Genealogical war memorials of Bournemouth’s fallen
Hill 60: May 2nd, 1915
Introduction
Tales from the Front (39) tells the story of Albert Edward James Davis, a native of Victorian Bournemouth, who fought in the Great War. His parents had crossed the Atlantic in search of better prospects, yet Albert’s path carried him east: first to India with the 2nd Dorsets, then to France with the 1st Battalion. On Hill 60 in May 1915, poison gas ended his life.
Tales from the Front (39): Background
Married in Texas
Frank Davis and Caroline Tubbs, parents of Albert Davis, got married in Washington County, Texas, in 1873. Both emigrated to America from Dorset. Frank came from a family of skilled craftsmen living in Blandford, a large town. Caroline came from a family of rural labourers. The SS Memphis took Frank from Liverpool to New Orleans. From here, he travelled to Texas, where he worked on a farm, perhaps as an indentured labourer. His ship’s manifest does not list Caroline, so she must have joined him in Texas. It remains unknown whether the couple managed to gain a farm of their own. They married, however, and baptised their first child two years later. The prosperity which had drawn them over the sea did not materialise. Five years after their marriage, they migrated again. This time, they settled in Bournemouth, a popular destination for Dorset families in the late nineteenth century.
Hope and improvement
Evidence survives to reconstruct the background to Frank and Caroline’s hopeful voyage to a new world. In the 1870s, Dorset farm labourers experienced extreme poverty and discontent. Farm workers confronted employers at several meetings. Unionism had begun to gain popularity with the farm labourers. Dorset farmers remained intransigent. They sacked or evicted those suspected of involvement. Emigration offered an immediate escape and hope for improvement. These conditions offered a commercial opportunity for American migration agencies. A ‘Commissioner for Texas’ painted glowing pictures of labourers becoming masters, owning land, and enjoying freedom. He pitched a dream: ‘as long as a man worked … he was treated as a gentleman’. They attracted candidates at public meetings, sent them on fast steamers from Liverpool to New Orleans, and brought them to work in Texas. Meeker, Knox, and Co., transport agents, based in New Orleans, placed Frank Davis in Washington County, north of Houston.
Customer endorsement
The agents strengthened their message with personal testimony. They published Frank’s letter to his parents in the Dorset press. My dear father and mother, I must tell you that we had a very good journey, and that we got there all right … We had very good weather all the way over … got on the boat at Liverpool … and we got to New Orleans in 24 days … called at Lisbon … My Master and Mrs are very kind to me, and all I have to do is one horse, a cow, and a few pigs; but they do not keep them here as they do in England. I have 15 dollars a month, food, and washing, and sleep in a little house by myself. I like the country very much. It looks like a charming country … We want more English people out here.
Reality
The promise proved fragile. Meeker, Knox, and Co. placed them in an area already in decline after the new railways bypassed it. Rain made the area’s waxy black soil sticky and difficult to work. Settlers needed expensive tools. Yellow Fever and perhaps malaria prospered. Economic conditions in the country, overheated by excessive speculation after the Civil War, generated panic and depression. Financial houses collapsed, severing the credit lines on which such agencies as Meeker, Knox, and Co. depended. Frank’s urban upbringing in a family of skilled craftsmen may not have prepared him for rural labour in difficult physical conditions. Economic conditions had little promise. Stories percolating back from England offered chances. Dorset rural workers, who earned 4 shillings a week, could get 16 shillings from a new master in Bournemouth. Good money and healthy breezes beckoned to Frank and Caroline. They baptised their second child in the growing resort.
Albert
On return, Frank had entered domestic service, driving a coach. By Albert’s childhood, however, he worked for himself, driving a cab. During the 1890s and 1900s, Albert’s family moved around Springbourne and Charminster, with a widowed grandfather linking him to earlier generations. Albert began work as an errand boy, as his father had, but the family’s earlier travels may have widened his horizons. This time, however, he answered a more trustworthy promise of secure employment by enlisting with the army. This took him in the opposite direction to his parents’ journey. He joined the 2nd Dorsets, who served in India during the early 1900s. The 1911 census locates him in Poona (Pune). He returned to find his mother a widow. At some point, he enlisted with the 1st Dorsets and travelled again, this time to France, a different military experience. Now he faced modern warfare rather than traditional parade-ground drill.
Tales from the Front (39): Hill 60
Protect body and mind
The war diary of the 1/East Surreys, veterans of Hill 60, shows that within a few days after gas attacks began, the army had developed defensive procedures. They consisted of practical steps in action. ‘Anti-asphyxiating pads, sprayers to spray on approaching waves of gas and for spraying the trench affected, gunpowder bombs to be hurled into the gas, men to keep high and open rapid fire through the gas.’ In addition, the army also employed moral tactics to sustain the men’s mental resilience against the enemy’s preferred weapons. ‘Honour and duty require that we win this fight … Our actions will have far-reaching consequences, if only to show the enemy that whatever cruel and cowardly methods he may employ, he cannot break the spirit of British soldiers.’ If newspapers had reached the men, they would have felt supported by the intense moral outrage expressed about the military use of gas.
May 2nd, 1915
According to their war diary, the 1st Devons relieved the 1st Dorsets at dawn on May 2nd. Sergeant Shephard, who kept a private diary, recorded the Devons as arriving in the afternoon. Until then, he spent the day searching for his colleagues. He described the time as ‘the bitterest Sunday I have ever known’. If they found a gassed survivor alive, he did not expect them to live long. A black mood came over him as he took careful steps around Hill 60. ‘Our dear boys died like rats in a trap, instead of heroes as they all were.’ Hill 60 had become a lunar landscape of death. Bodies, German and English, many ‘horribly mutilated’ lay everywhere. Continuous shelling and sniping prevented burial parties from working. An appalling stench cloaked the area, but the survivors kept looking. During the day, somebody identified the gassed body of Albert Edward James Davis.
Aftermath
Albert’s mother survived into the 1920s, living with her married daughter in Springbourne. No evidence has emerged that his brothers served in the war. Afterwards, the records list them as labourers, two in Bournemouth, two elsewhere. One worked for the Corporation, as did his brother-in-law.
During the next few days, the bodies of other Dorsets came to light, no doubt bearing the unmistakable signs of gas asphyxiation. The survivors huddled behind the lines, learning who remained with them and who had gone. Some companies suffered worse than the others. Sergeant Shephard, an experienced soldier, found the event had made a deep impression on him. In a matter of minutes, the gas, hitherto unknown, had culled his battalion. May 5th would become another bitter day, but they knew what to expect. ‘About 8 a.m. I was just about to have breakfast when the word was passed: “pads on, gas coming over”.’
Takeaway
Tales from the Front (39) has explored the background, life, and military career of Albert Edward James Davis (1887-1915). A professional soldier, he had served in India with the 2nd Dorsets. On return to Europe, he joined the first battalion and went to war in Flanders. His parents, Frank and Caroline, had escaped the unhealthy climate of East Texas in the 1870s, but their son could not escape the fatal gas fumes that enfolded him on Hill 60 almost fifty years later.
‘Tales from the Front’
A collection of personal stories honouring the natives of Victorian Bournemouth who gave their lives on the battlefield and the regiments with which they served. Blending social and military history with genealogical insight, it explores their roots, families, occupations, and the ultimate sacrifices they made for their country.
The posts weave genealogical data together with eyewitness accounts found in war diaries, contemporary press coverage, and official military histories. The series offers a powerful and intimate portrait of Bournemouth’s wartime heroes offset with live accounts of battlefield action.
Serving as a companion and continuation of Victorian Bournemouth, Tales from the Front forms part of News from the Past: History for the Rest of Us.
References
For references and engagement, please get in touch. Main primary sources: here and here (subscriptions needed). For War Diaries, go here. See also here. The featured picture shows an imagined scene—genealogical information based on available sources.
Kitablios Shu