Charles Alfred Pigot-Moodie

• Matriculated: 1909

• Born: 30 May 1890

• Died: 13 January 1915

• Regiment: Rifle Brigade attached to Royal Irish Rifles

• Grave/Memorial: Kemmel Château Military Cemetery: I.A.3.

Family background

b. 30 May 1890 at Westbrooke, Rondebosch, a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, as the younger son of George Pigot Moodie (1829–91) and Rose Maria (or Rosa Mae or Rosa Maris) Pigot Moodie (née Spranger) (c.1850–96) (m. 1879).

 

 

Parents and antecedents

The Pigot-Moodie (or Pigot Moodie) family begins in 1824 when Lieutenant Donald Moodie, RN (1794–1881), Pigot-Moodie’s grandfather, married Eliza Sophia Pigot (c.1798–1881) in Albany, Cape Colony, South Africa, where both families were established by the late eighteenth century. Pigot-Moodie’s father George was the fourth of Donald Moodie’s fourteen children (second son) and a land surveyor by profession. In August 1872, five years before the British annexed the Boer-ruled Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek (ZAR, established 1839), George obtained the concession to build the first working railway line in the ZAR. It ran first between Johannesburg and the Boksburg coal mines; was then extended to Krugersdorp and Springs; and stretched about 40 miles by its completion in 1890. As Surveyor-General of the ZAR (which regained its independence from the British after their defeat in the First Boer War [1880–1]), George also surveyed a railway route from Delagoa Bay (now Maputo) to Pretoria. In lieu of payment the ZAR government gave him a group of 13 farms, known as “Moodie’s Concession”, near Barberton (founded 1884), which rapidly became the centre of a gold rush that reached its height in 1886. Gold in abundance was soon found on “Moodie’s Concession” and after a fairly acrimonious legal dispute about mining rights, George obtained a mining concession in August 1885, which he sold in May 1889. The family then returned to the Cape and settled in Rondebosch, where George used his wealth to construct the mansion in which Charles Alfred was born (now the official residence of the State President) and the ornamental cast-iron drinking fountain (a national monument since 1964).

Pigot-Moodie’s mother was the daughter of a Cambridge educated surgeon, Stephen Spranger, MD FRCS (1813–75), who had practised in the Cape Colony.

 

 

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) Minna [“Minnie”] Sophia (1882–1965);

(2) George Frederick Arthur [later Brigadier, MC ] (1888–1959) (m. [i] [1917] Alexandra Rhoda Astley [1886–1918], one son; [ii] [1930] Ruth M.E. Stableton-Bretherton [1897–1956]);

(3) Edith Rosa Spranger (1885–1903).

George Frederick Arthur was at school at Harrow, went through the Royal Military College Sandhurst and became a professional soldier. During World War One, he served in the 2^nd Dragoons (the Royal Scots Greys), was mentioned in dispatches three times, and was the first South African citizen to be awarded the Military Cross after its institution on 28 December 1914. He ended the war as a Lieutenant-Colonel, commanded the Royal Scots Greys 1926–32, retired, served in World War Two as a Brigadier commanding a Pioneer Brigade, and died in Melsetter, Southern Rhodesia, at the home of his older sister Minna. His first wife died in childbirth while giving birth to their son John Peter [later Lieutenant RN]. He died of wounds received in action on 4 August 1940 when serving on the G-class destroyer HMS Greyhound (1935–41; and HMS Gloucester [1937–41]) while she was evacuating troops from Dunkirk. After George’s death in 1891, the family returned permanently to England: Charles Alfred attended school in Brighton, where his mother died in 1896; his sister Edith Rosa Spranger died suddenly at 21, James St Mansions, London SW, in 1903; and his sister Minna Sophia lived for long periods at 1, Essex Villas, London W8. At the time of the 1901 Census, Charles Alfred and his brother George were living with their unmarried aunt Edith Jesse Georgiana Moodie (1842–1927) at 8, The Drive, North Wimbledon.

 

 

Education

From 1900 to 1904, Pigot-Moodie attended Windlesham House Preparatory School, Brighton, Sussex, England’s first real preparatory school, which became one of the top five English preparatory schools in the nineteenth century [cf. H.M.W. Wells, G.B. Lockhart, J.R. Philpott]. Founded on the Isle of Wight in 1837, the school moved to Brighton in 1838 and to new buildings in 1846. According to the school magazine, neither Pigot-Moodie nor his elder brother excelled in work, sport or conduct. Charles Alfred came consistently bottom of his class for academic work; as a cricketer he was described, equally consistently, as a “careful bat”, but a fair to moderate bowler and “a plucky field”; and as a footballer, he was never more than “reliable” (1901): “a variable player, quite good on his day, rather inclined to hang back” (1903). He did, however, make his mark as a singer at the school concerts in November 1902 and 1903, and in his final term he was made a Monitor. From Easter 1903 to 1904 he served in the Windlesham House’s Cadet Corps, when it was affiliated to the Chichester Battalion of the Church Lads Brigade – the first, if not the only, preparatory school Cadet Corps to do so. Thanks to Dr C.J. Vaughn (1816–97, Headmaster of Harrow 1845–59), more boys from Windlesham had gone to Harrow than to any other secondary school.

He then attended Harrow School from 1904 to 1908 and matriculated as a Commoner at Magdalen on 13 October 1909, having taken Responsions in Michaelmas Term 1908. He took the First Public Examination in Hilary Term and October 1910 and read Modern History (Honours) until the end of Trinity Term 1912, when he failed Finals. He tried again in Trinity Term 1913, but seems to have failed yet again and left without taking a degree. He was a member of the Conservative and Bullingdon Clubs and won the point-to-point race known as the Varsity Grind. President Warren described him posthumously as “a man of some ability and much modesty and good feeling and sense”, and when he applied for a Commission in Autumn 1914, his Certificate of Good Moral Character was signed by none other than John Leslie Johnston, Magdalen’s Dean of Arts. When making his will, Pigot-Moodie gave his address as 10, Cadogan Gardens, Middlesex [London SW], where his sister Minna was currently living.

 

Military and war service

Having trained in the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps, where he was in the Cavalry Section, Pigot-Moodie, who was 6 foot 1 inch tall, applied for a Commission in the Special Reserve of Officers on 10 August 1914. He was commissioned Second Lieutenant on probation on 15 August 1914 in the 6^th (Reserve) Battalion, the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own) and subsequently attached to the 2^nd (Regular) Battalion, the Royal Irish Rifles. The Battalion had been in France since 14 August 1914 as part of 7^th Brigade, in the 3^rd Division, and taken part in the retreat from Mons, the Battles of the Aisne and the Marne, the Battle of La Bassée during the race for the sea, and the First Battle of Ypres. By 17 November it had been so badly mauled that it was down to 40 men, but it was gradually reinforced and on 30 November it was able to take over a new line of trenches to the east of Wytschaete, between the Kemmel–Wytschaete road and the road that runs northwards to join the Neuve Église–Ypres Road. Pigot-Moodie and a batch of 65 reinforcements joined it at the front near Kemmel on 5 December. From 9 December to 12 January 1915, the Battalion was in the trenches or resting in the area of Kemmel/Locre/Westoutre, and while it thus avoided the fighting at the Petit Bois, it suffered a steady stream of casualties. During this period, on 10 January, Pigot-Moodie wrote to a friend:

Of course the conditions are very bad, and trenches in an awful state, and all that; but the actual thing is not half so bad as a bald statement of conditions makes it sound: “accounts” that leave out the human element must give a false impression; if the men were to get depressed then it would be heart-rending, but exceptional conditions only bring out their extraordinary form of humour, and so they keep their spirits up.

And to another friend on the same day: “One thing is certain – one is far happier here than one would be anywhere else – no one is ‘heavy’.” On 11 January, his brother George, a Lieutenant with the Royal Scots Greys, saw him for the last time and found him “very cheery”. On 12 January, the Battalion returned to the trenches west of Kemmel for a four-day spell of duty, and at about 08.00 hours on 13 January 1915, while Pigot-Moodie was substituting for someone who was ill and supervising the repairs being made to his newly occupied trench, he was shot in the neck by a sniper and died seven minutes later, aged 24. Buried: Kemmel Château Military Cemetery (south of Ypres), Grave 1.A.3. He is commemorated on Minstead War Memorial, Lyndhurst, Hampshire. On 21 January 1915, a memorial service for him was held in the Magdalen College Mission Chapel, Oakley Square, London NW, “to which he had been a faithful friend and helper”. He left £25,914 5s. 9d. to his sister Minna, and when she died in Rhodesia, she left an estate in England valued at £21,131, most of which went to the Provincial Trustees of the Church of the Province of South Africa.

 

Bibliography

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

 

Printed sources:

[Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 33, no. 9 (22 January 1915), p. 145.

Harrow Memorials, i (1918), unpag.

Laurie, Falls and Graves, vol. 1 (1925), pp. 22–6.

Leinster-Mackay (1984), pp. 47, 116, 138–9.

Claudia Davison (ed.), The Burgoyne Diaries (London: Thomas Harmsworth Publishing, 1985), pp. 63–5.

Clutterbuck, ii (2002), p. 332.

 

Archival sources:

OUA: UR 2/1/70.

WO95/1415.

WO339/16568.