Sgt 57978 Arthur Thomas Finnamore

Arthur Thomas Finnamore was born 6th December, 1893 in Westminster and was baptised 24th January 1894 at St John the Evangelist, Westminster, London. He was the eldest son of Thomas Finnamore and his wife Sophia (nee Axtell).

 

His father, from Devon, and his mother, from a Buckinghamshire, married in London in 1891, and had ten children.  Arthur had an elder sister Daisy, and younger siblings Mary, Lionel (died in infancy), Alfred, Robert, Lily, William, Winifred (died in infancy), and Nellie.

 

In 1901 the family is living at 41 Horseferry Road, S.W. with five children. His father is a police constable. Arthur is 7.

 

In 1911 they are still living at 41 Horseferry Road, now with eight children. His father is a police pensioner, now watchman for the London County Council. His mother is 47: Daisy is 18, a waitress, Arthur is 17, a boy messenger for the G.P.O., Mary is 15, “mother’s help”.  Alfred, Robert, Lily, and William are at school, Nellie is 3. Also in the household is visitor Adwin Adams, 25, an electrician from Devon, who will marry sister Daisy in 1916. 

He enlisted in London soon after war was declared and was originally 1293 City of London Regiment. Arthur arrived in France with his battalion on 17th March 1915. At some point he was transferred and he was serving in the 17^th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Sergeant No 57978 when he was killed in action on the 24^th March, 1918, aged 24, during the German Spring Offensive. 

"The 17th & 18th King's of the 30th Division where in the neighbourhood of Verlaines on 24th March 1918 ...continuous Enemy Shell Fire and Machine Gun fire from 1.a.m the night of 23/24 th.  Dawn broke as usual with Mist covering the ground. At 8 a.m the Enemy's guns shelled the front branches and shortly afterwards the Germans came on in strength. Step by Step disputing almost every yard of ground the Division fell back fighting all the way over the four miles of country to the Canal du Nord.  Officers and men were by now absolutely exhausted, for they had been fighting continuously for three days and nights."

Arthur has no known grave and is commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial in France.

The POZIERES MEMORIAL relates to the period of crisis in March and April 1918 when the Allied Fifth Army was driven back by overwhelming numbers across the former Somme battlefields, and the months that followed before the Advance to Victory, which began on 8 August 1918. The Memorial commemorates over 14,000 casualties of the United Kingdom and 300 of the South African Forces who have no known grave and who died on the Somme from 21 March to 7 August 1918.

The cemetery and memorial were designed by W.H. Cowlishaw, with sculpture by Laurence A. Turner. The memorial was unveiled by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien on 4 August 1930.

His name was published among those Killed in the Weekly Casualty List on 14th May 1918.

Arthur earned his three medals. His father received Arthur’s Army effects and a War Gratuity of £20.  The pension card, in the name of his father, shows a pension of 5/- a week was awarded.

 

His brother Alfred served in the Northumberland Fusiliers from 1915 (he turned 16 in November 1914).  He also achieved the rank of Sergeant.  He was declared Missing in July 1918, captured  by the Germans, and was repatriated on 1st December 1918.  He earned his three medals. 

 

His parents lost another son when the youngest brother William died in 1919 at the age of 16. 

His father died 1932 aged 72 and his mother in 1947, aged 83.