Remembrance Day at the Zoo 2021

A poppy blooming beside our Gnome Guard in our former wartime zoo keepers’ garden, recreated at Newquay Zoo 2021

It’s Remembrance and Poppy time again.

Time to Remember the many zoo and botanic gardens staff from zoos worldwide who served and died in WW1 and WW2. 

Our former wartime zoo keepers’ allotment at Newquay Zoo has now been turned over to bees, pollinators and wildflowers, but for the ten years or more of the World War Zoo Gardens project (2009-2019), it was a quiet and productive  memorial  garden to zoo staff and animals who served and suffered through two world wars and many conflicts since. 

You can read more about the impact of WW1 on zoos and botanic gardens, their staff and animals: https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/ww1-related-posts/ 

including London Zoo, where staff  gather each Remembrance Sunday at their staff war memorial to lay wreaths https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/remembering-lost-wartime-staff-of-zsl-london-zoo-in-ww1/

Some long closed zoos like Belle Vue Zoo Gardens in Manchester have a staff war memorial nearby  https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/remembering-the-lost-ww1-staff-of-belle-vue-zoo-manchester/

Zoos like ZSL London Zoo, Whipsnade and Chester Zoo also lost keepers and other staff in WW2, but thankfully not so many as in WW1.  Read more of our WW2 tagged blogposts to uncover their stories, such as  https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/remembering-zookeeper-and-gardener-far-east-pows-70-years-on-2015/ 

Botanic Gardens like Kew also have staff war memorials https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/such-is-the-price-of-empire-the-lost-gardeners-of-kew-in-the-first-world-war/

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

Remembered.

Blog post by Mark Norris, Newquay Zoo Education, November 2021

Feeding the Zoo in Wartime

In our covid ‘Ping-demic ‘ days of empty supermarket shelves and problems with food deliveries, ‘food security’ has never very far from our thoughts over the last year or so. It’s “like the war” is an often-heard phrase.

This brilliant magazine infographic by illustrator W.B. Robinson shows what it took to feed London Zoo animals for a year – ‘the nature and quantity of the food demanded annually by the beasts in London Zoo.”

It is a magazine or book illustration random cutting, undated with no known title. I think it dates from the 1920s, after ‘the War’ (the First World War) as the phrase “sternly curbed by The Food Controller” is something I associate with WW1 rationing more than WW2. There was a famous WW1 Music Hall comic song, “Never mind the Food Controller / We’ll live on Love” by Florrie Forde.

“… the beasts in the London Zoo whose appetites, however, like those of their human neighbours, were sternly curbed by the Food Controller during the period of the War. Many of the commodities shown aboave were then excluded from the Zoo.”

Fascinating to look at in detail. On the food menu – Pigeons, Goats, Whiting, Bananas, Horse, Ducks, Rabbits, Herrings, Shrimps, Condensed Milk, Rats ….

• See our WW1 rationing post – https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2016/12/22/ministry-of-food-formed/

Blog posted by Mark Norris, Newquay Zoo Education, 9 August 2021

Remembering London Zoo in the Blitz 26-27 September 1940

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/

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/

.
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)

Wolfgang Suschitzky Zoo Photographer and Hitler’s Émigré Zoologists

Look at this fairly unremarkable picture of the Mappin Terraces at London Zoo, then look again.

Hovering above this primate enclosure at London Zoo, c. 1940/41,  is a barrage balloon in regent’s Park, protecting London and the Zoo from low level bombing and aerial attack.

The animals seem fairly unconcerned by what must be, after a while, a familiar sight of wartime London.

This fascinating image come from a Geographical Magazine 1941 from an article about the Wartime Zoo, written by James Fisher. I will post the rest of the article at a later date.

The photographer is an unusually named W. Suschitzky, a name I recognise from the London Zoo based Animal and Zoo Magazine (1936-41).

Wolfgang Suschitzky (1912-2016) took many animal photographs of stars and their pets and notable zoo animals for this 1930s magazine but is mostly remembered now for his documentary photography and filmography which includes the 1970s British film classic Get Carter.

A 2012 BAFTA tribute to Suschitzky the DoP (Director of Photography) on his 100th birthday http://www.bafta.org/heritage/features/a-tribute-to-wolfgang-suschitzky

Hitler’s Other Émigré Zoologists

What makes ‘Su’ or Suschitzky very much a product of his time at London Zoo in the Julian Huxley period of 1930s and 1940s was the other émigré talent that arrived there from Austria and Nazi Germany at the same time, such  as Ludwig Koch the pioneering sound recordist. http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/sound-and-vision/2014/03/in-praise-of-birds.html#

Wounded in WW1, the German zoologist Dr Hans Honigmann (1891-1943) was Director of the Breslau (Wroclaw) Zoo in what is now modern day Poland.

Hans was particularly interested in exploring the intellectual capacity of higher mammals. His fellow emigre son  Ernst (later a Shakespeare scholar) always liked to tell the story of his “brother”, “Clever Moritz”, a chimpanzee with whom the infant Ernst was sometimes obliged to share his cot in the cause of his father’s research. The story of “Clever Moritz” is in the autobiographical sketches which Ernst Honigmann collected as Togetherness: Episodes from the Life of a Refugee (2006).

Dr Honigmann senior was dismissed by the Nazis from his post as the Director of Breslau Zoo (now Wroclaw Zoo, Poland)   from March 1929 to May 1, 1934) because he was Jewish. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoologischer_Garten_Breslau

In 1935 the family escaped to Britain, where he found research work first in London Zoo with Julian Huxley for 18 months , then in 1937 as a scientific adviser for the newly founded in  Dudley Zoo near Birmingham.

With the outbreak of World War II , he lost this employment. After working as a natural history teacher at Blundell’s School in Tiverton,  Devon, he was finally interned  briefly as an “enemy alien” in 1940/1 and died in 1943 whilst working for the Zoology department of the University of Glasgow.

A Zoologist in Hitler’s Black Book? 
In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin put him on the Special Investigations List GB , The Black Book,   a list of persons who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the occupying forces (following special SS commands) with special priority should be located and arrested.

Suschitzky, photography, zoology  and animals

Suschitzky’s first love was zoology.  He quickly realised that he could not make a living in Austria in zoology, so  influenced by his sister Edith Suschitzky or Tudor-Hart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Tudor-Hart, he changed to study  photography.

At this time, the political climate in Austria was changing towards Fascism.

Being a Socialist and of Jewish origin, Suschitzky decided there was no future for him in Austria and in 1934 left for London. This is  where his sister lived. Suschitzky married a Dutch woman, Helena  (Puck) Voûte in Hampstead and they moved to the Netherlands.

His wife left him after a year, which he said “was great luck because had I stayed there, I wouldn’t be alive anymore, I’m sure.”

He returned to England in 1935, which is where and when he must have encountered Julian Huxley, the pioneering young Director  at London Zoo and his new magazine Animal and Zoo magazine, launched in 1936.

Any suggestion of Jewish heritage  or parentage would make even a well known zoologist, scientist  or photographer a target for imprisonment or worse in the increasingly Fascist Europe of the 1930s.

https://www.webofstories.com/play/wolfgang.suschitzky/1;jsessionid=2FB56D9D1F4D73B926C818BF6D0A0645

https://www.geni.com/projects/Reich-Refugees-during-Holocaust-1933-1945/24607

Blog Post Script

Suschitzky’s sister Edith Tudor-Hart (1908–1973)  was an Austrian-British photographer, communist-sympathiser and spy for the Soviet Union. She was instrumental in recruiting members of the Cambridge Spy ring, (Philby, Burgess, Blunt and MacLean) for the KGB, a spy ring which damaged British intelligence from World War II through to its discovery and famous defections in the late 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Tudor-Hart

Far from being an innocent time of photographing stars and their pet dogs, this Austrian family was hugely affected by the events of Europe in the 1930s and 40s onwards.

Blog posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens, Newquay Zoo, September 2018.

 

Flattened by a flying bomb: Overseer Walter Leney at ZSL London Zoo 25 November 1944

We have just passed the 75th anniversary of 25 November 1944, a sad event for the staff of London Zoo.

Walter Leney’s name appears on the ZSL London Zoo staff war memorial, killed at home by a Flying Bomb in WW2 whilst still employed working for London Zoo.

Overseer William Walter Thomas Leney and his wife Kate were both killed by a V1 flying bomb which fell on their house at Regent’s Park, very near the Zoo where Leney had worked his way up from the lowest rank of Keeper in 1901 to Overseer by 1944.

Walter Leney’s staff card (ZSL Archives)

Using information from his staff record card in the ZSL archive, we can see how Leney (b.19.10.1879) started life as a Helper on 12 February 1901, promoted to Junior Keeper by 1917, then Senior Keeper by Jan 15 1917.

By this time many of his keeper colleagues who had enlisted had already been killed.

leney

He entered Army service on September 17 1917 and was demobbed early in June 1918, wounded.

Despite his injuries, Leney had been made a 2nd Class Keeper by 1923, 1st Class Keeper by  1924 and became Acting Overseer by 1927, full Overseer by 1929 in charge of the Small Mammal House. This was the role he held for the next 15 years of his working life to his potential retirement age of 65.

On the back of his record cards (which chart pay rates and war bonusses) are his addresses – like many keepers living close to the zoo, Princess Road, 116 Gloucester Regent’s Park, then from 1928 onwards King Henry’s  Road, Hampstead NW3.

This was the address where the V1 fell; the CWGC records for him and his wife Kate Jane list him as “of 59 King Henry’s Road. Husband of Kate Jane Leney. Died at 59 King Henry’s Road.”

There are CWGC records as Civilian dead for W. W. T. Leney and wife

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/3130745/LENEY,%20WALTER%20WILLIAM%20THOMAS

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/3130744/LENEY,%20KATE%20JANE

Other Zoos like Maidstone Zoo (now closed) were in ‘Bomb Alley’,  the South of England corridor or route followed by many of the Flying Bombs.  Chessington Zoo was unlucky enough to be both bombed during the 1940 Blitz and also hit by a Flying Bomb V1 in 1944 (Newsreel footage here)

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/the-blitz-begins-7-september-1940/

London Zoo’s Walter Leney and his wife Kate Leney, remembered 75 years on.

Blog posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project, Newquay Zoo, 25  November 2019 

 

 

 

Richard Bartlett WW1 casualty of the famous London Zoo family 23 October 1914

Having no known grave, Richard Bartlett’s name should be up on the walls of this Menin Gate Ypres memorial, home to the last post each evening. Image: CWGC 

Lance Serjeant Richard Bartlett 10029, died in action on 23 October 1914 aged 28, serving with the 1st Battalion, The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment . He has no known grave and is remembered on Addenda Panel 57 of the Ypres  (Menin Gate ) Memorial.

CWGC lists him as the “Son of the late Clarence Bartlett, of Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park, London“.

The war affected not only the staff of London Zoo who joined up (as we have covered in previous London Zoo WW1 blog posts) but also the sons,  grandsons and wider families of zoo staff.

The Bartlett Society www.zoohistory.co.uk was set up by Clinton Keeling to link people with an interest in zoo history together. It is named after Richard Bartlett’s grandfather, Abraham Dee Bartlett,  the great nineteenth-century superintendent of the Zoological Society of London’s gardens at Regent’s Park – a post which Abraham held from 1859 until his death in 1897 at the age of eighty-four.

70 years later  on from Richard’s death, The Bartlett Society, named in honour of Abraham Dee Bartlett, was founded by the late C. H. Keeling on 27th October 1984. It is devoted to promoting the study of zoo history or ‘yesterday’s methods of keeping wild animals’.

Hopefully the following Bartlett family history is correct – I’m sure the Bartlett Society members will correct me if I’m wrong. 

In between a strange career as a publican, Abraham’s son Clarence also lived at the London Zoo or zoological gardens as its deputy superintendent and briefly superintendent on his father’s death. http://www.lemsfordhistory.co.uk/the-crooked-chimney.hem

http://www.lemsfordhistory.co.uk/Article_Chequers.html

Born in St. Pancras in  1887, his son Richard enlisted in Preston, which is probably why he enlisted in a Lancashire regiment. Richard is listed with his Lancashire Regiment in the 1911 census at the Bhurtpore Military Barracks, Bhurtpore Barracks, South Tedworth, Hants.

As a result of his prewar soldiering, Richard was able to get overseas quickly in the few weeks after war was declared, whilst many others were still enlisting in recruiting offices.

Richard appears to have been by trade a butcher when he enlisted, a slightly different animal-related career than his famous grandfather. His effects and will went to his brother Joseph.

By reading regimental diaries and histories, we get a glimpse of Richard Bartlett’s war and how he died.

http://www.loyalregiment.com/on-this-day-23rd-october-1914/

The 1st Battalion were part of the BEF (2nd Brigade in 1st Division) and landed in France on 13th August 1914. The 1st Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment sailed to France on the newly built S.S Agapenor on 12 August 1914.

They embarked at Southampton, but having started to cross over they ran into another ship on the Solent, giving her ‘a nasty bash’. One man was injured. That night they continued their crossing to La Havre.

The Battalion originally comprised regular pre-war soldiers. They were the only LNL battalion at Mons, and subsequently were part of the ‘Great Retreat’. They were present at; Marne, Aisne, Ypres, Langemarck 1914, Gheluvelt, Nonne Bosschen, Givenchy 1914, Aubers, Loos …  The 1st were the only LNL battalion to qualify for the 1914 Star, the majority of recipients also being awarded the clasp ‘5th Aug.-22nd Nov. 1914’ for being under-fire at Mons.

On the excellent Loyal Regiment website, there is a diary of a Private in Richard’s battalion: it mentions the day that Bartlett died during

“Chapter 7: THE FIGHT ON THE BIPSCHOOTE-LANGEMARCK ROAD, OCTOBER 23RD, 1914”

“Thus ended the Langemarck engagement so far as we were concerned. On October 26th, 1914, General Headquarters issued the report, a copy of which appeared in the current account of The Times of November 17th, 1914, as follows:”

THE GALLANT NORTH LANCASHIRES
SPECIAL 2ND BRIGADE ORDER
26TH OCTOBER, 1914

In the action of the 23rd of October, 1914, the 2nd Infantry Brigade
(less the 2nd Royal Sussex Regiment left at Boesinghe) was allotted the task of reinforcing the 1st Infantry Brigade and retaking the trenches along the Bipschoote-Langemarck Road, which had been occupied by the enemy.

In spite of the stubborn resistance offered by the German troops, the object of the engagement was accomplished, but not without many casualties in the Brigade.

By nightfall the trenches previously captured by the Germans had been
reoccupied, about 500 prisoners captured, and fully 1,500 German dead were lying out in front of our trenches.

The Brigadier-General congratulates the 1st Loyal North Lancashire
Regiment, Northampton Regiment, and the 2nd K.R.R.C. (King’s Royal Rifle Corps), but desires specially to commend the fine soldier-like spirit of the 1st Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, which, advancing steadily under heavy shell and rifle fire, and aided by machine-guns, was enabled to form up within a comparatively short distance of the enemy’s trenches.

Fixing bayonets, the battalion then charged, carried the trenches, and occupied them; and to them must be allotted the majority of the prisoners captured.

The Brigadier-General congratulates himself on having in his Brigade a battalion which, after marching the whole of the previous night without food or rest, was able to maintain its splendid record in the past by the determination and self-sacrifice displayed in this action.

The Brigadier-General has received special telegrams of congratulations from both the G.O.C.-in-Chief, 1st Corps, and the G.O.C., 1st Division, and he hopes that in the next engagement in which the Brigade takes part the high reputation which the Brigade already holds may be further added to. Signed B. PAKENHAM, CAPTAIN, Brigade Major 2nd Infantry Brigade.

The area is also covered on  http://www.loyalregiment.com/diary-of-a-second-lieutenant-1st-battalion/

Remembering Richard Bartlett, grandson of Abraham Bartlett, one of those “many casualties in the Brigade” on that day.

Blog posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo, September 2019

 

Remembering Charles Dare ZSL London Zoo died WW1 10 September 1918

 

Charles Dare is remembered on the ZSL Staff War memorial at London Zoo. 

10.9.1918        Charles William Dare    County of London Regt             ZSL  Helper,
originally enlisted as 2965 or 610564  19th London Regiment, he served also as Private 245116,  2nd (City of London) Battalion  (Royal Fusiliers).

Names of the fallen ZSL staff from the First World War, ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, 2010

He  was killed on active service,  aged 20 and is listed on the  Vis-en-Artois memorial, one of 9580 killed in this area in the “Advance to Victory”  having no known grave.

Charles had been in France with the London Regiment since June 1917. On this medal roll entry and elsewhere he is Presumed Dead or D.P. on 10th September 1918, presumably because his body was never found. This is why he is remembered on the Vis En Artois Memorial, rather than having an individual grave or headstone.

Charles Dare was killed during period of the 100 days of the  “Advance to Victory”  (August to November / Armistice  1918).

August 8th marked the beginning of the Battle of Amiens was known as the ‘Black Day’ of the German Army; on the 15th, British troops crossed the Ancre river and on the 30th, the Somme river.

Advances carried on throughout September 1918, when Charles Dare was killed. The Armistice came two months after Charles Dare’s  death on the 11th November 1918.

Family background
Charles Dare was born and lived in St. Pancras in  1898 and enlisted in Camden Town.

He had an older sister, Lilian E Dare, two years older, also born in St. Pancras.

His father Charles J Dare was a distiller’s clerk from Hereford, aged 38 in 1901 living at 16 Eton Street, St. Pancras parish / borough (London 1901 census RG 13/133). they stilllived there in 1911, not that far from Regents Park and the Zoo. His mother Mary A Dare, 37,  was born in Lugwardine,  Hereford.
A Helper in ZSL staff terms is a junior or trainee member of staff before they become a Junior then Senior Keeper.

 

Charles Dare married an Emily Catherine Holloway (1897-1944) of Kentish Town, early in 1918. According to the UK Register of Soldiers Effects, they had a daughter Gladys born 10th March 1918 or 1919.

Charles’ widow Emily Dare remarried an Arthur Scraggs in 1930 but was sadly killed as a civilian by enemy action (presumably an air raid casualty) during the “Baby Blitz” on London WW2 at her home 179 Grafton Road, London on 19 February 1944. 187 planes of the Luftwaffe bombed London on this day as part of Operation Steinbock. It was the heaviest bombing of the British capital since May 1941.

You can read more about the other ZSL London Zoo casualties of WW1 remembered on the ZSL Staff War Memorial here:

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/remembering-lost-wartime-staff-of-zsl-london-zoo-in-ww1/

Remembered on the centenary of his death – Charles William Dare, ZSL Helper (Keeper), died WW1 10 September 1918.

Blog  posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo, 10 September 2018.

The Blitz begins 7 September 1940

 

The Times article republished and illustrated in War Illustrated November 15th 1940

The Blitz, during which Nazi Germany bombed London and other English cities in nighttime raids, lasted from Sept. 7, 1940, to May 1941.

The raids killed around 43,000 British civilians and left widespread destruction.

ZSL London Zoo was in the firing line for the first time in over twenty years since Zeppelin airship and airplane bombing of London in WW1.

Long existing zoos such as Belle Vue (Manchester) and Bristol Zoo  had to put ARP (Air Raid Precautions) in place in 1939, along with newer 1930s zoos such as Chessington Zoo and Belfast Zoo.

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

Some animal propaganda (ZSL chimps with tin hats) in  War Illustrated November 15th 1940

” The Zoo is in fact a microcosm of London …” 

Chessington Zoo

Chessington Zoo was bombed on 2 October 1940 and several staff family members were killed. https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/chessington-zoo-blitzed-2-october-1940-eyewitness-accounts/

www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/80/a5333780.shtml

Lovely Chessington Zoo home movie 1940 footage, a grand day out presumably before the October 1940 bombing  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHeqmMWs7VM

LR Brightwell’s wartime panda poster for London Zoo 1942, encouraging zoo visitors and pandas to return  once the 1940/1 Blitz had quietened down. The “Off the Ration” exhibition encouraged Dig for Victory allotments like our World War Zoo Gardens but also encouraging zoo visitors  grow your own food animals (rabbits, chickens, pigs). 

Zoo Blitz Resources for Schools

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2016/03/10/blitz-and-pieces-at-our-wartime-zoo-workshops/

Interesting Year 6 cross-curricular topic map for WW2 – Blitz and Battle of Britain (now defunct 2014/15 Inspire Curriculum, Cornwall)  

The 1944/45 Blitz

Later in the war (1944/45) Chessington Zoo  was hit by a Flying Bomb – as mentioned in our blog post https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/chessington-zoo-blitzed-2-october-1940-eyewitness-accounts/

You can see Chessington zoo and circus staff clearing up the aftermath on YouTube https://youtu.be/T9CiQvwP1TQ 

London Zoo would also be affected by V1 and V2 bombing, including London Zoo veteran staff member Overseer W.W. T. Leney being killed in 1944 by a flying bomb at home. Nowhere in London or the Southeast was safe, night or day, at work or at home during the flying bomb raids. We shall mark the occasion 75 years on later next year on 25th November 1944 / 2019 with a fuller blogpost on Walter Leney.

The ZSL London Zoo staff war memorial:

Leney, William Walter Thomas, ZSL Overseer: Killed by flying bomb 25.11.1944

ZSL London Zoo veteran Keeper and Overseer William Leney at 65, old enough to have served in the First World war, was killed alongside his wife Kate Jane Leney (also 65) at 59 King Henry’s Road (Hampstead, Metropolitan Borough) by flying bomb. W.W.T.  Leney and wife died on 25 November 1944. Several flying bombs are recorded as having fallen around the London Zoo area, close neighbour of RAF Regent’s Park.

Studying the Blitz and Wartime Life? 

For more details about our schools wartime zoo / wartime life workshops for primary and secondary schools at Newquay Zoo, contact us via  https://www.newquayzoo.org.uk/education-clubs/school-visits/primary

The last elephant left at the damaged Elephant house Berlin Zoo in 1943/44 after the Allied Air raids (Image source: Mark Norris, private collection from defunct press archive0.

Similar Allied air raids on German cities and industrial targets  caused extensive damage to German zoos in city and railway areas, as personally and vividly described  in zoo Director Lutz Heck’s Berlin Zoo memoir Animals – My Adventure. This will be the subject of a future blogpost as we approach the 75th anniversary of these raids in 1943 / 2018 and 1944 / 2019.

Remembering all those affected by the Blitz and air raids, 1940 /41 and 1944/45. 

Blogposted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo gardens project, Newquay Zoo, 7th September 1940 / 2018.

Remembering Albert Stanford, ZSL London Zoo gardener died WW1 23 September 1917

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

Albert Staniford, gardener at ZSL London Zoo, died 100 years ago today on 23rd September 1917 during the Battle of Passchendaele.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2017/07/30/lost-gardeners-and-zoo-staff-during-passchendaele-1917-ww1/

23rd September 1917 Albert Staniford ZSL London Zoo Gardener
Served as 174234 216 Siege Battery, Royal Field / Garrison Artillery RGA

 

…

Names of the fallen ZSL staff from the First World War, ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, 2010

Albert Staniford is buried in an Individual grave, II. M. 3. at Maroc British cemetery, Grenay, France, a casualty of the  Period of Third Battle of Ypres / Passchendaele, July to November 1917.

 

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/523608/STANIFORD,%20A

 

ZSL gardener Albert Staniford was born in 1893 in the Regent’s Park area, the son of Annie and Alfred, who was also a gardener.

His medal record card states that he served in both the Royal Field Artillery as 17692 and 216 Siege Battery,Royal Garrison Artillery as 174234 Gunner Staniford.

He embarked for France on 31 August 1915, entitling him to a 1915 star, alongside the Victory and British War Medals.

Albert Staniford served in France for two years before his death in September 1917, dying only three months after his marriage in London on June 6 1917 to Esther Amelia Barrs (b. 1896). The CWGC listing has no family inscription on the headstone.

…

Albert is remembered on the ZSL London Zoo war memorial, garlanded with poppy wreaths each year on Armistice Sunday.

A fellow London Zoo  gardener Robert Jones was killed earlier in 1917 at the Battle of Arras on 9th April 2017.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/remembering-lost-wartime-staff-of-zsl-london-zoo-in-ww1/