Kenneth Charles Goodyear BA

• Matriculated: 1909

• Born: 24 August 1890

• Died: 28 September 1915

• Regiment: Royal Army Medical Corps

• Grave/Memorial: Barts Alley Cemetery Memorial

Family background

b. 24 August 1890 as the only son (two children) of Thomas Edward Goodyear (1863–1934) and Lizzie (also Lyzzie) Davies Goodyear (née Keddell) (1865–1956) (m. 1889). At the time of the 1891 Census they lived in “Denby”, Shrewsbury Road, Lewisham, Surrey (two servants); at the time of the 1901 Census they lived at 9, Rodway Road, Bromley, Kent (two servants); and at the time of the 1911 Census they lived at “Rothesay”, 91, Plaistow Lane, Bromley, Kent (three servants). Other addresses include: “Woodcote”, Sanderstead, Surrey; and “Deepdene”, Roding Road, Bromley, Kent.

 

Parents and antecedents

Although Goodyear’s father became a wealthy chartered accountant and left £53,559 8s 8d. (£3.4 million at present-day value), his father, Charles Goodyear (1833–1903), who in 1871 was a clerk to a wholesale hosier and by 1901 had become a warehouseman, left £127,132 4s. 2d. (£14 million at present-day value).

Goodyear’s mother was the daughter of Ambrose Keddell (1834–1915), who also seems to have risen in the world, since he described himself in the 1901 Census as a “shipowner’s clerk” and in the 1911 Census as a “ship-owner and worker”. Moreover, during the first decade of the twentieth century, he moved from Chatham to suburban Croydon, where he died, leaving £3,085 17s. 5d. (£300,000 at present-day value).

Goodyear’s mother-in-law, Louisa Ann Hewes (1837–1930), was the daughter of a carpenter from Chatham.

 

Siblings and their families

Goodyear’s sister was Kathleen Mary (1894–1970), later Pugh after her marriage in 1915 to John Alun Pugh (later Sir John Alun Pugh) (1894–1972); one son, three daughters. They lived at Dumsfold, Surrey.

John Alun Pugh was the son of a Welsh doctor who came from Cardiganshire (now Ceredigion). But he grew up in Brighton, Sussex, where his father was a reasonably prosperous GP, and he attended Brighton College from c.1903 to 1913, where he became friends with Goodyear, his older near-contemporary. In 1912, he was awarded a Foundation Scholarship in Modern History at The Queen’s College, Oxford, matriculated there in 1913, and was awarded a 3^rd in Classical Moderations in 1915. Although he had been admitted to the Inner Temple in April 1914, he joined the 1^st Battalion of the Welsh Guards in July 1915 (see James Windsor Lewis), disembarked in France in February 1916, and, on 10 September 1916 was badly wounded on the Somme during the fighting around Ginchy (9–14 September). After being invalided out of the Army, he was called to the Bar in June 1918 and practised on the South Wales circuit, as a result of which he became passionately interested in all things Welsh, learnt to speak the language fluently, joined Plaid Cymru and became the President of the Welsh Schools Trust. From 1939 to 1942 he was Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Pensions and he became a County Court Judge in 1944, serving on the Norfolk Circuit (1944–46), the West London Circuit (1947–48), the Bow Circuit (1948–50), and the Bloomsbury Circuit from 1950 until his retirement in 1966. He chaired the Norwich Licensing Area Planning Committee (1945–48), the Commission of Enquiry into the Bahamas Police (1962), the County Court Rule Committee (1963–66), and the Board of Governors of his old school, Brighton College. One obituarist described him as “one of the most courteous and considerate of county court judges” and the judge and novelist Henry Cecil (1902–76) wrote that “he had in the fullest measure the three qualities which most become a judge, particularly a county court judge, patience, courtesy and kindness”. He and his wife were deeply affected by Goodyear’s death.

The Pughs’ youngest daughter, Janet Bronwen Alun Pugh (1930–2017), was better known as Bronwen Astor. After training as a teacher at the Central School of Speech and Drama and a brief spell as a BBC TV presenter in 1954, she became the most celebrated supermodel of the late 1950s, who, according to one journalist, pioneered the “dirt-between-my-feet style of modelling”. She particularly inspired the French fashion designer Pierre Balmain (1914–82), whose clothes were known for their elegance and sophistication. In 1960, she became the third wife of William Astor (1907–66), the 3^rd Viscount Astor, and thus chatelaine of Cliveden, her husband’s mansion on the Thames in Buckinghamshire, during the two years when the Profumo Scandal (1963) was brewing. In all probability, the scandal with its attendant public disgrace hastened her husband’s premature death in the Bahamas and caused the couple to be “shunned by upper-class society” and deserted by their friends “in droves”. So Bronwen and her two young daughters left Cliveden and she consummated her lifelong fascination with matters religious by becoming a Roman Catholic in 1970 and setting up an ecumenical religious community in Tuesley Manor, her new home just south of Godalming, Surrey. Tghe community, however, collapsed in 1974. She began to train as a psychotherapist in 1983 and qualified in 1986.

 

Wife

Goodyear married Nancy Winifred (née Martin) (1893–1993) on 8 January 1915. Her later name was McIver after her marriage in Bombay (1919) to Daniel Lewis McIver (b. 1885 in Karachi, India, d. 1948). They then lived at “Woodcote”, Felbridge, Surrey. Nancy’s family had its roots in Scotland and her paternal grandfather – Alexander – was, by 1871, a colonial merchant’s clerk. Her father Alexander William Martin (1860–1929) was a stockbroker and the family lived for several years in Blackheath. He left £102,426 9s. 4d. (worth £3.5 million in 2005). Nancy was educated at Wentworth Hall School for Ladies, a boarding school in Mill Hill.

 

 

Daniel Lewis McIver grew up in India and worked there as a shipping agent, probably in Karachi. In March 1914 he contracted enteric fever, and when this was followed by phlebitis, he was sent back to England in July 1914 on six months’ convalescent leave. But on 2 September 1914 he enrolled in the 14^th (County of London) Battalion of the London Regiment (London Scottish), and joined it in France on 24 November. However, once in the trenches he began to suffer from ague and was finally hospitalized for three days in January 1915. On his return to duty on 17 January the ague returned, and so, on 18 February 1915, he was invalided home to England suffering from oedema of the leg and general dispiritment, and was judged to be unfit for service. He went before a final medical board on 18 February 1916 and was discharged from the Army on 3 March 1916 on the grounds of permanent total incapacity: “should never have been enlisted”. He subsequently returned to India and took up his old employment.

 

Education and professional life

Goodyear attended Holmby House School, Bromley, Kent (now defunct), from 1898 to 1902, then King’s School, Grantham, Lincolnshire, from 1902 to 1906, and finally Brighton College from 1906 to 1909. He matriculated at Magdalen as a Demy in Mathematics on 13 October 1909, but after failing Responsions in Trinity Term 1909, he had to re-sit them in Michaelmas Term 1909. He took the First Public Examinations in October 1910 and was awarded a 1^st in Mathematical Moderations in Trinity Term 1910. He then changed to Law and was awarded a 1^st in Jurisprudence in Trinity Term 1912, with his name appearing in the same class-list as that of G.H. Morrison. He took his BA on 6 July 1912 and in 1913 he was offered a special Exhibition for being the most distinguished Demy of his year. On graduation, he joined a firm of chartered accountants, and in July 1914 he achieved the fifth best result in the Intermediate Examination of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. One of his obituarists claimed that Goodyear, being a skilled photographer, had exhibited with the Photographic Salon, London, which had taken place annually under the aegis of the Linked Ring Brotherhood. Founded in 1893, the Salon took place at the Dudley Gallery, Picadilly, until 1904. But from 1905 until its final exhibition in 1909 the Salon took place at the galleries of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours at 5a, Pall Mall East, London. But we have been unable to find Goodyear’s name in any surviving exhibition catalogue or newspaper review, so given his date of birth, his obituarist’s claim is highly improbable – though he may have exhibited somewhere else during the last five years of his life.

 

 

President Warren wrote of him posthumously: “He enjoyed life and helped others to enjoy it in every rational and healthy way and was as much liked as he was esteemed, which is saying a good deal.” When he made his will, he gave his parents’ address: “Rothesay”, Plaistow Lane, Bromley, Kent.

 

 

War service

Goodyear came from a religious family – see his mother’s letter cited below – and like K.J. Campbell, he was a very close friend of the pacifist and conscientious objector Albert Victor Murray (1890–1967; Magdalen 1909–13). At the time of the 1911 Census (2 April 1911), Goodyear and Murray were staying in the same hotel in Lynmouth, Devon, and the initials of both Campbell and Goodyear are inscribed in Murray’s Bible. So although Goodyear was probably a pacifist, he joined the Army as a stretcher bearer and became a Private in ‘C’ Section of the 85^th (1/3^rd London) Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, a unit that was set up at Horsley, Winchester, Hampshire, on 1 January 1915 and equipped with seven motor ambulances. It travelled to Southampton on 16 January, disembarked at Le Havre on 18 January, and arrived at Hazebrouck, in northern France just south of the frontier with Belgium, on 20 January. Thereafter it followed the fighting in the Ypres area as part of 84^th Brigade, 28^th Division, until 26/27 September, the second and third days of the Battle of Loos, when it moved from Merville to Noyelles via Béthune and Beuvry. In June 1915, Goodyear was selected to go on leave on the grounds that he was “one of those who had been most often under fire”. A member of the same ambulance unit left the following glimpse of Goodyear in his capacity as a medical orderly:

I recall the great rush of work we had at Whitsuntide & he was attending to the feeding & comfort of the patients as they came into the camp before their wounds were re-dressed. How tenderly he did his work then, and paid out of his own pocket, as I afterwards heard, for extra milk for the patients.

 

 

On the 24/25 September the 29^th Field Ambulance Unit moved from Bethune to “very strong and large dugouts at Sailly la Bourse [two miles WNW of Vermelles and about five miles from the front line], made for the unit by the 9^th Seaforth Pioneer Battalion” in preparation for the Battle of Loos, which began at 06.30 on the morning of 25 September. A more advanced station was set up on the Vermelles–Cambrin Road. The first casualties were brought in shortly after the attack began: “gas cases from our own gas owing to change of direction of the wind”. By the time 29^th Field Ambulance was relieved at 16.00 on 28 September by the 85^th Field Ambulance, the unit had dealt with over 2,000 casualties.

The War Diary of 85^th Field Ambulance unit for 28 September relates what happened to Goodyear:

8 a.m. Detailed Lieut. Robbins, 4 NCOs and 20 Bearers to proceed in motor Ambulances to Vermelles to learn the route and see the advanced Dressing stations to be taken over from the 29^th Field Ambulance. Lieut. Robbins reported to me at 1 p.m. that he had conducted our party under a guide from the 29^th F^d. Amb. to the 2 advanced D^r. Stations and along the medical trench as far as our support Trench. On his return as the trench (Medical communicating) was being shelled with H.E. he left 8 men in the BARTS dugouts (one of the Ad. D^r, Stations) and took the other 12 back to the Brewery the other advance D^r. Station. Later 4 of the 8 returned to him there and 4 remained in the dugouts. He returned to the unit with the 16 men and 3 Motor Ambulances.

Shortly afterwards P^te SPOONER returned and informed me that his squad of 4 men had been ordered by the M.O. of the 29^th Field Amb. in the dugouts to go up to the captured German trenches and bring in some of the wounded lying there. They had not proceeded 200 yards when they were hit by a H.E. shell and N^o. 345 P^te. Goodyear K.C. and N^o. 134 Kraninger G[eorge] (1896–1915) were killed and P^te. Lion T[homas] E[dward] (1895–1915) was wounded [mortally]. P^te. Spooner was unhurt.

Kraninger and Lion are buried in Loos British Cemetery, Grave XVI.E.7, and Béthune Town Cemetery, Grave IV.E.37, respectively, which suggests that Goodyear was simply blown to pieces, as he has no known grave. He is, however, commemorated on Memorial 56, Bart’s Alley Cemetery, Loos British Cemetery; the inscription reads: “BA Magd. College, Oxford, pure and merry of heart, a great comrade”. He is also commemorated on a stained glass window in the Chapel of Brighton College: the left light depicts St Joseph, the centre light depicts St Peter and a Pelican (a common medieval image of Christ), and the right light depicts St John; the inscription reads “To the Glory of God and in loving memory of Kenneth Charles Goodyear / killed at Vermelles September 28^th 1915 while serving in the R.A.M.C. / Whosoever will be chief among you let him be your servant. Matt 20–27”. He was not commemorated on the War Memorial at King’s School, Grantham, until 2014. On 7 November 1915, Goodyear’s mother wrote a very moving letter to President Warren which sheds a great deal of light on Warren’s ability to understand and educate young men:

Your letter to my husband touched my heart most deeply & brought me healing & consolation – I thank God who has put You where you are – in contact with so many young lives & given you the insight to see the simple goodness in a life like my son’s – I know, too, that you recognise the divine source from which he derived all his strength & sweetness.

The letter continues that in the photo (the first portrait photo above): “He stands ready to go & with a smile – for when he enlisted in the R.A.M.C. he literally ‘Arose, & followed Him,’ cheerfully & in perfect confidence.” Goodyear left £1,195 0s. 4d.

 

 

Bibliography

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

Special acknowledgements:

*Stephonie J. Clarke, Archivist for the Felbridge History Group, for information on Nancy McIver, a Felbridge Parish Councillor.

 

 Printed sources:

[Anon.], ‘The Photographic Salon’, The Times, no. 38,748 (10 September 1908), p. 4.

[Anon.], ‘The Photographic Salon’, The Times, no. 39,060 (9 September 1909), p. 10.

[Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 34, extra number (5 November 1915), p. 18.

[Anon.], ‘His Honour Sir Alun Pugh’, The Times, no. 58,334 (25 November 1971), p. 18.

D.W.P., ‘Sir Alun Pugh: Devotion to Wales’, The Times, no. 58,335 (26 November 1971), p. 19.

Henry Cecil, ‘Sir Alun Pugh’, The Times, no. 58,341 (3 December 1971), p. 16.

Peter Stanford, Bronwen Astor: Her Life and Times (London: Harper Collins, 2001), passim, but especially pp. 1–35.

Peter Stanford, ‘Bronwen, Lady Astor obituary’, The Guardian, no. 53,295 (1 January 2018), p. 31.

 

Archival sources:

MCA: PR32/C/3/535-537 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to K.C. Goodyear [1915]).

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 1.

OUA: UR 2/1/68.

WO95/2272.

WO95/1759/2.

WO95/2272/6

 

On-line sources:

 Bronwen Astor, ‘Love, Faith and Strength’ (‘Iain McNay interviews Bronwen Astor’), YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjNaNVqj5zY (accessed 18 May 2018).

‘The Royal Army Medical Corps And its Work’, WWI The Medical Front: http://www.vlib.us/medical/ramc/ramc.htm (accessed 18 May 2018).

‘Nancy McIver and Woodcock’, Felbridge & District History Group: http://www.felbridge.org.uk/index.php/publications/old-surrey-burstow-west-kent-hunt-2/ (accessed 18 May 2018).