Who was the elusive man listed simply as ‘P Smith’ on the Roll of Honour Board? There was no regiment given, he wasn’t registered on the Absent Voters List at the end of the war, and none of the older residents could remember anyone of that name in the village.
Extensive research has uncovered the life of the man we now know was Percy Jonah Rich Smith.
To understand Percy’s life in Carleton Rode and the surrounding villages, we need to delve further back and start with his grandparents Charles and Caroline, and his father, Jonah.
Charles Smith and Caroline Cooper were both born in neighbouring Bunwell and moved to Carleton Rode after their marriage in 1842. They were hand loom weavers working from home, employing skills passed down through the generations and continuing a traditional cottage industry that had been at the heart of these rural communities since the Middle Ages. However, by the 1840s as mechanisation in industrial centres boomed with the development of factories in growing urban areas, the population shifted to reflect this change and life for village weaving families like the Smiths became increasingly difficult.
The 1841 census in Carleton Rode recorded 24 families (out of some 180 households) employed as weavers – and all members of the family would have had a role to play, including young children. However, by 1851 only two families remained in the village who were wholly involved in weaving -and the Smiths were one of them. (There were twelve other individuals described as silk and worsted weavers and these were usually the wives of agricultural labourers, plus one family had two young children aged 7 and 9 winding bobbins.)
The following link to photographer Paul Harley’s website has more fascinating information about weaving in Norfolk, beautifully illustrated, and much else besides.
Charles and Caroline had four children within their first five years of marriage, and the parish register reveals that they were baptised together in July 1847 in All Saints’ Church. Two more children were born before the census of 1851 was taken (including Percy’s father, Jonah, in 1850). The next decade saw the births of seven more children – including a baby girl who died within a very short time in early 1860.
The Smith family’s economic situation was very precarious by the time of the April 1861 census. Charles was described as an invalid and there were now ten children to feed at home – and at least two babies were being fostered out within the area.
Caroline was still weaving and the five oldest children, aged between 11 and 18, were out labouring in the agricultural fields when there was work available. Jonah, at 10, was recorded as lame and attending school along with his four younger siblings.
At least here the children were fortunate as there was already a church school well-established in Carleton Rode. The Reverend Frederick Bevan, who arrived as rector in 1821, founded the ‘daily school for 50 children’ shortly after his arrival. This meant that at the time, the village had better provision for educating its children than many other larger places, including nearby Attleborough, which only had a Sunday School that offered an extra two evenings instruction per week.
Throughout his 38 years’ service, the Reverend Bevan promoted the evangelical work of the Church of England, especially in missionary endeavours and education for poorer children. Although school registers do not exist for these years, Jonah would probably have started at the school aged three or four, towards the middle of the 1850s.
Quite by happenstance when delving into another family on the FamilySearch website, I came across a link to a family tree that contained photographs of Jonah and some of his family (contributed by Tracee Dow and reproduced here). It was quite a eureka moment as it contained a brief memoir written by Percy’s younger brother, Reginald, who had emigrated to Canada in the early years of the 20th century and adds greatly to our understanding of Jonah. The photograph of the family tree below (on top row) contains images of Jonah Smith and his wife, Lucy Rich, and his parents, Charles Smith and his wife, Caroline Cooper.
Tellingly, Reginald describes the Reverend Bevan as someone who ‘more or less ruled Carleton Rode’ – and whilst the situation is more nuanced than that, he and his wife (the daughter of Sir Robert Buxton) were at the top of the social hierarchy hereabouts and had enormous influence in local affairs.
As a four-year-old, Jonah suffered from an infected knee (probably caused by a thorn) which became gangrenous, and the leg was amputated. Thereafter, he walked with crutches until an adult when he acquired a wooden leg. However, aged 9, he suffered a serious accident when leaning over the well in the school yard. His friends had been cranking up the heavy, oak well-bucket to see how fast they could get it to drop, when the iron crank slipped out of their hands and flew out of control. It hit Jonah square in the back, causing him a spinal injury from which he would suffer for the rest of his life.
Jonah remembered the Reverend Bevan as having a profound effect on him as a youngster, both for his religious convictions as well as his support the family. The cleric impressed upon him the importance of both the Bible and his school studies – as it would enable Jonah to support himself later in life.
After Bevan died in 1859, he left most of his estate (well over a £1,000,000 in today’s currency) to dozens of charities – all connected with missionary work and improving the life of the poor.
Bevan’s successor, the Reverend John Cholmeley, and his wife Jane, were also very keen to ensure that all children, regardless of their background, would receive an elementary – and Christian – education. They were also at the forefront of the temperance movement and were strict adherers, establishing the Loyal Cholmeley Lodge and Coffee House in the centre of the village to support working men and encourage adult literacy at a time when the majority of adults were not able to read or write.
The school was also ahead of its time in providing all children with a meal at midday (and for many this would have been their only proper sustenance). This did not become compulsory in Britain until 1906 when the Local Education Authorities were required to provide free school meals.
As for charging for tuition, there is no record in the 1850-1860s of parents having to pay (we have school logbooks with brief daily entries from 1863) but by 1870 a weekly fee of one penny per child has been introduced when elementary education became compulsory for all children aged between 5 and 10 years.
Alongside the teaching of reading, writing, mastering arithmetic and the rote learning of times tables, there was much emphasis on Bible scripture, as well as attending Church on all major saint’s days – and the Rev. Cholmeley baptised many children during those services.
However, despite no school fees, many poorer parents could not afford the loss of the children’s meagre wages for ‘field work’ when it was available and in the earliest school logbook started on the 1st July 1863, there are many daily entries which record small school attendance (sometimes as few as 9 or 10 pupils) due to children being out in the fields with their parents. The notes include children employed in sowing wheat, bird keeping, picking acorns for pigs and haymaking, or employed at home ‘for domestic duties’ and looking after their infant siblings whilst their parents were out working. This was exactly the situation for the Smith family in the 1861 census (see above).
Two more children were born to Charles and Caroline during the first two years of the 1860s, a time of terrible anxiety for families – as can be seen from the numbers of children featuring in the burial registers. The Ipswich Journal, dated May 1862, gives this explanation, “Depwade: The increase of deaths arises principally from the prevalence of diptheria among children in the parishes of Bunwell and Carleton Rode. Two deaths from smallpox have been registered, neither of them after vaccination.”
The Vaccination Act (1853) stated that every child in Britain had to be inoculated against smallpox by the age of 3 or parents would face severe financial penalties. However, there were still many people who resisted vaccinating their children for fear they would succumb to the disease.
Charles and Caroline’s baby daughter, Ellen died at just a few months old in 1860 – either from complications at birth or from one of those very infectious diseases prevalent in the community at the time. The family were to suffer another premature death a short time later; their eldest daughter had married in the autumn of 1861 and died the following January – aged just 19.
Perhaps this tragedy finally spurred the family into moving away (as well as the economic reasons outlined above because by 1871 only one family was making a living from weaving in Carleton Rode). The Smiths and their eight surviving children relocated to London in the mid-1860s; a move that many other families from the surrounding villages also made during this period.
They headed to Kentish Town, an area to the north of the capital undergoing rapid railway and urban expansion. The Midland Railway was constructing stations, sidings, workshops, and train sheds as the once small village developed into a suburb. A large coal depot was also established to supply the railway, factories, businesses, and extensive housing being built – and it was here that the male Smiths found work and opportunity. Charles and Caroline also had their final child, Annie, born in 1868.
Charles, who had suffered an injury that meant he couldn’t operate a loom, was able to find work as a ‘carman’. These were drivers of carts, often employed by the railways to deliver goods and parcels. Two of his sons were similarly employed. We know that 20-year-old Jonah was lame (and had he stayed in Carleton Rode would not have been able to work as an agricultural labourer) and on the 1871 census was working as a ‘crossing sweeper’. A street cleaner (in the days of horse transport, urban streets were particularly grim) with enough guile and banter to make himself popular with not only local businesses and wealthier individuals, but also the expanding Metropolitan Police force, could make a reasonable living. Henry Mayhew was a journalist and advocate of social reform (he co-founded and edited the satirical magazine, Punch) who wrote a series of newspaper articles after interviewing many hundreds of poorer workers in the rapidly expanding capital city. These reports were compiled into a book, London Labour and the London Poor, published in 1851 and reprinted several times – many pages were devoted to the different ‘classes’ of Crossing Sweeper. It remains a fascinating depiction of mid-Victorian street life in Dickensian London.
Jonah did very well for himself and within ten years had managed to acquire enough capital to set himself up as a coal dealer with an office on the main thoroughfare in the suburb of nearby Gospel Oak. Over several months in 1880, he advertised his wares in the local paper.
He was also now able to support his widowed mother (his father died in 1879), unemployed brother and 13-year-old sister in decent housing. The family memoir of his son Reginald (referred to above) stated that Jonah had joined the Plymouth Brethren, a Christian evangelical movement which had grown out of Anglicanism in the early 19th century. He would have been well-versed in the Bible from his school days in Carleton Rode and there may have been financial support from the Brethren too. His son believed that he taught in a school as well.
In the spring of 1881, Jonah married Lucy Rich, a 21-year-old housemaid working for the vicar in Bromley St Leonards in Bow, east London – it seems likely that his religious convictions played a part here too.
Lucy was the daughter of an agricultural labourer from Silsoe in Bedfordshire where almost all the women (and many of the children) in working class families of the time were ‘straw plaiters’. This was another traditional industry that had been very important to the rural economy in the Bedford and Luton area for centuries, but which collapsed in the 1870s onwards as a result of cheaper imports from abroad. Lucy, like Jonah, went to London to find work.
By the time Jonah and Lucy married, his coal merchant business was doing well, and he was also developing other sidelines as a dealer. The couple lived in a newly built terrace in Gospel Oak, an area of Kentish Town that was rapidly becoming a prosperous suburb. However, life was not without drama.
Jonah developed a fowl dealing business and he had very well-stocked pigeon lofts at the family’s home on Roderick Road. These birds were very profitable at this time, both breeding ‘fancies’ as well as racing pigeons, and a court case reported in The Evening Standard in February 1886, describes Jonah as one of the victims of ‘The Mashers Gang’, local criminals well-known to the Metropolitan Police for targeting pigeon lofts. The gang was not apprehended.
Jonah and Lucy had six surviving children during the first fifteen years of their marriage; Edith Gertrude M (born 1882), Dorothea Lucy (born 1885), Percy Jonah Rich (born 1887) twins Grace Lilian and Reginald (born 1890), Alice Mary (born 1893), and Charles Edward (born 1895).
Tragically one of the twins, Grace, died aged five at the end of 1895 when Lucy would have been heavily pregnant with her next child.
It was Reginald, the surviving twin, who later emigrated to Canada and wrote about his father’s life – and that memoir has helped us to see a more rounded picture of Jonah. He was a larger-than-life character. Reginald tells us that his father suffered from periods of ill-health throughout his life relating both to his amputated leg and spinal injury, which meant long periods out of work, and during which time he and his family were supported by wider family members.
However, the complications that Lucy suffered from her continual pregnancies eventually brought the greatest tragedy for Jonah and his children.
The family memoir reveals that Lucy had gone into premature labour in April 1899 and it became apparent that she was carrying twins. One baby was born alive -the other was stillborn and resulted in Lucy’s death from peritonitis; sadly, baby Alec survived for only a few months. This must have been devastating for the family and we know from school records that Jonah and his younger children returned to Carleton Rode later that same year.
Reginald and Charles were admitted to the village school in October 1899, and they would have sat in the very same single schoolroom in which their father had been taught forty years before. Six-year-old Alice appears to have remained in London as she wasn’t admitted to the school until the following October. It was a brief stay – less than six months – before she left the parish permanently and we are still searching for what became of her.
Edith, who would have been 18, did not come to Carleton Rode with the rest of the family.
On the 1901 census, Jonah and his children, Dorothea, Percy, Reginald, and Charles, together with Jonah’s older married sister, Elizabeth Richards (as housekeeper) are living on Church Road in the village, close to the school. Jonah described himself as a ‘poultry farmer’, although from local newspaper reports over the next twenty years, he developed his business into dealing in livestock generally – and Percy started out by assisting him in the business. Fifteen-year-old Dorothea was working locally as a domestic servant.
So how did Percy fit into this village? Carleton Rode may have nurtured generations of his ancestors, but life here must have been quite alien to a thirteen-year-old adolescent who had grown up in the hurly-burly of an ever-changing and cosmopolitan urban landscape.
Lives have many facets, and research can reveal things which are uncomfortable to read and difficult to comprehend; one such incident involving Percy was reported in the Diss Express in September of 1902.
Percy was charged at Long Stratton Petty Sessions with cruelly ill-treating a horse whilst working it at Forncett St Peter that summer. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (now the RSPCA) brought the charge against the owner of the animal (a Bunwell builder named Walter Chatten) for sending the horse out with an open wound under the saddle, and Percy, who was riding the animal, for causing between twenty and thirty wounds from beating it with a knotted leather whip, which he said he ‘was obliged to beat the horse to get it along’.
The Inspector stated that he saw Percy thrashing the bay gelding along the road and that it was in very poor condition. He then stopped the driver to further examine the animal. He took off the saddle and pointed out the various wounds which Percy said the owner knew about and thought him fit to work. After instructing Percy to take the horse out of the harness, he sent it home and then went to the owner’s yard in Bunwell. Walter admitted the offence but asked the Inspector not to report it ‘as it wouldn’t happen again’. In court, the local police constable corroborated this attempt to get the Inspector to turn a blind eye.
During the hearing, the owner and Percy, as well as two witnesses including Percy’s father Jonah, all swore that the animal was fit enough to work and stated that the wounds were caused by feeding the horse a green vetch which brought it out in sores. The magistrates viewed the horse, decided to convict and imposed stiff fines on the owner and Percy.
The final sentence in the report is very damning indeed, “(The magistrates) regretted that they were unable to have Smith flogged for ill-treating the pony.”
Jonah had been no stranger to the Petty Sessions court since his return to Carleton Rode and Bunwell.
He was summoned (and fined) in May 1901 for allowing livestock to stray onto the highway (Turnpike) having been cautioned several times. He had also been fined for a similar offence when living in London.
Over the next few years, Jonah would appear at both Long Stratton and Wymondham courts for deliberately blocking the highway with his cart and refusing to move it (for which he was fined), for failing to send his child to ‘an effective school’, at which he addressed the bench at some length and was also fined (with seven days’ imprisonment if he defaulted), and there was also a curious case reported where he claimed to own a prize dog and the litter it sired. The judge discredited both Jonah’s evidence and that of his witness and dismissed the action.
Jonah clearly had strong opinions and liked to express them. He viewed the authorities with disdain and was not afraid to voice his point of view – regardless of the veracity of his actions.
In Percy’s case, he does not appear again in the courts, and he later forged a different life to his father.
Reginald’s memoir gives more detail regarding these early years back in Carleton Rode and Bunwell. His doesn’t say whether his father attended any of the churches or non-conformist chapels in the area, but he refers to Jonah’s despair at the loss of his wife, and prayer sessions with his three sons (Percy, Reginald and Charles). These were hard times and relatives in London occasionally sent food and clothing parcels to help out.
Within a few years, and with the financial help of his sister, Harriet, and her husband, Richard Sendall, Jonah was able to buy three clay lump cottages in Bunwell at auction in 1905. The family moved into the larger of the thatched properties which Jonah called ‘Ebenezer Cottage’ to reflect his religious beliefs.
Percy’s story
In 1911, the Smith family were still living at Ebenezer Cottage, which is on the Turnpike at Cordwell in Bunwell, and Percy was working as a grocer’s assistant. He married Florence Victoria Boaler the following year and the couple moved into Carleton Rode.
It seems likely that Percy and Florence would have known each other in London as they grew up in the same area and Florence’s mother was born in Bunwell. Her father worked for the Post Office and this is where Percy would later pursue his career.
Their first child was born on the 16th June 1913 and they named him Eric Reginald Percy. (Reginald, Percy’s brother, had emigrated to Canada the previous year.)
A second son, Clifford, was born towards the end of 1914 and these must have been very worrying times as the First World War, far from being over by Christmas, was intensifying.
Percy enlisted into the 1st Norfolk Regiment on the 28th February 1915 but was not called up until later that year (he and his wife attended the funeral of the former postman of Bunwell, Sergeant William Churchill, who had died that May from wounds received fighting in France).
Percy would have been given at least three to six months’ training before being sent overseas and when he finally set off for the Western Front towards the end of 1915, the couple had two very young children – and Florence was pregnant again. Her own parents lived in London but Percy’s aunt, Elizabeth Richards, was living nearby and there may well have been other relatives of her mother living in Bunwell. This must have been a familiar scenario across the country as over two and a half million men had volunteered by the end of that year.
Florence gave birth to a daughter on the 9th August 1916 and the name she was given makes reference to the war being fought in Europe – Vera Victoria Lorraine Smith.
Another local family, the descendants of (Gerard) Phil Chapman, had two photographs in their possession which had the name ‘Percy’ written in pencil on the back. They did not know the man’s identity, although they believed he would have been a friend of Phil’s from home. In fact, we have now established that the photographs both reproduced here do indeed feature a Smith – although it’s not Percy, but Charles his younger brother, who was in the RFA (very distinctive cap badge). Charles was the same age as Phil and they both lived on (or just off) the Turnpike in Bunwell. They would also have been at Bunwell School together and the families would have been well-known to each other.
Without a service record (60% of all First World War papers were destroyed in the Blitz during WWII), it is difficult to chart Percy’s wartime career. However, we know from the Regimental Medal Roll and Card that he finished the war as a corporal, which means that he would have been promoted twice as he enlisted as a private. Clearly, he was an efficient soldier, and his abilities were recognised by the Army. The other major clue as to what happened to Percy during this time is contained in the Silver War Badge index card for him.
The 1st Norfolks were part of the 5th Division and fought through the Third Battle of Ypres, which is now better known as Passchendaele. The British and Allied forces launched a massive offensive to break through German defences in the area around Ypres (Belgian province of Flanders), probably the most dangerous place to be on the Western Front as the Allies were on low-lying land overlooked by the enemy and surrounded on three sides.
The battle started on the 31st July 1917 after two weeks of massive bombardments as millions of shells were fired on enemy positions. However, the weather was atrocious due to continual rain and with the terrain turned to quagmire the Allies could not take advantage of their early success. The Germans regrouped and counter attacked. Trying to move troops, horses and heavy artillery across this treacherous landscape, already battered by three years of warfare, proved nigh on impossible in certain heavily congested areas. There are many familiar photographs that capture hellish scenes before, during and after battles.
So, to focus on what happened to Percy, our edited transcription of the War Diaries of the 1st Norfolk Regiment paints a picture of what he experienced in the days that lead up to his evacuation from the battlefield.
War Diary 1st Battalion Norfolk Regiment 5th Division 1917
1st Oct
Battalion on six hours’ notice to move up to the firing line. Weather fair. Billets fairly good.
2nd Oct
Marched to WESTOUTRE to camp for the night. Weather bad.
3rd Oct
Marched to BEDFORD HOUSE via WESTOUTRE. Roads very bad and congested with traffic. Battalion arrived at RIDGEWOOD and moved up to the line in the afternoon. Battalion marched off from RIDGEWOOD at 5pm to BEDFORD HOUSE. Some shelling at WINDY CORNER by heavy guns but not near enough to be dangerous although quite unpleasant. Weather good. Roads and tracks fair.
4th Oct
Received order to move up to TOR TOP at midnight. Battalion turned out very quietly and the regiment reached TOR TOP at about 2am. Quiet journey up, practically no shelling.
5th Oct
Shelling. Battalion in very old and knocked about trenches at TOR TOP, practically no shelter. Enemy commenced shelling at about 3am and kept up a fairly good barrage for about three hours. Extraordinarily few casualties. The CO (commanding officer) was slightly wounded in the foot and went down in the morning. Our OR (other ranks) was (sic) wonderful, which was very lucky as the shelling was very heavy. Weather wet and cold. At night battalion moved up to the line in relief of 2nd King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Some shelling on the way up, but we had no casualties. Battalion in the line in front of POLDERHOEK CHATEAU. 1st Cheshires on the left, 1st Bedfords on the right, 16th Royal Warwickshires in reserve. We had two companies in front line in support. Shelling heavy and we had several casualties.
6th Oct
Battalion in the line and very bad weather, raining practically all day. Shelling heavy at times and we had several casualties. The men suffered terribly from cold and wet as our cooks had been dumped before coming up to the line.
7th Oct
Battalion was relieved at night by 16th Royal Warwickshires and withdrew to support in front of INVERNESS COPSE. Several casualties during relief. We should have been much better if we had stayed in the front line, as we had to move up again the next night.
There is also an eye-witness account recorded after the war by Private Charles Carrington of the Royal Warwickshires who clearly expresses the mental as well as physical torment of Passchendaele.
“We settled down on our objective in a group of shell holes and there we sat for three days.
On the second day, it began to rain and rained continuously so that the bog of Passchendaele spread out into a lake. To begin with, we were sitting up to our knees in mud and water, very short of sleep and having just been through this very severe mental strain of the battle itself.
After this there was no further fighting. The Germans did not in fact counter attack us at that point, however they shelled us very scientifically. And on the second and third days we just sat in the mud being very heavily and very systematically shelled with pretty heavy stuff.”
Percy was reported wounded on the 5th October and sent back to Britain where he was diagnosed with Shell Shock. We have not yet found any record of which hospital he was sent to – or what treatment he was given – but he was discharged as unfit for future service on the 18th March 1918. He returned to his family in Carleton Rode and was awarded a disability pension for himself and his wife and children. We do not know how Percy’s wartime experiences affected him in the longer term – but it took two years after his discharge before he was able to find work again.
In March 1920, Percy was appointed postman for Attleborough and he probably cycled there daily from his home on the top of Wymondham Road in Bunwell (although technically in the parish of Carleton Rode) where he was living with Florence and their three children. Sadly, their second son, Clifford, died early in 1921, aged just six.
Percy then became a postman in Thetford in the summer of 1921. Perhaps this was a promotion as it was only a short train ride from Attleborough – and by this time Percy’s wife was pregnant again.
Florence gave birth to a daughter, Joan Doris Rich Smith, on the 6th December that year. However, all was not well, and Florence died in the Norfolk and Norwich hospital in early January 1922. At that time septicaemia (the cause of death) was not an uncommon complication following childbirth as it was well before the development of antibiotics – and, of course, it mirrored what had happened to Percy’s mother some twenty years before.
Such a time of terrible loss for Percy and his children, compounded also by the trauma of living through the First World War – and working out how to make a living and bring up three young children.
In September 1922, Percy placed the following advert in the EDP:
What has happened to six-year-old Vera and nine-month-old Joan? Perhaps they were taken in by relatives leaving Percy to cope with Eric?
Whatever the outcome of the advert, Percy married 27-year-old Emma Aldous from Old Buckenham at the beginning of 1923. The Smiths continued to live in the Wymondham Road house and Percy remained a postman for Thetford.
The next few years see reports of Percy and Emma taking part in village events; fetes to raise money to build a village hall (with Percy manning the Shooting Range …) and Emma was active in the Bunwell Women’s Institute which at the time had over 100 members.
Courtesy Tracee Dow FamilySearch
Percy’s father, Jonah, moved around 1920 to live with his daughter in East Dereham and died there on the 31st January in 1925.
By the late 1920s, Percy had become Bunwell’s local postman and he remained there until ill health forced his early retirement in 1936.
Percy died on the 3rd September 1938 aged just 51 and was buried in Bunwell Churchyard. The funeral report published in the EDP and reproduced below gives more details of the mourners who attended, including all of his surviving children, brother Charles, and many ‘old soldiers’.