A father pleads for his youngest son
This name is on St Mark's War Memorial, Kennington Oval, London SE11
(Percy Leonard Edmonds)
Service no 35157
Private, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, 9th Battalion
Died of wounds age around 20 on 25 October 1917
Remembered at Duhallow ADS (Advanced Dressing Station) Cemetery, Belgium
Information from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database:
(Fusilier Wood Memorial - special memorials commemorate a number of casualties known to have been buried in Malakoff Farm Cemetery, Brielen, and Fusilier Wood Duhallow Advanced Dressing Station, believed to have been named after a southern Irish hunt, was a medical post 1.6 kilometres north of Ypres (now Ieper). The cemetery was begun in July 1917 and in October and November 1918, it was used by the 11th, 36th and 44th Casualty Clearing Stations. The cemetery contains many graves of the artillery and engineers and 41 men of the 13th Company Labour Corps, killed when a German aircraft dropped a bomb on an ammunition truck in January 1918, are buried in Plot II. After the Armistice, the cemetery was enlarged when graves were brought into this cemetery from isolated sites and a number of small cemeteries on the battlefields around Ypres. Special memorials commemorate a number of casualties known to have been buried in two of these cemeteries, Malakoff Farm Cemetery, Brielen, and Fusilier Wood Cemetery, Hollebeke, whose graves were destroyed by shellfire.
Information from the censuses
In 1901 Percy Leonard Edmonds and his twin brother John Stanley Edmonds lived at 11 Cranmer Road with their parents, Charles W. Edmonds, 49, a butcher born in London, and Mary, 40, and their siblings, some from Charles's first marriage. Registered in the household were:
May Edmonds, 19, a dress-maker
Daisy Edmonds, 17
Walter Edmonds, 14
Sidney Edmonds, 11
as well as the twins.
In the 1891 census the family was listed as living at 78 Cowley Road. Charles was married to Eliza, from Ramsey, Huntingdonshire who, at 43, was three or four years older than he. An older son, Harry, 13, is registered, as well as Alfred, Mary/May, Daisy, Walter and Sidney. Charles gives his birthplace as Clapham.
Ten years previously, in 1881, Eliza and Charles lived at 21 William Street (near Kennington Park Road). They had two sons, George H. Edmonds, 3, and Charles A. Edmonds, 1. Eliza's brother, James, Belshaw, a 21-year-old railway porter, from Ramsey, Huntingdonshire, lived with them.