Charles Percy ("Pussy" to his military friends) Boulton BA, DSO

• Matriculated: 1885

• Born: 1 September 1867

• Died: 24 February 1916

• Regiment: Ministry of Munitions

• Grave/Memorial: St John the Evangelist’s Churchyard, Great Stanmore, Hertfordshire.

Family background

b. 1 September 1867 at Cosgrove Priory, Northamptonshire, as the eldest son of Charles George Boulton, JP (1831–81) and Georgiana Boulton (née Nicholl) (1840–78) (m. 1863). In 1871 the family was living in Datchworth, Hertfordshire (six servants); in 1881 it was living at Baron’s Lodge, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire (ten servants).

Charles George, a landowner, was the son of Charles Crabb Boulton (1788–1850) and the Honourable Caroline Thellusson (1793–1863) (m. 1822). When he died he left £17,005 18s. 4d.

Georgiana Nicholl was the daughter of Henry Iltyd Nicholl (1809–45) and Mary Anne Oddie (1816–67) (m. 1836). Henry Iltyd Nicholl was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, from 1826 to 1830, when he took his BA and became a barrister (Inner Temple). He took his MA in 1833 and was awarded the DCL in 1841.

 

Siblings

Brother of:
(1) Mildred Caroline (1865–1945);
(2) Alice Ma(r)y (1866–1920); later Lambert after her marriage in 1899 to Cecil Humphrey Lambert (1868–1938); two sons, two daughters;
(3) Henry Gerald (b. 1869, d. 1934 in Inverness, Scotland);
(4) Reginald (1871–1946);
(5) Raymond Edward (1873–1932);
(6) Evelyn Isabella (1874–1972); later Bernays after becoming the second wife (1937) of the Reverend (later Prebendary) Stewart Frederic(k) Louis Bernays, OBE (Military) (1867–1941);
(7) Walter Mountford (1876–1949);
(8) Arthur (1879–1950).

Mildred Caroline never married.

Cecil Humphrey Lambert became Secretary to a Public Company and specialized in liquidations. Alice May Lambert left £2,342 7s. 2d.

Henry Gerald left £6,584 0s. 8d.

Raymond Edward was awarded a 3^rd in Engineering at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia in July 1899. But on 25 February 1893 he had been gazetted Lieutenant in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) and during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) he served as a Captain in the Regiment’s 1^st Battalion. On 19 June 1900 he became dangerously ill at Kroonstad, in the Orange Free State, 144 miles south-south-west of Pretoria by road, and had to be brought back to England on HMHS Avoca (1891–1917; torpedoed as the SS Feltria by UC-48 on 5 May 1917 when eight miles off Mine Head, County Waterford, Ireland, with the loss of 45 lives). Nevertheless, he subsequently rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and during World War One he commanded the 6^th (Service) Battalion of the KOYLI from 26 December 1914 to 3 November 1915, the 2/4^th (City of Bristol) Battalion (Territorial Force) from 12 May to 1 September 1916, and the 6^th (Service) Battalion of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry from 30 March to 13 April 1918. At the time of his death, he was living at Green Lane Cottage, Stanmore, Charles Percy’s old home. He left £21,034 18s. 8d.

By 1950, Evelyn Isabella was Charles Percy’s only surviving sibling. On 24 April 1937 she had become the second wife of the Reverend Stewart Frederic(k) Louis Bernays, the youngest of the six children of the Reverend Leopold John Bernays (1820–82) and his wife Mary Bernays (née Gorton) (1823–82) (m. 1846). Stewart Frederic(k) Louis was also a grandson of the German-Jewish academic Adolphus Bernays (1795–1864), the first Professor of German (1831–63) at the recently founded King’s College, London, and a descendant of Isaac Bernays (1792–1849), who became the Chief Rabbi of Hamburg. The Bernays family is also connected by marriage with the family of Sigmund Freud. From 1839 to 1843 Leopold John studied Classics at St John’s College, Oxford, and was awarded a 2^nd (BA 1843; MA 1846). As an alumnus of Merchant Taylors’ School, he automatically became a Merchant Taylors’ Fellow (1839–46), but had to resign the Fellowship in 1846 when he married. In 1844/45 he was Curate of St George-the-Martyr, London; from 1846 to 1847 he was headmaster of Hackney (Church of England) Grammar School; and from 1847 to 1860 he was headmaster of Elstree School. From 1860 until his death he was Rector of St John the Evangelist’s Church, the parish church of Great Stanmore, Middlesex.

Stewart Frederic(k) Louis Bernays was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Oxford, from 1885 to 1888, when he was awarded a 2^nd in Modern History (MA 1893). He was ordained deacon in 1889 and priest in 1890, and served as Curate of St Thomas’s Church, Toxteth Park, Liverpool, from 1889 to 1892, where he met his first wife, Lil(l)ian Jane Stephenson (1868–1935), the daughter of the vicar, Canon John Stephenson (1837–1914). It is not clear what Stewart Frederic(k) Louis did between 1892 and 1898, but in the latter year he followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming the Rector of St John the Evangelist’s Church, Great Stanmore, where he remained until 1924 – apart from the period from May 1915 to 1919, when he served as a Temporary Chaplain (4^th Class) to the Forces, for which he was awarded the OBE (Military) in March 1919 (London Gazette, no. 31,377, 30 May 1919, p. 6,984). From 1923 to 1924 he was Rural Dean of Harrow and then, until his death in August 1941, he was the Rector of Finchley, London N3, a living with a gross stipend of £1,279 p.a. (plus a house), in a large parish with a population of 5,122. He left £9,837 19s. 10d. In his obituary of Stewart Frederic(k) Louis, now styled as a Prebendary, the Suffragan Bishop of Willesden wrote:

It is the privilege of some parish priests here and there to win the affection of their people. Few have held a larger measure of it than Stewart Bernays. At Stanmore and at Finchley he won the respect literally of all. His cheerfulness, not only in the ordinary routine of life but under the severe discipline of a bitter bereavement in his own home and of the recent destruction of his church [St Mary’s-at-Finchley, in 1940, by bombs], was a thing which all could admire and many would wish to imitate. Play of any sort was a delight to him, but it never obscured from himself or from those to whom he was sent his high calling as a faithful parish priest, who cared above all things for the glory of his Master and the good of the people entrusted to him.

Walter Mountford Boulton was a solicitor.

Arthur Boulton had no particular occupation.

 

Education and professional life

Boulton attended Haileybury College (Haileybury and Imperial Service College from 1942) from 1881 to 1885 and was a Commoner at Magdalen from 1885 to 1889. He passed Moderations in Trinity Term 1886 and read for a Pass Degree (Groups B3 [Elements of Political Economy] and B4 [Law] in Michaelmas Term 1887, and Group A [Classics] in Michaelmas Term 1888). He took his BA on 29 March 1890 and at some point during that year he moved to Stanmore, Middlesex. In May 1891 he was presented at Court by Colonel James Edward Hubert Gascoyne-Cecil (1861–1947), the 4^th Marquess of Salisbury (Viscount Cranborne from 1868 to 1903) and the Commanding Officer of the Hertfordshire Militia from 29 October 1892 (when he was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel). Colonel Gascoyne-Cecil was the son of the 3^rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903), who was Prime Minister from 27 June 1885 to 28 January 1886, from 25 July 1886 to 11 August 1892, and from 25 June 1895 to 11 July 1902). Boulton was transferred into the Special Reserve of Officers on 28 July 1908, probably just before he became a member of Lloyds (until 1909), and in 1910 he was living at Green Lane Cottage, Stanmore, Middlesex. He was a keen hunter in the Scottish highlands and a member of the Constitutional and Junior United Services Clubs.

 

 

Military and war service

Boulton joined the 4^th (Extra Reserve) Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment (formerly the Hertfordshire Militia) when he was commissioned Second Lieutenant on 18 January 1888 (London Gazette, no. 25,781, 27 January 1888, p. 613). He was promoted Lieutenant on 11 May 1889 and Captain on 3 June 1891 (LG, no. 25,932, 10 May 1889, p. 2,561; no. 26,168, 2 June 1891, p. 2,927). On 16 January 1900 the Battalion left Hertford for Ireland, where it did six weeks of garrison duty in Dublin. On 27 February 1900 it embarked on the SS Goorkha (1897–1928; broken up) from Queenstown on the southern coast of Ireland (Cobh since 1920) for passage to South Africa, where the Second Boer War had been in progress since 11 October 1899 and the small town of Mafeking had been under siege by 5,000 Boers commanded by General Piet Cronjé (1836–1911) since 13 October 1899. When Boulton’s 4^th Battalion disembarked at Cape Town in March 1900, it consisted of around 30 officers and 483 other ranks (ORs) and was the only militia unit to be serving in South Africa; it was reinforced by a company of mounted infantry, half of whom came from the 3^rd (Militia) Battalion of the South Wales Borderers (until 1881 the Royal South West Borderers Militia Rifles), and a battery of Maxim Guns (early machine-guns that could fire six hundred rounds a minute).

In March 1900, the war was going badly for the British for two major reasons. First, years of training by means of irrelevant and outdated parade movements “had dulled the senses of the rank and file”, with the result that they were unused to exercising initiative when under fire. Second, most regimental officers were unwilling to give up control of their men and insisted on close order formations even though it was becoming ever more obvious that open order formations were vital in the face of modern weaponry. However, following a series of disastrous defeats, General (later Field-Marshal) Lord Frederick Sleigh Roberts (1832–1914) (the 1^st Earl Roberts of Kandahar), who had arrived in South Africa on 23 December 1899 to replace General Sir Redvers Buller, VC (1839–1908), as Commander-in-Chief there, reversed this military situation. On 13 March 1900, following the Battle of Paaderburg (Perdeberg), General Cronjé surrendered Bloemfontein, 624 miles north-east of Cape Town by road and the capital of the (Orange) Free State (1854–1902), one of the two independent Boer Republics, to the British together with 4,150 of his men, without a shot being fired.

Roberts’s primary strategic aim then became Pretoria, 290 miles to the north-east by road and the capital of the South African Republic (1852–1902), the second independent Boer Republic, known to the British as the Transvaal. Roberts resumed his advance towards Pretoria in early May 1900, and just a week after its capture on 5 June 1900, his Army of 14,000 British troops decisively defeated an army of 4,000 Boers at Diamond Hill (Donkerhoek; 11–12 June 1900), a pitched battle that some historians see as the turning-point in the South African War since it ensured that the weakened Boer Army would be unable to retake Pretoria and had to start rethinking its tactics. The final pitched battle of the war took place at Rhenosterkop on 29 November 1900, and Major-General (later Field-Marshal) Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916; later the 1^st Earl Kitchener), Roberts’s second-in-command and “operational commander”, was promoted Lieutenant-General in anticipation of being made a local (Temporary) General and replacing Roberts as the Commander-in-Chief of British and Imperial forces in South Africa on 12 December.

A period of stalemate then ensued during which the two sides reconsidered their tactics, and in January 1901 the Boers made two decisions. First, that in future they would avoid pitched battles against an enemy whose army was well armed and had become huge – over 400,000 men against the Boers’ 40–50,000 men at the height of the hostilities. And second, that they would exploit the kind of guerrilla tactics that had been successful against British troop columns, telegraph sites, storage facilities and railways since the opening months of the war, when the Boers’ only “superior weapon” was their mobility. Their decisions meant the determined deployment of relatively small but highly mobile groups of skilled horse commandos who rode in very open order, used modern Mauser rifles and smokeless ammunition, were expert shots, and knew the landscape very well – and the prolongation of the war by a further 18 months. The British responded by developing a strategy of containment which they had been using to a limited extent for the best part of a year and whose aim was to limit the mobility of the Boer mounted commandos by cordoning off all the conquered Boer territory.

This strategy had five major aspects. First, a scorched earth policy involving the destruction of supplies, livestock, food resources, farms and towns whose owners and/or inhabitants were suspected of actively helping the enemy – a tactic that Roberts had demonstrably supported since 14 June 1900 (at the earliest). Second, a greater use of more mobile forces against the Boer mounted commandos, such as mounted infantry or Kitchener’s tactic of “great sweeps” or “great drives” by columns of troops 1,000–2,000 strong. Third, starting in November/December 1900 the creation of concentration camps for women, children and old men who had been dispossessed and/or rendered homeless by the scorched earth policy. By September 1901 there were 34 such camps in South Africa and at their height they contained 116,572 inmates, of whom an estimated 27,927 (24 per cent) died in captivity, mainly from disease and malnutrition caused by poor administration of the camps and inadequate medical care. Of these, 15 per cent were women, 79 per cent were children and 6 per cent were old men. Fourth, the progressive criss-crossing of the South African veldt by 100,000 miles of imported barbed wire fencing, a relatively new American invention. And fifth, in March 1900 the British began to build a system of blockhouses, easily defensible strong-points all over the field of operations This process was led by Major-General Sir Elliott Wood (1844–1931), the senior Royal Engineers officer in South Africa, who had several very able and skilled subordinates under his command – such as Major (later Major-General, KCMG, CB) Spring Robert Rice (1858–1929), the Commanding Officer of 23 Field Company, the Royal Engineers. Broadly speaking, there were two kinds of blockhouses. First, small prefabricated ones situated at regular intervals along the recently completed national railway system that spanned South Africa and linked its major cities; second, much larger ones, of which, by the end of the war in May 1902, 441 had been constructed to close passes through the hills and protect such major strategic points as bridges, railway junctions and stations. The large blockhouses were normally 35 feet high, with two or three storeys made of solid masonry, and equipped with steel loopholed doors and windows for rifles and machine-guns that were protected by extra thick metal plates, and machicoulis galleries. Major-General Wood remarked that “their height enabled them to command much ground” with the result that the Boers “left them severely alone” and managed to take only seven in two years.

Once it arrived in South Africa and before the above policy changes were set in motion, Boulton’s 4^th Battalion was sent by train to Kimberley, a diamond mining town on the western edge of Cape Colony c.590 miles north-east of Cape Town, that had been captured by the Boers on 14 October 1899 and liberated on 15 February 1900 by a column under General Roberts. From Kimberley, the 4^th Battalion proceeded to Warrenton, on the Vaal River, 47 miles to the north, where they came into contact with a force of 4,000 Boers and had to remain entrenched there for a week with their advanced trenches only 150 yards away from those of the Boers. In late March/early April 1900, the 4^th Battalion also underwent its real baptism of fire at Warrenton when it took part in the fighting for the massive railway bridge that spanned the Vaal at nearby Fourteen Streams, both ends of which were blown up simultaneously by the Boers. After a trying time that was spent in the trenches at night and escorting artillery during the daytime, Boulton’s 4^th Battalion was relieved by the 1^st (Regular) Battalion of the Munster Fusiliers and moved south of the Modder River, a few miles to the south of Warrenton, with its headquarters at Honey-Nest-Kloof, a well-defended farm c.35 miles south of Kimberley. From here, on 12 May 1900, Boulton wrote to his sister Alice that he had “a touch of dysentery or stomach ache” and had, for three weeks now, been suffering from diarrhoea and feeling very weak. On 19 May 1900 he told his sister that he still had dysentery but was getting better as he had been taken off the milk diet and was very glad not to have been sent to the military hospital at Orange River “as they try to send all the dysentery and enteric patients home”.

Some members of the 4^th Battalion formed detachments that were sent to Belmont, Richmond, Graspan and Enslin, along the railway line to the south of Kimberley, in order to defend it against attacks and pursue and disarm the Boers. To help them, they were supplied with an armoured train that ran between Kimberley and Warrenton, and even though this enabled them to make frequent contact with the enemy, they suffered no fatal casualties. On 23 May 1900 the 4^th Battalion was taken back to Fourteen Streams on the north side of the Vaal, where it occupied the site from which the Boers had shelled it nearly two months previously. But although the Battalion was supplied with plenty of good food and the health of the ORs was highly satisfactory, a considerable number of the officers fell prey to enteric fever and dysentery and some of them were invalided home. On 26 June 1900 the Battalion left Fourteen Streams and marched the c.180 miles northwards to Mafeking, variously described as “a dreary hole”, “a miserable hole of a town”, “a dull, deadly dull, little town”, that had been “dumped down in the middle of a vast desert” and was often “swept by storms of sand, great black clouds of sand rolling from the horizon and enveloping everything in an impenetrable pall of dust”. Its few buildings had been “tremendously knocked about by shells” and were patched with corrugated zinc, but it was well fortified by a complex system of trenches, and after a seven-month-long siege it had been relieved by a force under General Roberts on 17 May 1900, a week before Queen Victoria’s 81^st birthday, causing a massive explosion of patriotic fervour in London.

After the fall of Pretoria on 29 May 1900, when the war became more mobile, the change in strategy described above gathered momentum. Infantry regiments in South Africa were increasingly used for garrison duty and on 29 June 1900 Boulton wrote to his sister that he was about to go to Mafeking and rejoin his Regiment that had been tasked with acting as Mafeking’s first garrison – which it did until 18 August 1900. But it also used the time to acquire such useful military skills as scouting and working with its company of mounted infantry and battery of Maxim Guns. During the same period, Boulton’s Company unearthed a mine that the Boers had laid on Cannon Kopje during the siege and close to their laager: it consisted of more than 20 boxes of dynamite – nearly a ton of explosive.

After the fall of Pretoria, the 4th Battalion then moved northwards to Ottoshoop (Malmami), a Transvaal border village that was 22 miles from Mafeking by road and c.176 miles west of Pretoria by a major road. Here they took part in some “sharp fighting” when, together with Paget’s Horse (the 19^th Battalion of the Imperial Yeomanry that was mainly composed of “gentlemen riders”, i.e. “young men of good social position and public-school education”), they were involved in almost daily skirmishes with the encircling Boers during which they managed to take some prisoners. Although the ORs had had to sleep in the bitter cold on the bare Veldt and generally rough it for two weeks, they were in good health when, on 1 September 1900, they returned to Mafeking. Here, as part of the new military strategy, they became part of the column that was commanded by Lieutenant-General (later Field Marshal) Paul Sanford Methuen (1845–1932), the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1^st Army Corps throughout the Second Boer War, who had been heavily defeated by the Boers at the Battle of Magersfontein, a few miles south of Kimberley, on 11 December 1899. On 25 January 1901 Boulton wrote to his sister:

It is rather dull up here at present, you cannot ride more than three miles out in the direction of the Transvaal border [i.e. northwards] without running the risk of being sniped at or captured. Paget’s Horse taking the mails from here to Lichtenburg the other day [c.43 miles by road] lost one of the two mail carts going in, and volunteering the next day to go and bring it in were all captured. They lost about three killed and four or five wounded.

At about the same time Boulton fell sick yet again and was discharged from hospital to his regiment on 15 February 1901.

By October 1900 it was generally believed that the war would soon be over, and Colonel James Edward Hubert Gascoyne-Cecil, Boulton’s Commanding Officer, was recalled from South Africa and appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the administration first of his father and then of his first cousin Arthur Balfour (1848–1930), British Prime Minister from 11 July 1902 to 5 December 1905. He arrived at Hatfield on 24 November 1900 to “great rejoicings” and was offered the freedom of the Borough of Hertford – an honour which he accepted but whose formal presentation he postponed until after the cessation of hostilities. So in November 1900 Boulton took over as Commanding Officer of the 4^th Battalion, the Bedfordshire Regiment, and remained in this post until 11 June 1902 (when the Battalion arrived back in Hertford). He also became the Camp Commandant of Mafeking, now the location of the Battalion’s headquarters, and was promoted to the rank of local Major on 26 March 1901 (London Gazette, no. 27,299, 26 March 1901, p. 2,115). Boulton’s new task was by no means a “cushy number” and he soon discovered that the infantry’s new, less mobile role had its disadvantages. So on 16 May 1901 he wrote to his sister from Mafeking:

We are getting split up again now. We have got three captains, five subalterns, and 100 men at Jacobsdaal [265 miles south-east of Mafeking by road]. One subaltern in charge of [a] detachment at Maretsani [Mareetsane; 32 miles south-east of Mafeking by road], and another at Kraaipan [45 miles south-east of Mafeking by road], leaving 7 officers, about 200 men and myself at headquarters. The worst of being in command of a Regiment, is that one can never get away with any small parties, and one can only move if the whole Regiment goes. […] The other day [the Boers] looted a store at Lubatsi [Lobatse, Botswana, c.50 miles north of Mafeking by road], what they were chiefly after was warm clothing for the winter. The weather is horribly cold again now, especially at nights, and I don’t fancy our chaps will find it particularly pleasant work bivouacking out. […] Twenty-eight men escaped from one of the [Boer] commandos and came in and surrendered yesterday. They say there are a great many more who wish to surrender, but dare not leave their commandos. […] It seems impossible to say when we shall get back: we might be back in Nov[ember], or might be kept on to the end of the year. Personally I think it will be quite another four months, before the troops begin to come home in any number, and probably twice as long before this show fizzles out.

On 16 December 1901 Boulton admitted in a letter to his sister that monotony was setting in and remarked that of the Battalion’s nine officers, only six had been in South Africa since its disembarkation.

Nevertheless, many expeditions were made into the Transvaal and between the end of 1900 and September 1901 Boulton participated in operations in the Northern Transvaal, west of Pretoria. Then between September 1901 and April 1902 he saw more action in Cape Colony, both north and south of the Orange River, and in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony. He was also temporarily Commander of the Bloemhof Sub-District, whose principal town was on the banks of the River Waal, some 36 miles north-north-west of Christiana by road and c.91 miles north-west of Kimberley by road. After Christmas 1901 the Battalion moved c.180 miles south-south-westwards to Christiana by road, and although the Boers continued to snipe at them, there was no more serious fighting.

The war ended on 31 May 1902 with Boulton’s Battalion, reduced to six officers and 295 ORs due to the fighting, disease, reorganisation, and in some cases the decision to stay in South Africa. The survivors set sail for Britain on 20 May 1902 in the SS Guelph (1894–1913; wrecked on 25 June 1923 as the SS Caraquet when approaching Bermuda en route from Nova Scotia, but with no loss of life). They disembarked at Southampton on 10 June 1902, arrived at Hertford’s Great Northern Station on 11 June 1902, the date when Boulton reverted to the rank of Captain, and marched to the large park known as Hartham Common situated between the centre of Hertford and the suburb of Bengeo. Here, “in the presence of an immense concourse of spectators”, they took part in a Service of Celebrations at which medals, silver tobacco boxes and silver cigarette cases were presented to the troops (by Gascoyne-Cecil, now the Honorary Colonel of the Battalion), and Boulton received the Queen’s Medal with three clasps and the King’s Medal with two clasps. As part of the service Boulton contributed a short speech in which he told his audience that the 4^th Battalion had stayed in South Africa longer than anticipated. It had served on the front line up to the last nine months and its Mounted Section – jointly constituted with the 3^rd (Militia) Battalion of the South Wales Borderers and part of the Mobile Column commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley Brenton von Donop, RA (later Major-General Sir Stanley; 1860–1941) – had been fighting “more or less continually” for the past 12 months. Although at first the 4^th Battalion had been in line to the west of Kimberley, it had travelled more recently to Vryburg and Zeerust and as far north as Bulawayo (the second largest city in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), c.840 miles north of Kimberley by road).

The following is an account of a dinner given in honour of Boulton and the returning Stanmore volunteers:

At the Abercorn Hotel, Stanmore [now the Everest Abercorn, 78, Stanmore Hill], on Monday evening [16 June 1902], a complimentary dinner was given to Major C.P. Boulton (4^th Bedfordshire Regiment), and Stanmore Volunteers from South Africa. There was a good company present, presided over by the Rector of Stanmore, the Rev. S.F.L. Bernays [see under ‘Siblings’ above], who had on his right the guest of the evening, Major C.P. Boulton. […] An excellent dinner was provided in the tastefully decorated concert room, and after dinner the presence of ladies graced the proceedings. Immediately following the removal of the cloth the Rector gave the toast to the King [Edward VII] and other royal toasts. He said even as a good wine needed no bush[,] a good King required no speech to make him acceptable. He had inherited from his mother that keen sense of justice which had done so much for the nation. – The toasts having been loyally honoured, he gave “Her Majesty the Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the rest of the Royal Family”. He said our beloved Queen Alexandra had won the hearts of the English people by her care for her poorer subjects. As long as England had such a Royal Family, they need not fear for the stability of the English throne. – The toast was drunk with musical honours, and Mr. Neville Harris sang “The last watch”. Then came the last toast of the evening, “Major Boulton”, proposed by the Chairman amid a scene of unparalleled enthusiasm in Stanmore. He said he had two difficulties in his way in proposing the toast. First, his life was threatened by Mr. Kent, who had to propose “Other guests”, if he cribbed any of his thoughts. There was one thing about it. This was like cricket in the wet season. The first man in scored, and though he would do his best not to approach too closely to Mr. Kent’s ground, yet he had first innings. The second difficulty was what title to give their honoured guest. He went out as Captain Boulton, and came back as Major Boulton – (applause) – in command of his regiment; but he had told him (the speaker), much to his honour, that he ceased to be major when the clock struck twelve last Wednesday night. – (A Voice: “Bunkum”, and laughter). – It might be “bunkum”, but still Major Boulton said so. He had spoken to another guest that evening, and he said he knew the Major as Master Percy (laughter). He could not call him Captain Boulton nor Master Percy, so he would stick to “Major”. Still, what was in a name? They had met to do honour to the man and not to the title (applause). It was a great honour to preside at the dinner and propose the toast. He took it he had been asked to do this as rector of the parish as representing the village. He wanted to emphasize this, to assure Major Boulton that this was a village affair entirely, and he thought trying to add to the honour which they were trying to give him that evening was adding to the spontaneity of the whole thing. He did not mean to say that the good things eaten that evening were killed, cooked, dressed and pushed on the table in five minutes because the arrangement cost many anxious deliberations, quite as many as Lord Kitchener had to bring the war to a successful issue (laughter). The proposal to do their guest honour came from the volunteers themselves. He knew Major Boulton and his family well enough to know that he would hate to hear himself praised, but at the same time it was the modesty of himself and family, coupled with the readiness to take up anything in the village that was for the benefit of the place, which had made them so popular. There should be no flattery but the truth and nothing but the truth. What then was their enthusiasm that evening? First of all the pride they felt in him, a man who seeing his duty had done it. To show them the sort of man Major Boulton was not, he had recourse to a tale from Punch. A man suffered from some mysterious malady. When interrogated by the doctor he said: “Well, I dunno what’s the matter. I eats pretty well, and drinks pretty well, but when I sees a job o’ work coming along I goes all of a sweat and a tremble (laughter)”. This was the sort of man Major Boulton was not. When he saw the South African job coming along he did not go all of a sweat and a tremble, but seeing his duty he took it and stuck to it for two years and a quarter, right to the very finish. To such as he and the Militia regiment over which he had command, the Empire owed a great debt of gratitude. Two and a-quarter years lived in the quiet and peace of Stanmore, where they never quarrelled – (loud laughter) – was a long time, and it seemed more than this since that February morning when he bid good-bye and God-speed to the Major outside the Parish Church – for like the good soldier he was he went to church and commended himself and his cause to God before he embarked in his country’s service. The past had gone like an ugly dream, and he congratulated Major Boulton and his family on his career in South Africa and his safe return to Stanmore. The toast was drunk with musical honours and it was many minutes before the gallant Major could respond. Cheer after cheer went up, and when peace reigned, Major Boulton said he could not find in his heart the words to say for the magnificent reception they had given him. He did, indeed, thank them heartily. He came home on Wednesday, and was astonished to find flags flying, people cheering, and the church bells ringing. He was told he ought to have gone up the Hill, but he went, he believed, by the Back-lane. He had lived in Stanmore for twelve years, and had never seen such a gathering as that; and he took it as a great compliment to himself and the other guests. He had been asked to give them some reminiscences of the war, but he thought they knew as much as he did, for the soldiers depended upon the papers from home to know what was going on. He went out in March 1900, and with his regiment operated north of Kimberley with [Lieutenant-]General [Archibald] Hunter [1856–1936; appointed GOC 10^th Division near the end of March 1900], and were the first regiment to garrison Mafeking after the siege [ended 17 May 1900], and he became Commandant of Mafeking. After the fall of Pretoria [29 May 1900] the infantry was used almost exclusively for garrison work on the line of communications and convoy work. He had had experience in the concentration camp near Mafeking, and the chief point which struck him was the dirtiness and bitterness of the Boers – and the women were more bitter than the men [see above for the figures on mortality in British concentration camps during the Second Boer War]. As regarding the general character of the Dutch people – he was speaking of those on the Western side – there were very few who could read or write. They were clever in a way, with a certain amount of low cunning, and were extremely good horsemen. A fact which struck him was the polite way in which on all occasions the British soldier behaved to the women and children. He wished to place on record the great admiration which all the soldiers had on the western side for Lord Methuen. In conclusion, he thanked them heartily for the warm welcome. Mr. W.G. Kent proposed “Our other guests from the front”, and said he thought they had brought within range of practical politics that which was said to be an Utopian idea, Imperial Federation. Though they had had to pay a terrible price for the war, it had united the hearts of all Englishmen at home and abroad in the common cause, the good of the Empire. The toast was drunk, and Sergt.-Inspector Clarke, as the senior non-commissioned officer in Stanmore of the South African contingent replied. He said it was so long ago in South Africa, he had almost forgotten he had been there. The few months the C[ity] I[mperial] V[olunteer]s were there they had it pretty stiff. They did their share of marching, fighting and fatigues, and took their turn with the Derbyshires, the Sussex, and the Cameron Highlanders. This was practical proof as to whether the C[ity] I[mperial] V[olunteers] were any good. He thought that Volunteers should now come under the head of soldiers. He thanked them for the kind way in which they had received the toast. Mr. F.E. Robinson gave the toast of “The Ladies” in a humourous speech, and Mr. R[eginald] Boulton [see under ‘Siblings’ above], responded. […] The Band of the Fifth (West) Middlesex, under Sergeant Horlor, played a choice selection of music during dinner. A capital evening concluded with the National Anthem.

 On 23 June 1902 he was mentioned in dispatches (London Gazette, no. 27,459, 29 July 1902, p. 4,849) and on 31 October 1902 he was awarded the DSO: “In recognition of services during the operations in South Africa” (Edinburgh Gazette, no. 11,458, 4 November 1902, p. 1,095). Boulton was transferred to the Special Reserve of Officers on 28 July 1908 (London Gazette, no. 28,162, 28 July 1908, p. 5,535), confirmed in the rank of Major on 11 July 1912 and retained this rank until 3 November 1914.

On 24 November 1914 Boulton was asked to attend a Medical Board but did not do so and on 21 October 1914 he was asked to resign his Commission on the grounds that he had been suffering from heart trouble for about the last 12 months and said that his Doctor “could not pass me as fit for active service for probably at least another eighteen months, as any violent exercise or continuous strain would be likely to cause a recurrence of the trouble”. He appeared before a second Medical Board, which decided that he had an aneurysm of the thoracic aorta, which was confirmed by X-ray. Having been invalided out of the Army, he came to Luton, Bedfordshire, in October 1915 in order to work as Superintendant of the 100 Shell Fuse Department at Chaul End Munitions Factory. Prompted by the growing shortage of high-explosive shells in 1914/1915, this was built in 1915 as a matter of urgency on a 28-acre site and soon employed c.3,000 workers, most of them women who were paid 4d. per hour for their dangerous and exacting work. The fuse factory, of which almost nothing survives, was built next to the Great Northern Railway just east of the Chaul End crossing by George Kent Ltd, whose meter factory had opened in Luton in 1908.

Boulton died in Luton of heart failure, aged 48, on 24 February 1916, leaving £3,082 13s. He was buried on Monday 13 March 1916 in the Churchyard of St John the Evangelist, Great Stanmore, Bedfordshire. The funeral was well attended: four Sergeants of the Bedfordshire Regiment carried his coffin to the grave and four buglers sounded the ‘Last Post’. A brother officer, Charles Henry Brabazon Heaton-Ellis (1864–1948; later Lieutenant-Colonel, Sir Charles, CBE, FRGS, JP, DL), gave the memorial address, in which he said that “all who knew Major Boulton were inevitably drawn to him” and described him as “immensely popular”, “one of the very best”, “a good soldier, a keen sportsman, a faithful friend” and “a man who, while never swerving from his standard of right and wrong, could not make one enemy. […] I knew well how he grieved that he was not able to serve during this war.”

 

 

Bibliography

To the editors’ great regret, anno domini and the Covid-19 pandemic prevented them from searching through local papers for the detailed reports on the activities of the Herts Yeomanry in South Africa during the Second Boer War. We know about these because, in a letter to his sister of 29 September 1900, Boulton wrote that the Hertfordshire Mercury had a correspondent with the Herts Militia who enabled this newspaper to publish a report every week on the Regiment’s doings in South Africa.

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

 

Printed sources:

 Sergeant Branton Bamford, ‘Herts Yeomanry at the Front’ [letter of 22 July 1900], The Hertfordshire Mercury and County Press [could not be found].

[Anon.], ‘The Herts Yeomanry: Death of Sergt. Bamford’, The Herts Advertiser and St Alban’s Times, [no issue number] (10 November1900), p. 5.

C[harles] V[ictor] A[lexander] Peel, Wild Sport in the Outer Hebrides (London: F.E. Robinson & Co., 1901), pp. 87–9, 118, 120.

Cosmo Rose-Innes, With Paget’s Horse to the Front (London: John Macqueen, 1901), pp. 4, 31, 105–7, 116, 137.

[Anon.], ‘Harts Militia Return’, Hertfordshire Express and General Advertizer, no. 2,479 (14 June 1902), p. 5.

[Anon.], ‘Homecoming of the Hertfordshire Militia: Enthusiastic Reception at Hertford’, The Hertfordshire Mercury and County Press, no. 3,524 (14 June 1902), p. 5.

[Anon.], ‘Return of Major Boulton: Stanmore’s Welcome’, Harrow Observer and District Reporter (Stanmore Gazette), no. 375 (20 June 1902), p. 7.

[Anon.], ‘The Returning Troops: Dinner at Stanmore’, Harrow Observer and District Reporter (Stanmore Gazette), (21 June 1902), p. 8. [This may be wrong as there was no issue for 21 June 1902, so the article may be from one of the other two local newspapers.]

[Anon.], ‘Death of Major C.P. Boulton’ [brief notice], The Morning Post, no. 44,859 (26 February 1916), p. 7.

[Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’, The Oxford Magazine, 34, no. 14 (3 March 1916), p. 232.

[Anon.], ‘Bedfordshire D.S.O. dies in Hospital’, Biggleswade Chronicle, no. 1,270 (10 March 1916), p. 3.

Obituaries for Boulton also appeared in the Evening Standard and The Times round about 24 February 1916.

Creagh and Humphris, ii (1924), p. 297.

Sir Elliott Wood, Life and Adventure in Peace and War (London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1924), pp. 233–79.

Maurice (1931).

[Anon.], ‘Mrs Bernays: A Life of Service’, The Times, no. 47,225 (24 December 1935), p. 12.

C.T. Atkinson, The South Wales Borderers: 24^th Foot, 1689–1937 (Cambridge: CUP [Printed for the Regimental History Committee], 1937), pp. 362, 366, 388–9, 400, 408, 411.

[The Bishop of Willesden 1940–42 (Henry Montgomery Campbell [1887–1970])], ‘Prebendary S.F.L. Bernays’ [obituary], The Times, no. 49,002 (12 August 1941), p. 6.

Julian Orford, ‘The Dust of Conflict’, Military History Journal, 5, no. 4 (December 1981), pp. 151–3.

John Burnett, ‘Rosina Whyatt: Munitions-Factory Worker’, in: Useful Toil: Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s (1974) (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994), pp. 116–24.

Geoffrey Hewlett, Stanmore through Time (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing, 2009).

 

Archival sources:

The personal papers of Major Charles Percy Boulton of the 4th Battalion, The Bedfordshire Regiment (Hertfordshire Militia) (Acc. 4885), (16 item sc. 1900–16 including nine letters from Boulton to his sister Alice that were written between 12 May 1900 and 6 January 1902). Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies Library, Register Office Block, Hertford SG13 8EJ.

The Archives, St John’s College, Oxford.

WO339/26380.

 

On-line sources:

Wikipedia, ‘Adolphus Bernays’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphus_Bernays (accessed 4 July 2021).

Wikipedia, ‘Bernays Family’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernays_family (accessed 4 July 2021).

Wikipedia, ‘Robert Bernays’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bernays (accessed 4 July 2021).

Wikipedia, ‘Shell Crisis of 1915’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Crisis_of_1915 (accessed 4 July 2021).

Several very interesting items – including photographs – which deal with the Chaul End Munitions Factory in the context of Luton History can be found by searching on ‘Chaul End Munitions Factory’.