Arthur Leslie Stevens

This name is on the St Mark's War Memorial, Kennington Oval, London SE11A. L. Stevens(Arthur Leslie Stevens)(Stevens, Arthur Leslie)Service no Rifleman, Rifle Brigade, 9th Battalion Died 24 June 1916Remembered at Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Belgium and at St Mark's Church, London SE11Brother of Jack Oliver StevensInformation from the censusesIn 1911 Jack Oliver Stevens, aged 15, was living with his mother, Helen Elizabeth Stevens, 50, at 7 Hanover Gardens (this street is almost directly opposite St Mark's Church). Helen was born in Soho and was working as a tailoress. Jack was an errand boy for a shirtmaker and was born in Fulham. Helen stated that she had had 6 children, 5 of them surviving.Meanwhile, Arthur Leslie Stevens, aged 18, was working as a wood machinist (joinery) living with his aunt and uncle, John James Chambers (a "tailor maker") and Rosina Chambers (a skirt machinist). He was born in "Middlesex, Westminster". Also in the household was Edith Nellie Stevens, 21, presumably his sister, as well as Rosina Eliza Chambers, 14, daughter of John and Rosina, and Eliza Stevens, 77, Rosina's mother. In 1901 Helen and Jack (then 5) lived at 7 St John Street in the parish of St Margaret and St John in St George's, Hanover Square (Westminster). The census record includes Frederick Stevens, Jack's father, who was born in about 1859 in Lambeth. He was a commercial traveller so possibly he was away from home when the 1911 census was taken.Photo by kind permission of Mark Stevens

Mark Stevens, great-nephew of Arthur and Jack Stevens writes: "My great grandfather (Frederick Charles Stevens) is not the one on the memorial - he was the father of both Arthur and Jack. My father, now aged 99, remembers how his grandfather laid a wreath every Remembrance Day, buying up all the flowers on Picadilly, and after laying the flowers, drowning his sorrows in a pub near Victoria Station, before getting a cab home to Meadow Road where he lived with his son's family"