Pte 51238 Percy James

In 1901 the family is living at 62 Makin Street, Walton, with eight children, ages 4-23.  His father is a life insurance agent, Percy is 6.

 

Percy enrolled in Arnot Street School on 01st March 1899, when he was four years old, the family still at 62 Makin Street.

 

The 1911 census finds the family at 23 Dunluce Street, Walton, with six children at home, living in six rooms.  His father, 61, is a Prudential agent, and his mother is 52. Elizabeth, 29, is a housemaid, Isabella, 22, is a dressmaker’s machinist, and Albert, 20, is an electrician.  Percy, 16, and Henry, 14, are unemployed, and Alfred is 8, at school.  Four of their twelve children have died. 

His mother died in June 1915, aged 56, living at 35 Chepstow Street.

Percy James joined the National Union of Railwaymen as a cleaner with the Midland Railway on 29th August 1915, his age registered as 20. (There were two Percy James births in 1893-95 in Liverpool, but the other would have turned 21 by August, so this may well be our Percy.)

 

Percy enlisted in the 21st Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 75540. He subsequently transferred to the Labour Corps as Private 51238. 

He died on 24th November 1918 aged 23, the day before his birthday. He succumbed to pneumonia, at the General Hospital at Le Havre, most likely brought on by the Spanish Flu epidemic.

 

He was buried at Ste Marie Cemetery, Le Havre in France.

During the First World War, Le Havre was one of the ports at which the British Expeditionary Force disembarked in August 1914. Except for a short interval during the German advance in 1914, it remained No.1 Base throughout the war and by the end of May 1917, it contained three general and two stationary hospitals, and four convalescent depots. 

The first Commonwealth burials took place in Division 14 of Ste Marie Cemetery in mid August 1914. Burials in Divisions 19, 3, 62 and 64 followed successively. 

A memorial in Plot 62 marks the graves of 24 casualties from the hospital ship 'Salta' and her patrol boat, sunk by a mine on 10 April 1917. The memorial also commemorates by name the soldiers, nurses and merchant seamen lost from the 'Salta' whose bodies were not recovered, and those lost in the sinking of the hospital ship 'Galeka' (mined on 28 October 1916) and the transport ship 'Normandy' (torpedoed on 25 January 1918), whose graves are not known. 

There are now 1,690 Commonwealth burials of the First World War in this cemetery, 8 of which are unidentified. 

During the Second World War, Le Havre was one of the evacuation ports for the British Expeditionary force in 1940 and towards the end of the war it was used as a supply and reinforcement base. 

There are now 364 burials of the Second World War here,(59 of them unidentified) in Divisions 64 and 67 of the cemetery. 

The Commonwealth plots in the cemetery were designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.

Percy was engaged to be married to Minnie Bebbington of 53 Chirkdale Street, Walton. Minnie eventually married in 1922 to a man who had served in the Royal Navy during the war.

His loved ones, including Minnie placed notices in the Liverpool Echo on 28th November 1918:  

 

 

 

“November 24, in France, from pneumonia, Private Percy James. - Sadly missed by his fiancée Minnie Bebbington, 53 Chirkdale Street, Kirkdale.” 

 

His father received Percy’s Army effects, including a War Gratuity of £7-10s, and a pension of 5/- a week. 

 

His father died in 1929, at the age of 80.

 

Percy is commemorated in Liverpool’s Hall of Remembrance, Panel 60 Right or Panel 66.

 

We currently have no further information on Percy James. If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.