SIDLEY BLOG No 1

An Unlikely Hero

My maternal great grandfather George Thomas Sidley died in Chichester on 3 August 1956.

I met him many times when I was a child and my memories of him were of a quiet, small man who smoked a pipe and who had a bristly moustache which tickled when he kissed me. He always wore a waistcoat (sometimes decorated with ash from his pipe) and could waggle his ears without moving his face – an intriguing feat which always entertained me and my two brothers.

He was overshadowed by my great grandmother, Louisa, his wife of 59 years.  She was a very strong woman – a martinet.  They didn’t converse much and he spent a lot of time at the Lamb pub on Steyne Street, Bognor Regis about 20 paces from their cottage.  It’s still there.

 The Lamb Inn, Steyne Street, Bognor Regis, 2010

Family lore has it that, when George once went into hospital, Louisa pawned all of his clothes as she did not think he would come home. He did!

BUT childhood memories were nowhere near the full story.

I had decided to join the Guild of One-Name Studies (GoONS) and chose SIDLEY and variants as my choice of research because I did not know the origins of my Sidley family and thought this was a good way to find out.

In the 1881 Census there were 190 Sidley names and 17 Siddley names and 44 Sidle names. Of these 56 were in Lancashire, 46 in Cheshire, 46 in Middlesex and 21 in Staffordshire with others scattered in small numbers elsewhere.  The Sidle names were concentrated in Norfolk.

So I reckoned the 46 Sidley names in Middlesex were my family and I started with them. After finding births, deaths and marriage information and looking at census records I had a pretty good idea of the families involved and discovered that George was not recorded in the 1901 Census. His wife and children were living with her parents – Edmund and Mary Ann Chapman. So this started off my investigation.

His granddaughter, Peggy Buchanan, told me that he was in the Boer War and that she had seen a photo of him wearing a hat like an Australian Slouch Hat.

I found him recorded in 53 Company (East Kent) 11^th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry Regiment as a private with the service number 34309.

The Imperial Yeomanry is described as a volunteer cavalry regiment that mainly saw action in the Second South African or Boer War.  WOW! my great grandfather on a horse!  And he volunteered? Was it that he could not get work or he wanted a break from Louisa or something more traumatic?

The Find My Past website had great details culled from the National Archives WO128.  There he was in the casualty list having been taken prisoner at Tweefontein. Well, I wanted to know more as the picture of him in my mind changed dramatically and this led me to join the South Australian Boer War Association in Adelaide to learn more about this conflict.

In 2017 during a holiday in England, I made a trip to the National Archives in Kew and to my delight saw his hand written attestation document. He signed a short service (one year with the colours) attestation at 48 Duke Street on 25^th February 1901 just 12 days after the death of his third daughter, Doris Evelyn Pretoria Sidley aged 311 days.  George and Louisa had 9 children altogether but 5 of them died and I don’t know why. Still more research needed here.

On his attestation paper George asked to join the Duke of Cambridge’s Own having previously had service in the 2^nd Middlesex Rifle Volunteers and he agreed to serve for one year or more in South Africa. 

The rest of the story is in SIDLEY BLOG No 2.  Keep in touch.