Name
Joseph Crawley (Swan)
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
05/05/1915
30
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
4/7378
Bedfordshire Regiment
1st Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
1914 (Mons) Star, British War and Victory Medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL
Panel 31 and 33
Belgium
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Rickmansworth Urban District Memorial, St. Peter’s Church Memorial, Mill End, Nr Rickmansworth, St. Peter's C & E Primary School Memorial, Mill End, Nr Rickmansworth, We are not aware of any Batchworth memorial
Pre War
Joseph was born Batchworth in 1885 the illegitimate son of Mary Ann (nee Brownsell) Swan. Mary Ann married Charles Swan in 1877 and they had three children, Sarah 1877, Robert born and died 1880, Jane born 1881 died 1882.
On the 1881 census they were at Batchworth. Charles died in 1882 and in 1886 Mary Ann married Joseph Crawley (so possibly the father of Joseph Crawley Swan (junior)) and he is named on the baptism register, albeit a bit surreptitiously - The record has the child's given names as Joseph Crawley, parents Joseph & Mary Ann, surname Swan.
They had two children Alice in 1888 and Ethel in 1890 before Joseph senior died in 1890. On the 1891 census Mary Ann was living Lock Cottage, Church Row, Rickmansworth with her children Sarah 14 and Joseph 5, Swan, and Alice 3 and Ethel 1, Crawley. Mary Ann had two more illegitimate children, Albert in 1898 and Eliza in 1899. Eliza was baptised 15th of December 1899 in Mill End but her father was not named.
On Joseph’s CWGC entry Albert is noted as living 40 North Wharf Road, Paddington. In 1901 Mary Ann was living White’s Row, Uxbridge Road with her four children (all now given the surname Crawley) and with a Boarder Benjamin Smith 47, a Widower and Canal Boatman.
Benjamin Smith, again most likely the father of the youngest 2 - Albert & Eliza Harriet, though Mary Ann did have them baptised as Crawley and was shown as a single woman, on both entries.
In 1911 census, Alice Crawley (b1888) appearedc as now married to Henry Craft with 4 children of her own and 2 'boarders' - Albert SMITH age 13 and Eliza SMITH age 12.
After 1911 Albert & Eliza both kept the Crawley name. Albert married Alice Sarah Cheshire in 1919 and died in 1977.
Eliza Harriet married William Charles Higby in 1926 and died in 1980.
There appear to be no sign of Benjamin in 1911.
In 1921 Benjamin Smith is back, and living with William & Ethel Puddifoot (nee Crawley) at 168 Uxbridge Road, Mill End, and is described as Father-in-law, a widower and disabled out of work.
Mary Ann died in 1909 and her son Joseph left his effects to his sister Ethel who had married William Puddifoot in 1906 when she was only 16. In 1911 they were living Horwoods Cottages, Uxbridge Road, Mill End with their children William John 4, and Mary Letitia age under 1.
Recorded as enlisting in Watford.
Wartime Service
Joseph was killed in fierce, at times hand to hand, fighting in the vicinity of Hill 60 during the Second Battle of Ypres which took place during April and May 1915.
The Battalion War Diary states that shortly after 8am on the 5th of May the Germans attacked with asphyxiating gas, killing a few men and affecting the rest. Hill 60 was lost and the trenches were attacked all day with bombs, rifles and machine guns. It was a terrible day made worse by misdirected fire into their own trenches from their own artillery causing many casualties.
Private Arthur George Bunby died in the same action.
Acknowledgments
Malcolm Lennox, Tanya Britton, Mike Collins, Deborah Scott
