Charles Edward Smith was the third son of Jonah and Lucy Smith, born on the 18th November 1895 in Kentish Town, London. (An account of the family’s colourful history from Carleton Rode to London and back again can be read on his oldest brother’s page – Percy J R Smith.)
After his mother died in the spring of 1899, the widowed Jonah and some of the family moved back to Carleton Rode. Charles (coming up to 4 years old), and his nine-year-old brother, Reginald, were enrolled in the village school in October of that year. The school register reveals that Charles had already attended the kindergarten at Fleet Road Board School in Hampstead.
In 1901 the family were living near the Church in Rectory Cottage, and Charles’s father is listed as a poultry farmer. (See Percy’s page for more information)
Although this photograph is from the 1930s, the school had not changed much since it was founded in 1823.
The Smith family remained in the village until 1905 when Jonah bought a cottage off the Turnpike in Bunwell. Charles, at 10, then attended Bunwell School where it is likely that he became good friends with Phil Chapman, a boy of his own age who was also to lose a parent when he was still a youngster (Phil’s father died in 1908).
In 1911, aged 15, Charles was working as a live-in servant at Austhorpe House on the main turnpike road at Forncett End.
His employer, the Reverend Benjamin Appleyard, had recently bought the house after he took up a position within the Norwich diocese. The Reverend Appleyard served as an army chaplain during the war and there is a very interesting part of his obituary (from 1951) that describes his involvement in creating a First World War Memorial for Burgate Church, near Diss, where he moved when he returned from the Front in 1919 and stayed for over twenty years.
Click here to read about the church, and its extraordinary memorial, on the excellent Suffolk Churches site created by Simon Knott.
Our Roll of Honour board in Church states simply ‘C Smith’ RFA (Royal Field Artillery). It wasn’t until solving the puzzle of ‘P Smith’, that we were able confirm his brother’s identity. At least now we had a regiment to fit into the jigsaw.
There are at least nine Charles Edward Smiths who served with the RFA. Narrowing it down without a service record may be impossible.
However, we did have the photograph kept by Phil Chapman all his life, and on the reverse, someone had written ‘Percy’. This threw up a major issue – the cap badge in the photo is not from someone in the Norfolk Regiment (the unit in which Percy Smith served) – but it is that of a soldier in the RFA – and, although circumstantial, I feel very sure that the photo below is that of Charles Edward Smith.
On the FamilySearch tree website, a later photograph of Charles Smith from the collection of his brother, Reginald, has been uploaded. It is reproduced here below together with one of he and his wife – possibly from the 1950s?
Charles is listed on the Absent Voters List for 1918-1919, not with a regiment but with his father’s address – the cottage off the Turnpike, at Cordwell, Bunwell. So, he had not been formally discharged at this time but perhaps he was on agricultural furlough?
Charles, and his brother Percy, are remembered on both the Carleton Rode and Bunwell Rolls of Honour.
We know that he married Mary Ellen Lightning, a girl from Forncett, in June 1920 and for a few years they lived locally – three children registered in Depwade: Leslie Charles Percy (1921), Reginald A (1923) and Donald F (1926 – whose death was registered in the same quarter). It looks likely that they moved to the Loddon where another son was born, Wilfred J, in 1928.
The 1939 Register has Charles, Mary, Reginald and one readacted entry (presumably Wilfred), living on St Faith’s Road in Norwich. Charles and Reginald are Gardener and Under Gardener respectively, and Mary is volunteering with the ARP. Tragically, their eldest son, Leslie was in the Norfolk Regiment during WW2, and served in Malaysia, where he was captured by the Japanese and died a prisoner of war in 1942.
Charles died in Norwich in 1984 – his wife, Mary, had predeceased him in 1968.