Private LEONARD NEWMAN BISHOP
1, Cromwell Terrace, Romsey Road, Winchester (house no longer stands)
Service number 9416. 1st Battalion, The South Wales Borderers
Killed in action, France, 26 September 1914
Life Summary
Leonard Newman Bishop, the son of Edward and Sarah Bishop, was born in the first quarter of 1885. His father worked as a warder at Winchester Prison for many years and the family lived in prison service accommodation nearby. Leonard served in the Army for a decade before the Great War and was sent to France shortly after hostilities began in August 1914. He was killed in action the following month.
Family Background
Leonard’s father, Edward (1841-1911), was born in Winchester, the son of Benjamin and Elizabeth. Bishop. Benjamin worked as a shoemaker and then as a messenger (possibly for Winchester College) and the family lived at 7, Canon Street. In the 1861 Census Edward, then 19, was recorded working as a servant at Winchester College and living at the Commoners’ Hall. He married twice. His first wife was born Elizabeth Wisbey in 1827, making her some 14 years his senior. Edward and Elizabeth married in 1867 and in 1871 they were living at 5, County Cottages, Winchester, close to the prison where Edward was working as a warder, a job he continued in until about 1891.
It is believed that Elizabeth gave birth to a son in 1871 but he died the same year. Elizabeth herself died on 5 January 1877, aged 50, and is buried at West Hill Cemetery, Winchester.
In May 1878 Edward remarried. His second wife, Sarah Rebecca Newman, was the daughter of carpenter Charles Newman and his wife, also called Sarah. Sarah Jnr had been born in Cambridgeshire (probably in the village of Isleham, near Newmarket) in 1840. In 1871 she was living and working as a servant in Oxford and seven years later she and Edward married in Henley on Thames. The 1881 Census showed them living at 8, Prison Quarters, Winchester. The couple had four children, all born in Winchester: Edward Charles (1879), Edith Annie (1880), Lilian ‘Lily’ Lucy (1883) and Leonard (1885). Tragically, Sarah died in Winchester in 1887, aged 47, leaving Edward widowed for a second time.
It appears that Edward enlisted the services of an elderly aunt, Mary Carney, to help him look after his young children. In 1891 Mary was living with the family at their new home at 1, Cromwell Terrace, Winchester. (The house was part of a short row of properties on the Romsey Road close to the Royal Hampshire County Hospital which have since been demolished.) Mary was still with the family ten years later by which time Edward had retired from the prison service. Two children remained at home – Leonard who was working as a postman and Edward Jnr as an organ builder.
Shortly afterwards, Leonard moved to London where he found work as a postman in Isleworth. Then in 1904 he joined the Army, enlisting in Winchester with the 1st Battalion, The Dorsetshire Regiment (service number 7325). He served in India with the Dorsets and then in South Africa with the 2nd Battalion, The South Wales Borderers before transferring to the 1st South Wales Borderers (service number 9416).
Great War Record
When the Great War began in August 1914, Leonard was serving with D Company of the 1st South Wales Borderers. The battalion came under the orders of 3rd Brigade, part of the British 1st Division which arrived in France on 13 August. The Borderers first saw action at the Battle of Mons (23 August) when the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) attempted to hold up the advancing German First Army. The heavily outnumbered British inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans but were eventually forced to retreat. The retreat lasted for two weeks and took the BEF to the outskirts of Paris before it counter-attacked with the French at the Battle of the Marne (6-12 September). This forced the German armies to retire northwards until they in turn halted the pursuing British at the Battle of the Aisne (12-15 September). Both sides then began to dig in, marking the start of trench warfare on the Western Front.
Fighting north the Aisne, however, continued. On 26 September 1914, 1st Division took part in an action near the village of Chivy on the Chemin des Dames ridge. In his diary, Captain C.J. Paterson of the 1st South Wales Borderers described the day’s events:
The most ghastly day of my life and yet too one of the proudest because my Regiment did its job and held on against heavy odds. At 4.15am Germans attacked. Main attack apparently against my Regiment, which is the left of our line. D and A Companies in the trenches. B and C hustled up to support, and soon the whole place alive with bullets. News comes that they are trying to work round our left. The CO asked the Welsh Regiment to deal with this, which it did. Poor D Company had to face the music more than anyone else.
Presently the news comes that the Germans are in a quarry in the middle of our line … [but] C Company drove them clean out. About 3pm things began to quieten down. D and A Companies had done their share of the work on the right and left. We were able to reorganise more or less, except for D Company’s far advanced trenches, and those we searched at night and found James wounded, Sills and Welby killed. Total casualties. Killed - Welby, Simonds, Coker, Sills and 86 men; wounded – Pritchard, James and Gwynn slightly, and 95 men; and missing 12.
Leonard Bishop was 28 years old when he was killed during the fighting described above. His body was never found.
Family after the Great War
Leonard’s father, Edward, is believed to have continued living in Winchester after the war although there is no trace of him there in the 1911 Census or subsequent electoral records. He died in the city in 1935, aged 93.
Leonard’s brother Edward Charles, the organ builder, married twice. His first wife, Emily, whom he wed in 1903, gave birth to a son, Wilfred, in Winchester in 1904 but she died the following year. In 1908 Edward remarried. His second wife, Margaret Frances Carpenter, had been born in Bangalore, India, in 1887. The couple initially lived in Bournemouth where a son, Kenneth Leonard, was born in October 1910. Edward Charles served in France and Belgium during the Great War with the Royal Berkshire and Gloucestershire Regiments. He did not enlist until 1917 which means he was probably conscripted. After the war he, Margaret and Kenneth moved back to live in Winchester at 50, Fairfield Road. Edward died in Bournemouth in 1946 at the age of 66.
Leonard’s sister Edith had a daughter, Ethel, in 1896 when she was just 16. In 1902 she married John Whitear (it is unclear whether he was Ethel’s father) in Winchester and they had a son, Francis, and a daughter, Marjorie, together. The family lived for a time in Fulflood, first in Greenhill Road and then Avenue Road before also moving to Bournemouth where Edith died in 1961, aged 81. Leonard’s younger sister, Lily, was working as a domestic servant in Winchester in 1901. Ten years later she was helping to run a hotel in Bournemouth, but no record of her can be found after that date.
Leonard Newman does not figure in the Winchester War Service Register, although his brother Edward does, with his address given as 50, Fairfield Road. However, Edward may have been responsible for Leonard’s name appearing on the memorials at St Paul’s and St Matthew’s. Leonard was killed several years before Edward moved to Fairfield Road and so never lived in or visited the property. For that reason, this biography gives Leonard’s address as 1, Cromwell Terrace. It may have been situated just outside the Fulflood and Weeke parish boundary, but it is the house most closely associated with him.
Medals and Memorials for Leonard Newman Bishop
Private Leonard Newman Bishop was entitled to the 1914 (Mons) Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He is commemorated on the La Ferte-Sous-Jouarre Memorial, Seine-et-Marne, France. He is also listed on the memorials at St Matthew’s and St Paul’s churches, Winchester.