William Albert Wheatland (1877-1964) and Elizabeth Marlow (1887-1973).
My great-grandparents.
William Albert Wheatland’s birth date is uncertain. It’s may’s likely to be 13 April 1878, as recorded in the 1939 Register and a school register, or 5 June 1877 – as noted in his Royal Navy record. Perhaps he falsified the latter to make him appear older than he was. He was baptised on 9 June 1878 at St Peter’s Church in South Croydon, Surrey, to parents John Wheatland and Mary Coughlan. The family lived in Selsdon Road, according to the 1881 census.
He went to Brighton Road Boys’ School in South Croydon, noted on an 1888 school register.
William continued a long tradition of military service in the Wheatland family by serving in the Royal Navy from 1893, his career taking him to the Mediterranean and China, as well as to home seas and bases. The papers record that he was just under 5ft 2ins tall at the time he signed up, had dark hair, brown eyes and tattoos of women on both his arms, and had been working as an errand boy. By the time he signed up for another period of service in 1907, he’d grown to a still modest 5ft 6ins.
William started his service at a number of shore and harbour-based training establishments, including HMS Impregnable in Devonport, Devon, HMS Boscawen and HMS Pembroke. He served at a number of shore bases and on a number of vessels afterwards, some of them training ships, including the Ruby, Hood, Cruiser and Medusa. He joined as the plainly rated ‘Boy’, moving to Boy 1st Class, Ordinary Seaman and finally Able Seaman. He was sub-rated as a seaman gunner. Like most sailors, William was assigned to many ships during his service and was often on board for just a matter of months. From 1898 he was serving on the new HMS Furious in the Channel Squadron and took part in Atlantic manoeuvres on HMS Repulse.
The 1901 census listed him as an Able Seaman on board HMS Pioneer, a 3rd class cruiser under the command of Hugh Evan-Thomas. The ship served in the Mediterranean station and on the night of the census was moored in Malta. Later he served on HMS Ocean in the Channel Fleet. The 1911 census listed William and his shipmates moored off of Margate in Kent, on board the 2nd class cruiser Juno. Captained by Edwin Underhill, the ship formed part of the 3rd Division Home Fleet. From 1912 to April 1914 he served on HMS Yarmouth, which was part of the Mediterranean Fleet but then moved to the China Station, via the Suez Canal.
At the outbreak of The Great War he was on board HMS Victorious, a Majestic-class battleship, that formed part of the short-lived 9th Battle Squadron. But early in 1915 she was withdrawn from front-line service and William moved on briefly to HMS St George, a 1st Class Protected Cruiser on the Humber Patrol. For much of the war he was based at the Auxilliary Patrol base in Immingham on the east coast known as Wallington. Despite the carnage on land, the Royal Navy had a reasonably quiet war, its sheer size and power intimidating the German High Seas Fleet to the point that it rarely attempted to challenge its might. Most of the British navy’s strength was deployed at home in the Grand Fleet, blockading Germany or fighting off the threat to merchant shipping posed by U-boats.
In the last year of war and into the summer of 1919 he served on HMS Lowestoft, a Town Class light cruiser that was flagship of the 8th Light Cruiser Squadron Mediterranean. He left the Royal Navy in June 1919 and for his service in the First World War received the 1914-15 Star, the Victory Medal and British War Medal. Throughout his naval career there were sporadic references to him serving several days in the cells but by and large his character was rated as good or very good in the annual assessments, latterly the ‘very good’ rating marked as superior.
He may have gone on to serve in the Merchant Navy as a record from this set at the National Archives shows him, along with a photo (pictured right), but I’ve found no other records to flesh out this part of his story.
At some point during his service he met Ellen Coughlan, born in Croydon in 1883, who’d spent much of her young life working as a servant. They married on 14 September 1915 at St Peter’s Church in Croydon but their life together was tragically short for she died a year later. In 1922 he married again, his bride being widow Elizabeth Marlow. She was born on 29 October 1887 to parents Reuben Thomas Marlow and Annie Ayling and was baptised as Lizzie on 4 December that year at All Saints Church in South Acton, Middlesex. The family was living at Back Street, Acton, at the time, Reuben working as a general and bricklayer’s labourer. Annie, Elizabeth’s mother, died in 1895 and Reuben remarried the following year.
By the 1911 census Elizabeth was working as a servant for the Bennetts, who were sub-postmasters and stationers at Bank Buildings in Purley, Surrey. Shortly after the census she married Sidney Arthur Bryant, who was born in 1885 in Croydon, Surrey, and was the son of retired policeman John Bryant and his wife Mary Ann. Sidney and Lizzie had three children and Sidney Snr worked for the Post Office, eventually becoming a postman, but he joined the British Expeditionary Force with the 1st Battalion of the Royal West Surrey Regiment at the outbreak of the First World War. He was killed in action during a German advance in the First Battle of Ypres on 14 October 1914 and was buried at Oosttaverne Wood Cemetery, Heuvelland in West Flanders, Belgium. The Commonwealth War Graves record notes that Sidney had served in the South African Campaign – the Boer War – and a medal record exists for him. He would’ve been just a teenager during the action in South Africa, although it appears he signed up in the latter stages of the conflict.
Elizabeth was left a widow to bring up her children but she suffered further tragedy in 1917 when her youngest, Sidney Jnr, died after his clothes caught fire in his bedroom.
The 1939 Register listed William as a labourer on the roads at 5 Haling Road, South Croydon, the family home for decades. There too was Elizabeth, two children and a lodger called Michael Regan, who was also a road labourer. The year before his death William was recorded there in the electoral roll with Elizabeth and his step-daughter Doris, while his son Norman and his wife were registered to vote at 6 Haling Road. William died in 1964, Elizabeth in 1973.
Elizabeth’s children with Sidney Bryant:
- Doris Margaret Bryant (1911-1985), my grand aunt. Doris was born on 12 December 1911 and baptised on 20 December 1912 at Emmanuel Church, South Croydon, when the family was living at 200 Selsdon Road. She would have few if any memories of her father, who died at war when she was approaching her third birthday. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Doris ended up spending much of her life as a patient at Warlingham Park Mental Hospital a few miles from Croydon in Surrey. I remember her as a quiet, somewhat nervous woman during visits to her and her mum at Haling Road, Croydon, when she was able to spend some time away from the hospital. It’s highly likely that in this day and age she wouldn’t have been confined to an institution for so much of her life…
- Harry Arthur Bryant (1913-1972), my grand uncle. Harry was born on 8 April 1913 and baptised on 15 June at Emmanuel Church, South Croydon, when the family was living at Drovers Road. He married Winifred Sayer in Croydon in 1938 and a year later was noted as working in telecommunications for the Post Office. He died in 1972.
- Sidney Victor Bryant (1914-1917), my grand uncle. Born after his father’s death, he died a terrible death as a toddler. The Croydon Times of 3 February 1917 reported how he died a week earlier at home in Haling Road after his nightdress caught fire. His mother Elizabeth told an inquest that she had left him in bed with his siblings while she went downstairs to light a fire, but while doing so heard a scream. When she went upstairs, young Sidney’s clothes were on fire – caused by an unguarded gas fire in the bedroom. She took him to hospital on a tram but he died in hospital the next day from extensive burns to his chest, abdomen, legs and right hand. Doctors said he died from shock.
William and Elizabeth’s two children were:
- Olive Mary Wheatland (1922-2008), my grandmother.
- Norman William Wheatland (1924-1987), my great uncle. He married Monica King, suffered the loss of his son Michael in a tractor accident when he was aged just 16, and set up a company that supplied and erected large tents and marquees for events. He became a Freeman of the City of London.
Sources: Family memories. BMDs, Census and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk, Familysearch.org. Royal Navy records at the National Archives, catalogue reference:ADM/188/274.