Tunbridge wells police killed WW1

[Smokey807]

Hello: I have been asked by Dave Pate, Chief Constable of the Tunbridge Wells Borough Police to assist him in identifying all members of his police department that enlisted for service in WW II and from that list identify any men who were killed in the war. So far I have found only the death of Henry C. Wells but did find seven men from attestation records who had enlisted and survived the war. Given that the force had a staff of about 60 constables at any time and since there is a report in a 1918 newpaper that after the mayor gave a speech 16 men from the force enlisted soon after., so I would expect that at some 60 men from the force must have enlisted in total between 1915 and 1918.

Does anyone have a subscription they can use to the British Newspaper Archives to look for any mention of T.Wells police constables in the war. I know they have the Kent & Sussex Courier issues during the war. In the alternative does anyone have the time to go to the library and look through the newspapers on microfilm?  I cant look at the library as I do not live in England.

[Smokey807]

Sorry for the typo error. I should have typed in that Im looking for records for WW1 NOT WW II.

[jds1949]

Have you looked here:

http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Kent/TunbridgeWells.html

Most of the fallen have been researched - should give you a good start,

jds1949

[ShaunJ]

PC Thomas James Milton ("no record found" in that Roll of Honour) was killed in September 1914. "Probably the first man in Tunbridge Wells to respond to the call to arms" per his obit (with photo) in the Kent & Sussex Courier of 8 January 1915. He was a private in the Grenadier Guards according to the paper.

[ShaunJ]

CWGC for Private Milton. http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/578703/MILTON,%20T

He had only been with the Police for 2 months before rejoining his regiment (per the obit).

[Smokey807]

Thank you for the information about Thomas James Milton. I did some research on his family and now have all I need for him and I sent for the Kent & Sussex Obit just to finish him off.

Look forward to hearing of any others.

[Chris Doran]

Something to try: Go to Geoff's fuzzy search engine, which searches the CWG database with lots more options than the official site. Put police in the "Include all words" field, leaving all others blank and click on "Search". This gave me 248 hits. It won't take too long to look at each individually. Adding Kent might narrow it down a bit at the risk of missing some. Repeat with other keywords like policeman, constable, tunbridge ... Admittedly, I didn't get Wells or Milton, but you never know.

[Smokey807]

I took you advice and checked the "fuzzy search engine" and found no records for any mention of a policeman from Tunbridge Wells. I did a search on AncestryUK for all men who enlisted in Tunbridge Wells during WW 1 and looked al all the attestation records and found seven who served and survived and only one who died (H.C. Wells).

The problem as you no doubt know is that thousands upon thousands of military records were destroyed during the bombing of London and this was evidenced by very small number of attestation records I found for Tunbridge Wells and so many of the men I am looking for have had their records destroyed. This is why a newspaper search may be the only way of finding the rest of the policemen killed, this in fact is the only way that one of the two men known to have been killed(Thomas James Milton) did not show up on the attestation records as his record had been destroyed.

I have submitted the details of Mr Milton to the website "Roll of Honour". I was the one who did the original transcriptions for this War Memorial and at the time did not find the details for this man. thanks to those of you who found him, the website has now been updated to include his transcription.