An Arras casualty: S/20896 Rfm Herbert Charles Hines, 1st Rifle Brigade

Here's a nice little group which is my latest acquisition, courtesy of The London Medal Company. These have been on the market before, and were certainly sold at auction in 2005. Nevertheless, with the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Arras just around the corner, I thought it would be fitting to add this Arras casualty group to my collection.

S/20896 Rfm Herbert Charles Hines of the 1st Rifle Brigade was killed in action on the opening day of the Battle of Arras on the 9th April 1917.  He was born in New Cross, South London in 1883, his birth registered at Greenwich in the fourth quarter of that year. He was the son of William Hines, a bricklayer by trade, and his wife Emily, and they baptised him on the 5th December 1883 at Christchurch, East Greenwich (image below, courtesy of the LMA via Ancestry).

On the 1891 census the family was living at 6 Glenville Grove, Greenwich and comprised William and Emily and their six children, Herbert, aged seven, being the second eldest. His place of birth is recorded here as Deptford.

By the time the 1901 census was taken, Herbert was working as a sculleryman at Greenwich Naval College and, ten years on, aged 27, he was living alone at 14 Goodwood Road, New Cross, and working as a pastry cook. The following year he married Eliza Gibson (born 2nd January 1882)  in Greenwich and the year after that, on the 2nd August 1913, their daughter Lilian Agnes F Hines was born, her birth registered in Lewisham district in the third quarter of that year.

No service record survives for Herbert but his regimental number suggests that he joined the Rifle Brigade on the 6th June 1916. Other men with numbers in this range are mostly Derby Scheme men who had attested in November or December 1915 and were now being called up. As a married man, born in 1883, Herbert would have been placed into Group 38, and groups 33 to 41 began to be called up at the end of May 1916. The extract below shows other men with regimental numbers close to Herbert's, the date they attested, the Derby Scheme Group they belonged to (if they had attested under the Derby Scheme) and the date on which they were mobilised. Six of the nine men in this small sample were Derby Scheme men:

Unfortunately there is no pattern of service beyond early September 1916. The majority of these men - and presumably Herbert too - joined the regiment at Winchester on the 7th June and were posted to the 15th Battalion on the 10th June. From there, it was a transfer to the 20th Training Reserve Battalion for many, and then transfer again for many of the men. Three of the men listed above were transferred to the King's Royal Rifle Corps whilst others found themselves with the Northamptonshire Regiment and The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.

Herbert remained with the Rifle Brigade though. He was drafted to the 1st Rifle Brigade, probably via an Infantry Base Depot in Etaples or Havre and thus found himself serving with a regular battalion which had been in France since the 23rd August 1914 but which would have completely changed in complexion, many of the original members of that battalion having become casualties long ago. The battalion formed part of the 11th Brigade in the 4th Division.

The battalion war diary entry for the 9th April 1917 reads:

"Bn taking part in 3rd Army operations left the camp at 6.15am being engaged in the final objective of this day... Casualties: Capt Jackson and 2nd Lt Schiff killed; Capt Cavendish, 2nd Lts Day, Wellerd and Bridgman wounded. Other ranks, 20 killed , 71 wounded, 32 missing (16 subsequently being found holding shell hole posts)."

Herbert's name initially appeared on a Rifle Brigade list dated 29th April 1917 which appears to record him as being wounded, although note the speech marks around the letter W.

Soldiers Died in The Great War records that Herbert was killed in action and his widow would later receive a gratuity of £3 in addition to the princely sum of £3, three shillings and sixpence owing to him at the time of his death.

Eliza would have been sent Herbert's medals and memorial plaque, and it was presumably she who arranged for them to be framed together with a tiny portrait photo of him.  Eliza Hines never remarried and died in 1962 having been a widow for thirty-five years. Lilian Hines, who barely knew her father, married Victor C Benfield in 1946. The couple had one daughter, Margaret A Benfield, born in 1947. Lilian Benfield died at Hove in Sussex in 1989. 

Herbert Hines has no known grave and is commemorated on the Arras Memorial. He may be remembered by family members. He is now remembered by me. RIP.

The final image on this blog post is from series WO 363 and is Crown Copyright of The National Archives.

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Replica medals anyone?

I am often asked if I can recommend a good replica medals' provider. The honest answer is, I cannot.

By replica medals I mean replacement medals; copies of campaign and gallantry medals to replace originals that have been lost or sold over the years.

The truth of the matter is, I just cannot see any reason why anyone would want to go along this route. Neither would I advocate buying original medals which have had the recipient's details erased - neatly or otherwise. To me, that is vandalism and desecration which simply encourages more vandalism and desecration.

I rule out the replica/replacement/copy/fake - call them what you will - medals, simply because they are not the originals. Furthermore, from what I have seen, the vast majority look and feel awful.

For me, as a collector, I give myself two options: 

1. Post online appeals and create web pages for medals in the hope that one day someone might read that post or web page and recognise those same medals in their own collection
2. Buy identical contemporary medals

I recently purchased the campaign pair and Rifle Brigade cap badge to S-28524 Pte Leonard Thomas Bouchard. In due course these will go into a display for my great uncle, Rifleman John Frederick Nixon, who was killed in action in October 1918. Jack had attested under the Derby Scheme in 1915 and been mobilised in 1916 - so had Private Bouchard. The fact that the two men served in different battalions of the Rifle Brigade - albeit both service battalions - is irrelevant to me, although had I been more pedantic I might have held out for a closer medals-match.

Neither does it matter to me that when ultimately mounted in a display case alongside Jack's photo and identity tags, I will know that the medals next to him are not his. To me, displaying the medals of a contemporary is far preferable to displaying poor copies. For all the claims by medal companies, I have yet to see any produced with the toning that comes with decades of being hidden away in a drawer - as in the British War Medal example above. Buying another man's medals also enables me to take on another research project and to remember another man alongside Jack. Once the medals have been mounted I will record a brief service history on the back of the frame.

Finally there is the matter of cost. I note that one copy medal specialist by Royal Appointment, sells a First World War medal pair for a little over £55 (including VAT). The nasty modern shine on both medals comes free of charge. I paid £55 on eBay for the Bouchard pair, and furthermore have what looks like an authentic Rifle Brigade cap badge to boot. 

If Jack's medals ever do turn up I would of course remove Leonard Bouchard's pair and display these separately. Until that time though, I will be happy to honour both men's service for King and Country.

B-2966 Pte S S G Smeeton, Rifle Brigade

I picked up this man's Victory Medal some while back and thought it might be an idea to post what I know about him.  His medal index card tells us the following:

1. He was entitled to the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal
2. He was awarded silver war badge number 151770 which was mislaid, was found by the police,returned to him and subsequently acknowledged on the 20th June 1917
3. He arrived overseas in France on the 21st July 1915
4. He was a corporal when he stepped off the boat in France but was subsequently reduced in rank
5. He must have been discharged from the army prior to 20th June 1917 (see 2. above)
6. His British War Medal was incorrectly impressed and was returned on the 18th February 1921.  It was re-issued on the 21st December that year.

No service record survives for this man but the B prefix indicates that this man was either a reservist whose number had been re-allocated (which, incidentally, according to Queen's and King's Regulations, it shouldn't have been) or a time-expired regular who was re-enlisting.  I could find no surviving service record in WO 97 but his silver war badge roll entry confirms that he enlisted on the 1st September 1914 and was discharged on the 20th March 1917 as a result of wounds (rather than sickness).

A search through birth records yields one candidate: Stephen Samuel G Smeeton whose birth was registered in the West Ham district in the September quarter of 1885.  I have not located him on either the 1891 or 1901 census returns but he appears on the 1911 census as a 25 year-old stevedore living with his parents and five siblings at 68 Canton Street, Poplar.  A widowed sister-in-law, Bertha Kershaw, is also recorded and it is noted that his mother had given birth to eleven children, nine of whom were still living in 1911.  Stephen is recorded on the census as Stephen S J Smeeton and he is the only child who is recorded as having been born in West Ham.  The next youngest sibling is Albert James Smeeton aged 20, and therefore born around 1890, whose place of birth is noted as Poplar.  Presumably then, the family moved from West Ham to Poplar at some point between 1885 and 1890. Stephen is the only member of the family noted at that address on the 1915 electoral roll.

As regards Stephen's military service, let's assume he joined the army at the age of 18.  This would have made his year of enlistment as 1903 and a time when general short service enlistment terms were three years with the colours and nine on the reserve.  So perhaps he served until 1906 and was on the reserve when war was declared.  This doesn't seem right to me - his date of entry into France seems just too late for a much-needed reservist - but I'll have to content myself with this mystery in the absence of documentary evidence to the contrary.

The year after he was discharged from the army, Stephen Smeeton married Gwendoline E E Hiorns in Hackney.  Their marriage was recorded in the September quarter of that year. He and Gwendoline appear on the 1919 and 1920 electoral rolls living at 167 Mandeville Street, Hackney but by 1922 Stephen is living at 50 Spring Lane, Stamford Hill (Gwendoline does not appear) and he's still there, alone, in 1923 and 1924.  As well as confirming Stephen's address, the electoral rolls also give us his full name: Stephen Samuel George Smeeton.

I could find no evidence of issue from Stephen's marriage to Gwendoline Hiorns and after 1924 the trail goes cold until 1937 when Stephen Smeeton's death at the age of 51 is recorded in the registration district for Ongar, in Essex.