Ernest SMITH 1912-1941

I wonder if anyone can offer any suggestions as to where else I can look for information about the above-named man? He would seem to fit in with the Non-Commemorated War Dead so I hope it is okay to post this here.

Ernest SMITH was my grandfather who died in 1941 "as a result of enemy action" and whose "body was not found". This information comes from my father's adoption papers which is the only source I have of any information about Ernest. He is not on the CWGC, he does not have a death certificate (unless it is as 'Unknown') and I have failed to find any further information about him anywhere.

The rest of the details from the adoption papers are that he was tall, fair and Scottish, aged 28 in 1941 (so born 1912 or 1913); he worked as a clerk for Bradfield's or Bradford's builders of Poplar, London but moved about on demolition work; my grandmother stated that he was aware of the baby (my father) and that they intended to marry having met three years previously in Bedfordshire; and he had a sister who was a supervisor for the Post Office Telephone service in London (but no name given). I do not know why he was not in the military unless his work was a protected profession of some sort or other reason.

would guess that Ernest died sometime between January 1941 and about April 1941 (if they intended to marry I can't think why they would leave it any later). My grandmother first wrote to the Adoption Agency in July 1941 and she seems to have tried to move (she lived in furnished rooms and could not have a baby living there) and to keep her son originally but it seems this was not possible.

I have checked every Ernest SMITH born in Scotland in 1912 and 1913 and managed to 'kill off' most of them. A couple remain who could be correct but as I do not even have a full date of birth for him I cannot be sure. If I could find some trace of him to pinpoint a date of birth or something specific I could determine whether any of them are correct.

I have a copy of the Post Office Directory for 1940 but cannot find any trace of a Bradfield's or Bradford's builders. However, the Adoption Agency did make a note next to my grandmother's comment that Ernest's 'body was not found' that 'Mr (name redacted) of his firm says this'. Without this note that they had indeed checked with his employers, the whole tale could have been a fabrication but it appears not to be.

Can anyone think of anything else I can try (checked newspapers - online only; checked deaths; checked CWGC; checked with tree owners of people with an Ernest Smith in their on-line trees; etc. etc. etc!). Is there any listing of people who died in the Blitz or any other listings I could look at?

I apologise for the length of this topic but as I have so little information it seems sensible to offer it all.
Many thanks for being patient enough to read all this.
Sam

 

Sam, have you any credits left for Scotlandspeople? If you do, go to the deaths section and then scroll down the page until you come across the County tab. Select Minor Records, then enter Ernest's name and close the death date range to 1941. There is one death reported to Scotland's registrar for an Ernest Smith age 28 out of the 8 possibilities. If your lucky it should give you the information you seek. Cheers Maria
p.s. please post what you find, it might lead to something else.

 

I wonder if this might be Ernest. Trawler appears to have hit a mine.

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2500617/SMITH,%20ERNEST

If the Scotlandspeople entry confirms this, there are 3 family trees at Ancestry with him on it and he came from a family with eleven siblings.

 

Funnily enough that the one I was just looking at:

Name Ernest Smith
Age 27
Birth Date abt 1914
Death Date 9 Mar 1941
Cemetery Naval Memorials In The United Kingdom Lowestoft Part II
Burial Country England
Father George Smith
Mother Ada Mary Smith
Regimental Number LT/JX 215771
Region or Memorial Memorial Register

From the family tree he was:

Ernest Smith

Birth: 1913 - Aberdeenshire, Scotland - the detail says Nigg
Death: 9th March 1941 (9 Mar 1941)

TD

 

Wait a moment

One of those family trees says:

Citation Information
Other information
Ernest SMITH born in 1913 died in an air-raid in 1941 in London. Dorothy says that they were courting for 3 years after meeting at a dance in Bedfordshire. A man from Ernest's firm - Bradfield's Builders, London agreed that he was killed in an air-raid and that his body was never recovered.
Source Information
No source specified for this citation

I assume that this is your tree Sam?????

TD

 

Interesting TD, yours sounds more likely. All rests with that entry at Scotlandspeople then. Still trying to find out if all hands were lost on the H.M. Trawler Gulfoss.

 

Scotlands People does confirm this but Sam states in post #1 that he is not mentioned on the CWGC but as pointed out he is commemorated on the Lowestoft Naval Memorial. So unlikely to be the person unless missed by Sam on the CWGC search.

Regards
Hugh

 

Think you and TD are right Hugh. Out of interest I ran his name through the new 1939 I.D. collection for those born in 1912, it came back with 443 possibilities. We won't be tracing him that way that's for sure.

Looking back at Scotlandspeople, that entry in the service returns will be for him lost on the trawler. His death entry will only be recorded in England I reckon.

Should he still not appear as a civilian casualty then at the CWGC?

 

The only problem here is that one says he was lost at sea on active service for RN (or RNR etc), and therefore on the Lowestoft memorial, and the Ancestry family tree, which I think belongs to Sam (creator of this thread), says he died in the Blitz (in London) and was not in the services. This throws up the fact that he presumably would appear in the UK Civilians Died database, but he doesn't.

The first real point needed to be found is was he in the Forces or wasn't he??

As a clerk for a building company in 1939/1940 aged 26/27, why would he have ended up on a Trawler ?? I would have thought the Army was more likely as they needed men for North Africa, Far East and to guard the UK

I feel something is not right here and wrong paths are being followed

TD

 

I favour your guy TD. Tried a search for Bradfield Builders in the news archive but didn't get any hints for 1941.

I've also been having another thought, Ernest could have been a middle name, but favoured by him over his first name. There certainly has been plenty of individuals we have researched in the past that refer to themselves using the middle name.

More than likely this is an individual over looked by CWGC, but need the proof. I don't know if civilian casualties had to be reported back to Scotland, services definitely were supposed to be.

 

Just Maybe

[38] In 1899 John Byford, born in 1860 in Canning Town, took his young son John into partnership as John Byford & Son, lime, cement and brick merchants, manufacturing and dealing in bricks and building requisites of all kinds at Moody Wharf, Poplar and Commercial Road. It became a limited company in 1911, with £25,000 capital in £1 shares. John senior was also the chairman of the oddly-named British & Colonial Horse Shoe and Machine Company (actually hauliers, and still active during World War II). He was a member of West Ham Council from 1898 and Mayor in 1904-5, a Justice of the Peace, and vice-president of Queen Mary's Hospital for the East End, in West Ham

. He had served in the Royal Naval Volunteers and held a commission in the 3rd Essex Battalion Volunteers, and during World War I was active in local recruiting committees; he was knighted in 1925, by when he was living at Wedderburn Road in Hampstead; he died in 1931. Who was Who gives his recreations as yachting and swimming, and his club the Constitutional. The firm were agents for Griffin Brand Portland cement, and continued to supply local councils and others for some years. The National Maritime Museum has their 'house flag' - a rectangular blue flag, with a white triangle placed near the hoist bearing a red Welsh dragon.


Moody wharf next to Canary wharf.
High explosive bomb dropped there between oct 1940 and June 1941.
http://www.bombsight.org/bombs/8690/

Why was Ernest not in the services? Well it could have been his work there was classed as reseved occupation or he could have had a physical disability such as one of my uncles, who could work as hard as the next man, but had a club foot so was turned down for any of the services.​

 

RCG, service was voluntary until 1942 I believe.

The Scotlandspeople entry only adds the DOB for the Aberdeen born Ernest as 9/7/13. Cause of death "2" and at sea. Branch of service RNPS. Hopefully somebody might look for him in the future.

 

amberdog45, not according to this. Another reason could be that they just had not issued his call up papers.

At the outbreak of war, on 3 September 1939, the Military Training Act was overtaken by the National Service (Armed Forces) Act, and the first intake was absorbed into the army. This act imposed a liability to conscription of all men 18 to 41 years old. Men could be rejected for medical reasons, and those engaged in vital industries or occupations were "reserved" at a particular age beyond which no one in that job would be enlisted.

 

Just checked:
All UK, WWII Civilian Deaths, 1939–1945 results for Ernest Smith
and the only Ernest is:

Name: Ernest Stephen Smith
Estimated birth year: abt 1872
Death Date: 26 Feb 1941
Death Place: East Ham, Essex, England
Age at Death: 69
Spouse: Fanny Smith

So not him. If he was a civilian who died during an Air Raid I would have thought someone would have reported him missing, and/or known his approximate whereabouts, e.g at home, at work, in a pub, in a shelter etc. So perhaps the story that he was killed in an Air Raid does not hold as much water as first thought.
If he was enlisted and killed in an Air Raid then presumably the service he was enlisted in would know that he was either on leave or AWOL, and as he was 'dating' Sams grandmother his location was roughly known and his death recorded by the service he was in, as Sams grandmother would presumably have reported it to some authority or someone from the service would have investigated (?).

More questions than answers I'm afraid
TD

edited to add:

The search for UK Civilian Dead was restricted to London only as this was the stated location

 

Sam,
you have probably already done this but just in case..
Finding details of your birth grandfather,given the sketchy details is a mammoth task.
Would it not be more productive to look into your grandmother's ancestry?
Statistics suggest that families in the early part of the 20th century were much larger than today.Family stories get handed down the generations-it could be more productive.
I hope this is of help
David.

 

a long shot

might be worth giving them a call

http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Who-we-are/Museum-and-archives/Historical-factsheets/Our-work-in-the-Blitz

 

again might be worth dropping forum member Pete Wood a private message



http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/42685-civilians-killed-and-wounded-in-london-test-finished/


regards
Clive

 

Findmypast backs up your only death record TD for the Ernest Stephen born 1872. I used their search engine from 1939 collection and selected Bedfordshire as the search area as that's where he met the mother. Believe it or not there is only one Ernest Smith in that area born 1912. But is it worth paying findmypast £6+ to open that one record and then find out its not him at all? It wouldn't reveal his birth place, perhaps the occupation though.

Do you think something has been lost in translation at the adoption agency? The Ernest that was lost at sea, would account for the phrase, body not recovered and from what I've read the trawel hit a German laid mine field somewhere in the English channel. TD where was the citation you referred to earlier? Is that attached to a tree on Ancestry?

 

The citation on a family tree on Ancestry was as stated in post #5 - I believe the tree to be Sams (the originator of this thread) and is their take on the situation, not an official source.

From Sams first post:
Ernest had be 'going out' with his grandmother for 3 years, and one supposes from what is said, he was during that time going around London, on demolition sites working for a building company. From this, one can deduce that he was not called up for military service and hence would not appear on the CWGC database.
From the adoption agency papers, such as they are and unseen by us, it seems that both Sams grandmother (Ernest's 'girlfriend' for 3 years) and the company he worked for, both state he was killed in the blitz in London and his body never found. We should assume this to be true, unless for some reason Ernest had another reason for 'disappearing'. However the problem with that is that although his body may have never been found, the records at the time (because his 'absence' would have been noted by 2 different sources) would have recorded him as missing presumed killed or something similar. I cannot see that the building company would say 'Oh he hasn't turned up for work in the last month, lets carry on as if nothing has happened'. Also from Sams grandmothers recollections, Ernest knew about the unborn child and they had 'obviously' discussed the possibility of marriage, so Ernest was aware of the situation and either genuinely intended marrying or for some reason had cold feet.

Based on the above I feel the reference on the Lowestoft Naval Memorial is a red herring.

It would be of interest to see the actual papers re adoption that Sam has read.

TD

 

TD Agree with that.

1939 register only two names come up both with a E

Ernest L Smith 1912 Poplar London + 1 person locked.


Preview

William E Smith 1912 Poplar London + 1 person locked + 1 person officially closed.

Just a thought: Poplar builder lands big contract in Bedford 1938.
Ernest already married, works on site, in digs during week, home weekends
.
Gets girl pregnant, muck about to hit the fan, conveniently disappears during air raid. joins Foreign legion.