Fact file:
Matriculated: Did not matriculate
Born: 3 February 1899
Died: 2 September 1918
Regiment: The Rifle Brigade
Grave/Memorial: Faubourg d’Amiens Cemetery: VI.F.17
Family background
b. 3 February 1899 at Banstead Wood, Banstead, as the fourth (and youngest) son (of six children) of Charles Henry Garton (1859–1934) and Juliet Garton (née Westlake) (1857–1934) (m. 1884), who, since 1893, had lived at that address, not far from Epsom, Surrey. At the time of the 1901 Census there were eleven servants living in the house, and at the time of the 1911 Census nine. Others, who worked outdoors, probably lived in the stables and the Garden Cottage.
Parents and antecedents
Garton’s father, Charles Henry, was the second of the five sons of William Garton [II] (1832–1905), who in the Census of 1861 described himself as a General Carrier. William then gradually diversified into brewing (Census 1871) and sugar refining (Census 1881). His father, William Garton [I] (1795–1833), had been a brewer in Bristol; and after William [I]’s early death his wife Susannah Foley (1796–1880) had kept the family brewery going, eventually with the help of their eldest son Charles Garton (1823–92) (the brother of William [II] and uncle of Charles Henry Garton – and therefore our subject Garton’s great-uncle).
In 1847, Charles established Garton, Hill & Co. Ltd in Canute Road, Southampton, and in 1855 this company, using Charles Garton’s patent, began to produce saccharin, a grape sugar (glucose) made out of cane sugar that was otherwise known as “invert sugar” and could be used in brewing, wine-making, distilling and jam-making. This invention, which had taken years of experiment and £30,000 of investment, brought about a revolution in the brewing industry especially, since it enabled brewers to move away from heavy, soporific beers and produce much lighter brews. In 1871, William [II], who had joined the family firm almost immediately after the plant was acquired in 1847, bought the Anglo-Bavarian Brewery in Shepton Mallet (established 1864), England’s first lager brewery, whose name derived from the fact that it employed German brewers. The Gartons’ Southampton factory closed in 1882 when Garton and Sons moved its “Saccharum Works” to York Road, Battersea, London SW11. Here, in 1893, it changed its name to Garton, Hill & Co. Ltd. and it finally closed in 1920.
In parallel with these developments, the Frenchman Alexander Mambré (later Manbré) (1825–1904) established his Saccharine Co. Ltd for turning starch into solid glucose sugar in London’s Spitalfields in 1855; it then moved to Hammersmith in 1876, a mere two miles away from the Gartons’ factory. But as, by 1918, the Manbré Saccharine Co. was in difficulties, Manbré was bought out and in 1919 the company changed its name to Manbré Sugar and Malt Ltd, with A. Boake (b. 1844 in Ireland, d. 1925, leaving £227,881 3s.) as its Chairman and Albert Eustace Berry (1876–1961) as its Managing Director. By 1924, the two Hammersmith-based firms were making almost exactly the same thing – sugar and glucose for brewing, jam-making and the manufacture of confectionery – and both firms were almost equally profitable (£247,149 and £212,982 in 1926, with their joint profits for 1920–26 averaging £460,000 p.a.). In 1926, a proposal for an amalgamation turned into an outright sale when Manbré Sugar and Malt Ltd bought out the Gartons’ company for £2,300,000 and took over their Battersea works. The firm prospered, and when in September 1926 the new company, now calling itself Manbré and Gartons, issued nearly 800,000 shares of various kinds, they were expected to yield between 7% and 11% profit.
During World War Two, Manbré and Gartons developed a new and more rapid method for the production of penicillin in its Battersea factory using corn-steep liquor, and although it was badly damaged by a flying bomb in 1944, it was producing again in two days. The firm existed until 1976 when it was taken over by Tate and Lyle. Charles Henry had been the Chairman of the family firm and became a Director of Manbré and Gartons (1923–27); he also became a Director of the brewers Thomas Wethered and Sons Ltd, which had been operating in the Marlow area since the late eighteenth century.
The firm’s success was due not least to the input of William [II]’s eldest son, Richard (from 1908 Sir Richard) Charles Garton (1857–1934), who is described as a financier, racehorse owner and breeder. He was also a politician, who had fought the Battersea seat as a Conservative in 1900 and lost by 254 votes to an opponent, John Burns (1855–1943), who was an independent radical in his views but remained aligned with the Liberal Party, and who would become a good friend. Richard Charles had studied the problems of fermentation at Owen’s College, Manchester (founded 1851, absorbed into the University of Manchester in 1904), and the University of Marburg, Germany, pioneered the manufacture of liquid glucose (corn syrup) from such ingredients as maize, and become the permanent Governing Director of the family firm. He actively promoted the science and practice of brewing within the higher education system; his advice was sought by many companies; and he had a reputation for financial astuteness. Consequently, he was made a Director of two brewing concerns: E. Lacon and Co. (Yarmouth) and in 1902 Watney, Combe, Reid and Co. (Deputy Chairman 1924–28, Chairman 1928–32). For some years he was also a Director of Lloyds Bank. Although a Conservative, he set up the Garton Foundation in 1912 to promote the internationalist and anti-war ideas of Norman Angell (1872–1967) as those are set out in The Great Illusion (first edition 1910). In 1918, he received the CBE for his wartime services. He was a prominent and enthusiastic member of the racing fraternity; he was a benefactor to the town of Haslemere, Surrey, where he lived from c.1902; and in 1923 he founded the British Empire Cancer Campaign – of which he became the honorary Financial Secretary – with an anonymous gift of £20,000. On his death, only two months before that of Charles Henry, he left £2,642,364, of which £1,282,407 was paid in tax.
In 1893, Charles Henry used his increasing wealth to acquire Banstead Wood House, designed in 1884 by the architect Richard Norman Shaw, RA (1831–1912) for the merchant banker the Hon. Francis Baring (1866–1938) in a style that is often described as “Stockbroker Tudor”, together with a 483-acre estate near Chipstead, Surrey, which, by 1900, had a domestic staff of ten (including a butler). The new owners’ relationship with the village of Banstead has been described as “feudal maybe, patriarchal certainly, but above all matriarchal”, and the Reverend Arthur W. Hopkinson (1874–1960), Vicar of Banstead from 1918 to 1930, at a time when Banstead was rapidly changing from a one-street village into part of Greater London, has left us the following explanation for this description. Hopkinson was full of praise for the Garton family because it “stood for a great deal in the life of the parish”, and he recorded how they provided him, as Vicar, “with daily gifts of flowers, or fruit, or game, […] trips to dinner and the theatre in Town [… and] holidays in the Holy Land, in Algiers, on Dartmoor”, where, for some years, they owned a house at Throwleigh. He also tells us how Charles Henry, who chaired Banstead Parish Council from 1911 to 1927, provided the villagers with land for allotments during the war and subsequently, in 1931, gave the Banstead Parish Recreation Committee some valuable land in Garratts Lane to use as a playing field and recreation ground. But he left an even more graphic description of Charles Henry’s wife Juliet, the daughter of a Quaker corn merchant who “never lost her Quaker consciousness of the ‘inner light’” and who had been “brought into the Church through the preaching of a Mission in the parish where she lived”. Juliet Garton seems to have been even more active on behalf of the spiritual and physical wellbeing of the local people than was her husband. Every morning, she drove herself to the 8 a.m. Eucharist in the local church – All Saints in Banstead High Street until St Mary’s at Burgh Heath, of which the Gartons became major benefactors, was built in 1909 – before hurrying back to preside at the family breakfast. Hopkinson continues:
From seven in the morning till after midnight she worked, and sympathized, and prayed, and gave herself wholeheartedly to others. All her children and her grandchildren went to her as a matter of course with their troubles and problems, and ambitions. Her power of understanding and her wealth of sympathy seemed limitless. She was super-eminently a great-hearted woman.
During the war she supplied the villagers with rabbits that had been shot on the estate, milk at twopence a pint for any mother with a baby, and gifts of sugar, and after the war she provided pre-fabricated huts in Pound Road for ex-servicemen, paid for 100 chairs, bookshelves and a Bible for the Banstead Men’s Club, and set up a laundry in Chipstead Road for housewives who had no proper washing facilities. In return, Hopkinson tells us, she expected her charges to show her due and proper deference.
Despite its feudal traits, Banstead Wood House was, for Hopkinson, “a revelation of what hospitality can be”, “a power-house of refreshment and re-creation”. Year after year the Gartons entertained the Oxford VIII for their weekend of relaxation before the Boat Race, and the Reverend “Tubby” Clayton (1885–1972; the founder of Toc ‘H’ in Poperinghe in December 1915), “Caesar” (Bishop Walter Julius) Carey (1875–1955; an evangelical missionary bishop in South Africa), and tired workers in the field of all types and all ages found a refuge there. “There must”, Hopkinson concluded,
be hundreds of men and women who remember Banstead Wood House with gratitude. It always seemed to me an embodiment of the text “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. The fun, uproarious sometimes, was healthy because it was Christian. Every day began for family and guests, butler and footmen, cook and nine housemaids, with prayer. It was not an irksome extra, but the mainstream of a happy, contented household life.
Hopkinson also left us with the following insight into the relationship that existed between Banstead Wood House’s two principals: “Juliet without Charles would have been a magnificent ship in full sail but without a rudder. By their very unlikeness they were well matched. He was never impulsive, never impatient, an amazingly shrewd judge of men. In these respects only those who knew them will understood his saint-like qualities”. On his death in 1934, Charles Henry left his sons Charles Leslie and Arthur Stanley £2,709,702 net (c.£140 million in 2005), of which £1,406,910 was paid in tax, and individual bequests to seven hospitals: his funeral was attended by hundreds of mourners. When Juliet Garton died a few weeks after her husband, she, too, left nearly £3 million.
Siblings and their families
Brother of:
(1) Charles Leslie (1885–1941); married (1910) Madeline Laurence; two daughters, three sons;
(2) Phyllis Mary (1886–1974); later Lady Phyllis after her marriage in 1909 to Richard (later Commander Sir), Southby (1886–1969; 1st Baron Burford from 1937); marriage dissolved in 1961; two sons;
(3) Arthur Stanley (1889–1948); married (1917) Mona Macauley (1895–1986); one son, three daughters;
(4) Herbert Westlake Garton (1892–1916); killed in action on 15 September 1916 while serving as a Captain in the 9th (Service) Battalion, the Rifle Brigade, the regiment in which Edward Clive would also lose his life;
(5) Lois Juliet (1896–1978); later Rose after her marriage in 1920 to the Reverend (later Right Reverend) Alfred Carey Wollaston Rose (1885–1971); four daughters, two sons.
Charles Leslie was at Magdalen from 1904 to 1907 (BA 1907), where he made his name as a hurdler and an oarsman, but especially as an oarsman. Soon after matriculating, he represented the College in the coxless IVs of 4 November 1904, when he replaced James Douglas Stobart (1884–1970; Magdalen 1902–05, BA 1905) at No. 4, with W.A. Fleet at bow, and from 16 to 22 February 1905 he again rowed at No. 4 in Magdalen’s 1st VIII that went Head of the River in the spring Torpids after “a hard and exciting race with New College” on the last day of the races. In his assessments of the individual members of the crew, the Secretary remarked of Charles Leslie: “Hands heavy over the stretcher & very laboured finish.” On 8 May 1905, Magdalen’s 1st VIII began training for the Summer Eights (24–31 May) with Charles Leslie as No. 3. But the Secretary of Magdalen College Boat Club (MCBC) was implacable and described their initial efforts as “Very bad row. Very short, no swing, no rhythms. Bucket of the barges.” On 9 May he registered a “slight improvement” that continued on the following day, but on 13 May he described the row as “very & much too slow over the first half of the course”; on 15 May their performance had declined to “Rotten” and on 16 May it was “exceedingly slovenly” and lacking “life, leg drive, & swing”. On 17 May the merciless Secretary called the crew’s performance “Exceedingly slovenly […] again, & a most unsatisfactory row for we were again very slow over the first part of the course. […] but from the boat house in it was a dismal bucket; & no-one seemed properly rowed out at the finish owing to saving them selves [sic] at the start.”
So a new coach took over the training “& by dint of a few home truths seemed to wake the crew up & instill [sic] some idea of rhythm into us, & by making us row a faster stroke showed us that we could”. As a result, by 20 May the rowing was “on the whole better & showed more drive, length & swing” and this improvement continued on 22 May. So when the races started on 24 May, in “fine weather & good rowing conditions”, Magdalen rowed well and finished Second on the River, just behind New College. Magdalen’s performance improved so greatly that they went Head of the River on the second day, and after that the Magdalen VIII were not “really troubled” by their main rivals – New College, University College, and Christ Church – and passed the winning post well out of our distance away from their rivals (see G.M.R. Turbutt for a detailed description of the orgiastic Bump Supper that followed Magdalen’s victory). Although, when assessing the individual members of the crew, the Secretary once again reproved Charles Leslie for being “heavy with his hands over the stretchers & therefore not infrequently late on the rest of the crew”, for having “a rather peculiar & awkward finish, dropping his hands with a laboured effort from the shoulder, instead of from the elbows”, and for tending “to let his leg work off at the finish”, he finally conceded, albeit somewhat grudgingly, that overall he was “A Good waterman.”
On 2, 3 and 4 November 1905 Charles Leslie rowed in Magdalen’s crew that competed in the coxless IVs and reached the final, where they were up against their old opponent New College. At the boat house, three-quarters of the way along the course, the two boats were “exactly level”, but E.H.L. Southwell at stroke “picked up the stroke & kept it up the whole way to the finish & eventually Magdalen won a most exciting and well-fought race by ¾ length”. The Secretary then concluded his account with the following thought: “It is perhaps worthy of mention that the whole crew were Etonians and therefore “Floreat Magdalena et Etona’.” In 1906, although Charles Leslie was not a member of the VIII that went Head in late June for the second year running, he did take part in the Henley Regatta in July 1906 and was assessed by Southwell – the Secretary of MCBC for 1906/07 – as “an excellent waterman, who with bow [R.P. Stanhope] probably helped much to steady the boat against the somewhat bovine activities of less neat oarsmen”. Nevertheless, the Secretary shared his predecessor’s opinion that Charles Leslie was “rather short forward and late in applying his legwork, which is not yet strong enough”. The crew that began training for the coxless IV’s on 14 October 1906 was the same as the crew of the previous year, but it was beaten by Magdalen’s 2nd crew on the first occasion that a College had entered two crews for the coxless IV’s. This time the Secretary was more positive about Charles Leslie: “Garton at bow has probably steered better courses in the Fours than almost any other man, and while having in great measure won our race last year, came very near to doing so again.” This race seems to have been Charles Leslie’s final appearance on the river as part of a major crew, for although he was at first selected to row at No. 5 in the Magdalen summer VIII, in the end he took no part either in the Oxford race or in the Henley Regatta in summer 1907.
In 1913, Charles Leslie’s father gave him Holly Hill House, part of the Banstead Wood Estate, and during the war he became a Captain (Special Lists) and worked in the War Office. In February 1917 he received a special mention in dispatches that was not included in either the London Gazette or the normal military records that denoted “mentions by the Secretary of State [for War; i.e. Lord Derby (1865–1948) who held the office between 10 December 1916 and 18 April 1918] for valuable service in connexion with the War”. In 1921 he joined the Board of the Northern Assurance Company, and when he died, in 1941, Magdalen’s choir sang at his funeral.
Charles Leslie’s son, John Leslie Garton (later MBE, CBE) (1916–2002), who was at Magdalen from 1935 to 1939, had an even more distinguished career in the world of British rowing and came to “occupy the pinnacle of rowing’s governing body and the sport’s principal regatta”. In 1935 he became Captain of Boats at Eton; in 1936, he stroked the First Torpid that made three bumps and went Head of the River; he was Magdalen’s Captain of Boats 1937–38; he rowed against Cambridge twice and in 1938–39, his final year, he was elected President of the Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC). During World War Two he served as a Territorial Army officer in France (1940) with the Royal Berkshire Regiment, escaped via Dunkirk, and subsequently became a specialist in fire-fighting and bomb disposal. In 1944 he was seconded to the Staff of the 1st Canadian Army and helped in the planning of D-Day, for which he was awarded the MBE in 1946. After the war, he worked for Brakspear’s Brewery at Henley-on-Thames, but also became Captain of the conveniently placed rowing club that is known as Leander, and acted as its Chairman from 1958 to 1959, its President from 1980 to 1983, and the Chairman of its Trustees from 1982 to 1995. Within the University of Oxford, he coached Magdalen crews until well into the 1950s, was a Trustee of the Magdalen College Boat Club and became Treasurer of the OUBC in the 1960s. In 1959, he was elected a Steward of Henley Royal Regatta, chaired its Committee of Management from 1965 to 1978, and later became its President. From 1948 to 1977 he was a member of the Council and Executive of the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) and its President from 1969 to 1976, and in this capacity he played a major part in setting up the multi-purpose National Watersports Centre at Holme Pierpoint, near Nottingham, in 1973. He then chaired the World Rowing Championships that took place at the new Centre in 1975, and as “the administrative supremo of British rowing”, he steered both the Royal Regatta and the ARA through hard and inflationary times. From 1969 to 1977 he served on the Finance and General Purposes Committee of the British Olympic Association and the Board of the Thames Conservancy. In 1974 he was awarded the CBE for services to rowing. From 1951 to 1965 he was the Chairman of Coca-Cola Bottling Company (Oxford) and in 1977 he served for a year as High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire.
Richard Southby was the Conservative MP for Epsom from 1928 to 1947.
Arthur Stanley, described by one authority as “the greatest of Oxford’s [rowing] heavyweights”, had already made a considerable reputation for himself when he was at Eton, and after matriculating at Magdalen in October 1908, he was, unusually, put straight into the victorious Oxford boat that would row against Cambridge in 1909, when six of the crew were from Magdalen (see A.G. Kirby). He was selected again for 1910, when he rowed at No. 6, and 1911, when he was the Captain. In 1910 and 1911 he rowed in the Oxford boat that won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley, the first time ever that an Oxford college had won the Grand in two successive years. He took his BA in 1911. In 1912 he rowed in the Leander VIII that not only won the Grand, but also won a gold medal for Britain in the Summer Olympics at Stockholm with a crew of whom eight were from Magdalen with the ninth from Trinity Hall, Cambridge. During World War One he served from 1914 to 1920 as a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in Malta, the Dardanelles, Greece, Egypt and France, partly aboard the Special Service Vessel HMS Egmont. The old armoured cruiser HMS Achilles had been renamed HMS Egmont in 1905 and then served until 1912 as a depot ship in the Grand Harbour at Malta where her main task was to process sailors’ movements in and out of the Mediterranean Fleet. When the Navy set up a shore establishment inside the medieval Fort St Angelo and named it HMS Egmont, the old cruiser was towed home and broken up. After the war, Arthur Stanley maintained a close interest in rowing: he became a member of the Henley Management Committee and coached the Oxford VIII in 1925 and 1930. After the death of his parents in 1934, he moved into Banstead Wood House, which, in 1936, he donated for the creation of a children’s hospital which was to be known as The Princess Elizabeth of York’s Hospital for Children. It was finally opened in June 1948.
In 1940, Rosalind Mona (b. 1918), Arthur Stanley’s eldest daughter, married the Olympic oarsman (1948) Richard (“Dickie”) Desborough Burnell (1917–95) (Magdalen 1936–39), a member of another rowing family who was slightly older than her younger brother Charles Hubert Stanley Garton (1920–2004) (Magdalen 1939–40), another notable oarsman. Their son Peter (Magdalen 1959–62) followed his father and both grandfathers by rowing in the trial VIIIs and the ISIS VIII in 1960 and 1961, and for Oxford against Cambridge in 1962 – the Burnells’ third Blue in three generations. In 1962 he was in the OUBC crew that rowed as Leander at Henley but was beaten by the Russians in the final of the Grand.
Jean (1921–2009), Arthur Stanley’s second daughter, married first (1944) Sir Edward Henry Bouhier Imbert-Terry, the 3rd Baron Imbert-Terry (1920–78); and then (1983) Sir Lionel Bertrand Sackville-West, the 6th Baron Sackville of Knole (1913–2004), who read PPE at Magdalen from 1931 to 34 and was awarded a 3rd in 1934.
Lois Juliet’s husband became the Suffragan Bishop of Dover (1935–56) and the Senior Suffragan Bishop under Archbishops Lang, Temple and Fisher. Their sons Geoffrey Thomas Rose (b. 1923) and Michael Hugh Rose (1926–2003) were at Magdalen from 1941 to 1942 and 1948 to 1950 respectively.
Eric Clive Garton
Education
From 1906 to 1912, Garton attended Mr Hawtrey’s Preparatory School at Westgate-on-Sea, Kent. The school had been founded in 1869 at Aldin House, Slough, by the Reverend John Hawtrey (1850–1925); was known as St Michael’s School from 1869 to 1925; moved to Westgate-on-Sea in 1883; and existed in various locations until it merged with Cheam Preparatory School, Headley, Berkshire in 1994 (cf. H.W. Garton, V. Fleming). He then studied at Eton from 1912 to 1916, where he was a member of the Eton Rifle Volunteers. In 1916, Garton was accepted as a Commoner and Academical Clerk at Magdalen, but did not matriculate, having decided in the early autumn of that year to volunteer for military service.
War service
After leaving Eton, Garton trained as an officer at the Royal Military College (Sandhurst), and although, in a letter of 26 December (1916), he informed President Warren that he had been offered a commission in the Black Watch, he applied for a cadetship that would lead to a Commission in the Guards on 13 February 1917. But he later joined the 5th (Reserve) Battalion, the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own), where he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in April 1917. He arrived in France on 29 June 1918 and although the Battalion War Diary does not mention his arrival, he probably reported for duty with the 1st (Regular) Battalion of the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own), part of the 11th Brigade in the 4th Division, sometime in July. This would have been after the end of the Third Battle of Ypres, the Germans’ final attempt to break through the Allied front to the coast along a 25-mile front running north-north-east to south-south-west, from a point about six miles east of Ypres to one about six miles east of Béthune.
During July and the first half of August 1918, the 1st Battalion was alternating between stints in the front-line trenches north-east of the Canal de l’Aire, near Riez-du-Vinage and Pacault Wood, and billets in the hamlet of Busnettes, south-west of the Canal de l’Aire and just outside Lillers. Although the sector stayed relatively quiet during this period, the Battalion lost three officers and 33 other ranks (ORs) killed in action and wounded, and on 11 August the Germans sent a raiding party of 60 men against the British positions but were driven off. There was more fighting over the next few days and on 13 August Garton was one of two officers to be affected by gas while the Battalion was in support in the old front line. He stayed in hospital until 30 August 1918, thereby missing the fighting in which his Battalion had been involved on 19 and 20 August and during which it had lost another two officers and 21 ORs killed, wounded and missing. On 22 August the Battalion was withdrawn from the front line and began what seems to have been a very circuitous journey on foot and by bus until, on 29 August, it relieved the 1st Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry, with which it was brigaded, on the River Sensée, west of Éterpigny, around nine miles east-south-east of Arras. On 30 August 1918, the War Diary records that “the shelling throughout the day was tremendously heavy & very heavy casualties were suffered in consequence. At 4 p.m. the Battalion attacked the village of Éterpigny & the wood, capturing them soon after Zero. […] Enemy M.G. and artillery fire was very heavy & the advance through the marshes very difficult owing to the mud & thick growth.” On 31 August the Battalion was relieved and withdrew to the old German trenches west of Éterpigny, having lost ten officers and c.232 ORs killed, wounded and missing. The Battalion War Diary records that Garton, seven other officers and 251 ORs joined the Battalion on 30 August, which probably means that they did so as reinforcements after the end of the fighting.
At 23.00 hours on 1 September 1918, the Battalion was in its assembly positions south of the River Sensée, ready for the attack on 2 September 1918 on the German line that ran from Drocourt, south-east of Lens, to Quéant, just east of Bullecourt. Garton’s Brigade was to support the 12th Brigade, another part of the 4th Division, and after an artillery barrage lasting half an hour, his Battalion moved forward – but too fast, as it turned out, with the result that it became mixed up with the assaulting troops. As a result, the two Right Companies of Garton’s Battalion were forced to veer to the right, where they got mixed up with the 4th Canadian Division and so lost touch with the two Left Companies of their own Battalion, “which came under a terrific M. G. barrage & were compelled to withdraw to the Support Line again, sustaining many casualties in doing so”. Consequently, the two Right Companies were left isolated and were pinned down until the evening by heavy machine-gun fire. Garton was mortally wounded, probably by that machine-gun fire, and died with No. 33 Field Ambulance at Arras on 2 September 1918, aged 19. He was buried in Faubourg d’Amiens Cemetery, Arras, in Grave VI.F.17, inscribed: “We pray you remember in the Lord the souls of Clive Garton and his brother Herbert. Jesu mercy.” Garton, his brother (Herbert Westlake), and the 87 other members of the parish who died in World War One are commemorated on the Roll of Honour in All Saints Parish Church, Banstead, Surrey, and on the War Memorial with the Cross in the churchyard of the parish church that is known as the Garton Memorial (presumably because the family paid for it). He used also to be commemorated in the Garton War Memorial Chapel that stood in the grounds of the parish church until it was hit by a bomb in 1940 and had to be demolished. The heading above the Roll of Honour reads:
To the Glory of God – they who are here commemorated were numbered among those who, at the call of King and Country, left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in Freedom. Let those who come after see to it that their names be not forgotten.
After her sons’ deaths, Juliet ordered their rooms to be locked and never opened again. Garton died intestate but his estate was valued at £6,340 18s 5d.
The Faubourg d’Amiens Cemetery, Arras; Edward Garton’s grave is second from the left in the front row
(Photo courtesy of Dr Roger Hutchins)
Faubourg d’Amiens Cemetery, Arras; Grave VI.F.17
(Photo courtesy of Dr Roger Hutchins)
Bibliography
For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.
Special acknowledgements:
**[Hugh E.E. Howson], Two Men: A Memoir [The Story of two Shrewsbury Schoolteachers: privately printed memorial book for Evelyn H.L. Southwell (1886–1916) and Malcolm G. White, (1887–1916)] (Oxford: OUP, 1919). Also available on-line at: http://www.archive.org/details/twomenmemoir00soutuoft (accessed 21 July 2018).
*John L. Garbutt, Manbré & Garton Ltd 1855–1955: A Hundred Years of Progress, (London and Aylesbury: Hazell, Watson & Viney, [1955]).
*Fiona Wood, ‘Garton, Sir Richard Charles (1857–1934)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 21 (2004), pp. 561–2.
*The Archives of the Banstead History Research Group [BHRG].
*John Sweetman, How a Village Grew and Changed, 2 vols (Banstead: BHRG, 2004).
*Blandford-Baker (2008), pp. 97–100, 105, 150–2, 154–5, 189, 193, 294–5.
The Editors would like to make it clear that Nigel McCrery’s excellent book Hear the Boat Sing (The History Press: Stroud, 2017) was brought to their attention as recently as January 2019. It provides detailed accounts of the lives of 42 Oxford and Cambridge Rowing Blues who died as a result of World War One, and as eight of these were Magdalenses or closely connected with Magdalen through a relative, it would seem that the Editors of The Slow Dusk and Mr McCrery have been following parallel research paths without being aware of each others’ existence and so have made use of the same resources. But whereas Mr McCrery has focused more on the finer points of top-class rowing, the Editors have focused more on family and social history. As a result the two projects not only overlap in places, but also complement each other well.
Printed sources:
[Anon.], ‘[The order at the start was …]’, The Times, no. 37,722 (1 June 1905), p. 11.
[Anon.], ‘Rowing: Oxford University Fours’, The Times, no. 37,856 (4 November 1905), p. 7.
X Trois Étoiles, ‘Isis Idol no. CCCXCVIII: Mr Arthur Stanley Garton’, The Isis, no. 422 (20 November 1909), pp. 103–4.
[Anon.], ‘In Memoriam: Captain H.W. Garton’, The Eton College Chronicle, no. 1,587 (26 October 1916), p. 107.
[Anon.], ‘Second Lieutenant E. Clive Garton’ [obituary], The Times, no. 41,892 (11 September 1918), p. 4.
[Anon.], ‘Two Large Industrial Issues’, The Times, no. 44,376 (14 September 1926), p. 19.
Berkeley and Seymour , i (1927), pp. 107–9, 138–41, 152–76, 196–208.
[Anon.], ‘Sir Richard Garton’ [obituary], The Times, no. 46,736 (24 April 1934), p. 16.
[Anon.], ‘Mr C. Garton’s Large Estate’, The Times, no. 46,806 (14 July 1934), p. 17.
[Anon.], ‘Children’s Hospital in the Country’, The Times, no. 47,300 (17 June 1936), p. 14.
A.W. Hopkinson, Pastor’s Progress: An Autobiography (London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1942), pp. 82–107.
McCarthy (1998), pp. 101–3.
Christopher Dodd, ‘John L. Garton’ [obituary], The Guardian, no. 48,452 (21 June 2002), p. 22.
[Anon.], ‘John Garton’ [obituary], The Telegraph, no. 45,737 (1 July 2002), p. 21
Pidgeon (2002), pp. 35–45.
Geoffrey Robinson, The History of All Saints Church (Banstead: BHRG, 2007).
McCrery (2017), pp. 43, 47, 55–6, 111, 121, 151, 153–7, 180.
Archival sources:
MCA: PR/2/19 (Daily Telegraph obituary in President Warren’s Notebook for 1917–21), p. 118.
MCA: PR32/C/3/511-514 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to E.C. and H.W. Garton [1916]).
MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 1.
OUA: UR 2/1/75.
OUA (DWM): C.C.J. Webb, Diaries, MS. Eng. misc. d. 1160.
WO95/1495.
WO95/1901.
WO95/2534.
WO339/102916.
On-line sources:
Sugar Refiners and Sugarbakers Database: http://home.clara.net/mawer/intro.html (accessed 21 July 2018).
Banstead History Research Group, Banstead Photo Archive: www.bansteadvillage.com (accessed 21 July 2018).
Publications by the Banstead History Research Group: www.bansteadhistory.com/f_blue_nav_bar_html2.html (accessed 21 July 2018).