Foster Wheatland (1897-1983) and Winifred Mary Power (1897-1965).
My great-grand uncle and aunt.
Foster was born on 17 April 1897 to parents John Wheatland and Mary Coughlan and baptised on 13 June at St Peter’s Church in Croydon, Surrey.
His parents then moved to Sisland in Norfolk, where the family was listed in the 1901 Census. Foster was admitted to a school in nearby Loddon in May of 1900. By the 1911 Census the family were back in Croydon, at 6 Haling Road, and a report of a concert in the Croydon Chronicle and East Surrey Advertiser of 13 May 1911 showed that Foster went to Dering Place Council School.
Like his brothers, he served in the Royal Navy, joining up in 1912 as a Boy 2nd Class, and then signing for a 12-year engagement in 1915, after the start of the First World War. He was described as just over 5ft 2ins tall with blue eyes and brown hair. He served as a signalman and then a leading signalman, responsible for communications between vessels, on such ships as the cruiser HMS Antrim. Part of the Grand Fleet, the Antrim spent some time on the Northern Patrol, helping to enforce the blockade of Germany and hunt down German ships in the northern North Sea and Atlantic. While Foster served with her in 1916, the ship was sent sent to Arkhangelsk in northern Russia, a key port of the Russian Navy, and it then carried out convoy escort duties in the Atlantic.
After the Antrim, Foster served on the sloop HMS Iris and the depot ship HMS Blake, assigned to the 11th Destroyer Flotilla of the Grand Fleet. After the war he was on other depot ships such as the Hecla and Dido, which were designed to provide maintenance and other support to destroyers, but he left the navy in 1920.
He became a porter with the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway based at Mitcham Junction station on 26 February that year, earning a princely 18s per week. He married Winifred Mary Power in Croydon in 1924. She was a native of Carshalton in Surrey and had been born in 1897 to park keeper John Power and his wife Ellen. In the mid-1920s, Foster worked for a time as a milkman with United Dairies in Croydon but in 1928 he was charged with embezzling over £16 from his employers and appeared before the town magistrates (Croydon Times 18 April 1928). The matter only came to light because he’d suffered an accident and a substitute had covered his round. Foster told the court that he’d offered to pay back the money and that he’d even helped customers who couldn’t pay their bills, and had had to borrow to cover those sums. He also said there had been much illness at home. The police said that Foster had previously helped them arrest two housebreakers and had served in the Navy, where his character had been described as very good. He was put on probation for six months and told to pay back the money, the magistrates telling him that the good reference from the police had saved him from a prison sentence.
Various electoral roll records in the 1930s showed Foster and Winifred living in Carshalton. By 1939 they were living in Chilmead Cottages in Nutfield, Surrey, and Foster was working as a plasterer. During the war he changed his job again and began working for the postal service, serving for a time as a postman in Redhill and Reigate, Surrey. They then went to live in Godstone, Surrey. Winifred died in 1965 and Foster in 1983. The couple had at least one child:
- Leslie Foster Wheatland (1925-2007). Leslie was born in 1925 and served with the Royal Navy in the Second World War. The Croydon Times of 24 March 1945, in a report on the Wheatland family’s war service, noted that he was serving abroad with HMS Royalist at the time. Leslie married Beatrice Rose Harman in 1967. She died in 1987. Leslie, who was regularly listed in electoral rolls as living in Godstone, Surrey, died on 5 August 2007. The probate record noted that he was a retired welder.
Sources: Birth, marriage, death and burial records including civil registrations from the General Register Office, census returns, military and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and familysearch.org.
British Newspaper Archive (titles in text).
Naval records at National Archives (series ADM 188).
The London Gazette 20 Mar 1942 (F Wheatland postal appointment).