Edward Hickman Tucker Meeson was born on 20th December 1877. He was the only son of Frederick and Emily Meeson, of Eastbourne. He was admitted to the school on 24th April 1890 up Rigaud’s.
After leaving the school in 1891, Meeson began training as an engineer. In 1894 there was a note in the Elizabethan congratulating him on passing into the Royal Navy as Engineer-Student. Between 1894 and 1899, he trained at Keyham and became Engineer Lieutenant on the 1st June 1904.
On the 28th December 1908, Meeson married Gladys May Joy, the elder daughter of George Robert Gordon Joy, and they had a daughter, Margaret. By June 1912, Meeson had been promoted to Engineer Lieutenant-Commander.
In 1914, he served on HMS Laurel in the action in the Heligo­land Bight on the 28thAugust, and was present at the sinking of the Blücher during the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915. He was also at the evacuation of both Anzac and Cape Helles. He was promoted to Commander in recognition of his services on board the Laurel, and was created a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order in 1915.
He sank with his ship, HMS Defence, at the Battle of Horn Reef, off Jutland on the 31st May 1916, at the age of 38. His widow Gladys went to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she remarried 5 years later.
Charles Dennis Fisher was born in 1877 at Blatchington Court, Sussex; the ninth of eleven children of the famous historian Herbert William Fisher. He attended Westminster School as a Queen’s Scholar from 1891 until 1896. He was academically brilliant, being elected head to Christ Church, Oxford and becoming a Slade Exhibitioner in 1897. Fisher became a tutor at Christ Church in 1903 and remained at the university until the outbreak of war. He was a skilled classicist and edited the text of Tacitus in the Oxford series of Scriptures Classici.
At the school Fisher developed a love of cricket, frequently playing for the School and College 1st XI. He was less successful as a footballer and a review in The Elizabethan noted that he was:
‘a hard-working forward, though somewhat clumsy, and liable to fall down at critical times. As a goal-keeper, a position which he held up till the last six or seven matches, he caught the ball well, but perhaps hardly made the most of his reach’ (he was 6ft 3”)
Perhaps unsurprisingly it was the cricket which he kept up at University, playing for Oxford against Cambridge in 1900 and for Sussex in 1901. He continued to be involved in the school after leaving and was made a Governor in 1908.
On the outbreak of war he was disabled from joining the army on medical grounds. Anxious to play his part he learned to drive and enlisted in the Ambulance Corps, serving in Flanders and mentioned in despatches for his bravery under fire. He managed to obtain a commission as a Lieutenant in the Navy in 1915 and was appointed in HMS Invincible. The ship was sunk in the Battle of Jutland on 31st May 1916 with the loss of 1026 lives.
Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate, dedicated the following verse to Fisher following his death:
Fisher is sitting on the wall at the back of the photograph
Over the warring waters, beneath the wandering skies
The heart of Britain roameth, the Chivalry of the sea,
Where Spring never bringeth a flower, nor bird singeth in a tree;
Far, afar, O beloved, beyond the sight of our eyes,
Over the warring waters, beneath the stormy skies.
Staunch and valiant-hearted, to whom our toil were play,
Ye man with armour’d patience the bulwarks night and day,
Or on your iron coursers plough shuddering through the Bay,
Or neath the deluge drive the skirmishing sharks of war:
Venturous boys who leapt on the pinnace and row’d from shore,
A mother’s tear in the eye, a swift farewell to say.
And a great glory at heart that none can take away.
Seldom is your home-coming; for aye your pennon flies
In unrecorded exploits on the tumultuous wave;
Till, in the storm of battle, fast-thundering upon the foe,
Ye add your kindred names to the heroes of long-ago,
And mid the blasting wrack, in the glad sudden death of the brave,
Ye are gone to return no more.-Idly our tears arise;
Too proud for praise as ye lie in your unvisited grave,
The wide-warring water, under the starry skies.
Archibald Noble was born on 4thJuly 1886 and was the only son of Joseph and Sarah Noble, of Ham, Surrey. He arrived up Grant’s in the September 1898.
He did not have an unblemished record at the school; the Grant’s House ledger notes that he was tanned twice in 1902. One of the occasions was for smoking in Grant’s on Saturday night, and the other was for being “more than 5 minutes late for Sunday breakfast”!
He left the school in July 1904. Following in his father’s footsteps, Archibald became a solicitor in October 1908 and worked for Bayley, Adams, Hawker and Noble, a firm based on Tower Bridge Road, Bermondsey.
On the 12th September 1914, Archibald enlisted as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 10th (Service) Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment. He was made adjutant, a role that consisted of providing administrative support to the commanding officer, and moved with the Battalion to Codford St Mary in Wiltshire. In November 1914, the battalion was billeted in Bournemouth, where Archibald was promoted to temporary Captain on 9th December. After six months in Bournemouth, they moved to Aldershot.
They were finally sent out to the western front and landed in France on the 26th September 1915. He was mentioned in despatches and was engaged in the fighting at Vimy Ridge, near Arras, in May 1916.
A French soldier in the trench line below the crest of Vimy Ridge, December 1915. Note a man looking into a periscope. (IWM Q49225)
The ridge had been under German control since October 1914 and the French had been attempting to recapture it. In May, the fighting intensified with the British mining and the German artillery and trench mortar fire. On the 21st May 1916, during heavy shelling, Archibald was killed in action at the age of 29.
Charles Albert Madge was the youngest son of Dr Henry Madge Madge of St. Marylebone, by Margaret, daughter of David Broun, of Broxburn Lodge. He was born on 26th August 1874 and was a member of Home Boarders house between 1887 and 1889. He was a good runner, coming 2nd in the Under 14 300 Yards race at Athletic Sports. He was also musical, although criticised as seeming ‘too often to be singing sharp’ although his reviewer noted that this was ‘very much less of a fault than singing flat, and will vanish completely as his confidence grows’.
He served in the Army during the 2nd Boer War, rising to the rank of Captain in 1901 and being mentioned in despatched on 29th July 1902. He retired from the Army in 1905 but must have settled in South Africa when he married in 1910 — a son was born in Johannesburg in 1912. He was a member of the Headquarters Staff of the Union Defence Force in the country. Jan Smuts, the 2nd Prime Minister of South Africa wrote of his work:
“as Director of the Information Bureau at Defence Headquarters, Colonel Madge has done exceedingly good work, which is none the less meritorious because it has been of a somewhat dull and prosaic nature. It has, however, meant the constant exercise of no small organising ability and sound judgement. The fact that we hear so very little of and nothing against this most important branch of Defence Headquarters in itself speaks volumes for the good work Madge has done.”
He appears to have transferred to fight on the Western Front with other South African Forces later in the war. On 10th May, 1916 he was killed by a minenwerfer while being conducted round the trenches at the Hohenzollern Redoubt by Colonel Rowley who had a miraculous escape from injury.
His son, Charles Henry Madge, became a poet and sociologist and helped develop the ‘Mass-Observation’ project which aimed to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of around 500 untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires.
Waldemar and Herbert Schmidt were the sons of Waldemar and Alma Louise Schmidt of South Kensington. Both boys attended Westminster School as members of Home Boarder’s house, the house for day pupils. The younger brother, Herbert, was born on 26th May 1876 and was admitted to the school in September 1892. He became an exhibitioner in 1893 and a non-resident Queen’s Scholar in 1894.
Whilst at the school, Herbert got involved in the music scene. He sang a contralto solo in the School Concert in 1894 and in the 1896 concert, he performed the violin: “the violin duet played by H.W.D. Schmidt and A.R. Astbury formed an acceptable variety, both performances showing careful training and great promise.”
After school, Herbert became a clerk in the London and Westminster Bank before moving to Shanghai to work in marine insurance in 1898. By 1904, he was working as a clerk at Union Insurance Society of Canton in the Queen’s Buildings, Hong Kong, alongside his brother, who was a manager there.
Herbert returned to London in the August of 1913 and following the outbreak of war, he enlisted in the Royal Fusiliers in the Public School battalion on 10th December 1914.
On May 5th 1915, Herbert changed his surname from Schmidt to Stone; his brother also decided to change his surname, but he chose to become Smith. Later that month, Herbert became 2nd Lieutenant with the 4th Battalion (Extra Reserve) Connaught Rangers and went out to the western front in December 1915 where was attached to the Royal Irish Rifles.
He was killed in action at Mont St. Eloi on the 26th April 1916.
With so many lives lost on the Western Front, it is easy to forget that those commemorated were sometimes killed in rather different circumstances. Godfrey Jackson Hunter was one of the Old Westminsters who fought to suppress the insurgency in Dublin known as the Easter Rising.
Hunter was a Home Boarder at the school from 1904 to 1907, before going on to Cambridge and the Bar. He fenced whilst he was at the school and university, reaching the semi-finals of the Public Schools competition at Aldershot in 1907. In 1914 he joined the Lincoln’s Inn Officer Training Corps before becoming a 2nd Lieutenant in the 5th Royal Irish Lancers.
On Easter Monday, 24th April 1916, the Easter Rising began in Dublin. Patrick H. Pearse declared the establishment of an independent Irish Republic shortly after noon at the General Post Office. In order to suppress the rebellion five cart loads of rifles and a large amount of ammunition brought from England needed to be transported from the North Wall railway terminus to the Magazine Fort in Phoenix Park. Fifty mounted lancers, under the command of Godfrey Jackson Hunter, were instructed to provide an escort.
As the lancers approached the Four Courts a number of Irish Volunteers opened fire. Lieutenant Hunter ordered his men to fall back and they desperately tried to move out of the line of fire. The lancers managed to take cover at the nearby Collier’s Dispensary and Medical Mission buildings. They moved the ammunition inside and turned the wagons over to form a barricade. The two groups then proceeded to fire at one another, the volunteers attacking and being repulsed on several occasions over the following days. On Wednesday 26th April, during an exchange of gun fire, Hunter was shot dead. The remaining lancers were eventually relieved the following day by soldiers using makeshift armoured vehicles created from boilers from the nearby Guinness Brewery.
Wilfred was the second of his family to attend Westminster; his elder brother Gilbert had already been at the school for two years when Wilfred was admitted up Rigaud’s as a non-resident Queen’s Scholar in January 1897. When Gilbert left the school in 1899 Wilfred became a boarder.
At the age of 16, Wilfred sat and passed the entry exams to R.M.A. Woolwich. He left the school in 1900 and had worked his way up to Lieutenant by November 1904. He retired from the army in 1907 to become a journalist and worked on the staff of TheStandard and The Globe newspapers.
Following the outbreak of war, Wilfred rejoined the army as a Lieutenant in the 12th Service Battalion, King’s (Liverpool) Regiment on 1st October 1914 and was promoted to Captain at the end of December. His battalion was attached to 20th (Light) Division, which was somewhat chaotic at this early stage, and lacking in trained officers and equipment. The Division assembled in Aldershot, and were moved to Surrey before ending up on Salisbury Plain in April 1915.
They were ready to be inspected by King George V at Knighton Down and finally landed at Boulogne on 27th July. They spent some time around Fleurbaix, where they had training and their initial familiarisation with the trenches.
He was invalided home in February 1916 on account of wounds received while on active service and sent to Millbank Military Hospital, which is near the site of the Tate Britain. He died there from the effects of his wounds on 10th April 1916 at the age of 31.
Gerald Moxon was born on 22nd November 1893, the only son of J. P. Moxon and joined the school in 1908 up Ashburnham. He opted to study “the modern tongues and sciences”, joining the school-wide rivalry between the Moderns and the Classics which, by 1908, had taken a poetic turn:
“Classics indeed can strut righte well
And talke and boast in their conceit;
But ne’ertheless in things that count
They’ll finde the Modernes hard to beat.”
by C.M. Goodall (AHH 1906-09)
Gerald played in the winning Ashburnham Junior House Football team in 1909. The Ashburnham House ledger records that he played outside right, but that he “also played back instead of last. He is a dashing player, very fast, and goes straight for the man (and usually gets him too!). He is a much better outside right than back.”
A celebratory Supper was held in honour of the victory on Tuesday 21st December. A song specially composed for the occasion was performed, the chorus went —
“Oh don’t let me play ‘gainst Ashburnham
For never that game I’ll forget
I was charged and knocked over the touch-line
While the rest put the ball in the net.”
On 1st of October 1913, Gerald joined the 7th Batt. Royal Fusiliers and was attached to the 4th Battalion in September the following year. He went out to the western front, but received a wound to the head on 20th October 1914 and was invalided home. He was promoted to temporary Lieutenant in February 1915 and returned to the front in March. By July, Gerald had achieved the rank of temporary Captain. He was killed in action at St. Eloi at the age of 22 on 27th March 1916. He was the 3rd member of the winning Ashburnham Junior Football teamto lose his life in the war — after R. Chalmers and J.W.H. McCulloch — and he was not the last…
On Friday, March 24, we had a most enjoyable field day at Berkhamsted with Eton, Harrow, Merchant Taylors’ and Berkhamsted against the Inns of Court. We have to thank the latter most warmly for a most instructive day, and for their hospitality afterwards.
