-the-first-world-war/ 

The Lost Gardeners of Kew WW2

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-in-world-war-two/

Irish Botanic Gardens https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2016/05/22/commemorating-the-great-war-in-irelands-zoos-and-gardens/

Natural History Museums, Naturalists and Scientists such as the Linnaean Society lost staff in WW1 and WW2

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/lost-fellows-the-linnean-society-roll-of-honour-1914-1918/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/ww1-related-posts/

These are just a few links to the many stories of so many men and women  whose lives and careers were changed by WW1 and WW2 across Britain, Europe and the World, alongside the animals and plants they looked after.

As we say at the end of the war memorial service  in my Cornish village and many people say around the world on Armistice Day / Sunday – “We will remember them!”

Blog posted on 8th November 2023 by Mark Norris,  Newquay Zoo Education Dept.

Remembering the London Blitz 80 years on from September and October 1940

Remembering London in The Blitz 80 Years on …

Remembering London Zoo in the Blitz 26-27 September 1940
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/london-zoo-in-the-blitz-26-27-september-1940-from-magazines-and-press-articles/

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Remembering Chessington Zoo bombed 2 October 1940
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/chessington-zoo-blitzed-2-october-1940-eyewitness-accounts/

Blog posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project (Newquay Zoo)

1916 The Somme, the Zoo and Kew Gardens

Somme poppies, Thiepval area, France taken on my first trenches tour, 1992 (Copyright: Mark Norris)

 

 

The 1st July 1916 was the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, arguably one of the worst days in the history of the British Army.

Experts remain divided over whether Haig’s battle plans and The Somme Battles overall were a complete disaster or a sharp learning curve for his “Citizen Army” of volunteers.

Amongst these “Pals” battalions of early volunteers from similar streets, towns or trades were several Zoo and Botanic gardens staff, some of whom were killed or wounded. They joined the memorial and roll of honour list of scientists, museum staff, gardeners and naturalists that we have been following as part of the World War Zoo Gardens project to see what impact WW1 had on zoos, botanic gardens and similar trades and institutions.

Several British zoo staff with no known grave are remembered on the Thiepval Memorial to the missing of the Somme battles. 
(Image: CWGC website)

‘The Zoo’  ZSL London Zoo

10.07.1916 Albert A Dermott 13th Btn. Rifle Brigade, Rifleman ZSL Messenger

Rifleman S/4504 Albert Arthur Dermott, 13th Btn. Rifle Brigade, (The Prince Consort’s Own) ZSL Messenger, aged 22, was killed on the Somme and has no known grave, being listed on the Thiepval Memorial.

Dermott is listed amongst the 72,000 names on the strangely shaped Thiepval memorial to the missing dead who have no known grave of the Somme battles of 1916-18. The memorial by Lutyens which sits high on a hill overlooking the killing fields of France is nicknamed by some the ‘elephant’, with its howdah or passengers on a zoo elephant ride.

Autumn colours behind the ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, November 2010 (Photo: Kate Oliver, ZSL Education)

According to CWGC records, Albert Arthur Dermott was the son of Frederick John Dermott and (Margaret) Rachel Frances Dermott (nee Creswell) of 2 Queen’s Road, Dalston, Middlesex, London. After his mother Rachel’s death, Dermott’s father Frederick remarried a Louisa Archer.

Albert was born in Islington, Middlesex, London on 25th April 1894 and was resident and enlisted in Marylebone, Middlesex. According to his medal records, he entered service overseas on 29 July 1915 (earning a 1915 star) and was killed just under a year later. He would have been only just past 22 years old when he was killed in action.

Dermott is listed on the Thiepval project database. The following biographical information was researched by Ken and Pam Linge for Dermott’s database entry, culled from Census information – Dermott was the youngest of five children. His siblings were Rachel Margaret Dermott (b.1883), Alice Louisa Dermott (b. 1885), Frederick John Dermott (b.1887), Edith Dermott (b. 1891). The young Albert was educated at Shap Street School, Hackney from 9th September 1901.

15.9.1916 Arthur G Whybrow 2547, 19 Bn. County of London Regt , ZSL Helper.

Whybrow joined up on 4 September 1914 and went to France on 8th March 1915. He was killed during the Somme battles, probably in the clearance of High Wood by 47th (London) Division, 15 September 1916.

Born around 1891, Arthur Whybrow worked first as a Domestic Gardener (like his father John) before joining London Zoo as a keeper (noted on his marriage certificate in July 1913). He married Daisy Sutliff and they had a child, Winifred Daisy Whybrow born 1913/14. Daisy remarried after Arthur’s death, a Mr Goodard in mid 1919.

 

High Wood was fiercely fought over during the Battle of the Somme until cleared by 47th (London) Division on 15 September 1916 when Whybrow was killed. The original ‘London’ Cemetery at High Wood was begun when 47 men of the 47th Division were buried in a large shell hole on 18 and 21 September 1916. Other burials were added later, mainly of officers and men of the 47th Division who died like Arthur Whybrow on 15 September 1916. His gravestone looks slightly more squeezed in next to others than normal as if this is a mass grave.
A G Whybrow lies buried with many others of his London Regiment who died on the same day.

At the Armistice in 1918  Whybrow’s cemetery contained 101 graves. The cemetery was then greatly enlarged when remains were brought in from the surrounding battlefields, but the original battlefield cemetery of London Regiment soldiers where Whybrow is buried is preserved intact within the larger cemetery, now know as the London Cemetery and Extension. The cemetery, one of five in the immediate vicinity of Longueval which together contain more than 15,000 graves, is the third largest cemetery on the Somme with 3,873 First World War burials, 3,114 of them unidentified.

Listed on CWGC website as the son of John and Louisa Whybrow, of Hampstead, London and husband of Daisy Goodard (formerly Whybrow), of 193, Junction Rd., Highgate, London.

05.10.1916 Gerald P Patterson 19th County of London Regt ZSL Helper

The 19 County of London Regiment may be an error or his first regiment. This is likely to be 43689 Private Gerald Phillips Patterson of the 8th Battalion, Norfolk Regiment was killed on 5th October 1916 during the Somme fighting. He is buried in an individual grave XI. C. 4. in Connaught Cemetery, Thiepval, Somme, France. There is no family inscription on his headstone, pictured on the TWGPP website. .

The life of his battalion during the Somme battles is well set out in the Somme school visit site http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=2956

It is likely that Patterson went into action with the Norfolks on the 1st of July 1916, the first day of the Somme as part of the 18th (Eastern) Division as part of K2, Kitchener’s 2nd Army Group of New Army volunteers. Patterson was most likely killed during the attack and capture of the Schwaben Redoubt on the 5th October 1916. The next day his battalion went back for rest out of the line.

Many of Patterson’s 8th Norfolk battalion who were killed and whose bodies or graves were not found are remembered on the nearby Thiepval Memorial, alongside other ZSL staff like Albert Dermott.

Patterson is listed on the ZSL memorial plaque as 19th County of London Regiment; along with several other ZSL staff he enlisted locally in Camden Town, Middlesex, close to the London Zoo.

Later he must have transferred to his County regiment the Norfolks as he was born in Great Yarmouth like his parents and siblings. His father was a school attendance officer and Patterson was the youngest of 7 brothers and sisters, all born in Great Yarmouth. On leaving school, the 1911 census lists him as an Auctioneer’s Articled Pupil, before becoming a ZSL Helper (a junior or trainee keeper rank).

There are now 1,268 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the Connaught cemetery. The vast majority of the burials are those of officers and men who died in the summer and autumn of 1916 battles of the Somme. Half of the burials are unidentified, many brought in from smaller cemeteries around the Somme battlefields area.

William Dexter, ZSL London Zoo keeper killed in WW1
(Photo: Courtesy of Nova Jones, digital clean up Adrian Taylor ZSL)

23.10.1916 William Dexter Kings Royal Rifles, Rifleman ZSL Keeper

Rifleman S/19841 William Dexter was a married keeper enlisted in the 2nd Battalion, Rifle Brigade, The Prince Consort’s Own, who died on or around 23 October 1916 aged 31. Dexter is buried in an individual grave XVIII. J. 5. at Bienvillers Cemetery, near Arras,and the Ancre, France.

Nova Jones, Dexter’s granddaughter, inspects his name on the new panels at the ZSL London Zoo staff war memorial. (Image: Mark Norris)

According to his granddaughter Nova Jones whom I met at London Zoo in March 2014, William Dexter came from a zoo family of several generations. The daughter of William’s daughter Dora, Nova found in time for ZSL’s wartime centenary exhibition in 2014 a photograph of William Dexter in uniform with Rifles cap badge and has confirmed with the Royal Greenjackets Museum that “William as a Rifleman (Service no. S/19841) served with the 2nd Bn. Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own) during the First World War.”

William Dexter was listed on his Army Medical Form as a “Keeper at Zoo”, 5 foot 5 ½ inches, Physical development ‘Good’. His father Robert Dexter had been employed at the zoo from the 1860s onwards. After working as a labourer and painter, William obtained employment ‘as worth keeping’ in 1908, rising to Junior Keeper of Ostriches in 1913 before joining up. The 31-year-old father of four children, enlisted in the Rifle Brigade in December 1915.
A portion of boot with his numbering appears to be all that helped identify William Dexter and prevent him being buried like all the others as “Unknown British Soldier”.

After barely one month serving in France he was listed as “Missing – accepted as having died on or since 23 October 1916”. Although war service and pension records are difficult sometimes to decipher, “A portion of boot” was seemingly all that was left to identify his missing body , along with posthumous medals and a pension, for official recognition and return by the authorities of Keeper Dexter to his wife and four children.

Belle Vue Zoo Manchester

Belle Vue Zoo staff 1916 deaths

3. Private William Morrey 27 June 1916

Several William Morreys from the Cheshire, Lancashire and Manchester area are listed on the cwgc.org site, obviously a local name.

Before his enlistment under the Derby Scheme, it appears our William was the one who worked as a water and gas fitter at the Zoological Gardens at Belle Vue, Manchester.

Pioneer 130519 William Morrey died aged 21 on the 27 June, 1916, serving originally with the Manchester Regiment but on his death with the 1st Battalion of the Special Brigade, Royal Engineers (a gas unit).
William Morrey is buried in the middle of the second to back row of these hospital related casualties, Beauval Communal Cemetery, Somme, France.
Morrey is buried at an individual grave B17 at Beauval Communal Cemetery, Somme, France. The great majority of the burials were carried out from such hospitals as the 4th Casualty Clearing Station where Morrey died at Beauval from June 1915 to October 1916.

Directly alongside Morrey in three other graves B 14-16 are three others of this special Battalion killed on the same day, Pioneer 129027 Richard Brown, Pioneer 128027 James Duckett (also from Manchester) and Pioneer 128805 Walter Norman Welton.

CWGC lists Morrey as the son of William and Lydia Morrey, of Widnes. Mr A.E. Morrey of 13 Ollier Street, Widnes, Lancs appears to have chosen the family inscription on his CWGC headstone: “He gave his life for Freedom”
Morrey and comrades lie in the middle of the second to back row of Beauval Cemetery, France. Image: cwgc.org
These Special Companies are described on the Long, Long Trail website http://www.1914-1918.net/specialcoyre.htm and on their forum posts #61 Royal Engineers Special Brigade: post #61 jones75 which gives the following information:

Pioneer William Morrey, No.130519, 21st Section, 1st Bn, Special Brigade, Royal Engineers
Born : Widnes, Lancashire.
Enlisted : Manchester, 20th January, 1916.
Resided : The Lodge, Halton View, Widnes.
Died of wounds in France on 27th June, 1916, aged 21.
Buried at Beauval Communal Cemetery, Row B, Grave 17.
William Morrey is also commemorated at St Ambrose church in Halton View, the Belle Vue Zoo memorial and on the Widnes War Memorial in Victoria Park, Widnes in Cheshire.

William Morrey was the second son of William & Lydia Morrey and died in No.4 Casualty Clearing Station on the 27th June as result of gas poisoning on the previous day.

His sister, Mrs Dutton of Milton Road, Widnes, received a letter from an Army Chaplain, Reverend H.D.W. Dennison, CF, in it he wrote….

”It is with deep regret that I have to tell you of the death of your brother, Pioneer W. Morrey. He was admitted into this hospital yesterday afternoon suffering severely from gas poisoning, and though everything possible was done for him, he died early this morning. I am burying him this afternoon with four of his comrades who suffered the same fate in Beauval Cemetery. May he rest in peace and, and may God comfort sad hearts that his loss will cause……”
An old boy of Simms Cross school, William Morrey also attended St Ambrose church and Sunday School and was a member of the Gymnasium at St Paul`s Parochial Rooms. On leaving school, he worked for five years as an apprentice gas & water fitter at the Corporation Gas Works in Widnes.

Before his enlistment under the Derby Scheme he worked as a fitter at the Zoological Gardens at Belle Vue, Manchester.

He joined up on 20th January, 1916 into the 14th Bn, The Manchester Regiment, regimental number 32486 and in March that same year was transferred to the Royal Engineers and sent to France.
He wrote his last letter home in mid June and in it he said he was in the best of health and expected to be moved nearer to the front line. (WWN 1916)
The Special Brigade, Royal Engineers was a unit formed to counter the German Gas threat, they were employed to dispense poison gas from the allied trenches towards the enemies lines, it is possible that William Morrey was gassed carrying out this task as accidents and the effect of shell-fire on the equipment caused leaks on a regular basis.

So Morrey died in the preparation for the Somme, which three months later would claim another Belle Vue Zoo colleague, Alfred Routledge.

Routledge is one of several British zoo staff with no known grave who are remembered on the Thiepval Memorial.
4. Private Alfred Routledge

He died serving with the 11th Battalion Manchester Regiment on The Somme aged 23 on 26 September 1916. He was killed in an attack on Mouquet Farm which was part of the final and successful British attempt to capture the village of Thiepval.

The village occupied high ground in the centre of the battlefield and had been a British objective on the first day of The Battle of The Somme on 1 July 1916.

Alfred Routledge is one of the many “Missing of the Somme” listed on the Thiepval memorial, having no known grave. Routledge was killed in the final days of taking Thiepval village, one of the original objectives of the 1st July 1916, the first disastrous day of the Battle of The Somme two months earlier.

CWGC lists him as the son of the late Alfred and Emily Barton Routledge of 504 Gorton Lane, Gorton. Married.

Routledge and fellow Belle Vue Zoo staff Sidney Turner and Ralph Stamp are remembered on the St. James Parish Church war memorial http://gortonphilipsparkcemetrywargrave.weebly.com/st-james-church-gorton.html

Chester Zoo

George Mottershead who founded Chester Zoo in 1930s was badly wounded on the Somme on 15 October 1916. The Mottersheads were nurserymen and market gardeners, as shown in BBC Our Zoo June Mottershead’s  ‘Grandad’ Mottershead working well into old age and wartime to provide food for his son’s zoo animals. Three of June’s Mottershead uncles and step-uncles from this gardening family were killed in the First World War, two others on her mother’s side, whilst her father George was badly wounded on theSomme.

Kew Gardens

Royal Botanic Gardens Kew wartime casualties 1916

Several Kew staff were killed serving in the Somme area later in the autumn of 1916.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/such-is-the-price-of-empire-the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-in-the-first-world-war/

Sydney George Cobbold, 3 October 1916.

Sergeant Sydney George Cobbold, S/12906, 8th Battalion, Rifle Brigade died on the 3rd October 1916, aged 28. His 1917 Kew Guild Journal obituary lists from his letters back to Kew that he had enlisted in the Rifle Brigade by June 1915 and shortly after November 1915 embarked for France.
He is buried at Grave Reference II. B. 7, Le Fermont Military Cemetery, Rivière, a front line cemetery of 80 burials begun by the 55th (West Lancashire) Division in March 1916 and closed in March 1917. Looking at the Graves Registration GRU documents, it appears that on the same day that Sgt Cobbold was killed, 4 other 8th Rifle Brigade were killed and buried in the same plot 2 Row B of this front line cemetery alongside him – Rifleman L.J. Farr, W.G. Kittle, Benjamin Gordon (Jewish star in place of a cross) and fellow sergeant J.R. Aspden, Military Medal. Cobbold lies among his comrades and his men.

Sydney Cobbold of the 8th Battalion, Rifle Brigade died 3rd October 1916, Somme area (Kew Guild photo)

John Divers, 9 October 1916

Rifleman John Divers, service number 7056, 1st / 9th Battalion, London Regiment (Queen Victoria Rifles) and also County of London Cyclists, died on 9th October 1916 when his patrol into No Man’s Land towards the German trenches was wiped out. For a time he was “missing, believed killed” and an officer wrote to his father that they had not been “able to thoroughly search the ground” for his body.

As a result Divers has no known grave and is one of two Kew Gardens casualties (with H.M. Woolley) listed amongst the missing of the Somme Battles on the Thiepval Memorial at Panel Reference Pier and Face 9 C. John Divers is listed amongst over 72,000 men from the UK and South Africa who died in the Somme area before March 1918 and who have no known grave. An excellent Thiepval database exists to put faces to names and add to the publicaly available knowledge about these 72,000 men.
Several Kew staff with no known grave are remembered on the Thiepval Memorial
At the end of September 1916, Thiepval village was finally captured from the Germans, one of the original objectives of the disastrous first day of the Battle of The Somme on 1st July, 1916. Attacks north and east continued throughout October when John Divers was killed and into 18th November in increasingly difficult winter weather. Over 90% of those commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial died like John Divers between July and November 1916.

Having visited this Thiepval memorial, it is like many of the other memorials to the missing such as the Ypres Menin Gate, quite overwhelming to scan the panels ccontaining thousands of carved names.

Born 7 August 1891 at Redhill in Surrey, he was the only son of a gardener and amateur botanist Mr Jos. Jas. Divers. From a well known family of gardeners, Divers worked with his uncle W.H. Divers VMH at Belvoir Castle, Grantham before joining Kew, March 1912, quickly becoming a Sub-foreman, Herbaceous and Alpine Dept. He was killed on the same day as fellow Kewite H.M. Woolley. (Thanks to his relatives for some of this background family / genealogical information).

John Divers, Kew Gardens 

Herbert Martin Woolley, 9 October 1916
Listed on the Kew memorial as Rifleman / Corporal Herbert Martin Woolley, “Essex Regiment” is most likely to be Rifleman 3844, 1st / 5th Battalion, London Regiment (London Rifle Brigade), died 9 October 1916. Herbert is commemorated on Panel Reference Pier and Face 9 D, Thiepval Memorial, along with fellow Kewite John Divers.

Born 27 September 1883, Herbert was the son of G.H. Woolley, Vicar of Old Riffhams, Danbury, Essex. In 1908 after working in several nurseries and Kew 1906-08 he left to work managing a rubber estate in North Borneo. He returned from Borneo to join the Essex Regiment but ditched his commission and training as an officer to become a corporal in the London Rifle Brigade to see action more quickly. His brother suggest he was also promoted to Sergeant. Herbert was killed shortly after the attack on Combles in 1916.

Herbert or “Bertie” Woolley came from a high-achieving and distinguished family of 12 children including his brother Lieutenant Colonel Sir Charles Woolley (1880 – 1960), “Woolley of Ur”,a famous archaeologist who knew Lawrence of Arabia. His brother Major George Harold Woolley VC OBE MC (1892 – 1968) was the first Territorial to win the Victoria Cross. In G.H. Woolley’s autobigraphy, “Sometime a Soldier“, Bertie’s unusual decision to become a private soldier and change regiments to get to the front quicker is described:

“While I was on sick leave my third brother, Bertie, returned from British North Borneo. He had been trained at Kew Gardens and in Germany, and then was employed on rubber plantations in Borneo. When in England he had joined the old Militia, so I had no difficulty in helping him to get a commission in the Essex Regiment. He soon tired of England, so transferred as a private to the London Rifle Brigade; he did well with them in France and was quickly made a sergeant, then offered a commission. He was killed with the L.R.B. on the Somme in 1916.

 

G.H. Woolley, Sometimes A Soldier. London: Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1963, pp. 38-39

Charles Henry Anderson, Albert Medal, 29 November 1916
Lance (or Lance Corporal) Charles Henry Anderson died on 29/11/1916 aged 26, Service no. 2326, 1st/14th Bn. London Regiment (London Scottish). His medal record card states that in addition to the standard Victory and British war medals, he was also awarded the Albert Medal (citation below). Anderson is buried amongst 253 WW1 Commonwealth soldier burials at Grave Reference II. K. 3, St. Venant Communal Cemetery in France. From 1915 to 1917 this cemetery was linked to British and Indian forces Casualty Clearing Stations in the area.
His mother Mrs L. Anderson chose the inscription on his headstone: “I Will Give Unto Every One of You According to His Works” (Revelation 2.23)

” The King has been graciously pleased to award the Decoration of the Albert Medal of the First Class in recognition of the gallantry of Lce. Cpl. Charles Henry Anderson, late of the 1st/14th Bn. of the London Regt., who lost his life in France in November last in saving the lives of others. On the 28th Nov., 1916, Lce. Cpl. Anderson was in a hut in France with eleven other men when, accidentally, the safety pin was withdrawn from a bomb.

In the semi-darkness he shouted a warning to the men, rushed to the door, and endeavoured to open it so as to throw the bomb into a field. Failing to do this, when he judged that the five seconds during which the fuse was timed to burn had elapsed, he held the bomb as close to his body as possible with both hands in order to screen the other men in the hut. Anderson himself and one other man were mortally wounded by the explosion, and five men were injured. The remaining five escaped unhurt. Anderson sacrificed his life to save his comrades.”

Royal Botanic Gardens  Edinburgh no doubt had staff who served during the Somme Battles but they lost no staff there. Their equivalent to the Loss of Pals battalions on the Somme was the loss of several staff in the local regiment 5th Royal Scots at Gallipoli in 1915.

Gardeners and others 

Garden magazine editor, writer and Kewite Herbert Cowley was home from the trenches, invalided out and newly married by 1916.

His new  brother in law was  killed on the first day of Battle of the Somme, as his wife Elsie Mabel (nee Hurst) lost her 30 year old brother Percy, a clerk.

Rifleman 4278 Percy Haslewood (or Hazlewood) Hurst of the 1st /16th Battalion, London Regiment (Queen’s Westminster Rifles) waskilled on the 1st July 1916, during his battalion’s diversionary attack on Gommecourt. Percy left a wife Geraldine of 18 Teddington Park, Middlesex. His widowed clerk / accountant father Samuel and typist sister Elsie Mabel was left grieving for his loss.

Like Herbert’s Kewite colleagues Rifleman John Divers and Corporal Herbert Martin Woolley, Percy H. Hurst is listed on the Thiepval memorial to the Missing of The Somme (Pier / face 13C). Several other Kew Gardens staff are listed in the Kew Guild magazine ‘Roll of Honour’ section as serving in Percy Hurst’s local London Regiment but thankfully survived.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/dig-for-victory-1917-world-war-1-style-the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-and-the-fortunate-herbert-cowley-1885-1967/

Wartime editions gardening magazines and journals listed lost gardeners such as George Harrow, son of George Harrow of Veitch’s Nursery, killed 1st July 1916. Gardener T. Percy Peed, a nurseryman, died serving with the 8th South Staffs in France on 10 July 1916.

Gardener Sergeant L.A. Iceton Seaforth Highlanders died on 26 July 1916.

RHS Wisley lost several staff during the Somme Battle period including:

Private John Fletcher Lee 31st Battalion Canadian Infantry, died 5 July 1916, buried at Lijssentheok Cemetery.

2nd Lieutenant Fritz Bowyer, 9 Squadron RFC died on 25 July 1916, Arras a Flying Services Memorial.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/education-learning/blogs/libraries/August-2014/First-World-War-commemoration-at-Wisley

Natural History / British Museum staff 

Private C.R. Dunt, killed Hebuterne, on staff of British Museum

 

 

Scientists, naturalists and others

Of the eight fellows FLS of the  Linnean Society casualties lost in WW1, two were lost in the Somme period and battles of 1916.

Geoffrey Watkins Smith 10 July 1916 
A Captain in the 13th Battalion Rifle Brigade, Geoffrey Watkins Smith died on 10 July 1916 is buried in grave III J 27, Pozieres British Cemetery, Ovillers la Boisselle. CWGC lists him as the son of Horace and Susan Eleanor Penelope Smith, of Beckenham, Kent. A Fellow of New College Oxford, Watkins Smith wrote several books including Primitive Animals and A Naturalist In Tasmania.

 

Wilfrid Omer Cooper  26 September 1916
Born 1895, he was killed in 26 September 1916. He had been involved with the Bournemouth Natural Science Society, studying isopods. Elected to the Linnean Society only in Spring 1915, he was still a private G/40113 in the 12 Battalion Regiment, Middlesex Regiment when he died aged 21. He has no known grave and is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial to the missing of the Somme battles.
Wilfrid Omer Cooper has no known grave and is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial.
He is listed on the CWGC website as the son of the late John Omer Cooper (died 1912) and Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Thompson Cooper, 6 Queensland Road, Boscombe, Bournemouth. On the listing for Soldiers Died in The Great War (SDGW) he is listed as born at Boscombe, Bournemouth, Hants and resident at Bournemouth. He enlisted at High Beech, Loughton and was originally listed as formerly B/23290 Royal Fusiliers.

In 1911 census he and his brother Joseph Omer Cooper were both schoolboys living with their 89-year-old father (a retired auctioneer, surveyor and estate agent, born in Reading, Berkshire 1822-1912) and 53-year-old mother Mary (born Willenhall, Staffordshire, 1858-1944) at 50 Westley Road, Boscombe. Two other children had not survived infancy. His brother Joseph served from 1914-19 in Britain in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC).

He may be the author of several books including The Fishing Village and other writings (Literary and Scientific) posthumously published in Bournemouth by H.G.Commin 1917, the author one Wilfrid Omer-Cooper.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/lost-fellows-the-linnean-society-roll-of-honour-1914-1918/

Remembered all as part of #Somme100

Posted on 1st July 2016 by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project, Newquay Zoo.

 

Remembering Henry Munro London Zoo Penguin Keeper missing 29 September 1915

Remembering Billy and Harry.

The Zoological Society of London war memorial bears the inscription:

In memory of employees who were killed on active service in the Great War 1914-1919

Staff casualties are listed on the plaque in order of date of death. The first of these is:

29.9.1915 Henry Munro 4 Middlesex Regt ZSL Keeper

I first saw Henry  pictured on a postcard from London Zoo given to me by a zoo colleague and I became intrigued by the unnamed “King Penguin with Keeper 1914”.

Harry Munro, the now named ‘Keeper with King Penguin 1914’ (as described on a recent London Zoo postcard I was given) Copyright ZSL / London Zoo/ F.W. Bond

The Photograph

Look at the photograph again. Really look at it. Look at it carefully in detail. What attracts your attention?

It would be fascinating to know how different people react to this photo – a photographer from a technical point of view or that of another zoo keeper?

On a recent Twitter #ThrowbackThursday pic.twitter.com/7Zv155kWSe @zsllondonzoo 30 January 1914 release of this picture by ZSL, there were a few brief comments including someone who misread the caption: “King Penguin with keeper Harry Munro (1914), who was sadly lost in action during WWI” to reply (hopefully tongue in cheek) that “He was a brave penguin who fought valiantly for his country” !!!

Maybe  you can use the comments box at the end of the blogpost to tell me your view of this picture, I’d be interested to hear.

To me this is a fantastic photograph, considering the photographic technology of the time. It’s one of my favourite zoo archive photos.

Having myself spent around 20 years working with zoo animals, having on many occasions sitting with them and other keepers to keep the animal still enough to be photographed, I know how difficult this is today, let alone with the cameras of 1914.

I have looked at this photograph many, many times since I first started the World War Zoo Gardens research project. What do I find so fascinating about it?

It is beautifully framed, the keeper at the same height as the penguin, so somehow equal. Many photographs emphasise the height or short size of penguins measured against a keeper bending down to it. Height implies dominance or mastery. It is a species photo of a penguin, but with the photographer’s choice to include the keeper. This photo can be read as being about equality or friendliness.

The Penguin

We should not forget that in 1914 this is almost certainly a wild caught King Penguin, one of few that would have been around in European zoos at the time. These were usually brought back from Salvesen whaling or from polar expeditions, such as the famous penguin groups established at this time at Edinburgh Zoo in its first year.

In  1914, the year that this was taken, Ernest Shackleton was still on his Antarctic expedition, Captain Scott was only a year or two dead from the race to the Pole in 1912, and the extreme journey of Apsley Cherry Garrard to retrieve Emperor Penguin Eggs from the South Polar sea ice nesting grounds nearly cost him has life, recounted in his book The Worst Journey in the World.

This was a box office animal, a very topical and popular unusual bird, worthy of a photograph. A King Penguin (possibly the same one?) is pictured on another London Zoo postcard meeting royalty and Princess Mary around this date.

Getting down to penguin level holds some risks. Putting your shiny eyes near or at penguin beak height is unwise. Many press photographers have asked myself  or other zoo colleagues to hold penguins or other injured seabirds at our face height to get a better cropped head shot. This is something we have to warn them against, if we value our eyes against that powerfully muscled head and neck with fish-hook of a beak.

The Keeper’s hand is blurred with movement, perhaps caught in the act of either stroking the Penguin to reassure it in this unfamiliar setting, or to keep it in place for the photograph and at a safe distance.

Is it a portrait of the Keeper as well as the Penguin? It is to me a very purposeful gaze – the Keeper’s attention is fully focussed on this bird, rather than smiling to the camera. Difficult to tell what mood the keeper is in – has he been kept too long doing this by the photographer, as sometimes happens? Is the penguin being cooperative? What mood is the penguin in? It’s also difficult to judge the keeper’s character from the photograph, but F.W. Bond as London Zoo’s  photographer and staff member would have known the other staff reasonably well.

The clothes

I like the slightly naval look to the informal uniform, not the usual keeper double breasted suit and peaked cap that London Zoo staff were pictured in at the time, but a much more relaxed waistcoat, scarf, and the oddly modern looking boots.  Was it a hot day the picture was taken?

I have seen these boots  advertised in garden magazines of the period, very similar to the clogs worn by working gardeners and no doubt good in the wet slippery conditions a penguin or sea lion keeper would work in. They are pretty much the Edwardian / Georgian equivalent to today’s steel toe-capped keeper safety boots.

It is also resonant as a picture of a youngish man in uniform in 1914. Soon many such photographs would be taken in different circumstances, once war was declared in August. Their jobs in many workplaces, including London Zoo, would increasingly be taken by women until the war ended (see the Mary Evans picture blog below for an early WW1 female keeper).

The background

Looking into the background, unlike in many zoo photos of the time, there are no crowds of visitors around in the background. Nobody is  sitting on the ornate metal bench, the path is swept clear of litter. Is this photograph taken before the zoo day begins, the end of a long day or a quiet Sunday when the zoo was mostly the preserve of ZSL fellows rather than public?

Another photograph

I was excited looking at London Zoo’s Zoo at War 2014 exhibition in their old elephant tunnel under the road (put together by Adrain Taylor) to see another photograph of Harry and his favourite penguin.

The Daily Graphic coverage of a “Missing Soldier-Keeper”, 16 November 1915 mentions more about this keeper – penguin relationship. It reads:

“Billy” the famous King Penguin at the Zoo died shortly after his keeper, Munro, enlisted at the beginning of the war. Munro is now reported missing from his regiment. It is hoped he may be a prisoner.

So we have a name for the King penguin as well as the keeper too.

The Keeper

But who was this  ‘unnamed’ Keeper with King Penguin?

Henry Munro was the first of the London Zoo staff to be killed on active service, 29 September 1915.

On the CWGC site and UK Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919 database (1921), ZSL Keeper Henry Albert or ‘Harry’ Munro is registered as born in the St. Pancras Middlesex area and enlisting in the Army in Camden Town, Middlesex (the area near Regent’s Park Zoo).

Quite old in military terms, Harry appears to have volunteered or enlisted most likely in 31 August 1914; conscription for such older men was only introduced in 1916.

Munro served as Private G/2197 with the local regiment, 4th Battalion, The Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own).

Henry (Albert) Munro served in France and Flanders from 3rd January 1915 and died  aged 39 in action on or around 29th September 1915.

 

The Ypres Memorial (Menin Gate). Image: CWGC website

Harry has no known grave, being remembered on panel 49-51 amongst the 54,000 Commonwealth casualties of 1914 to 1917 on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial in Flanders, Belgium.

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/918293/MUNRO,%20HENRY

His death occurred a few days after September 25th 2015 saw the British first use of poison gas during the Battle of Loos after the first German use in April. The Battle of Loos took place alongside the French and Allied offensive in Artois and Champagne, following the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April to May 5th 1915 onwards).

Henry Munro served from 31 August 1914 to 5 January 1915 in Britain, and then with the 5th and then 4th Middlesex Regiment as part of the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) from the 6th January 1915 in France until his death on 29th September 1915

Much of the detail for this story comes from his Military History Sheet, and WW1 Army Service Papers (“Burnt Documents”) that fortunately have survived. Here he is listed as a “Zoological Attendant” This early service gained him the 1915 star, along with the standard Victory and British medal.

According to his service record, Henry enlisted at Camden Town on 31 August 1914. Posted as a Private, 5th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment GS (General Service) on 2 October 1914, by the 6 January 1915, Henry was posted to the 4th Battalion with whom he fought and was posted missing 29 September 1915.

Land, air and sea 

I first came across the keeper’s name as ‘Harry’ Munro as it is listed in Golden Days, a 1976 book of London Zoo photographs (ZSL image C-38771X?) This same book also lists Harry as intriguingly being involved in “the army, airships and anti-submarine patrols”. Airships from coastal bases were used for anti submarine patrols because of their longer range and stamina than the flimsy aircraft of the time.

Nothing more appears on his service papers about this air and sea activity. I have little more information on this intriguing entry at present but the London Zoo typed staff lists of men of active service list him as ‘missing’ well into their 1917 Daily Occurence Book records. Many of the identifications of staff in the photographs in Golden Days were from the memory of long retired staff.

Harry Munro’s name is the first of the names of the fallen ZSL staff from the First World War, ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, 2010

Harry Munro is pictured with a King penguin but is listed on his staff record card as a keeper of sea lions. Intriguingly, several London Zoo histories list secret and unsuccessful attempts made early in the war to track submarines using trained seals or sealions. Airships were also used for U-boat spotting. I wonder if and how Harry was involved?

On the Mary Evans Picture blog “London Zoo at War” there features an interesting reprinted picture from the Mary Evans archive:

http://blog.maryevans.com/2013/04/london-zoo-at-war.html

“In March 1915, The Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News featured this picture, showing a zookeeper in khaki, returning to his place of work while on leave to visit the seals, and to feed them some fish in what would be a rather charming publicity photograph.”

This soldier, according to Adrian Taylor at ZSL, working on their WW1 centenary exhibition, is George Graves, one of Munro’s keeper colleagues in khaki who survived the war and returned to work at London Zoo.

Family background

Henry Munro was born in Clerkenwell, in 1876, not far from Regent’s Park zoo (London 1891 census RG12/377) and may have worked initially as a Farrier / Smith, aged 15. His family of father William J Munro, a Southwark born Printer aged 42 and mother Eliza aged 43 (born Clerkenwell) were living in 3 Lucey Road, (Bermondsey, St James, Southwark?)

Private Henry or Harry Munro was 39 when he died, married with three children. He had married (Ada) Florence Edge on 20th November 1899. His service papers record along the top clearly written that half his pay was to be allotted to his wife.

They had three children, born or registered in Camden Town (near the zoo) by the time he was killed on active service. Hilda was 14 (born 29th March 1901), Albert Charles was 9 (born 5th June 1906, died 1989) and Elsie, 7 (born 17 August 1908, died 1977), all living at 113 Huddleston Road, Tufnell Park to the north of the zoo in London in 1915. 2 other children died in infancy according to the 1911 Census.

Interestingly, maps list Regent’s Park as having a barracks on Albany street (A4201).

Sadly Ada Florence his wife died in 1919, his later medal slips amongst his service papers being signed for by Hilda, his oldest daughter. Hilda was then around 19 in 1920 and no doubt responsible for her younger brother Albert Charles by then around 14 and of school leaving age and much younger sister Elsie, by then 12.

Staff record card information

I was lucky enough in 2014 in the ZSL Archive to look through the 1914 Daily Occurrence Book that recorded daily life and works in London Zoo, handwritten in a huge ledger each day. After many mentions thought preceding years, Munro’s name disappear from the keeper’s list in August 1914.

Even more revealing and intimate was his staff record card, an index card listing his career:

Henry Munro. Married. Born February 18 1876.

January 18 1898 Helper at 15 shillings per week.

February 21 1899 Helper at 17 shillings and 6 pence a week.

February 6 1900 Helper at 21 shillings per week.

February 6 1903 Helper at 24 shillings and 6 pence per week.

May 19 1906 Helper at 25 shillings per week.

August 15 1909 Junior Keeper on staff Antelopes at  £6 per month.

December 15 1913 Senior Keeper on staff Sea Lions at £6 10 shillings per month.

Entered Army September 15th 1914.

Missing 29 September 1915.

Enlisted for war 1914, balance of pay given to wife.

Addresses listed include 177 Gloucester Road, Regent’s Park, NW (crossed out) 113 Huddlestone Road,Tufnell Park, N. (Date stamped April 23 1913)

A Helper is the lowest or youngest  rank of Keeper, this phrase crops up on the ZSL London Zoo staff war memorial for young staff.

(Many thanks to Michael Palmer the archivist and library team at ZSL for their help during my visit.)

 

 

 

Middlesex Regimental War Diary

On 29 / 30 September 1915, the number of officers and other ranks killed, wounded and missing is listed after an account of the preceding few days of battle. Harry Munro would have been amongst these missing.

Remembering Billy and Harry, 100 years on.

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

 

London Zoo in the Blitz 26 / 27 September 1940 from magazines and press articles

This week sees the anniversary of the London Blitz affecting London Zoo, not just on the 26/27th September but for many anxious nights to come. Slowly press coverage and press releases trickled out, reassuring people that not much harm or damage had been done.

Our first report is from an Australian newspaper archive, itself reprinting a South African source? World news indeed!

LONDON ZOO BOMBINGS.

Animals’ Remarkable Escapes.

In London’s famous zoo elephants and monkeys, zebras and parrots have had remarkable escapes from indiscriminate Nazi bombing. The keepers (according to the “Cape Argus” Cape Town), have become amateur salvage men. The zoo suffered the disastrous effects of nearly 100 incendiaries and 14 other bombs recently, and while most of them fell either on paths or open spaces, a few hit buildings.

Monkey Hill, the ostrich and crane house, the restaurant, zebra house, aquarium, one of the aviaries and the antelope house have all been damaged. The aquarium keeper has been unofficially made foreman of the salvage gang. He has other keepers to help him. Jubilee and Jacky, the chimpanzees who were born at the zoo, are both still at the Zoo, with George and Chiney. They have been moved from the “chimp” house into the monkey house. So far the only animals which have escaped from the quarters through bombing are some monkeys and zebras and three humming birds.

There was great excitement the night a bomb fell on the zebra house. The building received a direct hit, and every one expected to find the animals dead. Not only were they alive and fit, but one ran a mile, as far as Gloucester Gate, with keepers in chase. One of the monkeys enjoyed a long spell of freedom. For three days it explored the Park, but towards the end of the third it returned to the Hill for food. There were about 30 monkeys set free by a hit scored on the Hill, but the keepers knew that if the animals were left alone they would soon return for food, and they did so. Although half a ton of concrete was blown over a parapet by the bomb, none of the monkeys was hurt. Fortunately, all the fish had been removed from the aquarium at the beginning of the war, so that none of them was hit when a bomb went through the roof.

Reprinted from The West Australian, Saturday 28 December 1940

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/47300068

This magazine article in our collection is again a reprint of another paper – The Times – but with exclusive photographs for The War Illustrated magazine and makes interesting reading.

The zebra house shown is wrecked and its escaped zebra is ‘pictured’ later in our blog post in an unusual way, painted by a war artist.

“The Zoo is in fact a microcosm of London. Hitler’s bombs cause a certain amount of damage to it, and a considerable amount of inconvenience; but they have not destroyed the morale or the routine of its inhabitants, animal or human, and it continues to function with a very respectable degree of efficiency”

In our August blogpost on the August 1940 edition of Boy’s Own Paper, we mentioned an article by Sydney Moorhouse advertised for the following month on London Zoo and zoos at war, September 1940.  The kind donation of this September issue to me  from Norman Boyd, a fan of the zoo artist L.R. Brightwell  means that I can now share this piece with you.

It should be read like The Times / The War Budget article on London Zoo’s blitz above as a reassuring bit of wartime propaganda in itself.

The Boy’s Own Paper account of zoos at war was published the month that London Zoo was blitzed but written well before September 1940.

London Zoo’s preparation for War can be seen in some photographs taken from their Animal and Zoo Magazine in November 1939 in their library and archive blog :

http://www.zsl.org/blogs/artefact-of-the-month/zsl-london-zoo-during-world-war-two

The wartime /mid 1940s map we have for London Zoo in our collection  mentions the  Camel House “as damaged by enemy action” but it’s still standing today!

When Zebras roamed Camden Town during the Blitz

One of the remarkable sights of wartime London in the 1940 Blitz was an escaped zebra during the London bombing raid of 26/27 September 1940.

There is an excellent personal account of it by London Zoo Director Julian Huxley in his memoirs and snippets of what the Blitz was like for zoo staff on duty:

One night about 11 o’clock we heard a stick of bombs exploding nearer and nearer to our shelter, until the last bomb shook the foundations of the building.

I put on my tin hat and went across the Zoo to find that five bombs had hit the grounds, the Zoo’s water main had been cut and the restaurant was burning …

Firemen soon turned up and I conducted them to the Sea Lion Pool, the only source of water left, which they nearly drained before the flames were under control …

taken from Julian Huxley, Memories. Julian Huxley was the Director of the Zoo at the time.

The incident has been remembered also in a painting by war artist Carel Weight, now in the Manchester City Art Gallery.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/escape-of-the-zebra-from-the-zoo-during-an-air-raid-206376

London Zoo area in the Bombsight.org ww2 website

The amazing Bombsight.org  blitz map for 1940/41 also shows where bombs fell in and around the zoo, a website well worth exploring.

The Blitz on Britain’s cities and its zoos,  remembered.

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

 

 

Gardeners and zoo staff lost at the battle of Loos 25 September 1915.

100 years ago the Battle of Loos which began on the 25th September 1915 saw another sad list of casualties from the zoo and botanic garden staff that we have been researching.

Many of them have no known grave and are listed on the panels of the Loos Memorial to the missing.

Over the next few weeks up until 14th October 1915 at Loos, around 2013 officers and 48,677 men became casualties (of which 800 officers and 15,000 men were killed). British casualties at Loos were about twice as high as German casualties.

The Battle of Loos was the largest British battle that took place in 1915 on the Western Front. The battle was an attempt by the Allies to break through German defences in Artois and Champagne.

The first day Sunday 25th September 1915 was when each of these men were killed.

In many places British artillery had failed to cut the German barbed wire in advance of the attack and many British troops were advancing over open fields, within range of German machine guns and artillery. The British were able to break through some weaker German defences and capture the town of Loos-en-Gohelle, mainly due to weight of numbers. Sadly British supply and communications problems and late arriving  reserves meant that any breakthroughs could not be exploited on that vital first day.

Sunday the 25th was an especially bad day for the volunteers and army reservists on the staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh serving with the 5th Cameron Highlanders.  Four of their number were lost on 25 September 1915. All four are remembered on the Loos Memorial, having no known grave.

Losses at Gallipoli to their RBGE colleagues in the 5th Royal Scots had also been steadily happening throughout 1915.

• Willam Frederick Bennett, 5th Cameron Highlanders, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh staff – missing
• Alan Menzies, 5th Cameron Highlanders, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh staff – killed
• John Stewart,  5th Cameron Highlanders,  Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh staff – killed
• George Hugh Stuart,  5th Cameron Highlanders, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh staff – killed

Leonie Paterson and RBGE team have been blog posting the stories behind the RBGE men on their memorial. The losses at Loos and what happened to the 5th Cameron Highlanders are covered here: http://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/17293

http://www.rbge.org.uk/assets/files/science/Library%20-Archives/RBGE_WWI_service_roll.pdf

http://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/16244

About the four RBGE staff lost at Loos.

Lance Corporal S/10817 William Frederick  Bennett of the 5th Cameron Highlanders, aged 26,  is listed on panel 120A of the Loos Memorial having no known grave. CWGC list him as as the “Son of Anna Bennett, of 5, Holdings, Llanedarne, Cardiff, and the late William Bennett.” Bennett joined RBGE staff as Probationer in 1911, and enlisted in the 5th Cameron Highlanders on 29 August 1914 and served in Flanders for about five months before his death at Loos.

Private Allan Menzies, S/11385, died aged 21, serving with  “B” Coy. 5th Bn. Cameroon Highlanders, also remembered on Panel 122, Loos Memorial. CWGC lists him as the “Son of James and Mrs. Menzies, of 117, Scott St., Perth. A Forester in the Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh.” Menzies joined the garden staff as a Probationer in August 1913 and like Bennett joined the Cameron Highlanders on 29th August 1914. He served for four months in Flanders before his death at Loos.

There are two John Stewarts died on 25 September 1915 serving in the 5th Battalion Cameron Highlanders, both on the Loos Memorial. Both deserve to be remembered but RBGE list the following as their man:

• Lance Corporal John Stewart, S/14592,  died aged 25, 5th Cameron Highlanders. He is also remembered on Panel 120,  Loos Memorial. CWGC lists him as the “Son of Mrs. Elizabeth Christina Stewart, of Carrick Place, Alloway, Ayr.”

Private George Hugh Stuart, S/14584, died aged 23 serving with 5th Battalion Cameron Highlanders. He is remembered on Panel 123 A, Loos Memorial.

Henry James Longhurst, remembered on the Second panel, Kew Gardens War Memorial, London. 
 Image: Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project

Belle Vue Zoo (Manchester) lost 33 year old private 22109 Frederick Lester Reid of the 1st Battalion, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, formerly Private 16565 Manchester Regiment. He is also named on the Loos Memorial to the Missing, having no known grave.

Stockport born and raised, he left a widow and several children. CWGC lists him as the “Son of the late Peter and Mary Ann Reid; husband of Elizabeth Jessie Reid, of 256, Gorton Rd., Reddish, Stockport.”

There is more about his war service at http://www.loyalregiment.com/22109-pte-f-l-reid-l-n-lan-r/  and the http://www.stockport1914-1918.co.uk

F.L. Reid listed  on Belle Vue Zoo’s now vandalised war memorial – luckily the names, although hard to read, are inscribed in stone as the brass statue has been stolen. Image: manchesterhistory.net

Kew Gardens lost Rifleman Henry James Longhurst, R/7519, 2nd Battalion, Kings Royal Rifle Corps, who died aged 23 on 25th September 1915. He has no known grave and is listed on Panel 101 / 102, Loos Memorial.

Born on February 3 1892, Longhurst is noted in his Kew Guild Journal obituary 1915/16 as “the first of our young gardeners to give his life for his country in this war” alongside W.H. Morland, another early Kew casualty at Gallipoli, who was then employed at  Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. He entered Kew on July 1913. He enlisted on November 21, 1914 and was killed in action “somewhere in France“, as we now know during the Battle of Loos.

Henry Longhurst is listed on one of the many name panels on 15 foot high walls surrounding Dud Corner Cemetery’s headstones – the Loos Memorial to the missing of this 1915 battle. (Image Source: CWGC)

The Anglo-Irish landed estates of Ireland, soon to be rocked by civil war and the Easter Rising of 1916, were already experiencing the same unsettling situation as English estates with the heirs lost and dynasties ending.

Charles Annesley Acton, heir to Kilmacurragh, killed 25 September 1915, Battle of Loos. Image Source: Kilmacurragh website.

Charles Annesley Acton, heir to Kilmacurragh estate and gardens (now Botanic Gardens of Ireland) Was also killed on 25 September 1915.

When Thomas Acton died on August 25th 1908, his 32 year-old nephew, Captain Charles Annesley Acton then succeeded to Kilmacurragh. Born in Peshwar, India in 1876, he was educated following family tradition at Rugby and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.

In 1896 he joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and served with the regiment in Malta, Crete, Hong Kong, India and Burma. Following his uncle’s death Charles resigned his commission and settled for a gentleman’s life on the family estate … He continued to develop the estate and arboretum …

With the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914, Charles and many of the gardeners at Kilmacurragh headed for the battlefields on the French Front. On September 25th 1915, Charles Acton, while trying to assist a fellow soldier, was mortally wounded by an explosion at Loos. He was only 39.

Major Charles Annesley Acton, D Coy. 9th Bn Royal Welch Fusilers is also remembered on the Loos memorial, panel 50 to 52. CWGC lists him as “Of Kilmacurragh, Rathdrum. High Sheriff Co. Wicklow, 1913, and J.P. Served in Crete, 1898, and China Expedition, 1900. Second son of the late Col. Ball-Acton, C.B., and Mrs. Ball-Acton.”

You can read more of this story about how Kilmacurragh lost both  Charles and another heir in WW1 along with most of the gardeners and declined until rescued as part of the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland at http://www.botanicgardens.ie/kilmac/kilmhist.htm

Later 1915 casualties

Later on in this month on 29 September 1915 London Zoo’s Sea lion keeper Henry Munro would be posted missing in Flanders,  and eventually judged to have no known grave is now remembered on the Ypres Menin Gate Memorial.

He was followed on 10th October 1915 by Kew Gardens pony boy private Frank Windebank and Sergeant H. J. Smith, both of the 7th East Surrey Regiment, killed on the same day and buried close to each other in Plot 1 of  Vermelles British Cemetery. During the Battle of Loos, Vermelles Chateau was used as a dressing station and Plot I was completed first. Smith and fellow Kewite Frank Windebank are buried at Vermelles Cemetery a  few graves apart with other 7th East Surreys.

We will post remembrance blog entries on the appropriate days.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/such-is-the-price-of-empire-the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-in-the-first-world-war/

All those who fought at the Battle of Loos, remembered.

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

Remembering zookeeper and gardener Far East POWs 70 years on 2015

January 24th 2015 is the 50th anniversary of the death in 1965 of Winston Churchill, wartime prime minister and coiner of many memorable phrases including, most notably for our wartime gardens project, “War is the normal occupation of man. War – and gardening” (speaking to Siegfried Sassoon in 1918).

January 25th 2015 and 7th February 2015 are the less well-marked 70th anniversaries of several zoo and botanic garden casualties who died as FEPOWs (Far East Prisoners of War) or in the vicious fighting of what was called the ‘forgotten war’ in the jungles and oceans of the Far East. For many, the Burma Star was hard won.

G H Spare from the Kew Guild Journal obituary c. 1945/6

Remembering Albert Henry Wells, London Zoo keeper killed in action, Burma, 25 January 1945

Remembering Gordon Henry Spare, Old Kewite / former Kew Gardens staff who died as a Far East POW (FEPOW), Borneo, 7 February 1945

Amongst the family medals I saw from childhood and that I now look after is a Burma Star belonging to my maternal grandfather, who died before I was born. A naval holder of the Burma Star for his service on aircraft carriers in the Far East, he survived several Kamikaze attacks. We still have some of the dramatic photographs in our family album.

My grandfather Len’s  Burma Star for naval service, with two portraits and his photos of life on board deck of an RN aircraft carrier from kamikaze attacks and seaplane prangs to deck hockey c. 1944/45 Source Image: Mark Norris, World War Zoo gardens Collection.

So one day about fifteen years ago, I knew I would meet some amazing people with tales to tell when I was told that the Burma Star Association were visiting Newquay Zoo (home of the World War Zoo Gardens project) during a holiday gathering. I met them all by accident whilst I was clambering around our indoor rainforest in the Tropical House at Newquay Zoo, doing a feeding talk and rainforest chat.

Part of our Tropical House at Newquay Zoo.

As they entered the heat and humidity of our Tropical House, I heard a different reaction to the usual “what’s that smell?” White haired old men remarked amongst themselves and to their wives that the smell “took them back a bit”. They were all transported back in memory to the tropics by that wet damp jungle smell.

As I scattered mealworms to attract the birds, pointed out various species of plants or animals then introduced some snakes and insects, I was surprised to be asked by one of them “if I knew what all the animals tasted like?”

The Burma Star embroidered: Embroidered hassock cushions, Zennor Parish Church Cornwall. Image: Mark Norris /WWZG

I should have realised why he asked  when I saw the Burma Star proudly embroidered on some of their blazers and the regimental ties. These tough old men soon told me how they survived as soldiers or prisoners in the jungle, eating whatever they could catch or collect. For some of the prisoners amongst them, it literally saved their lives.

I quickly gave up talking and allowed our zoo visitors to listen to their jungle survival stories. From what I remember, to these hungry men, everything from snakes to insect grubs tasted “like chicken!” Having eaten a few unappetising invertebrates in the past, and those mostly dipped in chocolate, it only proves that hunger is the best sauce to unusual food!

Burma Star Association window, Zennor Parish Church, Cornwall. Image: Mark Norris / WWZG

We do many rainforest talks for schools and visitors in our evocative and atmospheric Tropical House at Newquay Zoo, home to many interesting jungle animals including rare birds like the critically endangered Blue Crowned Laughing Thrush.

I  often think of those Burma Star veterans (who would now all be in their nineties, if still alive) and tell their “bushtucker” story whilst working or talking to people in the Tropical House.

Part of our Tropical House at Newquay Zoo.

 

I thought of them recently when passing the Portscatho Burma Star memorial overlooking the harbour in Portscatho in Cornwall. I was puzzled why of all places it was there, but recently found more on the BBC archive about the unveiling of this here in 1998.  This memorial is especially dedicated for the missing who have no known grave, people like G.H. Spare of Kew or Henry Peris Davies of ZSL London Zoo. It is “dedicated to the memory of 26,380 men who were killed in Burma 1941-45 and who have no known grave, thus being denied the customary rights accorded to their comrades in death.”

I wonder if the dedication of this memorial was the reason for the Burma Star Association gathering and social visit to Newquay Zoo, where I memorably met Burma Star veterans? This would have been around 1998.

I especially think of these men whenever I look at the Burma Star window in the beautifully rugged coastal church at Zennor in Cornwall.

I have inscribed the name of my Grandfather in the Burma Star memorial book at Zennor, along with the names of some of the casualties amongst London Zoo and Kew Gardens staff who died on active service in the Far East.

Burma Star memorial book and lectern, Zennor Parish Church, Cornwall. Image: Mark Norris / WWZG

Close up of the Burma Star memorial inscription,
Portscatho, Cornwall
Image: Mark Norris

Dedication on the Burma Star Memorial Portscatho Cornwall, unveiled by Viscount Slim, 1998  . Image: Mark Norris.

I  also thought of these men when displaying books and a silk jungle escape map in a display about another old man in the jungles of Far East Asia, plant hunter Frank Kingdon-Ward.

Frank Kingdon Ward in WW2 from a trail board from a past Newquay Zoo plant hunters trail. Image: Mark Norris / WWZG

If any prisoner had escaped or aircrew crashed down in these jungles, silk escape maps like these would have been a life saver. After the war, explorers like Frank Kingdon-Ward helped the US government find their missing aeroplanes (and crew) in these dense jungles and mountains. In this connection, see our postscript about missing aircrew on the Melbourne Botanic Gardens staff memorial tree: Flight Sergeant E.J. Hiskins, RAAF 1944.

The lower part of Borneo on a secret WW2 silk escape map in the World War Zoo Gardens collection. Labuan Island POW camp, Sabah, Borneo  where G.H. Spare died is off the map, further up the coast on the left-hand side (now off the coast of modern Malaysia).

From the Kew Gardens staff war memorial:

G.H. Spare, 7 February 1945
Gordon Henry Spare, Private 6070 SSVF Straits Settlements Volunteer Force / 3rd Battalion (Penang and Province Wellesley Volunteer Corps), Singapore Volunteers, died at Labuan, Borneo as a Japanese POW.
According to CWGC records Spare is remembered on column 396 of the Singapore or Kranji Memorial, as he has no known grave. He was the son of Harry and Grace Spare, Wallington, Surrey, and husband of Rose Ellen Spare, Worthing, Sussex. His wife, young son and daughter were evacuated clear of danger before the Japanese invasion.

G.H. Spare of Kew and Henry Peris Davies of ZSL London Zoo are remembered on the Singapore Memorial (image copyright CWGC website http://www.cwgc.org)

John Charles Nauen, 10 September 1943
J.C.Nauen was Assistant Curator, Botanic Gardens Singapore from 1935. Nauen served with G.H. Spare as a Serjeant 5387, volunteer in the 3rd Battalion, (Penang and Province Wellesley Volunteer Corps) SSVF Straits Settlement Volunteer Force.

His botanic skills were of help gardening and collecting plants from the local area to help keep fellow prisoners alive. Nauen died as a Japanese POW prisoner of war aged 40 working on the Burma-Siam railway in September / October 1943 of blood poisoning. He is buried in Thanbyuzayat CWGC Cemetery in Burma, alongside 1000s of fellow POW victims from the Burma-Siam railway. He was the son of John Jacob and Clara Nauen of Coventry.

Some of Nauen’s plant collecting herbarium specimens survive at Kew, whilst he has an interesting obituary in the Kew Guild Journal 1946 (alongside G.H. Spare) and The Garden’s Bulletin Singapore September 1947 (XI, part 4, p.266).

John Charles Nauen of Kew and Percy Murray Adams, ZSL Whipsnade keeper who  both died as Japanese POWs are buried here at THANBYUZAYAT WAR CEMETERY. Image: http://www.cwgc.org

Many Botanic gardens and Herbariums were looted by invading forces, Singapore Botanic Gardens only surviving through the efforts of botanist Edred Corner.

More about Kew Gardens staff in WW2 can be found on this blog post. https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-in-world-war-two/

An interesting Kew Gardens archives blog post on the vital nutritionist role of tropical botanists in keeping fellow POWs alive in internment camps has been recently written by James Wearn and Claire Frankland.

Ness Botanic Gardens FEPOW Bamboo Garden launch with Elizabeth and Zoe, pupils from Pensby High School and Merle Hesp, widow of a FEPOW Harry Hesp, 2011.
Image source: Captive Memories website.

A Far East Prisoner of War memorial garden was created in 2011 at Ness Botanic Gardens in Liverpool, linked to http://captive memories.org.uk There is more about this garden at the Waymarking website FEPOW garden entry

Wells, Adams, Davies: three of the five fallen ZSL staff from the Second World War, ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, 2010 (plaque since replaced with a more legible one, 2014)

London Zoo staff names killed in the Far East 

1. Henry Peris Davies (Lieutenant RA) ZSL Clerk: Killed in action Far East 21.12.1941

Lieutenant Davies 164971, Royal Artillery, 5th Field Regt, died aged 27. His name is listed on the Singapore memorial, like that of Gordon Henry Spare of Kew

According to his ZSL staff record card, Peris was born on 29th March 1913, he joined London Zoo as an accounts clerk on 2 September 1935. Four years later, he was called up as a Territorial on the 1st or 2nd September 1939.

Taukkyan Cemetery, Burma.
Image Source: CWGC

2. Albert Henry Wells (Gunner RA) ZSL Keeper: Killed in action, Burma 25.01.1945

Gunner Wells 1755068, Royal Artillery, 70 H.A.A Regiment is buried in an individual grave in Taukkyan Cemtery, Burma, a concentration of thousands of battlefield graves from the Burma campaign. He was aged 36, the son of Henry and Mary Wells and husband of Doris Hilda Wells, Hendon, Middlesex.

According to his ZSL staff card, Albert Henry Wells was born on the 15 or 25 April, 1908. He was first employed at London Zoo in January 1924 as a Helper, the most junior keeper rank. He had worked his way up to 3rd Class Keeper  by 1937.

On January 11 1941 he was called up for military service and his staff card reports him as killed in action in Burma January 25 1945.

The rest of his staff card involves details of the pension being paid by ZSL London Zoo to his wife Mrs. Wells including additional amounts for each of his three children until they reached 16 in the 1950s.

 

3. Percy Murray Adams (Gunner RA) ZSL Whipsnade Keeper: Died in Japan POW 28.07.1943 aged 26. Gunner 922398, Royal Artillery, 148 (Bedfordshire Yeomanry) Field Regt.

According to his ZSL staff card, he was born on 15 July 1917 and joined ZSL Whipsnade on 24 May 1932. Like Henry Peris Davies at London Zoo, he was called up as a Territorial on September 3rd 1939. Adams was unmarried. In March 1942, his staff record card reports him as “Reported as Missing at Singapore. In 1945 reported died of dysentery in Japanese POW camp somewhere in 1943.”

Only  a few rows away from  Kew’s J.C.Nauen, Adams is also buried in Thanbyuzayat CWGC Cemetery in Burma.

Percy Murray Adams, ZSL Whipsnade Keeper, Animal and Zoo Magazine c. 1937/8

These three men are all remembered on the ZSL London Zoo staff war memorial WW2 plaque. I also inscribed their names  in the Burma Star Association memorial book in Zennor Church on my last visit.

I will be updating the entries on ZSL London Zoo WW2 staff casualties later in 2015.

The grim story of what happened to Japanese zoo staff, vets and animals is well told in Mayumi Itoh’s recent Japanese Wartime Zoo Policy.

Gas masks for Japanese zoo elephants on the cover of Mayumi Itoh Japanese zoo wartime book

Further reading about POW gardening can be found in Kenneth Helphand’s Defiant Gardening book and extension website

You can read more about the Burma Star and its assocaition on this website: http://www.burmastar.org.uk/epitaph.htm 

It’s probably appropriate to end with the Kohima prayer or Burma Star epitaph, which I didn’t realise came from WW1 but was used on the Kohima Memorial to the dead of the Burma Campaign in WW2. The words are attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds (1875 -1958), an English Classicist who had put them together among a collection of 12 epitaphs for World War One in 1916:

“When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today”

Rest in peace, Gunner Wells and  Gunner Adams and the many others who never returned.

 

Melbourne Botanic Gardens Australia staff memorial tree.

Postscript
Later this year I will blogpost about the staff memorial tree at Melbourne Botanic Gardens which remembers a Gallipoli / Middle East campaign casualty and an airman from the Far East Campaign in WW2.

Planted in memory of members of the staff who died in Active Service.

Driver A.W. Bugg, AIF 1915.

Flight Sergeant E.J. Hiskins, RAAF 1944.

10th September 1946

The original memorial tree website said that “information regarding E.J. Hiskins would be welcomed“. His CWGC records list him as Flight Sergeant Ernest Joseph Hiskins, Royal Australian Air Force, 410058, who died on the 15 April 1944.

He is remembered on Panel 9 of the Northern Territory Memorial. He is listed as the son of Ernest Barton Hiskins and Alice Mary Hiskins, of Brunswick, Victoria, Australia.

Northern Territory Memorial, Australia (Image CWGC website)

The Northern Territory Memorial stands in Adelaide River War Cemetery and is one of several memorials erected to commemorate 289 men of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Air Force and the Australian Merchant Navy who have no known grave and lost their lives in operations in the Timor and Northern Australian regions and in waters adjacent to Australia north of Latitude 20 South.

More to follow!

Blog post by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo

 

 

 

The ‘First Blitz’ on London from an unpublished WW1 diary

Cropped detail of a private back garden photograph of a British Zero airship , location and date c. 1917 /unknown. (Image source: copyright World War Zoo Gardens collection)

July 1917 entry, Edith Spencer’s diary. Source: Mark Norris, World war Zoo Gardens collection

Air Raid Precautions were not just part of wartime life at London Zoo in WW2 and the 1940s. Amongst one of the  prescient safety actions at London Zoo in World War 1 was to build reinforced enclosure fronts for some of the dangerous animals such as reptiles, to protect the animals and staff from flying glass and the public from escaped animals.

The shape of things to come? A private back garden photograph of a British airship , location and date unknown c. 1917. (Image source: copyright World War Zoo Gardens collection)

Researching what we can learn from how wartime zoos survived for the World War Zoo Gardens project, it is curious to see how people prepared for this new threat, beginning with the first aeroplane raids on Dover around Christmas 1914 mentioned in our previous December 2014 blogpost The first Zeppelin raid on Britain took place on 19 January 1915. London was reached and bombed at night by Zeppelins on 31 May 1915.

These were noticeable responses to a new threat from the skies,  German zeppelin airships and later, Gotha and Giant bombers. London Zoo and Regent’s Park were in the flight path of several raids but thankfully spared air raid damage in WW1, although Regent’s Park was bombed on several occasions. The London Zoo was spattered with spent shrapnel from the “Archies” (Anti-aircraft guns) on Primrose Hill  and prepared against possible animal escape with firearms trained staff of “a special emergency staff of picked men was always on call. Heavy shutters were fitted to the glass fronts of the poisonous snakes’ cages” (Source: The Zoo Story, L.R.Brightwell, 1952). A long-term outcome of the WW1 air raid preparation was the provision of a First Aid post for visitors continuing after the war (Source: The Zoo, J. Barrington-Johnson, 2005).

In some of the London Zoo histories such as by L.R.Brightwell, the “barking of the Archies” (anti-aircraft guns) on Primrose Hill nearby was an interesting note. London was slow at first to realise and respond to the threat. In Ian Castle’s books on these first London air raids in the Osprey History series, the maps show zeppelin and bomber routes heading over Regent’s Park with one or two bombs in the Park. By day and by night, a Zeppelin or large bomber aircraft must have been a strange and unnerving sight for visitors, staff and zoo animals.

Animals here at Newquay Zoo which have aerial predators such as meerkats, monkeys and lemurs quite frequently respond to aerial objects. Most notably in the past skies above Newquay  we have seen ranging from the Eclipse in 1999, candle party balloons, hot air balloons, party fire balloons, hang gliders, air ambulance helicopters, the Red Arrows, the Battle of Britain flight to the more natural occasional Sparrowhawk or Buzzard. Being near a former RAF base and Newquay Airport, although supposedly a no-fly zone for aircraft, the animals do see  some unusual aerial activity over the zoo.

Having been around on watch at Newquay Zoo on Firework Night in the past with nervous new arrivals, I wonder what the London Zoo animals would have made of Zeppelins, anti-aircraft guns or searchlights. Even the odd daytime firework or past lifeboat maroon sounded for emergency or Armistice Sunday in Newquay elicited a very noisy or nervous reaction from many animals from peacocks, macaws,  monkeys  and lemurs.

Cropped detail of a private back garden photograph of a British airship , location and date unknown c. 1917. (Image source: copyright World War Zoo Gardens collection)

There is lots of fantastic detail on Ian Castle’s excellent website on WW1 air raids. Ian is the author of two Osprey books London 1914-17: The Zeppelin Menace and London 1917-1918: The Bomber Blitz amongst several other airship related books.

Ian Castle identified the photo in January 2015  as “a British SSZ (Submarine Scout Zero) airship.” As Ian goes on to explain ” We had nothing to compare with the Zeppelins, but built numbers of small non-rigid airships to patrol the maritime approaches to Britain, looking for German U-boats trying to threaten the all-important convoys. The Zero was 143ft 5ins long, compared with a Zeppelin which measured over 600 feet. The first Zeros flew in the summer of 1917 and a total of 77 were built, right up to the end of the war.”

Airships like these patrolled the coast looking for U-Boats, which threatened Merchant shipping, fishing boats and Royal Navy vessels supplying and supporting Britain’s war effort. By 1917 bad harvests and U-Boats threatened Britain’s civilian food supply, leading to rationing and an early form of ‘Dig for Victory’, as mentioned elsewhere on our blog. The remains of heavy concrete mooring blocks from British  airship sheds can be seen on the Lizard in Cornwall,  an hour away from Newquay Zoo where our wartime garden project is based. There is more about these in  Ian Castle’s book  or  Pete London’s books about Cornwall in The Great War (Truran, 2014) and  U-boat Hunters: Cornwall’s Air War, 1916-19 (Truran, 1999).                             

A photograph from Ian Castle’s collection of SSZ 37, the type of Zero airship shown in our postcard photograph.
Source: Ian Castle

The ZSL Archive artefact of the month recently was the 1914 WW1 ZSL report. Looking slowly day by day through the daily occurrence books of London Zoo from August 1914 in the amazing  ZSL library and archive recently, I didn’t reach 1917 or 1918, something to do on my next visit. They would certainly have been amongst the talk of many of the staff who lived in the Primrose Hill, Regent’s Park  and  Camden area. Edith Spencer’s Diaries – 1917  A glimpse of everyday life amongst the London  air raids can be found in the unpublished civilian diaries of Edith Spencer (born 1889, St. Helen’s, Lancs). These form part of my wartime diary collection for the World War Zoo Gardens project.

Please credit Mark Norris / World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo if you reproduce any sections of Edith Spencer’s diaries or contact us via this blog site comments.

When the diaries recently went on show in my village as part of a WW1 centenary display, several elderly ladies spoke vividly of their mother’s stories of hiding from the Zeppelins in London.

March 1917 entry, Edith Spencer’s diary. Source: Mark Norris, World war Zoo Gardens collection

With a brother away at the Western Front, Edith was the unmarried youngest daughter of  William W. Spencer, a deceased Wesleyan Methodist Minister. Several of her brothers became Methodist ministers and missionaries. It seems from Edith’s diaries that paid work was probably new, as she had no paid career listed in the 1911 census. Her mother Isabella (nee Reid) had died the year before on the Isle of Wight, where there was a strong family connection. This meant Edith was now  working in London as a clerk, working at the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society offices at 24 Bishopsgate in London. This building has now been replaced by the Pinnacle skyscraper.

Her employment there may have been part of freeing up men for the war effort. There is more about this organisation on the website Wesleyan Methodism archives . Edith’s unpublished diaries for 1917 to 1920 have some surprisingly understated entries (a lot of the entries are work related). Maybe the raids were becoming a commonplace feature of London life by then. Date evidence suggests that these are aeroplane raids, rather than the last of the Zeppelin attacks.

As Ian Castle suggested after reading her diary extracts, Edith Spencer’s low key reaction was surprising but not unusual:

“I am always fascinated when you read diaries such us this as they are so ‘relaxed’. These early bombing raids on London and other cities were so new – like something from science fiction to the average civilian, yet their diary entries are so ‘matter of fact’!”

Friday 19 January 1917: terrific explosion at Silvertown.

This explosion at a muitions factory at first was thought to be the result of air raids and was widely reported at the time. Her next entry seems to refer possibly to the Geological or  Geographical Society offices as a lecture venue. She also goes to many other talks of an evening, on art and other things, but mostly faith related.

Friday 9 February 1917: Lecture on ‘Aircraft’ at B.G.S.

Eighteen Gotha  large bombers attacked London on 13 June in broad daylight at the height of 12,000 feet, the first daylight raid on London. Despite the efforts of 90 British home defence aircraft scrambled to intercept them, 100 bombs were dropped on London by the 14 aircraft that got through.  Several notable buildings were hit ranging from the Royal Hospital Chelsea  and Poplar County Council School where 18 children were killed and others injured. 162 people were killed and 432 injured in this first daylight raid by aeroplanes on London. No Gotha was brought down and the air  defences of London were found wanting. Source for the additional details of these raids throughout this blogpost are the books First Blitz by Neil Hanson (Corgi Books) and London 1917-18 The Bomber Blitz by Ian Castle (Osprey), as well as his excellent website. Edith Spencer records this raid which saw bombs fall all around her place of work  in Bishopsgate:

Weds 13 June 1917: 10.30 PM [Prayer Meeting]  11.30 Air Raid, piece of bomb on roof. Thurs 14 June 1917: Warning of raid, 3 – 4 in basement.

March 1917 entry, Edith Spencer’s diary. Source: Mark Norris, World war Zoo Gardens collection

The 14 June entry appears only to have been a warning, rather than a raid. The next daylight raid came on 7 July 1917.

July 1917 entry, Edith Spencer’s diary. Source: Mark Norris, World war Zoo Gardens collection

Saturday 7 July 1917: Big German air raid on London . Stayed in Committee Room. Leadenhall Street hit badly …

The ” Archies” or AA guns  were readier this time but more of the 24 German Gothas were successfully engaged by Sopwith Pups and other planes of No. 37 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps. 21 Gothas reached London around 10.30 a.m.  and again many of the 72  bombs on the City  hit the area near Edith Spencer in Bishopsgate. 54 were killed and 190 were injured. Leadenhall Street, Fenchurch Street and Billingsagte Fish Market were hit in this raid, according to Ian Castle, Leadenhall being mentioned by Edith Spencer.

Tuesday 17 July 1917: Emergency Committee met. Tuesday 21 August 1917: Mr. Goudie called meeting re. shelter in Air Raids, decided to go to our own strong room.

August’s poor wet and windy weather deferred many other raids and some of these August daylight raids only reached the coast.

August 1917 entry, Edith Spencer’s diary. Source: Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens collection

Wednesday 22 August 1917: Rumour of Air Raid, only reached Margate. Spent an hour in the Strong Room.

With more well organised air defence by the RFC, the German Gotha raids switched to night raids, as recorded by Edith Spencer:

Monday 3 September 1917: Air raids at night – didn’t hear anything.

16 were killed and 56 were injured by around 50 bombs from the 5 Gothas that made it through. One reason that she might not “hear anything” much is that on many night she was at home in Watford, though sometimes stayed up in London. Edith’s home address was the now vanished (1869 – 1966) Wesleyan Manse, 1 Derby Road, Watford, Herts. The shrapnel from this first night-time bombing raid can still be seen on Sphinx and Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment today.

There were other Gotha raids on London 24 and 29 September 1917, more in October and a planned firestorm of incendiaries on London in December 1917 but these have no record in Edith’s diary; these sections are mostly blank of any entry. 1918 entries Edith Spencer’s unpublished diary These most probably relate to air raids by Giant and Gotha aeroplane bombers as the last Zeppelin raids on London were on 19/20 October 1917. Britain’s air defences were becoming too organised for the lumbering Zeppelins; “the day of the airship is past for attacks on London” the Kaiser declared after the 23/24th May 1917 raids (Castle, London 1914-17: The Zeppelin Menace, p.85 ). Only four Zeppelin raids were mounted in 1918 against Britain on the North and Midlands ending on 5 August 1918; several Zeppelins were also destroyed by fire at their home base of Ahlhorn on 5 January 1918. From now on, aeroplanes were the emerging new threat.

Monday 28 January 1918: Raid, lights down 8.10 onwards. Tuesday 29 January 1918: Raid, warning 10pm.

January 1918 entry, Edith Spencer’s diary. Source: Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens collection

The 28th January 1918 raid saw 65 killed and 159 injured from 44 bombs, including 38 killed and 45  men, women and children injured in the basement shelter of Odham’s printing works at Longacre in London. This was the sort of basement shelter that Edith Spencer and work colleagues used at Bishopsgate. A night time raid warning maroon was sounded for the first time shortly after 8pm. Sadly panic from these unfamiliar explosions led to a crush in Shoreditch heading towards  one air raid shelter at Bishopsagte Goods Yard, leaving 14 killed and 12 injured. Thankfully only 3 of the 13 Gothas and 1 of the 2 new Giant bombers made it as far as London. Several attacked coastal targets and 5 were lost to landing accidents or one shot down over Essex.

It is interesting that she refers to  ‘lights down’ suggesting a form of blackout in practice, either routinely or in response to air raid warning. This precedes the chaos of life in the blackout in WW2 As well as brothers who were Methodist ministers, Edith had family fighting in the war.

Sunday 10 February 1918: letter from Frank reporting next move to France on 26th [February]

F.W. Spencer her younger brother (born in 1891 at St Helen’s, Lancs.) survived his service with the 58th Brigade, Royal Garrison Artillery as a Lieutenant  and later as Acting Captain, Royal Field Artillery which he joined on 11 March 1916. Raids on London continued as weather permitted  into 1918:

16 February 1918 entry, Edith Spencer’s diary. Source: Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens collection

Saturday 16 February 1918: Raid warning 10.5 to 12.5 only, very distant firing heard. [this .5 might be 50 minutes or half past].

17 and 18 February 1918 entry, Edith Spencer’s diary. Source: Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens collection

Sunday 17 February: Raid Monday 18 February: Holly and  I cleaned silver. Raid, firing nearer. Hilda, Holly and I made row in kitchen.

The sound of the anti aircraft guns is a vivid note in her record of this raid. This was a raid by only two German ‘Giants’ that made it to London where Woolwich was hit and the Royal Hospital Chelsea, killing around 7 people. On the next day 17th  London was hit again, by the R.25 a Giant, the only available German plane, but 20 were killed and 22 injured including servicemen home on leave and several in a shelter at St. Pancras station.

7 March 1918: Air Raid at 11.20. In bed.

It looks like Edith was often back in Watford each night, as she missed injury in the raid by 3 Giants which left 23 killed, 39 injured in the St. John’s Wood and Clapham Common area. A single 1000 kilogram bomb at Maida Vale was responsible for 12 of those killed and 33 injured. One of those killed was Lena Ford who wrote the words for Ivor Novello’s wartime hit song “Keep the Home Fires Burning”.

Whit Sunday Bank Holiday May 19 1918   Air Raid 11.30 to 1.15

This was the largest and last air raid of the war on London, according to Castle. It was a Bank Holiday weekend of notably fine weather. Edith Spencer on the Monday had a “beautiful walk round Plum Lane … Weather glorious, the fields all gold and green …” 18 Gothas and 1 Giant bomber reached London for the Whitsun raid of 1918, thankfully under half those that set out. 48 were killed, 172 were injured by the raid. The evening raid was the first countered by the newly amalgamated Royal Air Force which was created from the RFC and Royal Naval Air Service units on 1 April 1918. Several Gothas were brought down by the RAF and anti-aircraft fire over London and the Coast. After the War Edith Spencer continued to work for the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, working on her Pitman Shorthand and recording family, religious and missionary activities returning to normal.  Our diaries finish in 1920 by which she was experiencing increasing health problems.

11 November 1918 entry, Edith Spencer’s diary. Source: Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens collection

In her armistice day entry, I think Mary is Edith’s  older sister Isabella Mary Spencer, who seems to have been involved in nursing after a career as a teacher and Methodist missionary. The reference to ‘hospital isolation to help with pneumonia’ suggest the Spanish flu epidemic that killed so many civilians and servicemen who survived  the war. Edith is off work for several weeks dealing with Mary, when she herself comes down with flu from working in the hospital. This flu  probably accounted for the post-war deaths of  several zoo and Kew gardens staff after WW1 as set out in our WW1 casualty biography sections. Lessons learned for another war? You can look at the equivalent raid entry for each date on Ian Castle’s website www.iancastlezeppelin.co.uk as these years are added to this evolving website or in his book the London 1917-18 The Bomber Blitz.

WW1 air defence technology that survived into WW2.

Ian Castle’s website shows more details of the Zeppelins, German and British  planes involved as well as the increasingly organised air raid defences. These would be tested again, resembling some of the WW1 devices like sound locators, searchlights,  aircraft batteries, balloon screens  and plotting rooms (all shown on propaganda / information cigarette cards of  the late 1930s, see above)  but with the  significant improvement of RADAR in the Second World War. Zoos themselves were staffed by WW1 veterans who had served in the forces or worked at the zoo through WW1. This would give them some insight into how to prepare for the threats that air raids and gas raids might pose as WW2 loomed. My research area of zoos, botanic gardens and aquariums has uncovered many stories across Europe  of preparing for and surviving disastrous events like air raids in the Second World War.  Swords into  ploughshares … Researching what happened to wartime zoos, aquariums and  botanic gardens one sometimes comes across odd facts. Former airfields and failing  estates make  suitable large spaces for wildlife parks. Newquay’s coastal sister zoo Living Coasts in Brixham  (opened on the Marine Spa /Beacon Quay site in 2003)  was briefly part in 1918 of a naval seaplane station; its war surplus hangers eventually became aviaries in the fledgling Paignton Zoo in the 1920s. This must be some kind of ‘swords into ploughshares’ or its zoo equivalent, for a very different kind of flight! Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo. Postscript Edith Spencer’s diaries are written in the  Boots Home Diary and Ladies’ Note Book for 1917 to 1920.

Fighting German Imports, a page from Boots Home Diary 1918.

Amongst the handy medical and legal information, one interesting page is about Boot’s the Chemist’s  role in the War. Collecting and growing plants for the Vegetable Drugs Committee in WW1 and WW2 is another story for a future blog post.

Tower Poppies 2014 pictures

Tower Hill Poppies Oct 2014

In case you do not get to see the WW1 centenary ceramic poppies project in the moat of the Tower of London, one poppy for each of the 888,246 British and Commonwealth troops who died in WW1, here are my recent photographs.

All the poppies have now been sold, raising millions for veterans’ charities.

I visited the Tower Poppies on the day of my well-attended talk on the World War Zoo Gardens project, wartime zoos and botanic gardens at Kew Gardens and thankfully didn’t have  the much reported difficulties of reaching  Tower Hill, so popular has visiting this centenary installation become before it finishes on 11 November 2014.

This is one of many commemorative events happening worldwide as part of www.1914.org which includes the Kew Gardens wartime tours  throughout November 2014 and London Zoo ZSL’s poster style exhibition about the Zoo at War which runs for another month or two.

Tower Poppies

You can read more about the HRP Tower of London poppy  installation “Blood Swept Land and Seas of Red” by ceramic artist Paul Cummins at https://poppies.hrp.org.uk/

 

 

Amongst these 888,246 poppies are ones which mark or commemorate the WW1 deaths of 12 ZSL London Zoo Keepers, 19 Belle Vue Zoo Manchester keepers and 37 Kew Gardens staff, along with many others from gardens staff in Britain, members of the Linnean Society and British Ecological Society that we have been documenting in our blog research since 2009:

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/remembering-ww1-in-zoos-and-gardens/

Members of zoo families were also killed in WW1,such as two Jennison sons at Belle Vue Zoo Manchester, several brothers of Chester Zoo’s George Mottershead (badly wounded on the Somme) and a brother of Herbert Whitley, founder of Paignton Zoo (Newquay’s sister zoo).

I will be talking at the BGEN conference next week at Paignton Zoo about how to link these wartime links and history commemorations to sustainable development education, telling some of these WW1 personal stories: http://bgen.org.uk/resources/free/using-the-garden-ghosts-of-your-wartime-or-historic-past/ 

There are RBL poppies on sale in the Newquay Zoo shop in case you are visiting us and we will stop to observe the 11 a.m. 2 minutes silence on the 9th and 11th November 2014 this year.

We will remember them, zoo keepers and gardeners of all nations who served or suffered in WW1.

How botanic gardens and zoos survived wartime – talk at Kew Gardens 20/10/14

Preparing for my talk:

“How  botanic gardens and zoos survived wartime”  Mark Norris, Newquay  Zoo / World War Zoo Gardens project

Monday 20th October  6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, RBG Kew. £2 entry. Please arrive by 5:45pm.

For more details and to see the other talks this coming year see http://www.kew.org/sites/default/files/kmis-updated.pdf

http://www.kew.org/visit-kew-gardens/whats-on/how-botanic-gardens-and-zoos-survived-wartime