PEOPLE IN PORTSMOUTH

 

Lives Lived and Lives Lost - Portsmouth and the Great War

FREDERICK ARTHUR BATCHELOR
 
For about 20 years around 1900 the Batchelor family ran a lodging house at 19 Hampshire Terrace in Southsea, or at least Frederick Arthur's mother Elizabeth did whilst his father Arthur pursued a variety of jobs outside their home. At the time Hampshire Terrace was a respectable area within sight of Government House in what is now Ravelin Park.
 
The connection between Portsmouth and the Batchelor family began in the 1870s when Arthur moved to the town from his birthplace at Bosham in Sussex with his parents William and Lucy and siblings Albert and Bertha. They initially lived at 37 Russell St, near the Guildhall, and William was described as a sawyer and Lucy, unusually, as a butcher. Arthur left home in the late 1880s after marrying Elizabeth Sarah, probably in 1889 though records are inconclusive.
 
The 1891 census shows the couple living at 19 Hampshire Terrace and while Elizabeth ran the lodging house Arthur was working as a grocer. With them was their first child Frederick Arthur who was born in 1890 and three step children with the surname Bone. The names of the parents for the step-children is not known. By 1901 the family had grown with the addition of three more children, Reginald Egbert (b. 1892), Elsie May (b. 1893) and John Abraham (b. 1896). John died in 1904.
 
By 1911 Arthur had given up grocery and become an agent in oils, varnishes and turpentine whilst Frederick Arthur was working as a reporter on the Evening News. It's not known what happened to Frederick after the outbreak of the Great War except that by 1917 he was serving with the King's African Rifles as a Captain in Sierra Leone. It was there that he lost his life in November 1917.
 
Further Information
 
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website lists Fredrick (sic) Arthur Batchelor, Captain, King's African Rifles, date of death, 29/11/1917, aged 27, buried at Freetown (King Tom) Cemetery (Grave ref: 1.F.3.). Son of Elizabeth Sarah Batchelor, of Wellington House, 19, Hampshire Terrace, Southsea, Hants., and the late Arthur Charles Batchelor.
 
Frederick Batchelor is remembered on the Cenotaph in Guildhall Square, Portsmouth. He is not listed in the 'National Roll of the Great War', Section X.
 
Frederick Arthur was the elder brother of Reginald Egbert Batchelor who died in France a few months before Frederick.
 
Tim Backhouse
August 2014