Alwyne Chadwyck ("Hobber" at Magdalen and in the Army) Hobson

• Matriculated: 1911

• Born: 10 September 1892

• Died: 13 May 1915

• Regiment: Life Guards

• Grave/Memorial: Ypres Menin Gate Memorial: Panel 3

Family background

b. 10 September 1892 at The Marfords, Bromborough, The Wirral, Cheshire, as the fifth son (youngest child of seven) of Richard Powdrell Hobson, JP, DL (1835–1909) and Mary Eleanor Hobson (née Chadwick) (1847–1907) (m. 1868). At the time of the 1901 Census the family was still living at The Marfords (nine servants).

Parents and antecedents

Hobson’s father did not come from a particularly rich family, though he was educated at a private school. His father, also Richard Powdrell Hobson (1807–50), was an accountant and one of the official assignees at the Manchester Court of Bankruptcy. After leaving school Hobson’s father went into the cotton business: in 1863 he was learning the trade in New Orleans, but then went to Alexandria, Egypt, because of the American Civil War (1861–65). In 1868, after his return to England, he became a partner in the firm of Welsby and Taylor, which then became known as Welsby, Taylor and Hobson, at 13 Manchester Buildings, 1 Tithebarn Street, Liverpool. The partnership lasted until mid-1873, but in August of that year Johnson Gore Welsby (b. 1832), who had been in the cotton trade since at least 1857, obtained a largish sum of money on false pretences. He was declared bankrupt in November 1873 and summoned to court to answer criminal charges on 22 November. But he never materialized, nor could he be found, for by that time he had probably used the money to abscond to America (Carolina), where he ultimately married again, leaving his English family in very straitened circumstances.

In 1868, however, Richard Hobson had married into a rich family, for his wife Mary Eleanor was the third daughter of John Chadwick, DL, JP (1815–1901), a well-respected and influential second-generation cotton merchant. The Chadwick family owned Throstle Nest Mill, a large water-powered spinning mill just outside Ashton-under-Lyne, then an important mill town on the eastern edge of Manchester where 75 cotton mills were established between 1773 and 1905. The couple first lived at Huyton, near Liverpool, then moved to “Brooklands” on the Liverpool–Manchester Road. Richard’s business, now known as Richard Hobson & Co., brought him in a steady £2,500 or so p.a., but when, in about 1879, he inherited a house and about £80,000 from a paternal uncle, he bought “The Marfords”, a large Victorian house, now demolished, with stables for eight horses and a garden that employed ten gardeners. Richard retired in 1888 and became High Sheriff of Cheshire. In 1896, James Kershaw, his wife’s maternal uncle, died and left £500,000 (approximately £20,000,000 in 2005), of which £125,000 came to Richard and Mary Eleanor. This inheritance enabled him to begin collecting small antiques, especially European carvings in ivory and Chinese ceramics, most of which were sold at Christie’s, in London, on 30 March 1909, very soon after Richard’s death. The collection was divided into four categories: “Old Nankin Pottery” (Lots 1–69), “Old Chinese Enamelled Porcelain” (Lots 70–108), “Porcelain Etc.” (Lots 109–118) and “European Carvings in Ivory” (Lots 119–135), and realized a total of £3,340 1s. In 1898 he became a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Cheshire. One obituary describes him as “one of the best-known Liverpool commercial men” and records that besides being Chairman of the Lancashire cotton-spinning firms of James Kershaw and Co. Ltd. and J. Chadwick and Co. Ltd., he was a prison visitor, a Governor of Christ’s Hospital, a Director of Lloyd’s Bank, a Director and Chairman of the Liverpool & London & Globe Insurance Co. and a Director and Chairman (1887–88) of Liverpool Philharmonic Society, a Director and Chairman of the British and Foreign Marine Insurance Co., and a Director and the Deputy Chairman of the Liverpool Overhead Railway Company.

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) Arthur Alexander Powdrell (1869–77);

(2) Elinor Gertrude (1871–1963); later Barker after her marriage in 1897 to Captain (later Brigadier, DSO and Bar) Randle Barnett Barker (1870–1918), who died of wounds received in action on 24 March 1918 at Guédecourt serving as Officer Commanding 99th Infantry Brigade; two sons. She was later Tatham after her marriage in 1921 to the GP Dr Arthur Leopold Tatham (1868–1936);

(3) Gerald Walton (later Lieutenant-Colonel, DSO, CMG) (1873–1961), who married (1908) Wynifred Hilda Muir (1886–1962); two sons, one daughter;

(4) Richard Leigh Clare (1876–1900); killed in action on 5 June 1900, during the Second Boer War, at Schippen’s Farm, Engellicht Drift, while serving with the 4th Battalion, the King’s Royal Rifle Corps;

(5) Christine Mary (1879–1968); later O’Rorke after her marriage in 1901 to Reverend Henry William Leycester O’Rorke, MA (1869–1938); three sons, four daughters;

(6) Geoffrey Dudley (later MA, MVO) (1882–1949), who married (1920) Gertrude Adelaide Vaughan (1881–1938); one son.

Elinor Gertrude’s first husband was a distinguished soldier. Their elder son, John Philip Calverhall Barker (changed from Calverhall Barker to Sankey-Barker by deed poll on 12 May 1927) (1900–90), was particularly affected by the death of his uncle Alwyne, became a pacifist and conscientious objector, and spent his life quietly, as a country gentleman and natural historian, living at Pant y Goitre, near Abergavenny, Monmouthshire.

Gerald Walton was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, joined the 12th Lancers and fought in the Second Boer War. He retired from the Army in c.1908, but re-enlisted on the outbreak of World War One and spent the war commanding remount depots in France and England. After demobilization in April 1919, he became a businessman for the rest of his life.

Gerald Walton’s elder son, Richard Walton Hobson, OBE, CBE (1909–2001), was also a professional soldier. He had a distinguished career during World War Two and rose to the rank of Brigadier.

His younger son, the Right Honourable Sir John Gardiner Sumner Hobson, OBE, TD, QC, PC, MP (1912–67), trained as a lawyer, served in the Army in World War Two and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He took silk in 1957, the year in which he became MP for Warwick and Leamington Spa (1957–67). He was appointed Solicitor General in 1961, and from 1962 to 1964 he was Attorney General and legal adviser to Edward Heath. He was one of the five Ministers who vetted the statement to the House of Commons in which John Profumo (1915–2006) denied any impropriety in his relationship with Christine Keeler (b. 1942). He successfully prosecuted the spy William Vassal (1924–26), and then played a major part in the subsequent Radcliffe Tribunal (1963).

Christine Mary’s husband was prominent in the Missions to Seamen movement. Henry William Leycester O’Rorke read Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a 3rd in 1892 (MA 1896). He was ordained deacon in 1893 and priest in 1894, and was Chaplain to Missions to Seamen in Liverpool and San Francisco from 1893 to 1901. From 1901 to 1904 he was Vicar of Send, Surrey, and from 1904 to 1908 Vicar and Rector of Farnham, Surrey. He then served as Chaplain to the Duke of Devonshire from 1908 to 1915 and was, at the same time, the Perpetual Curate of Edensor, Derbyshire, the closest village to the Duke’s home at Chatsworth. From 1915 to 1928 he was Rector of Bladon with Woodstock and also served as Chaplain to the Duke of Marlborough until 1927.

Geoffrey Dudley could have worked in the Foreign Office or at the Bar, but in 1909 bought himself a partnership in Sotheby’s Book Auctioneers where he became a Director. As such he was instrumental in persuading the firm to diversify beyond books and move its premises to Bond Street. A bibliophile and expert in rare books, he knew at least seven languages and was a recognized authority on bookbinding. He (co-)authored c.30 books, nearly all of them on bookbinding and libraries, and was, for many years, responsible for writing Sotheby’s auction catalogues.

Education

Hobson attended Mr Richardson’s Preparatory School, Sandroyd, Cobham, Surrey (also known as Mr George Egerton’s Preparatory School, and Sandroyd Preparatory School) (founded 1898; cf. E.P.A. Moore), from 1902 to 1903, and Mr Dobie’s School, Heswall, The Wirral, Cheshire (also known as Moorland House; closed 1970), from 1903 to 1905, before moving to Eton College from 1905 to 1911. His obituary in The Eton Chronicle characterized him as follows:

From the first[,] he showed himself possessed of a strong, determined character and a fund of common sense. Shrewd, clear-headed and able-bodied, without being brilliant, he worked hard and he played hard, and earned the respect of all those of whatever age who knew him.

Because his eyesight was not good enough to allow him to become more than a moderate cricketer, he turned to rowing at Eton, where he rowed with his exact contemporary, the triple rowing Blue E.D. (“Dink”) Horsfall (Magdalen 1911–14, Pass degree 1914). His obituary continued:

In his second summer on the river [1909], [he] won Novice Pulling with Arthur Burn [1892–1914; the son of the MP for Torquay 1910–23 and an aide-de-camp to King George V 1910–26 who was killed in action at Ypres on 29 October 1914 while serving as a Second Lieutenant with the 1st Royal Dragoons; no known grave]. Their rowing was characteristic of them. In three nights racing they were never first till half the course had been completed – on one night not until they had reached the Railway Bridge on the way down – yet they were never disheartened or flurried, but went steadily on, showing a spirit which gave promise of the cool heads and brave hearts which they have displayed in the sterner struggles of the war.

He matriculated as a Commoner at Magdalen on 17 October 1911 and although he was exempted from Responsions because he had an Oxford & Cambridge Certificate, he passed an additional Responsions paper on the French historian Adolphe Thiers in Michaelmas Term 1911, which allowed him to take only one part of the First Public Examination (Holy Scripture) in Michaelmas Term 1912. He then began to read for a Pass Degree (Groups B1 [English History] and B2 [French Language]) in Hilary Term 1913, but he did not complete the course and left without a degree. Hobson continued to row while he was at Magdalen, and managed to do so, “with much success and more promise”, until prevented from doing so by considerations of health. He rowed in the Coxless Fours (1911), the Challenge Pairs (1912) and the Torpid VIII (1912) that went Head of the River for the first time. After giving up rowing, he became better known at Oxford as a polo-player and point-to-point rider, “for he was an exceedingly good horseman”. He won the riding and jumping competition against Cambridge in 1909, and in 1912 he represented the University in show-jumping at Olympia: he also won several college point-to-point races. By the Michaelmas Term of 1913 he was a member of the University Drag Hounds; and in his first year at Oxford he also played polo for the University, and against Cambridge in June 1914 when Oxford won by 19 goals to one. He was a member of the Bullingdon Club.

President Warren wrote of him posthumously:

Possessed of considerable means of his own, he was a man who might well have devoted himself wholly to sport and enjoyment, but he was eminently public-spirited and philanthropic. He interested himself much in the Eton Mission [at Hackney Wick] and in the work of the Cavendish Club, and both here at Oxford and in London was specially devoted to the cause of the Children’s Emigration Society, for which he got up a very successful meeting in his College Hall.

Warren is here referring to the Child Emigration Society of Oxford, of whose Council Hobson was an active member. The Society was established by Kingsley Fairbridge (1885–1924) of Exeter College between 1909 and 1912 and in 1913 it began to resettle British orphans in Australia: by c.1960, it had brought 3,362 child migrants to Australia. Warren’s obituary then continued:

[Hobson] had many friends, and not a few closely attached to him. There was something very attractive in his combination of serious thoughtfulness and bold love of sport, and altogether he was a fine specimen of young English manhood.

When Hobson made his will, he gave his address as Misterton Hall, Lutterworth, Leicestershire.

Military and war service

Hobson was in the Eton Officers’ Training Corps for five years and a term and passed Certificate ‘A’ in May 1911, which Warren explained by saying that he was very keen to become a professional soldier. Unfortunately, the Army rejected him at first because his health was not thoroughly sound and his sight was weak. Nevertheless, he spent two years and a term in the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps (OUOTC), passed Certificate ‘B’ in March 1913, became a cadet Corporal, and on 20 December 1913 he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the OUOTC cavalry (London Gazette, no. 28,783, 19 December 1913, p. 9,342). As such, he was attached to the 5th Dragoon Guards from 16 to 23 March 1914. So when, on 25 August 1914, the 2nd Life Guards was formed at Windsor as part of the 7th Household Cavalry Brigade in the 3rd Cavalry Division, Hobson joined it on the very next day as a Temporary Second Lieutenant; in December 1914 his promotion was antedated to 2 September 1913. The Regiment trained at Windsor until 5 October, embarked at Southampton on 6 October, landed at Zeebrugge on 8 October, and arrived at Bruges on 9 October 1914 as part of IV Corps. Hobson, however, was not with the 2nd< Life Guards when it landed in France since the Crofton Diaries indicate that he and other replacement officers, including Captain Sir Morgan Crofton himself (6th Baronet [of Mohill]; 1879–1958) (q.v.) only reached the Regiment on 14 November 1914, when it was in the trenches near Ypres.

We know a great deal about Hobson’s Regiment during the first two years of the war because of the Crofton Diaries. Moreover, and unusually, the Commanding Officer of the Regiment used the regimental War Diary not only to record the day-to-day events, but also as a place to note down his thoughts and opinions, and on 10 October he remarked:

Find the hospitable natives a great hindrance to discipline. The Country seems very ill-suited for Cavalry tactics […] I think that with few exceptions Reservists of more than 12 years service are useless, and frequently afford a bad example to younger men. Neither men nor young officers seem at first to realize the serious side of War, and men with experience of [the] South African War seem rather harmful than otherwise.

During the following week, the Regiment moved south-westwards to Ypres, then out eastwards as far as Menin before scouting round the south-east of Ypres and arriving at Kemmel on 16 October. Two days later it had moved back to the north-east, and it made its first contact with the Germans who were advancing westwards towards Ypres, and saw action near Oostnieuwkerke, just to the west of Roeselare (Roulers), on the extreme edge of what would harden into the Ypres Salient. On the following day it was involved in violent action further to the west-south-west, near Westrozebeke, halfway between Oostnieuwkerke and Poelcapelle. The First Battle of Ypres began on 19 October and the Regiment saw more fighting over the following days as it gradually withdrew southwards to Zaandvoorde, via Poelcapelle and Hooge, where it arrived on 23 October. For the next four days the Regiment was out of the line and so missed being shelled by Ernst Stadler’s artillery on 24 October, but on 27 October it was back in the trenches half a mile north-west of Zandvoorde on the extreme left of the line held by the 3rd (Cavalry) Division. It stayed until 30 October when it was forced to retire. The next day it had retired further still, to woods south of Verbranden-Molen, and after advancing north-eastwards to Hooge, on the east–west Menin Road, it withdrew south-westwards to Sint Elooï. From 1 to 5 November it was in the woods south of Hooge, and on the afternoon of 6 November Hobson was wounded in the left arm one inch below the elbow by a rifle bullet, which took out a piece of skin the size of a penny, making him one of the 24 casualties that the Regiment suffered during the confused fighting in the wood on Klein Zillebeke Ridge, near the hamlet of Zwarteten, when the attacking Germans almost succeeded in breaching the French line.

As Hobson’s wound had become very dirty, contained pieces of clothing and a metal fragment, and had begun to suppurate, he was sent back to England from Boulogne on 9 November on the hospital ship Carisbrooke Castle, where, on 19 November, a Medical Board passed him unfit for service and gave him a month’s sick leave. On 18 December 1914 a second Medical Board at Caxton Hall, Westminster, London SW1, passed him fit and he was still in England when he was promoted Lieutenant on 20 January 1915 (London Gazette, no. 29,084, 26 February 1915, p. 1,980). By the time of his return to France in February 1915, his Regiment had been out of the line from 26 November 1914 to 1 February 1915, refitting or in billets, and then, from 3 February to 1 March 1915, it was at work either in the trenches or helping to dig trenches. Hobson and another officer rejoined the Regiment on 2 March 1915 when it was at Étaples, a major assembly point and hospital centre near the Channel coast to the south of Boulogne. The Regiment stayed here until 12 March, when it was taken to Merville, six miles south-east of Hazebrouck, and from 13 March until 13 April it trained in infantry tactics at Staple, about three miles west-north-west of Hazebrouck. On 24 April it moved a mile south to Wallon-Cappel and from there it went northwards into Belgium, where it stayed at Vlamertinghe from 28 April to 4 May. By 8 May it had come back to Wallon-Cappel, where it was issued with gas masks, after which it returned to the Ypres area and stayed there until 12 May, when it moved into trenches half a mile east of Potijze.

On 13 May 1915, from 04.00 to 07.15 hours, the Regiment was subjected to a heavy artillery bombardment, which preceded a major German assault (see R.E. English). During this shelling, Hobson was first buried by a shell and then lightly wounded in the head, and while he was being taken away on a stretcher, the bearers found another, more seriously wounded officer. Hobson said that he would walk to the dressing station but was hit again by shrapnel; his leg was nearly severed and he fell into a shell-hole, where he died of wounds received in action, aged 23, one of the Regiment’s six officers and c.120 other ranks killed, wounded or missing during this relatively brief engagement. He was buried initially near Railway Clump on the Potijze Road, north-east of Ypres, by members of the 1st Royal Dragoons, but now has no known grave. He is commemorated on Panel 3 of the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, and in the Chapel of St Peter’s Church, Edensor, Derbyshire, which stands in parkland on the Chatsworth Estate. His obituary in The Eton Chronicle sums up his life as follows:

Amply endowed with health and wealth, and having a keen faculty for intellectual enjoyment and many interests of the noblest kind, he seemed blessed with all that makes life best worth living. Without hesitation he has given up all; and those who mourn the loss of his friendship and his company have at least the comfort of knowing that, though he had great possessions, he did not shrink when the call came to him to lay them down.

He left £69,412 7s 7d.

Bibliography:

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

Printed sources: 

[Anon.], ‘Serious Charge against a Liverpool Merchant’, Liverpool Mercury, no. 8,063 (22 November 1873), p. 5.

[Anon.]. ‘Local Men of Mark, no. 88: Mr. John Chadwick, J.P. of Ashton-under-Lyne’, Ashton Herald Supplement, 5, no. 234 (old series), 3, no. 145 (new series) (7 May 1892), p. 6.

Robert Head, Cheshire at the Opening of the Twentieth Century: Contemporary Biographies (Brighton: W.T. Pike & Co., 1904), p. 178.

[Anon.], ‘Mr Richard Hobson’ [obituary], The Times, no. 38,863 (22 January 1909), p. 11.

[Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 33, no. 24 (28 May 1915), p. 335.

[Anon.], ‘Alwyne Chadwick Hobson’ [obituary], The Eton College Chronicle, no. 1,530 (4 June 1915), p. 82.

Leinster-Mackay (1984), pp. 144, 198, 297, 327.

Ian Haynes, Cotton in Ashton (Tameside Metropolitan Borough: Libraries and Arts Committee, 1987), pp. 9–10.

Mike Williams and D.A. Farnie, Cotton Mills in Greater Manchester (Preston: Carnegie Publishing Ltd., 1992).

Sir Morgan Crofton, Massacre of the Innocents: The Crofton Diaries, Ypres 1914–1915, ed. by Gavin Roynon (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2004), p. 20, 80, 242, 244.

Blandford-Baker (2008), pp. 104–11.

Archival sources:

MCA: PR32/C/3/665–666 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to A.C. Hobson [1915]).

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 2.

OUA: OT 4/2.

OUA: UR 2/1/75.

OUA(DWM): C.C.J. Webb, Diaries, passim.

WO95/1135.

WO95/1155.

WO339/9974.