20133 PRIVATE WILLIAM PETER DULIEU
6TH (SERVICE) BATTALION KINGS OWN
(ROYAL LANCASHIRE REGIMENT)
WHO DIED OF WOUNDS
5TH MAY 1916
AGE 40 YEARS
Following on from the search to find the story of Albert Drake’s great war service and sacrifice as displayed on the Halesworth War Memorial, the name of W Dulieu proved just as difficult to trace. As with Albert, there was no information of his life on the Suffolk Roll of Honour website. On beginning the research, little did I know that this was yet another life consisting of lies and deception, along with another broken marriage, leaving a young wife and child abandoned.
William Peter Dulieu had been born at Bethnal Green, which was at that time in the County of Middlesex (now Greater London), during the fourth quarter of 1876. His father John and mother Sarah (née Smith) were both employed in the furniture trade, manufacturing decorative mouldings and also French polishing, a skill that young William had taken up on leaving school in the early 1890s. On the 6th June 1897, he married Alice Emily Yarrow. They had a daughter, also named Alice, who was born in 1900. At some time after the birth of their first child, William met another young lady by the name of Minnie Harvey Chapman who had been born and raised in the Suffolk village of Wangford, which lies just a few miles to the east of Halesworth. When they met, Minnie was employed as a housemaid working for a solicitor in Hackney, the neighbouring borough to Bethnal Green. Their romance must have blossomed, as William left Alice sometime after the 1901 Census to set up home and live as a married couple with Minnie, in the south London Borough of Camberwell. It was here that the first of their three children, Christine, was born in 1904. Over the following three years, they remained in the same area of south London with their son, William junior, born in Southwark in 1907. Some time after his birth, William, possibly in fear of being found out as a bigamist, (although no records of a marriage could be found), moved his family to the northern city of Derby. It was here that in 1906 the famous company Rolls Royce opened their factory to produce high quality motor vehicles, of which much of the interior fittings would require men skilled in the art of French polishing. It was while living and working in Derby that their third child, a boy of the name of Leslie, had been born.
Just two years later, at the time of the 1911 Census, the family were found to be living at 73 Chediston Street, Halesworth with William employed as a French polisher at Smith Motor Carriage Works in Bridge Street.
When Britain declared war against the Kaiser’s Germany on the 4th August 1914, William must have been one of the very first men from the town to volunteer to serve, as in an open letter written by the local Rector, A C Moore, and published in the Halesworth Times newspaper on the 25th August, he lists all the men from the town who were at that time serving in the country’s Armed Forces. William is shown as having enlisted at Ipswich to serve as a Gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery, with the regimental number of 41872. Further research shows that at some time in early 1915 he had been transferred to serve in the Infantry, becoming a Private soldier with the new number of 20133 while serving in the 6th (Service) Battalion, Kings Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment). This battalion had been formed in the city of Lancaster on 9th August 1914, after Lord Kitchener’s appeal, in which he asked that able-bodied men should step forward to create a brand new field army in which he hoped groups of volunteers from the same villages, towns or clubs would enlist to serve together in what became known as Pals Battalions. Around the time William joined them, they were based in Tidworth, Wiltshire, where they would have been undergoing intensive training preparing for war in Europe. It must have then been quite a shock to them to hear that they were in fact destined to travel to the warmer climate of the Middle East. On the 13th June 1915 they set sail for Egypt in preparation for taking their part in fighting Germany’s allies, the Turks, on the Gallipoli Peninsula. They landed on the 6th July, and within a very short period of their arrival, they entered the front line where, over the following weeks, they became involved in several fierce engagements. It would have been during one of these, possibly towards the end of August, that William received a gunshot wound to his shoulder, for on the 14th September the Halesworth Times reported that Minnie, now living in Rectory Street, had received news that William had been wounded and was in hospital.
It is not exactly known when, after recovering, William returned to his battalion, but it is most likely that he would have re-joined their ranks prior to their arrival in the then Ottoman province of Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) to continue their fight against the Turkish forces, who by late 1915 were considered to be a major threat to British oil interests. On arriving from Egypt at the port of Basrah, the 6th Kings Own joined the forces that were attempting to relieve the British and Indian troops who, for several months, had been besieged in the town of Kut-al-Amara ever since December 1915. These troops, although heavily outnumbered and very low on food and ammunition and without any sign of the relieving force (which included William), managing to make a breakthrough they were finally forced to surrender at the end of April, after resisting for one hundred and forty-three days. It would have been around this time that William would have received further wounds, which he would eventually die from on the 5th May 1916. At a later date he, along with over three thousand five hundred of his comrades who had paid the ultimate sacrifice, were laid to rest in the British Military cemetery in Amara, where sadly today, after many years of upheaval in the Middle East, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission have been unable to maintain this and several other cemeteries in the region. It is reported that most of the individual headstones have been lost. The names of these soldiers are now remembered in two volumes of memorial books held in the Commission’s offices in Maidenhead, Berkshire, and a screen wall built in what is left of the cemetery’s grounds.
On William’s enlistment he must have had pangs of conscience, as he had declared his lawful wife Alice to be his next of kin. Shortly after his death, in May, she received a war gratuity of £4.4s.8d (£4.38p). It was just under a year later that she had remarried George Hope, a furniture dealer of Camberwell, South London with the marriage certificate showing her as a widow, while living at the same address as her new husband. Similar payments were made to her over the following two years with the last gratuity being paid in August 1919. That made a total of monies paid to her of £15.19s.4d (£15.97p).
Meanwhile in Suffolk, how his poorly stated unmarried wife and three children managed to survive is not known, but on the second anniversary of William’s death she had paid for a Memorial notice to be published in the Halesworth Times. However, at some time in the early 1920s, while living at No.2 Maltings Terrace, Bramfield, she began receiving small payments of dependent’s pension from the Government, with the last amount being paid in August 1929.
For his service and loss in the Great War, William’s designated next of kin would have been entitled to claim his medal entitlement of the 1915 Star medal trio with a named bronze Memorial plaque and Scroll.
It is not known if any application was ever made and, if so, where are they now?
A postcard showing Chediston Street in the early 1900’s.
This is where William and Minnie were living in 1911.