William Dukinfield Nicholson BA

• Matriculated : 1907

• Born: 13 May 1888

• Died: 23 February 1915

• Regiment: Cameron Highlanders

• Grave/Memorial: Dickebusch (Dikkebus) New Military Cemetery (Extension): A.19

Family background

b. 13 May 1888 in Kensington, London, as the second son (five children) of Sir Arthur William Nicholson, KCB (1852–1932) and Lady Nicholson (née Gertrude Susan Palmer[-]Astley) (1849–1920) (m. 1883), Dukinfield, Cheshire, and Arisaig, RSO, Inverness-shire; according to the 1891 Census, the Nicholson family also had a house at 15, Upper Phillimore Gardens, Kensington, London (nine servants), and at the time of the 1901 Census, they were living at the Toft, Bournemouth (seven servants).

 

Parents and antecedents

Nicholson’s father was at Magdalen 1870–74 (4^th Class in Modern History), an athlete and outstanding oarsman (Magdalen eight, Oxford Boat 1872–74, President of Oxford University Boat Club 1873–74, in the Leander eight that won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley in 1875): “one of the fine oars who in the early ’seventies began the career of Magdalen on the river”. Clerk in the House of Commons (1875–1918) (Public Bill Office 1875, Journal Office 1876, Committee Office 1887, Clerk and Secretary of the Committee appointed to enquire into the Jameson Raid 1896–97, where his success marked him out for preferment, Second Clerk Assistant 1900–02, Clerk Assistant 1902). He was awarded the CB in 1907 and made a KCB in October 1919. By the time of his retirement in July 1918, he had served under 11 administrations, and only three MPs had longer parliamentary experience. His lengthy obituary concluded:

His great knowledge and long experience of Parliamentary procedure were readily placed at the service of all who desired advice and guidance, and his collection of Speaker’s rulings has been of inestimable value to those who followed him at the Table. Since his retirement he had lived mainly at Arisaig, the only attractions that brought him south being Henley Regatta and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. […] His later years in the House were clouded by the loss of two of his sons, who were killed in France.

Nicholson’s mother Gertrude was the eldest daughter of Francis Dukinfield Palmer[-]Astley, JP DL (1825–68), High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1854 and the grandson of John Astley (c.1720–87). He was the owner of extensive, coal-rich estates in Dukinfield, east of Manchester, near Stalybridge, Cheshire, and initiated the industrialization of Dukinfield that would reach its height in the mid-nineteenth century (cf. its population: 1,730 in 1801; 5,096 in 1821; 14,681 in 1831; 29,935 in 1861). In c.1859, Francis and Gertrude became co-proprietors of the estate of Clanranalds at Arisaig. After her father’s death, Gertrude, a noted angler at a time when fishing was not considered a sport for ladies, became Arisaig’s sole proprietor and then Lady of the Manor in 1881, two years before she married Arthur William Nicholson in 1883. During the same period, Gertrude gained notoriety for the part she played in the so-called clearing of the Highlands. This involved the forced evictions of impoverished crofters and cottars whom the land could not support and the transformation of uneconomic agricultural land into reasonably profitable free-range sheep farms and even more profitable forest where deer could be hunted for sport by the wealthy. One hostile critic described Gertude as “the matriarch of a cursed family with a ferocious history of clearance and eviction”. In 1883, Gladstone, with the approval of Queen Victoria, set up the five-man Napier Commission to investigate the situation. Arthur William appeared before the Commission to argue his wife’s case and did so in terms of contemporary laissez-faire capitalism: if the poor could not support themselves by means of their own labour, then they must go elsewhere even if that meant the complete depopulation of some parts of the Highlands. The Commission’s Report (1884), however, issued in the Crofters’ Holding Act (1886), which gave greater security to the inhabitants of the Highlands. Gertrude also carried on her father’s business in Dukinfield: in 1883 the Astley Mill Co. was formed, construction work started in 1884, and on 13 June 1885 Gertrude, the Lady of the Manor, opened the mill with a gold key. At the same ceremony, Gertrude’s two sisters – Constance Charlotte Astley (1851–1935) and Beatrice Emma Astley (1858–1923) (later Cheetham after her marriage [1887] to the very wealthy but environmentally concerned Liberal MP for North Derbyshire [1880–85] and Stalybridge and Dukinfield [1905–11], the Rt Hon. John Frederick Cheetham [1835–1916], no children) – christened the mill’s large steam engines “Constance” and “Beatrice”. In 1899, Gertrude returned to the town to lay the foundation stone of its new Town Hall.

 

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) Francis Astley Stuart (b. 1884–after 1932);

(2) Charlotte Gertrude (1886–1961);

(3) Arthur Stuart (1889–1914);

(4) Helen Constance (b. 1893–after April 1951); married [1913] to Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Arthur Stuart was killed in action on 14 September 1914, aged 26, while serving as a Lieutenant in the 1^st Battalion, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, shortly after it had landed in France to reinforce the 1^st Brigade, in the 1^st Division. No known grave. His death was confirmed in 1919 and he is commemorated in the Memorial Hall, Marlborough College, and on La Ferté–sous–Jouarre Memorial.

 

Wife

Husband of Barbara Florence Martin (1884–1969 [Cowichan, British Columbia, Canada]) (m. 1914). Barbara was one of the nine children of the Revd John Martin (1847–1922), who studied at Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1870; MA 1873). He was ordained deacon in 1871 and priest in 1872, and from 1871 to 1875 he was Curate of Brenchley, just east of Tunbridge Wells, Kent; from 1875 to 1885 he was Rector of Stoney-Stanton, Leicestershire. In his later years he lived at Charley Hall, Leicestershire, which his wife had inherited from her father in 1869, and left £26,713.

 

 

After their marriage, Nicholson and his wife Barbara lived at “Dunholme”, 15, Manor Rd, Bournemouth, Hampshire. During World War One, from June 1916 to November 1919 and from August 1918 respectively, Barbara and Nicholson’s sister Charlotte Gertrude – who never married – worked as civilians for the YMCA in Le Havre, France, and were awarded the British War Medal for their work. In 1923 Barbara Florence married [ii] Marcel Charles Koechlin (1874 [Le Havre]–1953 [Oak Bay, BC, Canada]), the son of Edouard Charles Koechlin (1847 [Mulhouse, Alsace, France]–1895). Despite his French origins, Marcel Koechlin was a British subject who had worked as a tea planter in India, probably near Trivandrum, Kerala, near the south-western tip of the Indian sub-continent. On the outbreak of war, he served as a Trooper in King Edward’s Horse from 8 September 1914 to 15 September 1915, when he was promoted Sergeant. On 23 August 1917, he was sent back to Britain because of some rheumatic disorder and transferred to a Reserve unit shortly after the Armistice. They probably went back to India after their marriage, but on 26 March 1932 they landed from the SS Europa (1930; scrapped in 1963 as the French liner the SS Liberté) at Tacoma, Washington State, USA, about a hundred miles south of Imperial Vancouver Island, in Canada, a favourite retirement retreat for senior civilian and military officials of the British Empire, and lived there, in the town of Duncan, for the rest of their lives.

 

 

Education

Nicholson attended Marlborough College from 1903 to 1906 and the obituary which appeared in The Marlburian said, rather cryptically: “Beyond being reported as industrious and of good character, he made no particular mark at School. These qualities brought him to the top, as he grew into his full strength of body and mind.” He spent time abroad before matriculating at Magdalen as a Commoner on 15 October 1907, having passed Responsions in Hilary Term 1907. He took the First Public Examination in Hilary Term 1908 and the Preliminary Examination in Jurisprudence in Trinity Term 1908. He was awarded a 4^th in Modern History in Trinity Term 1910 and took his BA on 16 January 1913. In his first year at Magdalen, along with M.M. Cudmore, he rowed in the 1909 Torpid and then in the Oxford University Boat Club Fours. In December 1909 he rowed in the University trial VIIIs together with D. Mackinnon and Cudmore. In July 1910 he emulated his father by rowing in the College VIII which, after a gap of three years, went Head of the River by beating New College and which then became the first Magdalen crew ever to win the Grand Challenge Cup, Henley’s most prestigious international trophy, after a memorable race with Leander. Three other members of the crew (Cudmore, V. Fleming and Mackinnon) would also be killed in action in World War One. Nicholson took his BA on 10 January 1913 alongside H.R. Inigo-Jones. President Warren described him posthumously as “manly, dutiful, capable”. When making his will, he gave his address as “Dunholme”, 15, Manor Road, Bournemouth.

 

 

Military and war service

Nicholson was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the 3^rd (Reserve) Battalion, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, on 29 August 1906. After graduating in 1910, Nicholson immediately joined the 2^nd (Regular) Battalion of the same Regiment in Poona, India. Here, according to President Warren, he “maintained his athletic reputation in rowing, running and gymnastics”; according to his obituary in The Marlburian, he “enhanced his athletic reputation by running second at Calcutta in 1910 for the Championship of India ‘Half-mile’”; and in February 1914 at the Poona Regatta he captained his regimental VIII. He was promoted Lieutenant on 1 March 1912 but had probably left the Battalion before it returned to England in November 1914 since, by 20 August 1914, the Army List was describing him as a supernumerary Lieutenant who was then restored to its establishment. He was certainly serving with the 2^nd Battalion by 18 December 1914.

Together with other Regular units previously stationed abroad, the Battalion became part of the 81^st Brigade, 27^th Division on its arrival back in England in November. The Division marched to Southampton on 19 December, landed in France on 21 December and immediately went to the front near Ypres. On 23 December it had reached Aire-sur-la-Lys, fifteen miles south-west of Hazebrouck, and it remained at nearby Boëseghem until 6 January when it marched 18 miles north-east to Flêtre, just below the Belgian border. On the following day it marched to Dickebusch, south-west of Ypres, where it remained until 10 January before being sent into the trenches south of Ypres near Sint Elooi. The Battalion’s War Diary described conditions there as follows: “Mud in trench terrible & presented serious menace to general safety – witness 2 men who fell forward into it & could not move and were suffocated.” On the following day the Battalion was in trenches at Voormezele, just to the north-west of Sint Elooi, where it was exposed to heavy shelling but remained until 12 January. The Battalion’s War Diary continued: “Condition of men coming out pitiable. Numbers could scarcely walk & all were perished with cold, & coated with the most stinking mud from head to foot, & soaked to the skin.” The pattern of short periods of violent action in the trenches alternating with longer periods of rest away from them was repeated in the same general area (Dickebusch/Brasserie/Vierstraat/Kemmel/Westouter) until 22 February, when, at 5.30 p.m., the Battalion went into the trenches at Bus-House, near Sint Elooi. On 23 February 1915, Nicholson was in charge of a trench that was being subjected to a considerable amount of sniping. At 00.30 hours, an orderly who was bringing a message to the trench was mortally wounded by a sniper just outside the trench, and when Nicholson went to his assistance, thinking that the man was only wounded, he too was hit and died about an hour later, aged 26. Buried: Dickebusch (Dikkebus) New Military Cemetery, Grave A.19, next to Captain Percy William Norman Fraser, DSO, of the same Battalion, who had been killed in action the day before; inscription: “Whatsoever things are honest and pure and lovely: think on these” (Philippians 4:8). He and his younger brother are commemorated on the St Swithin’s War Memorial, Bournemouth, the town where his widow was living at the time. He left her £3,923 13s. 9d. and she received a pension from the Army (£80 p.a. from 24 February 1915 and £160 p.a. from 3 December 1915).

 

 

Bibliography

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

 

Printed sources:

[Anon.], ‘Rowing: Henley Royal Regatta’, The Times, no. 39,314 (2 July 1910), p. 18.

[Anon.], ‘William Dukinfield Nicholson’ [obituary], The Marlburian, 50, no. 748 (30 March 1915), p. 748.

[Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 33, no. 15 (5 March 1915), p. 242.

[Anon.], ‘Obituary: Sir A.W. Nicholson’, The Times, no. 46,097 (2 April 1932), p. 12.

Hunter, ‘The Politics of Highland Land Reform, 1873 to 1895’, Scottish Historical Review, 53 (1974), pp. 45–68.

Milan Pavasovic, No Mean City: A History of Dukinfield (Swinton [Manchester]: Neil Richardson, 1984), pp. 3–18.

Ian Haynes, The Dukinfield Cotton Mills (Ashton-under-Lyne: Neil Richardson, 1993), pp. 49–50.

Hutchins (1993), p. 31 and plate 11.

Philip Gaskell, Morvern Transformed: A Highland Parish in the Nineteenth Century, 3^rd edition (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), pp. 84–7, 188–212.

Denis Rixson, Arisaig and Morar: A History (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002), pp. 137–52.

 

Archival sources:

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

OUA: UR 2/1/63.

WO95/2264.

WO339/7687.