This story, we thought, would be a relatively straightforward “war grave” story to post in time for Remembrance Sunday 2024. Instead, the background work on John William threw up a horrible sad story of its own; that of a soldier who was found guilty of one of the worst crimes and who was able to move on with his life with relative ease due to the times he lived in. But then, one of the stories at this grave is also that of his soldier grandson – a young man who made the ultimate sacrifice, an entirely different sort of character. Was the first soldier’s victim able to move on? Did he offend again? What would his son, daughter in law and grandson have thought of him, if they knew? The contrast couldn’t be more extreme. We’ll talk about this part of the story at the end of this post so you can skip it if you need to.
The story starts with John William Smallwood. He was born in December 1859 or 1860 – records vary – the middle child of five of John Augustus and Mary Ann (Indermaur) Smallwood of Birmingham. Mary Ann was a London lass whose father was a cabinetmaker of presumably Germanic origins, although he was also London-born. John Augustus was himself born in Birmingham and the son of a surgeon. A good family in other words. But John William and his five siblings were illegitimate and quite likely never even knew it. Because John Augustus had married bigamously in 1852 to Mary Ann and started his family over. On their marriage certificate he declared himself a bachelor. The family moved around but settled in Soyland where John William was born. John Augustus died in 1869 and was buried at King Cross in Halifax.
John William likely knew nothing of this and as his father died when he was nine, and his half siblings long gone to York, may well have never even known that his father had been married before. The Smallwoods can’t be traced in 1871 but in 1881 he was working as a painter in Skircoat and with his siblings helping to support his mother. In 1886 he married Maria Whiteley who was a woollen weaver whose family hailed from the Ripponden-Warley-Sowerby Bridge area. Maria and her family seem to have had far less trouble than John William’s did and the couple would have 30 years together of what looks on the surface to have been a very happy marriage. John William’s business did well and the family found themselves in Todmorden by 1891 where they would settle on York Street. The house or shop number would change from time to time but they had found their home.
John William found himself painting Walsden Board School, the new Workhouse at Beggarington, Waterside Mill, the Market Hall, the fire station…if it needed painting he painted it. He would have been one of Anthony Bowden’s main competitors and he seems to have held his own pretty well. He even repainted part of Christ Church when it was being renovated in 1904 and the area he was responsible for was the only area finished on time – a conscientious tradesman! Unfortunately his business was turned upside down in 1906 when an employee suffered a terrible fall while on the job and sued him, causing him to have to file for bankruptcy. The irony of the journeyman painter falling while working on Christ Church is not lost on us. His business recovered though as he was a popular contractor and a member of Prudence Lodge and the total amount of damages owed to Findlow, the injured painter, weren’t too overwhelming.
Time passed for the Smallwoods and by 1911 the family of seven had moved up the road to 24 Halifax Road. Eldest son Frank Augustus (so John William DID perhaps have some fond memories of his father) was also a house painter, and at the other end of the range was Percy, still in school. John William and Maria had been lucky to have all five of their children survive. But WW1 arrived. Second-youngest son Whiteley had already enlisted in the army in 1913, service clearly being something that ran in the family, and Frank followed in December 1915. Maria was already unwell with gallstones and the stress of having two of her sons off fighting and her third rapidly approaching enlistment age would have exacerbated her condition. She became so unwell that she had to have an operation to have her gallbladder removed, and in February 1916 was admitted to the Gaskell Home in Rusholme to have it sorted out. Unfortunately she had what was likely a bad reaction to the anaesthetic used and suffered cardiac arrest and died.
The loss hit the family hard, and if bereavement leave was given to either son we have no record of it. Meanwhile, the war continued, and more and more men were having conditional or previously unconditional exemptions challenged. In the autumn of 1916 Percy’s exemptions expired. He had previously been allowed to stay home to help John William with the business, mainly the financial bookkeeping side, and with Maria’s death and the other two sons’s service and Frank’s ill-health while serving as reasons to keep him at home. Percy had been a bright child, winning awards for his performance while a student at Roomfield Board School, and would have definitely been a great help to John William while he struggled to run a business with his other sons and likely many of his subcontractors gone.
Percy duly went and joined the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, serving first with the 10th Brigade and later the 2nd. It was his time in the 2nd, on October 1st 1918, so painfully visibly close to the end of the war, that he became the only Smallwood son to become a casualty. His family in Todmorden weren’t officially notified until October 31st and his death notice appeared in the newspapers on November 1st. Ten days later it was all over.
John William was left £26 from Percy’s effects. As if any compensation would be enough! His health began to suffer, unsurprisingly as the two losses he had suffered in the space of two years would have impacted anyone. John William’s health continued to deteriorate and it must have been difficult for the family as son Frank had been infected with malaria and injured several times during his service, and while still working as a painter post-war wouldn’t have been as fit as before. By the time 1920 rolled around he was a tired bereaved man, although still trying to keep himself going. His body eventually gave up in July of that year and he joined the much-missed Maria in their vault next to the angel.
The newspaper remarked after his death on his “affable and genial disposition” and it’s some consolation to see that he wasn’t turned bitter by what had happened. And shortly before his death there was, at least, some closure. From his obituary in the Todmorden Advertiser on July 30th 1920:
“…a rather sad circumstance was that only last week official information was received that his [Percy’s] body had only just been discovered, and had been exhumed and reinterred in one of the recognised British Cemeteries in France.”
Rather sad, yes, but for John William we can be glad that he survived just long enough to know where his son’s body lay. Percy’s CWGC grave is at Bellicourt and his name is recorded here too, yet one more young man who was lost but not forgotten.
Now, though, we should circle back to John Augustus Smallwood, and what we referred to at the beginning of this post about the stark contrast between him and Percy. John Augustus’s first marriage came in 1838 to Sarah Darbyshire while he was stationed in York with the 7th Dragoons as a troop sergeant-major. Both were under the age of 21 and didn’t give their fathers’ names or occupations on their marriage certificate. The following year their daughter Julia was born and there would be two more children, Edwin and John Augustus Jr., before the couple parted in 1849. This is where it gets bad, so feel free to move on if you want to avoid brief discussion of a potential sexual assault.
The story is clear from the above. John Augustus and Sarah had parted ways due to an unspecified domestic issue, and when she returned south to collect her children the allegation was made. Was it a case of parental alienation? Did he really sexually assault (or try to sexually assault) his daughter? His defense argued the former, attempting to point out inconsistencies in Julia’s story and tiresomely recycling the twin themes we still hear today of “she didn’t object” and “he didn’t succeed so really there’s no crime here”…surely contradictory themes, but never mind. He was found guilty by the jury after half an hour’s deliberation – whatever the details of the evidence not printed were they must have been convincing and outweighed any doubts in the minds of the jurors – and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Sarah took her children and fled back to York and found lodgings with her brother Charles and made ends meet as a dressmaker. She would find love again but not remarry until 1875 despite having more children. Sarah as we’ve seen wasn’t the only one who started over, but she was the only one prevented from moving on with her life illegally due to living in the area she had once married. There might have been a way around it via lying, as her husband had, but perhaps she was rightfully wary of marrying again and losing her rights as a single woman. Being at the legal mercy of your husband was a dangerous thing if your husband wasn’t trustworthy.
Meanwhile the sum total of John Augustus’s punishment was his 18 months in prison and some sort of discharge from the army, although of what sort is unclear. He had lost his chance at a cornet’s commission which would have elevated him to officer status, but was still somehow able to work as an army drill sergeant. “Drill Sergeant” was certainly how he described himself at the baptism of many of his children, rather than as a merchant’s clerk, so the army meant much to him. Not enough for him to not apparently commit a horrible crime…though he might have simply never considered that he would be held accountable. His bigamous marriage that took place less than a year after he got out of prison indicates that maybe a lack of concern over consequences was a personality trait. But like many people who do bad things, he was also able to leave behind positive impressions in the minds of some; John William named his firstborn son partially after him, and it seems as though his service to the army was something that was valued by his children and grandchildren and thought of as something to emulate. The memory of someone you barely knew is a complex thing; what you know and what you don’t know can be completely at odds with each other. Despite what he did, he inspired others. It’s just sad that this inspiration was woven into a war that cost so many their lives.
This story is also a reminder, though, that we are ourselves and our own people and not defined wholly by our ancestors. We carry their names, we carry some of their DNA, but our lives really are our own.
And what of Julia? She stayed in York for the rest of her life and while it wasn’t a long one it seems to have been a fairly average one. Staying first with her uncle Charles Darbyshire, she would later find work as a laundress and lodged with her aunt Mary Ann and uncle Edward Thorp for a time, doubling as their domestic servant. She married twice, in 1861 and 1875, the second time to a man with the fantastic name of Hornby Peacock who had been married first to her stepsister Ann Bielby and then had lodged with Julia and her husband Francis Barker following the death of his second wife. She had three children and died in 1883, eighteen months after contracting phthsis. Thankfully for her, in spite of what happened, she was able to move on and have a life and family.