This month's B13 magazine featured an article by Steph Silk, who I met when researching stories and images based on Moseley in Bloom. It turned out that she was also researching the stories behind all the names on St.Mary's Church WWI Roll of Honour, and she was very interested in the work I had done on the Furse Family.
Who Do You Think They Were?
Second Lieutenant William Henry Furse was 25 when he was mortally wounded by a bullet in No Man's Land. He was taken back to the British lines but died within hours. 40 miles away his brother Alan Furse was celebrating his 24th birthday but could hear distant guns. It was 1st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
The name of William Furse is one of 106 names commemorated on the Moseley Roll of Honour in St Mary's Church. A small B13 Platoon has chosen to investigate these 106 men of Moseley and William Furse was amongst the first batch examined by Gillian Catell.
The 1911 Census shows the Furse family living at 53 School Road. The father Henry was an electrician from London, the mother Florence Mundy Cox was from a large local family. They married in 1890 in Solihull and set up home in Hampstead, London, where sons William and Alan were born over the following two years. In 1900 a third son Claude, was born in London. The 1901 Census shows the family split up while Florence was in a nursing home in London.
We have no further evidence until we find them at School Road but we know that the two elder boys went to Solihull School and Claude the youngest later went to King Edward High. William becomes a bank clerk and Alan a clerk to a Chartered Accountant.
At the outbreak of war both sons volunteered for the Birmingham Battalions known as the Birmingham PALS. These became the 14th,15th and 16th (Service) Battalions of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. The Furse brothers were both in the 14th Batallion until September 1915 when William was commissioned into the 21st Northumberland Fusiliers. Towards the end of 1915, William, on leave in Moseley, married Beatrice Law, a private secretary from 67 Cambridge Road and returned to France.
My story now leaps forward 100 years. It was pure serendipity when I met local printmaker artist Sarah Moss recently in connection with her unique contribution to the Moseley Local History Group's project, 'Moseley Then and Now'. She was sourcing Moseley photographs from Victorian times to the present day to inspire 6 narrative copper plate etchings. She showed me a print of her WWI etching, and told me it was a family group by the name of Furse! She had found a folder of unidentified family pictures while rummaging in the MLHG archive. A scribbled note from the owner of 36 Salisbury Road said that they had been found in the loft in 1981 when they moved in and that the previous owner was C.S. Furse. Sarah delved into the Archives at the Birmingham Library and found that the Furse family had moved from School Road to Salisbury Road in about 1919. Sarah was hooked. She bought Terry Carter's book "Birmingham Pals" a history of the 3 Birmingham Battalions and found to her joy numerous extracts from the letters and memoirs of Alan Furse. And to my joy, she lent me the book.
Back to 1916 when Henry and Florence received the dreaded telegram . On 7th July, Alan received a telegram from his parents, telling him of William's death. He reflected back on his birthday celebrations, "little did I know that my best pal had gone to his long rest." Later that year Alan was hospitalised and then discharged as medically unfit for further service. He became senior partner at Cox and Furse, Chartered Accountants, he never married and continued living at Salisbury Road until he died in 1970. Claude remains a mystery but we know that he didn't marry and stayed at Salisbury Road until he died in 1981.
William's young widow Beatrice also continued living at Salisbury Road until 1921 when she married Frank JD Lindner. Sadly she died in childbirth in 1922 at The Dingle Nursing Home in Wake Green Road. Her son James survived and died in 1997.
You can see Sarah Moss's Exhibition of Moseley stories "The Boys Cheered and The Girls Cried" at the Cow House on Saturday 28th June as part of the Open Gardens Weekend.
Come and Join the B13 Platoon
Stephanie Silk
Stephanie@moseleyB13.com
With thanks to Terry Carter, the late Graham Reeves, and the Moseley Local History Group www.moseleyhistory.co.uk (718)
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