Douglas Saville Thornton

• Matriculated: Did not matriculate

• Born: 6 May 1896

• Died: 1 October 1916

• Regiment: Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment)

• Grave/Memorial: Thiepval Memorial: Pier and Face 10C, 10D and 11A

Family background

b. 6 May 1896 at Avenue House School, Sevenoaks, Kent, as the only son (of four children) of Francis Oliver Thornton (1866–1933) and Marea Fanny Suzannah Thornton (née Saville) (c.1868–1933) (m. 1893). In 1916 the family was living at 8 Vincent Road, Croydon, Surrey, and later at 31 Fairfield Road, East Croydon, Surrey. At the time of the 1901 and 1911 Censuses, the family had no servants.

Parents and antecedents

Thornton’s paternal grandfather John Thornton (1843–1913) was born in Cambridge; his father died when he was two and he was brought up by his mother Lydia Searle, née Gray (1812–95), who was a friend of John Bright (1811–89) and who, to earn a living, set up a school in Cambridge, which she ran with her daughter. In 1861 John Thornton was an assistant to his uncle Joseph Thornton (1808–91), a bookseller of 18 Magdalen Street, Oxford, who had opened his shop in 1835. In 1870 Joseph Thornton moved the shop to 11 Broad Street, where it remained Oxford’s oldest bookshop until the family sold it before it went bankrupt in 1983. It continued to trade under the name Thornton’s until 2003.

In 1881 John Thornton was headmaster of a boarding school in Braintree, Essex, but by 1891 he had moved to become Principal of Avenue House School in Sevenoaks, Kent. In 1901 he was a schoolmaster in New Milverton, near Leamington Spa; and by 1911 a retired schoolmaster living in Bexhill, where he was a Deacon in the Congregationalist Church. His obituarist wrote “his creed was of the broadest; and though a Liberal in politics, he was Socialistic in its best sense”. He was also an enthusiast of Esperanto and flew the Esperanto flag. In 1891 Thornton’s father was a schoolteacher and Vice-Principal of his father’s Avenue House School, and by 1891 he had become Principal of the school after his father had moved to New Milverton. However, by 1911 he had given up teaching and become a chartered accountant. He may have been influenced by his father’s popular book First Lessons in Bookkeeping, published in 1901. He set up the firm of Thornton, Murray & Thornton (Moorgate Station Chambers, London EC2).

Thornton’s maternal grandfather was Alfred Thomas Saville (1839–1915), the son of Thomas Prosper Saville (1815–1902), a Birmingham gunsmith. Alfred Thomas was ordained, and married Elizabeth Ann Marston (1835–1903). They were sent by the London Missionary Society (LMS) on the barque John Williams II, a mission ship operated by the LMS to Huahine, a small island (16 x 13 km) in the Society Islands in French Polynesia, where he was to practise his missionary work. After an adventurous journey via Australia, running aground on Aneiteum in the New Hebrides and returning to Australia for repairs, Alfred Thomas and his wife landed on Huahine. Several of his children including Thornton’s mother were born there. Due to his ill-health the family returned to England in 1874 and he became Minister of the Congregational Chapel in Rye, Sussex, and later of Hailsham, Sussex. His diaries (1866–88) and personal papers are in the London University School of Oriental & African Studies Library. Thornton’s mother was educated at Walthamstow Hall, one of the oldest girl’s independent schools in the country, established in 1838 as an inter-denominational school for the daughters of missionaries.

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) Mary Noel (1893–1977);

(2) Margaret Ruth (1899–1995), later Beaton after her marriage in 1965 to the widower Edgar Arthur Beaton (1896–1983);

(3) Katherine Phyllis (“Kitty”) (1903–91); later Price after her marriage in 1928 to Stanley Price (1901–98); three sons and one daughter.

Stanley Price was an academic and for many years secretary of the Yorkshire Council for Further Education. Katherine Phyllis was a health visitor, and they brought their children up according to Christian and socialist principles. One of their children became a doctor and one a clergyman; the other two both became prominent in public life.

Christopher (“Chris”) Price (1932–2015) joined the Labour Party when he was aged 16, and after doing National Service, during which he was thrown out of Officer Cadet School for being argumentative and looking scruffy, he read Classics at Queen’s College, Oxford. He was prominent in University and student politics nationally but graduated with a third. He then went into school-teaching and by 1962 he was the Senior Classics Master of Ecclesfield Grammar School, South Yorkshire. In 1964, he unsuccessfully stood as Labour Candidate for Shipley, but from 1966 to 1970 he represented Perry Bar, Birmingham, and immediately on taking his seat was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Anthony Crosland (1918–77) in the Department of Education. He then spent four years away from the House, working as Education Correspondent for Thames TV and the New Statesman (of which he later became Chairman from 1994 to 1995), but was elected Labour MP for Lewisham West from 1974 to 1983 and was once more appointed PPS to the Education Secretary, this time Fred Mulley (1918–95).

After Labour’s massive electoral defeat in 1983, Price moved from politics into education and from 1986 to 1992 was Director of Leeds Polytechnic, succeeding the architect Patrick Nuttgens, CBE (1920–2004). Price oversaw its transition to Leeds Metropolitan University (since 2014 Leeds Beckett University) of which he was the Principal and Chief Executive from 1992 to 1994. Throughout his life he was involved in a great many projects and campaigns: he worked with the National Youth Bureau on drug rehabilitation; he was a member of the Arts Council; he headed the Commission on the Organisation of the School Year (2000–03); and for many years he campaigned for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece. His Guardian obituarist described him as a person of “undaunted spirit and warm-hearted generosity” who “wanted people to be treated fairly and […] children to be taught properly”.

Helen Margaret Price, MA (b. 1939) studied Modern History at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and then trained as a teacher. From 1961 to 1962 she was an assistant teacher in Stoke on Trent; from 1972 to 1974 she was an assistant teacher in Lancashire; and from 1974 to 1980 she was an assistant teacher in Sheffield. She was on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, and using her married name of Jackson, she was the Labour MP for Sheffield Hillsborough from 1992 to 2005, when she stepped down. In 2010 she was awarded the CBE for her services to the Women and Pensions Network and the community in South Yorkshire.

Education

Thornton attended Malvern House School, Lewisham – destroyed by bombs during World War Two – from 1905 to 1907, and in the latter year he was awarded an Open Scholarship to King Edward VII School, Sheffield, where his uncle, Frederick Thomas Saville (1876–1942), was both the Head of the Junior School and the owner of Lynwood House, the School’s one authorized boarding house. Thornton attended King Edward VII School from 1907 to 1915 and was a member of its Junior Officers’ Training Corps from October 1914 to July 1915. He became the School’s Champion Athlete, the Head of his House, and the Head Prefect from 1914 to 1915. His immediate predecessor as Head Prefect was George Holmes. Although he was elected to a Demyship in Mathematics at Magdalen in May 1915 and awarded a Sheffield Town Trust Scholarship, he did not matriculate.

War service

Thornton, who was 5 foot 7½ inches tall, attested on 9 August 1915 and served in 6 and 3 Companies of the Inns of Court Officers’ Training Corps (“The Devil’s Own”) from 22 November 1915 to 21 April 1916 (promoted Lance-Corporal on 22 January 1916). But from 9 August 1915 until 21 April 1916 he lived at home, i.e. until, on 24 April 1916, he was commissioned Temporary Second Lieutenant in the 19th (Local Reserve (Gateshead)) Battalion of the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment (The Sherwood Foresters) (London Gazette, no. 29,567, 2 May 1916, p. 4,445). He was then rapidly transferred to the 11th (Service) Battalion of the same regiment. His Battalion had disembarked in France on 27 August 1915 as part of the 70th Brigade (part of the 8th Division from October 1915 until 14 July 1916, then transferred to the 23rd Division).

Although the Battalion does not record his arrival by name, he must have joined it with one of the reinforcement details that arrived on 12, 13 and 18 July 1916 to replace the terrible casualties suffered by the Battalion in the calamitous attack on Ovillers-la-Boiselle of 1 July, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. On that day 21 officers and 508 other ranks (ORs) out of a total of 27 officers and 710 ORs were killed, wounded or missing, mainly because of machine-gun fire. There is no War Diary for August, but the War Diary of 70th Brigade suggests that the Battalion had been taken out of the front line in order to re-form. It trained at Shelter Wood, just north of Fricourt Farm, from 1 to 7 August, spent 7 to 16 August in billets, trained at Ploegsteert Wood, at the southern end of the Ypres Salient, from 17 to 25 August, and then finally at Le Romarin, near Amiens, for the rest of the month.

On 1 September Thornton’s Battalion marched back to Shelter Wood, where it trained yet again, this time for 12 days, and by 19 September it was in the trenches at Contalmaison (captured on the afternoon of 9 July), a mile to the south-east of Pozières, where it stayed until 22 September. It was still in the Contalmaison area on 26 September, with the 150th Brigade, 50th (Northumbrian) Division (Territorial Force), on its right and the 8th Battalion, the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI), also part of 70th Brigade, on its left, and with that Battalion’s left extended as far as the Albert–Le Sars–Bapaume road.

23rd and 50th Divisions to capture two German trenches on a mile-long front that extended in front of Le Sars from the Albert–Bapaume road on the left to the divisional boundary with 50th Division on the right. At 09.15 hours, Thornton’s Battalion, with the 8th Battalion, the KOYLI, still on its left, formed up in the Assembly Trench, charged, and took the first two objectives: Flers Trench and most of Flers Support Trench. But according to the terse letter which Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Farnell Watson, DSO, the Commanding Officer of the 11th Battalion (who had been wounded on 1 July 1916 and who was clearly still suffering from the wound, the losses and the stress of battle), wrote to Thornton’s parents on 4 October 1916, their son had been killed in action, aged 20, by a sniper just after the capture of the second-line German trench “while he was working hard to put it into a proper state of defence”. Thornton was buried “close to where he fell” before his Battalion withdrew that evening to Lozenge Wood after losing 12 officers and 220 ORs killed, wounded or missing, i.e. 242 of 70th Brigade’s 800+ casualties, but he now has no known grave. Thornton’s death is reported to have devastated his parents and sisters. On 9 October 1916, his father wrote to break the news to President Warren and said:

In a letter written on the eve of the offensive in which he fell, he wrote: “I don’t want to die, but if God shows me it is part of my duty, I am ready to go”. He has been rapidly promoted to God’s Upper School.

Thornton is commemorated on Pier and Face 10C, 10D and 11A of the Thiepval Memorial and on his school’s memorial plaque.

Bibliography

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

Printed sources

[Anon.]. ‘Obituary. Mr. John Thornton, Schoolmaster, Author and Booklover’, Leamington Spa Courier, 86, no. 45 (7 November 1913), p. 4.

[Anon.] ‘Memorial Service at Hailsham. Rev. J. Wright Davies’ Eloquent Tribute’, Sussex Agricultural Express, no. 7,961 (3 December 1915) p. 4.

[Anon.], ‘Second Lieutenant Douglas Saville Thornton’ [obituary], The Times, no. 41,294 (10 October 1916), p. 1.

[Anon.], ‘Second-Lieut. D.S. Thornton’ [obituary], The King Edward VII School Magazine, 4, no. 12 (December 1916), pp. 308–9.

McCarthy (1998), p. 129.

Julia Langdon, ‘Christopher Price’ [obituary], The Guardian, no. 52,404 (25 February 2015), p. 35.

Archival sources: 

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 3.

MCA: PR 32/C/3/1137–1139 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to D.S. Thornton [1915–1916]).

WO339/56991.