Charlie Smith in the Machine Gun Corps

Some time ago Nigel Aspdin sent me this postcard photograph of a family member, Charles Sydney Smith, who served in the Machine Gun Corps (British/Imperial, rather than Canadian) during the Great War. Charlie was born in 1890 in Nottingham, son of a bank clerk John Bywater Smith (1847-1897) and Mary Ann Woolley. After his father died in 1897, they moved to Derby, where he married Beatrice Slater in 1915. In the outdoors portrait, he is shown in the uniform of a British officer, the cap badge identifying him as a member of the Machine Gun Corps, and mounted on a horse. The lower margin of the photograph is annotated, "France. May 1916," while the reverse, shown below, has a lengthier message to his wife.

17/5/16
Darling little girlie,
What do you think of this photo, it is not very good as my horse won't keep still. Hope the measles are OK. We move up into the trenches to-day. Weather is A.1. Want a letter from you and can't get one. Will write if possible to-night, hope to get leave after this spell in the trenches, but will let you know in plenty of time.
All my love
Charlie

This would be an interesting photograph to research on its own, and it was sitting in my "to do" file, waiting for a suitable moment. However, yesterday, while browsing photographs for sale on eBay, I came across a listing of a postcard which seemed rather familiar:


It seems an extraordinary coincidence, but this photograph was taken at exactly the same spot as the one of Charlie Smith, albeit that the shutter on the window has been raised and a woman stands in the previously empty doorway. The eBay listing states that it is inscribed on the reverse, "Dick 21.6.16," so it appears to have been taken just over a month later. Unfortunately, my meagre funds allowed for eBay purchases won't stretch to this one. I presume the photographer's studio was located in the vicinity of the yard.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission web site and database show that Major Charles Sydney Smith of the Machine Gun Corps, and husband of Beatrice Smith of 3 Wheeldon Avenue, Derby, died on 28 November 1918 at the age of 28, and was buried at the Nottingham Road Cemetery in Derby (Grave/Memorial Ref. 3872 (C.)). It also states that he was awarded the Military Cross, and was mentioned in dispatches. The Nottingham Road Cemetery, which featured in a recent article, "contains 193 First World War burials and 134 from the Second World War. There is a small war graves plot of about 40 burials from both wars, the rest of the graves are scattered throughout the cemetery."


His medal card shows that he arrived in France on 11 March 1916, but there is sadly little else to show what he was doing between then and his death in November 1918, shortly after the war had ended.

The gravestone of Charles Robinson of Derby, Nottingham Road Cemetery

Occasionally in old photo albums and other family photograph collections, you may come across photographs of old gravestones. Presumably intended originally as another form of memorial for a loved family member, they may now provide clues to who else is pictured in other unannotated photographs in the album.


I have one such image scanned from a photograph in my father's collection. Unfortunately I don't currently have access to the original, and I was rather short-sighted in that I only scanned the photograph, not the mount. However, from the dimensions of the original - determined as 96.6 x 143.8 mm, using Adobe Photoshop's "Image Size" query on the scanned image - it must have been a cabinet card.

Charles Robinson was a younger brother of my great-grandmother Amy Payne née Robinson (1867-1932). He was born on 21 September 1872, the third child of Daniel Robinson (1837-1910) and Emma née Bacon (1842-1900) of 9 New Forester Street, St Werburgh's parish, Derby. His father Daniel was a Derby Borough police constable, promoted to the rank of sergeant in the late 1870s, when they also moved to 74 Fleet Street. The inscription on the headstone states:

In Loving Memory of Charles, son of Daniel and Emma Robinson, Born Sept. 21st 1872. Died Sept. 21st 1889. "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, Blessed be the name of the Lord."

From information provided by my father, Charles Robinson was buried in the Nottingham Road Cemetery. I suspect that the photograph was taken at least a year or two after Charles Robinson's death, as the grass has already grown up in front of the headstone.


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A quick Google search of "Nottingham Road Cemetery Derby" brings up several useful hits on the first page, including:

- A Google map and satellite image showing the address, location of, and directions to the Nottingham Road Cemeteries.

- The web site of the Derby City Council, which administers the cemetery - this provides cemetery details and facilities, as well as contact details and opening times for the Cemeteries Office.

- An article by Peter Seddon on the Bygone Derbyshire web site entitled Nottingham Road Cemetery - Derbeians at Rest - this gives some brief historical notes, describing it as having opened in 1855 as Derby's first municipal cemetery, and extended several times - it is still in use.


- Mike Smith's Pictures of Derby web site has a page with several images of the cemetery, including the grand main entrance and lodges, and one of the two mortuary chapels, designed by acclaimed Derby architect H.I. Stevens in the gothic style, and which are shown in the portion of satellite image above.


These buildings have a particularly characteristic shape, and it is possible to recognise one of the chapels in the background of the Charles Robinson headstone photograph, as shown in the enlarged image above.


Examination of the angle of the roofs, and the position of the chapel in relation to the main entrance - mostly hidden behind the tree - suggests that Charles Robinson's headstone is either to the WNW of the western chapel, or to the ESE of the eastern chapel, as shown approximately in the image above.


A closer examination shows that the graves in the western area are facing in the wrong direction in relation to the photographer's view - actually at an oblique angle - but that those in the eastern area would face towards the photographer, roughly as shown in the photograph. It's difficult to estimate the distance away from the chapel, but least with an approximate direction, a search can be made in the graveyard for the headstone. It is likely that the cemetery office will also have a record of the position of this grave.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to alert readers to my new blog, The South Derbyshire Graveyard Rabbit, which will feature graves and graveyards from South Derbyshire. This particular photograph hasn't made it there, because it doesn't fit into my fairly strict definition of "South Derbyshire."