1st Battalion Grenadier Guards Archives

A month ago, during the run-up to Remembrance Sunday, I retold the story of the December 1914 funeral of Boer War hero, Private William Gibson of the First Grenadier Regiment of the Foot Guards – Great Dunmow’s first military funeral.

Not long after my post, I was looking through an on-line catalogue of an auction-house, and saw that a set of cards from Great Dunmow were coming up for auction. The image of the cards in the auction-house’s catalogue was extremely poor and none of the cards were clearly visible. But, they were too irresistible for me – I just had to bid on them! So I bid on them blind and, because there are many collectors of postcards from Great Dunmow, won them at great cost. Imagine my shock and surprise when they arrived in the post and I saw that one of the cards was of Great Dunmow’s Military Funeral but not the postcard I already had.

Arthur Willett, photographer of Great Dunmow, had taken at least two photographs of Private Gibson’s Military Funeral. This second card shows the funeral cortège with Gibson’s Union Jack covered coffin very clear in the photograph. Behind the carriage with the coffin, there is a group of people walking – including a hatted woman and some children. Is this Sarah Gibson, William’s wife, and their children? Behind this group, there is a large gun-carriage. Through the lens of Great Dunmow’s photographer, a tiny piece of First World War social history has been captured for posterity.

If anyone has anymore postcards of Great Dunmow’s military funeral, please do let me know – I would love to publish them on my blog. My recent auction purchase has given me some more great social-history postcards of this small East Anglian town through the lens of Arthur Willett – I’ll be publishing them on my blog over the next few months.

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– War and Remembrance: Great Dunmow’s Emergency Committee
– War and Remembrance: Great Dunmow’s Military Funeral 1914
– Postcard home from the front – The Camera never lies
– Postcards from the Front – from your loving son
– Memorial Tablet – I died in hell
– Memorial Tablet – I died of starvation
– Memorial Tablet – I died of wounds
– The Willett family of Great Dunmow
– Postcard from the Front – To my dear wife and sonny
– War and Remembrance – The Making of a War Memorial
– Great Dunmow’s Roll of Honour
– For the Fallan
– Aftermath

A year ago, I told the story of the Willett family of Great Dunmow, and how local photographer and newsagent, Arthur Willett, often took photographs of the town’s happenings, including the photo below, which he captioned as “Military Funeral 1/12/14”

At the time of my post, I puzzled over whose funeral it was, as it appeared to be a funeral of a soldier from the First World War, but the date of the funeral did not match any man on the Commonwealth War Graves’ Debt of Honour for 1914. An eagle-eyed reader of my blog spotted the answer in a book written by Great Dunmow’s local historian from the 1970s, Dorothy Dowsett. In her book Through all the changing seasons, hidden amongst Miss Dowsett’s considerable writings about the town and its inhabitants, is the answer to my conundrum.

The Military Funeral shown in the postcard was not that of a First World War casualty, but the funeral of a war veteran from the Second Boer War (1899-1902), Private William Gibson of the First Grenadier Regiment of the Foot Guards.

Private William Gibson, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, was the first soldier to be give a funeral with military honours in the town. He died at the age of forty-six in 1914, and was buried at the parish church. During his service he gained the Khartoum Medal, the South African Medal (1901), the Transvaal/Cape Colony Medal and the Sudan Medal. William Gibson served in the London expedition of 1898 under Major-General Lord Kitchener.

Dorothy Dowsett, Through all the changing seasons, p171

Harry Payne’s postcard of the Grenadier Guards

1911 Census – Star Lane, Great Dunmow
William Gibson, Head, Married, aged 39, born 1872 Essex Stebbing, occupation Gas Stoker.
Sarah Gibson, Wife, Married, aged 42, born 1869 Essex Dunmow.
Charles Chevallier, Stepson, Single, aged 15, born 1896 Essex Dunmow
Ivy Chevallier, Stepdaughter, aged 11, born 1900 London Lambeth.

Sarah Gibson (nee Sarah Mead, b1871-d1955) married William Gibson in 1910. Prior to her marriage, she had been married to a man with the wonderful name of Temple Edgecombe Chevaillier, who according to this website about the Mead family of Great Dunmow, either divorced or abandoned her by 1899/1901. If you are interested in seeing a picture of Sarah Gibson, wife of the Boer War hero, the first man to be given a military funeral with full honours in the Essex town of Great Dunmow, do take a look at the Mead family website.

Star Lane, Great Dunmow. Home of William and Sarah Gibson. If you know Great Dunmow, you will know that the lane is very much the same as it was in the early 1900s. The houses on the left are still there, but the tree has long since been cut down.

Follow-up December 2013: Shortly after publishing this post, I bought at auction a series of postcards of Great Dunmow. Amongst the postcards was another (different) photo of the 1914 Military Funeral. My post Great Dunmow’s 1914 Military Funeral – A follow-up tells the story.

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Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in
– War and Remembrance: Great Dunmow’s Emergency Committee
– Postcard home from the front – The Camera never lies
– Postcards from the Front – from your loving son
– Memorial Tablet – I died in hell
– Memorial Tablet – I died of starvation
– Memorial Tablet – I died of wounds
– The Willett family of Great Dunmow
– Postcard from the Front – To my dear wife and sonny
– War and Remembrance – The Making of a War Memorial
– Great Dunmow’s Roll of Honour
– For the Fallan
– Aftermath

Tag Archive 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards

Great Dunmow’s 1914 Military Funeral: A follow-up

War and Remembrance: Military Funeral 1914