Ferdinand (Fred) with his wife and three of his 10 children
invasion campaign and his name is listed on the Helles Memorial.
Just a short time before on 23rd April, Jane had received a letter from the King’s Privy Purse keeper, FM Ponsoby to express His Majesty’s appreciation of the patriotic spirit which
prompted all six sons to give their service. He’d been gratified to hear how they’d all readily responded to the call of sovereign and country and congratulated her on contributing in such a brave measure.
After Ernest’s untimely death, Jane was unscrupulously evicted from her house in Sodom as she had heavily relied on his mining income of 20 shillings a week and so couldn’t afford the rent; the pension she received for him at five shillings was merely inadequate. News of Jane’s story soon got round
and a letter from a Barnsley MP was sent to Parliament insisting they change clause 21 of the pension scheme.
With her other five sons all married, their high wages were also used to support their widowed mother; yet their separation allowances from the army went to their wives and families. The
Lee brothers’ mother Ethel his only daughter. She’s 95 this year and is joined by her two remaining siblings, Kenneth, 92, and Gordon, 87.
The eighth child, George Henry, joined the 2/5th Reserve Territorial, York and Lancaster Regiment, but no records have been found of him by the Lee brothers. As a reservist, he may have never fought overseas, waiting at home to be called up. What is known from pre-war census is that George worked as a bottle packer at the glassworks, possibly Rylands’ Hope Glass Works which was in Stairfoot. After the war, he moved to Darton where he lived on Woolley Colliery Road.
All six of the brothers are named on the Roll of Honour at Stairfoot’s Wesleyan Chapel on Huningley Lane along with other men from Stairfoot who went to war.
The youngest child, Ernest, still lived at home with mum Jane before the war where he worked as a colliery labourer above ground. Unlike his brothers, Ernest joined the Royal Navy in the Collingwood volunteer battalion and was just 20 when he left for war. With a surplus of 30,000 naval volunteer reserves who didn’t find jobs on the ships, Churchill formed land brigades named after commanders, using the manpower to secure and defend the British ports.
Unlike the marine brigade, the volunteers were a lightly equipped infantry without medical, artillery or engineer units. After being sent to Gallipoli in Turkey, Ernest was killed in action on 4th June 1915 aged 21. He was one of 250,000 casualties at the failed Dardanelles
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In a sorrowful turn of events, Jane herself died in June 1917 age 64, over a year before the war had ended; she never got to see all of her five remaining sons return home to Barnsley.
It brings great sadness to see the coffins returned from overseas in recent years, each draped in the Union Jack with a sense of loss for their families waiting at the runway. Some in Barnsley lost their only sons, others lost as many as three during the Great War. So it is remarkable that Jane therefore only suffered the one devastating loss to her own family. Under the billowing cloud of the Blitz in WWII, the previous war records had been totally destroyed and so the Lee brothers have somewhat struggled to piece together the Watson story through memories of relatives and any remaining records.
All six of the brothers are named on the Roll of Honour at Stairfoot’s Wesleyan Chapel on Huningley Lane along with other men from Stairfoot who went to war.
Childhood memories are filled with war stories passed down through their mother from her father Fred, Ernest’s memorial plaque and war medals hanging on their living room wall.
Sharing memories and memorabilia together, Eric, Trevor and Maurice have researched their roots and found a shared interest in the lives that were. Eric is taking a trip to France this summer to take in the sights of where the overwhelming devastation was caused. With the six Watson brothers plus their three sisters, the Lee brothers are calling for distant relatives to also get in touch as they’d wish to locate many of the war medals which have been lost over time.
*A special thanks to Jane Ainsworth for helping with the preliminary research of the Watson family history.
Ferdinand’s war record
Ernest, Collingwood Battaltion, Royal Naval Brigade
MP argued that if Ernest hadn’t gone to war, Jane and her son would have still been living in their home.
After such patriotism from the family, he was ashamed of his country if this wasn’t the last story of its kind and asked the pensions minister to make special grants in future cases of this nature. Taking into account Ernest’s potential assistance value once his wage would have ultimately increased, he also made claim that Jane’s pension should be fixed with special consideration in the hope that such a case and generous amount would encourage other women to not fear sending their sons to war. The family never knew the outcome of the MP’s letter.
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