Remembering Worthing's fallen

Charles was born to parents Harold and Martha in Fulham, London, in 1867.
He served all his working life in the Royal Navy, took retirement and his pension, but continued working as a recruitment officer for the Royal Navy.
Charles married Lydia Elizabeth Rogers at Portsea in 1895 and they went on to have five surviving children, all born at Portsmouth.
In 1901 Lydia and two children were living with Lydia’s parents in Clive Road, Portsmouth.
The 1911 census shows Charles, Lydia and five children living at 19 Barttelot Road, Horsham.
Lydia’s widowed mother is also living with them.
Later they moved to ‘Langleigh’, Ripley Road, Worthing.
In August 1914 Charles was recalled to the Navy and served in the Mercantile Fleet Auxiliary.
In the winter of 1916, while serving as a chief torpedo coxswain, he was taken ill on board his ship off the Shetland Islands.
He returned home to Ripley Road, Worthing, but died on December 15, aged 49.
His death was recorded as due to exposure.
Charles is buried in Broadwater Cemetery and remembered on Heene Parish Church war memorial.
Lydia died in 1924 and was buried with her late husband in Broadwater Cemetery.
Her name is recorded on his CWGC headstone.

Ernest Madgwick, known sometimes as Pete, was born in Portslade in 1885.
He was the youngest child of seven born to Paul and Ellen Madgwick.
In 1891, when Ernest was five, his father was working as a stoker at the local gas works and the family home was at 4 Gardeners Terrace, Portslade.
Ten years later they had moved to 4 Cobden Road, Worthing, and Ernest was working as a baker boy.
On July 14, 1907, Ernest married Olive Barnett at West Tarring Church, and the couple made their home at 2a Selbourne Road, Littlehampton.
Ernest was working as a house painter and they later moved to 34 Western Road, Littlehampton.
Ernest enlisted at Littlehampton with The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) 3rd Battalion.
The battalion was formed at Canterbury in September 1914 and served throughout the First World War in England.
In 1916 Ernest fell seriously ill and was taken to Shorncliffe Military Hospital, two miles west of Folkestone in Kent.
After 13 weeks he died there on December 15.
His body was brought home and he was buried in Littlehampton Cemetery.
He is remembered on the Littlehampton war memorial and on the memorial at West Tarring Church.

Francis Pye was born in Charlton, Kent, in 1871 and was baptised on May 9, 1871, at the church of St Jude, Peckham.
He was one of six children of William Pye, a ship owner, and his wife Caroline, née Wright.
The family were living at 39 Victoria Road, Charlton, when William Pye died in 1884.
Francis joined the Royal Fusiliers as a young man.
In the 1901 census he was at home with the family at 70 Croydon Road, Penge, Kent ,where he was a Lieutenant aged 29.
During the First World War his Battalion was attached to the Gold Coast Regiment, part of the Royal West African Frontier Force.
They were a valuable reinforcement to the British Empire Forces, operating against German colonial troops in East Africa.
Francis, now a Captain, was injured while serving in Africa.
He was taken to the no. 3, East African Stationary Hospital where he died on December 15, 1916, aged 44.
He is buried in the war cemetery at Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
Francis was described as the husband of Rosa Jane Pye, of Sheen Cottage, 22 Heene Road, Worthing (demolished), but they were never married.
Rosa Jane, née Wilson, had been married to Harry Agar.
In his will, Francis left £1,111 18s 3d to Rosa Jane Agar, spinster.
She died in Brighton in 1916 under the name of Pye.

Charles Beuttler was born in 1889 at Bedford, the youngest son of Thomas Breame Beuttler and his wife Maud, née Brereton, in a family of three sons and two daughters.
Thomas Beuttler, who was born in India, was the superintendent of the London County Council Industrial School at Feltham.
Charles was educated at a boarding school at Eaton Place, Brighton.
His parents retired to Worthing where they lived first at ‘Roydene’, St Michael’s Road, and later at ‘Brereton’, Highdown Avenue.
The family regularly attended St Andrew’s Church, West Tarring.
Charles enlisted on April 18, 1911, with the Mounted Rifles.
During the First World War he served with the Royal Field Artillery, attaining the rank of Second Lieutenant.
He was mobilised to France on March 14, 1916.
In December 1916 he was wounded by the bursting of a shell and died in Bethune Hospital on Christmas Eve.
He is buried in Bethune Town Cemetery.
His father died in 1922 and is buried in Heene Cemetery, Worthing.
The inscription on his headstone includes a remembrance of his youngest son.
Charles is also remembered on the war memorial at West Tarring Church.
Probate was granted to his widowed mother on February 22, 1927, with effects of £74 0s 7d.

Walter Pollard was born in Worthing in 1891, the son of Walter Henry Pollard, a watchmaker, and his wife Maria, née Feldwicke.
The family home was at 31 West Buildings, Worthing, where Walter senior had his business which continued there until at least the late 1920s.
At the age of 23 Walter decided to emigrate to New Zealand.
He left from the Port of London on October 30, 1914, on the SS Somerset, bound for Auckland.
On arrival in New Zealand Walter found work as a house porter but before long he had enlisted with the New Zealand Rifle Brigade.
On May 27, 1916, he left Wellington with his battalion for Devonport, England.
From there he went to France where he died of wounds received in action on December 30, 1916.
Walter is buried in the Estaires Communal Cemetery Extension.
Back in Worthing he is commemorated on the war memorial at the Catholic church of Our Lady of the Angels on the corner of Crescent Road and Richmond Road.
He is also remembered on the grave of his parents in Durrington Cemetery.

William’s parents were John James Collins, born in Brighton in 1850, and Alice, née Standing, born in Edburton, Sussex, in 1859.
The couple married in Edburton in the winter of 1877.
John James was an agricultural labourer by trade and the couple had six children, William being the youngest.
The family lived in Patcham, near Brighton, where William was born in 1888.
He was baptised in Patcham Church on May 5, 1888.
When William was just a couple of months old, his father died leaving Alice a widow at the age of 29.
Alice had six young children to bring up on her own, the eldest, Mary Jane, being just nine years old.
Soon, Alice had moved her family to 12 Gordon Cottages, (now 135 Broadwater Street East), Broadwater, and the 1901 census shows Alice as a housekeeper still raising her children alone; while William was a scholar.
By 1911, William, now aged 22, was working as a nursery gardener and living at home with his mother and three of his siblings.
William enlisted in Worthing but succumbed to pneumonia while fighting in France in 1917.
He is buried in Gezaincourt Communal Cemetery extension and is remembered on St Mary’s Parish Church war memorial in Broadwater.
Alice placed an obituary in the Worthing Gazette dated February 7, 1917.
It read: “Collins: On January 27th at the Casualty Clearing Station, France, from pneumonia. Private WJ Collins, the youngest and dearly loved son of Mrs A Collins, Broadwater, Worthing. Age 29 years. Deeply mourned. At rest with Christ, which is far better.”

Arthur Herbert Hart (known as Bert or Herbert) was one of ten children born to Thomas William and Mary Jane Hart.
Born in 1898, he was one of three sons and had two elder and five younger sisters.
Thomas was a jobbing gardener by trade and had moved his family from Essex to Kent and finally to Worthing just before Bert was born.
Thomas was born in Cambridgeshire, and Mary Jane (née Lake) in Essex.
The family lived at 30 Wenban Road, Worthing, and Bert was a pupil at St George’s School, Lyndhurst Road.
Bert enlisted in Worthing and, at the age of 19, he was killed by a German sniper.
He was buried at Vermelles British Cemetery and is remembered on the grave of his elder sister, Margaret Ann Hayler (Maggie Hart), who was buried in Broadwater Cemetery in November 1918.
Part of the inscription on their headstone reads: “God takes our loved ones from our home but never from our hearts.”