Luton's People 1914-1918
This page contains a list of soldiers/civilians from Luton and surroundings 1914-1918, and the ancestors of people who live in Luton today. It has been compiled from the 1918 Luton Absent Voters List, Rolls of Honour; and information researched and uploaded by project volunteers and members of the public.
If you find your ancestor here, and there is only basic information available, then feel free to use the comment box to add further information you may already know. The WWI Project Team, can then add this further information to the basic data we already hold.
The sources of this information can be found via the links below. Please feel free to download and use this information, but please please search for and upload your ancestor to the site if/when you find them:-
Absent Voters List
Luton Roll of honour
Before adding anybody to the site, it is always advisable to search for your ancestor first.
Pte Walter Brazier, 40379, 2nd Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment, was killed in action at Chateau Wood, near Ypres, on July 31st, 1917, the date of the start of the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele). He was aged 21 and left a widow, Olive.
Pte Joseph Bunker, 60856, 1st Battalion Royal Fusiliers, was killed in action in Belgium on July 31st, 1917. He was aged 24 and left a widow, Lydia Emily.
Pte Walter Watton Page, 269777, 1st Battalion Herts Regiment, died on July 31st, 1917, from wounds sustained in action in Belgium. He had joined the regiment the previous September and underwent training at Halton Camp.
Pte Humphrey Winton Worthington, 19589, 11th Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment, was killed in action on July 31st, 1917. The Luton doctor's son, aged 19, had been transferred from the Norfolk Regiment (32417) only a short time earlier.
Cpl Alfred Edward Bertram Burgess, 204386, 12th Battalion East Surrey Regiment, died in a dressing station on August 1st*, 1917, from wounds sustained while serving in a trench in Flanders.
L-Cpl Herbert Smith, 60089, 26th Battalion Royal Fusiliers, was the third of five serving sons of Joseph and Jane Smith, of 58 New Town Street, Luton, to lose his life on the battlefield. He died of wounds in Belgium on August 2nd, 1917.
Pte Horace John Sanders, 27416, 7th Battalion Norfolk Regiment, was killed in action in France on August 2nd*, 1917, about three months after going to the Front. He had been slightly wounded a few days previously but returned to duty almost immediately.
Pte Sidney James Bone, 27319, 7th Battalion Norfolk Regiment, was killed in action on August 2nd, 1917. He was aged 30, and left a widow and daughter.
According to military records, Pte Stanley ('Tom') Toyer, 235151, 2nd Battalion South Lancs Regiment, was killed in action on August 3rd, 1917.
Reginald James Payne was my maternal Grandfather born in Dudderston, Birmingham on the 9th November 1896. He was the 3rd eldest of six children born to Walter & Minnie Payne.
For the second time in his Army career, Pte Alfred George Cook, 200573, 1/5th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was reported missing.
Luton-born Company Sgt-Major Harry Parks (DCM), P/154, 16th Rifle Brigade, was killed in action near Ypres in Belgium on July 31st, 1917. His home was in London, and he left a widow and six children.
Sgt Arthur William Groves, 9643, 6th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was killed in action in Belgium on August 6th, 1917. He is commemorated on the Luton Roll of Honour but may not have had much association with the town as no local address is recorded for him.
Pte Harry Isaac Hurry, 238022, 12th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, was killed in action on August 7th, 1917, although an officer at the Front gave the date as August 8th.
Pte Charles Herbert Halfpenny, 32135, 6th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was killed in action in Flanders on August 9th, 1917. According to a letter sent to his widow Dorothy he was the victim of a sniper while he slept.
Driver Walter Gylee, 184771, 88th Battery, 14th Brigade Royal Field Artillery, died of wounds in France on August 11th, 1917. He was born and bred in Lincoln but for a time had been a junior assistant with Wootton & Webb pharmacists on Market Hill, Luton.
Gunner Arthur William Loney, 163241, 32nd Divisional Ammunition Column, Royal Field Artillery, died accidentally in France from a gunshot wound on August 11th*, 1917. He was aged 25 and left a widow and a year-old child.
Pte William Scrivener, 18757, 1st Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment (transferred to 208th Division Employment Corps, Labour Corps - 22240), died probably from shell shock in France when the area he was in came under fire on August 12th, 1917.
Pte Albert King, 87202, 149th Company Machine Gun Corps (Infantry), was killed in action in France on August 3rd, 1917. A letter to widow Louisa Jane said: "Your husband was killed instantaneously by a shell in the early morning, about 2am.
In August 1917, nearly eleven months after he was first reported wounded and missing, Guardsman Cyril Bernard Bryan, 18447, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, was acknowledged as presumed to have died on the battlefield on September 25th 1916.
It was not until August 1917 that the family of Pte Stanley Thomas Warner, G/15027, 11th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment, were officially notified that he was presumed to have died on the battlefield on October 21st, 1916.
Pte Archie Oliver death Hurry, 238021, 12th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, was killed in action in Flanders on July 16th, 1917. His brother Harry, with whom he enlisted, had died on the battlefield just a few days earlier.
Sgt Carl Hill, 3/7592, 7th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was killed in action in the Third Battle of Ypres on August 16th, 1917. There was no report or family announcement of his death in the local Press, but he is included on the Luton Roll of Honour.
Second Lieut Herbert James Day had served as an observer with the Royal Flying Corps for only about six weeks when he was wounded in aerial combat on Tuesday, August 7th, 1917. He died of his wounds the following day in a casualty clearing station in France.
Luton-born Sgt Percy Wells, 4484, 7th Regiment, South African Infantry, died from blackwater fever on August 19th, 1917, while serving in East Africa.
Gunner Frederick Charles Smith, 81322, 65th Howitzer Battery Royal Field Artillery, died on August 10th, 1917, from wounds sustained earlier in the day in action near Armentieres.
Pte George Buggs, 22845, 8th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was captured by the Germans while fighting in the front line at Hulluch in France on June 22nd, 1917, one of nine men taken prisoner in a surprise incursion by the enemy under cover of smoke and darkness.
Pte Alfred Scales, 89760, 44th Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps, died on August 23rd, 1917, of wounds received in action in Flanders. He was aged 36 and left a widow and six children, the youngest (Cissie) born just five days before his death.
Pte Owen Brownlow Dale, 764687, London Regiment (Artists' Rifles), was killed in action by a fragment of shell in France on August 24th, 1917. His father, Pte Owen Clifford Dale, 2494, London Regiment, had also been killed in action, on the Somme in 1916.
Pte Ernest Currant, 260151, 1/8th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment, was killed in action in Flanders by a sniper on August 27th, 1917. He had seen only ten weeks service at the Front.
It was nearly 12 months before the family of Pte Ernest Arthur Godfrey, 60808, 24th Battalion Royal Fusiliers, learned that he had probably been killed in action in France on April 29th, 1917.
Pte Charles Joseph Morris, 68395, 17th Company Machine Gun Corps (Infantry), died in the 1st Canadian General Hospital in France on August 28th, 1917, from wounds sustained on August 19th. He was admitted to the hospital the following day.
Pte Alfred Large, G/14842, 12th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment, was killed in action in Flanders on July 31st, 1917.
Pte Ernest George Chamberlain, 14553, 6th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment, was reported missing on October 7th, 1916. But it was not until more than 10 months later that his widow Edith in Luton was informed that he was presumed killed in action on that date.
George Titmus was born on 2nd July 1890.
Stoker First Class Horace Stanley Sharp, K17954, Royal Navy, was killed instantly by a bomb dropped on Chatham Dockyard by a German aircraft carrying out a raid on Kent on the bright moonlit night of September 3rd, 1917.
Pte Ernest Sylvester Harris, 18614, 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was killed in action by a shell at the Third Battle of Ypres on August 1st, 1917. He was aged 25.
Pte Harry (Henry) Sharp, 228138, 1st City of London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers), died of wounds sustained in Flanders on September 5th, 1917. He was attached to the 13th Battalion Royal Fusiliers.
L-Cpl Archibald George Dexter, 233498, 1/2nd Battalion London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers), was killed in action in Belgium on August 16th, 1917. A chum on leave, Pte Smith, of New Town Street, Luton, said he had seen L-Cpl Dexter's party fall and had helped to bring them in and bury them.
Pte Gerald Edward Hills, 30799, 7th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was reported missing in action in Belgium on July 20th, 1917.