The Great War: A–M · Story 9
Sons of John and Edith Bates
Bates was a common surname in the Ringstead area in the Nineteenth Century. They were not all related, however, and one John Bates came into the village as a Baptist Minister.
It was a Church of England Bates family who we are looking at first. Gabriel Bates married Hannah Mitchell on 24th March 1829 in Ringstead Parish Church. He became a shepherd, just over the border, at Keyston in Bedfordshire and the couple had a son, born there in 1841, who they also named Gabriel. He did not follow his father but became a shoemaker and, on 3rd July 1863, he married Hannah Ball in Denford Church.
It is this couple’s son, John, born in 1871 who was the father of our two Great War soldiers. John married Edith Jackson in Woodford on 26th December 1892. Two of their children, James (or more usually, Jim) born on 9th November 1895 and William Baden Powell Bates, born on 10th (or 12th in some military records) May 1900, we will be looking at here.
James (Jim) Bates (1895-1952)
We start with something of a mystery. In the 1911 Census for Ringstead, the father, John Henry Bates, aged 39, was with his two sons, James aged 15 and already a worker in a local factory shoe room and William Baden Bates (10) still at school. John was shown as having been married for eighteen years and having had five children, four of whom were still living. This information is normally put in the wife’s section but Edith and two of the children are not there. John is not shown as widowed but I have not found Edith in 1911 or later. There may be some simple explanation for this, such as a clerical or transcription error.
There are some newspaper reports of John Bates being involved in fights. Was he a violent man? On the other hand, maybe it was the dogs that drove her away! On 27th November 1908 the Northampton Mercury had reported:
John Bates, shoe operative, Ringstead, was summoned for keeping a greater number of dogs above the age of six months than licensed to keep, at Ringstead on November 12th. – Defendant pleaded not guilty and the Bench dismissed the case.
Jim Bates, aged 19 years 4 days, volunteered for war service and joined the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment and was posted for duty on 31st March 1915 at Northampton. He was a shoehand when he enlisted. He was 5ft 6¾ inches tall, weighed 112 lbs (8 stone or about 50.8 kilos) with a 34½ inch chest and excellent eyesight (6/6). He was given the Regimental Number 17727. It seems that his only misconduct was when he was warned that he was due to go on active service. He was stationed in Kent and overstayed his leave by 2 days 23 hours 55 minutes on 25th June 1915.
He embarked for France on 21st July 1915 and after a brief time in one of the base camps joined the 5th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment on 23rd July 1915. Jim was to remain in France until September 1917. The 5th Battalion took part in the Battle of Loos in 1915 and the Battles of Albert, Pozieres and Le Transloy in 1916. In 1917 they were at the First Battle of the Scarpe, the Battle of Arieux, the Third Battle of the Scarpe and the Cambrai Operations.
On 3rd July 1917 Jim went down with P.U.O.. This was an abbreviation of Pyrexia (Fever) of Unknown Origin and was usually known as Trench Fever. It accounted for about one third of all British soldiers seen by the doctors during the war. It was not considered a particularly serious but perhaps it was only in the trenches that it would be so described. The symptoms could include front headaches, dizziness, severe lumbago, a feeling of stiffness round the joints and severe pains in the legs, particularly the shins. Men felt weak and often were slow to recover. It was only towards the end of the war that it became clearer that it was a disease carried by body lice which lived in the soldiers’ clothing and fed on their blood. No effective cure was found during the war and, instead, preventative measures including strip inspections and fortnightly baths were instituted and clothes were disinfected. At the end of the war all soldiers were also disinfected to stop the disease spreading to the civilian population in Britain.
Jim was found to be suffering with the fever on 3rd July and over the next weeks he moved from the front line to Rouen and on to Calais. He returned to duty in the field on 31st August 1917 but once more went down with P.U.O. on 9th September and this time, after going to one of the hospitals in Rouen, on 31st September, he was taken on HMHS (His Majesty’s Hospital Ship) Aberdonian back to England.
While in England Jim married Ada Rose Fairey. The military records show that they then lived at 69 Harborough Road in Rushden which I think may have been Ada’s parents’ house. The Rushden Echo of 25th of January 1918 reported:
Bates – Fairey – The marriage was solemnized at the Park-road Baptist Church, Rushden on Monday [21st] by the Rev. R.C. Law of Miss Ada Rose Fairey, youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C.F. Fairey of Harborough-road Rushden, and Pte. Jim Bates, eldest son of Mr. J.H. Bates, of Church-street, Ringstead.
The bride, who was given away by Pte. Harry Newland, was charmingly gowned in crepe royal, trimmed with swansdown. She wore a bridal veil and wreath of orange blossom and carried a choice bouquet of lilies and chrysanthemums, the gift of the bridegroom . . . Mr W.B. P. Bates (brother of the bridegroom) carried out the duties of best man.
He returned to his base and embarked again for France from Folkestone on 4th February 1918. He landed at Boulogne and joined the L.I.B.D. [Light Infantry Base Depot] at Calais the next day. From there he went to the Corps Reform Camp which allocated men to the reformed battalions following the terrible losses in 1917. On 15th February 1918 he joined the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment in the field.
The 21st of March 1918 marked the start of the Germans Spring or Ludendorff Offensive which was a last desperate throw of the dice to win the war before the United States manpower could swing the balance in the Allies favour. On that first day in the early morning fog the German Stormtroopers and artillery attacked and the British lost 7,512 men dead and some 10,000 wounded. The 5th Army was in full retreat. In 1918: A Very British Victory, Peter Hart wrote of this time:
All along the British Front units were fragmenting: divisions were arbitrarily split up into brigades and rushed into action, brigades were losing track of whole battalions, the battalions were fragmenting into companies, the companies lost all cohesion and fell into their constituent platoons, the platoons became mere sections and soon all that was left were isolated groups of just a few men making their way across the battlefield as best they could.
The 7th Battalion History by Captain H.B. King tells of this time for Jim:
At the beginning of March, it became evident that the German offensive would soon commence and the 7th Northamptons were held in Corps Reserve at Hancourt . . . The battle stations allotted to the 7th Northamptons consisted of four so-called redoubts between the villages of Jeancourt and Vendelles . . .These positions situated on high ground were very exposed to artillery fire and being little more than scrapes in the ground about 3 feet deep, afforded no cover of any sort.
At about 4.30 a.m. on March 21st the noise of a heavy bombardment could be heard at Harcourt and it was evident that the offensive had opened. At 5.40 a.m. the battalion received orders to “stand to” and move up to their battle stations. [They were later forced to withdraw.]
The next days were ones of almost continual retreat and trying to stop it from becoming a rout. After concentrating at Harcourt (Hardecourt) the Battalion proceeded to Meraucourt (Mericourt) but were forced to withdraw again and the Northamptons had to hold, as the sole rearguard, the bridge across the Somme at Falvy, while the rest of the Division crossed. The line was forced back again to the village of Warvillers on 27th March.
It was probably in this desperate time, on the 27th March or the following day, that Jim Bates was badly hurt, possibly south of St Quentin. By 31st March the German surge was running out of steam, or more accurately, men, and the tide turned in the Allies favour.
The Casualty Form records that his wound was received on the 27th March but on the form, “Statement by a Soldier Concerning his Own Case”, Jim Bates stated:
I have a gunshot wound in my back, right leg and right arm received in action, March 28th 1918.
On the other hand, his Medical Report prior to discharge states that it was on 31st March 1918. The report also shows his movement through the hospital system:
He states that whilst in action he was wounded in the chest. He was removed to hospital at Rouen and transferred to St Mary’s Hospital [possibly St Mary's V.A.D. Hospital in a former church hall in Plaistow] and on 16th December 1918 to the 2nd London General Hospital [set up in St Mark’s College and adjoining school in Chelsea]. On 3rd January 1919 he was transferred to the Military Hospital, Endell Street.
The Endell Street Military Hospital in Covent Garden was opened in May 1915 by Suffragists Dr Flora Murray and Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson. It was the first unit to be entirely run and staffed by women. Most of these hospitals set up in church and community buildings were closed soon after the end of the war.
Jim’s only consolation would have been that he had survived and that his army days were over. On 17th January 1919 he was discharged, “being no longer physically fit for war service”. The report also stated:
His general condition is good. He has one healed scar over the right chest. Portions of the 6,7,8 ribs have been removed. There is collapse at the base of the right lung.
There is also the revealing question which is just ticked which reads:
18. In the case of loss of teeth. Is the loss of teeth the result of wounds, injury or disease directly attributable to active service or through service under such conditions that treatment was unobtainable?
He returned finally to Ada who would have seen his “Wounded” notice in the Northampton Mercury on Friday 12th April 1918.
Bates, Pte. J., Northants. Harborough Road, Rushden, dangerously wounded in the right arm.
He received the British and Victory Medals as well as the 1915 Star.
By 1936 we know from a minor court case that Jim was now a dairyman living in “Montrose”, Newtown Road, Rushden. By the 1939 Register of England and Wales he was still living in Montrose but was now doing heavy work in a boot factory as a yardman. It must have been hard going for a man with his disabilities.
At the end of the Second World War, on 2nd April 1945, Jim and Ada’s daughter, Muriel married William E. Foose, as her parents had, at Park Road Baptist Church in Rushden. We see that the Bates family was firmly Baptist now. William Foose was an American who had served in the United States 8th Air Force and had flown 25 missions over Europe. Perhaps he had been based at the nearby Chelveston Aerodrome.
The married couple emigrated to America in March 1946 and a year later, on March 9th 1947, Jim and Ada flew from Bovingdon, an RAF and Civil Aerodrome near Hemel Hempstead, to America, probably staying with William’s parents initially.
Jim died some five years later and was buried a hundred miles south-west of New York in Bridgeport, Perry County, Pennsylvania on 9th August 1952. We know that Ada travelled from America to England and back in 1954 on the Queen Elizabeth and her place of residence was, appropriately for a Northamptonshire woman, Tannersville in Pennsylvania. She died near her daughter at Quincy, Adams, Illinois in May 1981. There is also a memorial to Ada at Bridgeport. Through the Foose line Jim and Ada have many descendants spread across the United States.
William Baden Powell Bates (1900-1969)
On May 17th 1900 the town of Mafeking in South Africa was relieved by a small British force after a 217-day siege by the Boers. The hero of the stubborn resistance was Robert Baden Powell, whose idea to use boys in a quasi-military role, led, later to his setting up of the Boy Scout movement. There was great rejoicing all over the country. Just before the relief, on May 10th (or 12th in some sources), Edith Bates gave birth to a son. When, over a year later, on 17th September 1901, she and her husband John, had him christened, they decided to name him William Baden Powell Bates in honour of the Mafeking hero.
In 1911, William was ten years old, living with his father and older brother Jim (Edith seems to disappear from the records). When the war started in 1914 it seemed unlikely that William would be involved and it is possible that he did just miss the fighting. Unfortunately, most of his military records have been destroyed but there is one that may shed some light on his time as a soldier. His name has been transcribed as W.P.R Bates but it seems likely that this is a transcription error. The form details how William was discharged back to duty after two days in hospital for influenza, that terrible epidemic that killed so many in the immediate post-war period.
He was a Lance-Corporal in the 7th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment with Regimental Number 103221. He was nineteen years old and had been in service for one year three months so he would have been conscripted in early May 1918 when he had just turned eighteen. We know from the Ringstead Roll of Honour that William was in the 7th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment and was in the Army of Occupation. He was shown as a Private in that list but it would have been prepared before he received his promotion.
In 1918 the 7th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment had fought at the 2nd Battle of Arras, the Battle of the Hindenburg Line and the Final Advance in Picardy. At Armistice the infantry were in a rest period but the artillery were still in action. The Division received orders to join the British force to occupy the Rhine bridgeheads but these orders were cancelled on 21st November when they were in the area of Harveng undertaking road and railway repairs.
There is some disagreement about when the 7th demobilised but we do know that they were part of the Army of Occupation as part of the 122nd Infantry Brigade who in turn were part of the London Division. We also know from the hospital discharge form that he was attached to the 52nd Mobile Veterinary Section. Both this section and the 7th finished their tour of duty in October 1919 (In some accounts demobilisation was in May 1919).
Unfortunately, as I have been unable to find any other records - even the usual Medal Card, we cannot be sure that William ever fought in the war but he may have just been part of the army of occupation. This is one of those occasions where family knowledge is invaluable. One reason for believing that William probably only went to Germany in late 1918 or early 1919 is that in the last quarter of 1918 he married Winifred Bailey in the Thrapston District.
At some time after returning home William became a Lineman with the Rushden & District Electricity Supply Company. Certainly, we know that by 1933 this was his job through an article in the Northampton Mercury on 23rd June of that year. It tells of a serious accident that he suffered. [I transcribed this article from a British Newspaper Archive digitised original copy and some of the words are lost in the fold. I have put the guessed words in bold.]
Terrible burns were suffered by William Baden Powell Bates of Ringstead on Tuesday when he was engaged in electrical repair work in a kiosk at Islip which was struck by lightning on Tuesday evening.
Bates is a lineman employed by the Rushden and District Electricity Supply Company and he was with some men at the junction kiosk near the Woolpack Inn. Bates was in the kiosk when there was a blinding flash of lightning. He was seen hanging on to the cable through which a current of electricity [11,000volts] was passing.
Having cut off the current workmates pulled him free from the cable and it was found that he was alive but had been burned badly about the arms and face.
Two doctors were hastily called and after they had given him treatment Bates was taken to Northampton General Hospital in a critical state.
We know that William survived his ordeal and in 1937 was elected to Ringstead Parish Council. In the 1939 Register of England and Wales he was shown as a lorry driver. We see that William and Winifred probably had three children, John, Winifred and one record closed. William died on 6th December 1969 and Winifred followed him on the 4th July 1972.
