6 Sons sent to war, how many survived?

Charles Joe and Sophronia Honeysett had six sons and they all went into the armed services. The family featured in their local newspaper, the Kent & Sussex Courier on Friday 11 May 1917, when the youngest was being called up. At the beginning of the war, the local Sussex newspapers offered to take free pictures of the young men in uniform who had signed up and published their names in a front page list. By 1917 the tone was more measured and individual families were featured, their stories described in a factual way.

The article said that their eldest son, Charles (aged 27) was in the Royal Engineers, a sapper, and had previously been wounded. On recovery he had returned to his regiment but had been listed missing. The family had only just had news of him.

Their second son, William (aged 26) was a stoker on HMS Ganges.

The third son, Jim (was 25) a Lance Corporal in The Buffs, and went out to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force early in the war. He had been wounded three times, and now unfit for trench duties, was guarding German prisoners.

The fourth son, Tom, had been killed at the age of 21 on 09 May 1915. He was a private in the Royal Sussex Regiment and had died as part of the assault of “Hill 60”, not far from Ypres.

The fifth son, Fred (aged 21), had been wounded twice already and had recently transferred to the Royal West Surrey Regiment.

Alfred, aged 19, had just received his call up papers.

The Honeysett Brothers’ War History

Charles was 24 when he signed up on 13th October 1914 and he was a quarryman. He joined the Royal Engineers, Kent Fortress Company as a sapper. He got dysentery in late 1915 and had been invalided to England. He was put on the army reserve list on 25 July 1919 and received a small disability pension for malaria. He received the 1914-1915 star, The British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

William’s first service date was 19 Jan 1917, he had been a cattleman before he joined the Royal Navy. He was on the Pembroke II before he moved onto The Ganges. These were both training establishments. I have seen no record of active service.

Military information about Jim (actually William James) is hard to find but he was a labourer before he enlisted.  He was on the casualty list as wounded from 21st May 1915 , also from 17th August 1916 and was wounded again on 2nd Jan 1918. The Buffs were an East Kent Army Regiment and served in France & Flanders. James’ record features Etaples, where there were large medical facilities behind the lines. He went straight from the army to the Royal Airforce in April 1918 and became a batman.

Tom went out to France on 4th January 1915 and survived 4 months before being killed. He died on Hill 60 as the Germans sought to win back the hill using one of the first gas attack of the war.  At this time, there was no effective defence against the gas. Hill 60 was not really a hill but a spoil tip from a nearby railway cutting. It was fought over continuously during the war as the height gave the victor an advantage in a basically flat landscape.  It was completely devastated and was left as a wargrave.

Tom is commemorated on the Le Touret memorial, one of over 13,400 soldiers who died in Ypres area between October 1914 to September 1915 and who have no known grave. His family received the 1915 star, The British War Medal and the Victory Medal. There is a current archeological expedition taking place on Hill 60.

Fred signed a short service attestation at the start of January 1916 when he was 19. He started as a private in the 13th London Regiment but seems to have been transferred several times and was finally demobbed on Mar 02 1919. He received the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

Alfred, currently no information found on Alfred’s war history. Do you know differently?

Did they survive?

In the 1939 register I’ve found the five sons and their father :-

Charles Joe is a widower, he is a retired bailiff and an inmate in an establishment in Uckfield. Alfred is also in Uckfield, he doesn’t appear to be married and he is also listed as an inmate.

Charley and wife Jane L, are listed at Tile Barn Farm, Uckfield, he is a heavyworker on the farm. This is the farm he worked on before he enlisted.

William is possibly in Tunbridge Wells, married to Agnes M.

Frederick is possibly in Lancashire married to Olive with children James & Freda (later Fisher)

Jim is  possibly  in Tunbridge Wells and married to Ivy.

Tracing back this Honeysett line – is it yours?

Charles Joe was born in 1865 in Guestling in East Sussex, to Joseph & Caroline Honeysett. His father Joseph was born in Stone, Kent in about 1822, but as a young man aged about 14 he was working as a labourer on a farm in Guestling. Joseph & Caroline Medlock married in 1862, stayed in Guestling and had 5 children.

Charles married Sophronia Jenner in Rye district in q2 1889, and the 1901 and 1911 censuses show they moved around on the Sussex/Kent borders and then they were in Hartfield, Sussex, during WW1. They had two daughters, Lily Flora and Annie in addition to the 6 boys.

This blog is part of the Hunnisett & Honeysett One Name Study.

Sources:

Kent & Sussex Courier – Friday 11 May 1917, British Newspapers Archive, www.bna.com

British Army War records 1914-1920 – Ancestry

www. forces-war-records.co.uk

1939 register – Findmypast or Ancestry

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/

https://www.gro.gov.uk

https://www.ww1cemeteries.com/

The first gas masks -https://simonjoneshistorian.com

A Criminal Conversation – a strange tale from 1823

Charles Honeysett, the innkeeper of the Swan Inn at Tunbridge Wells,  accused a Mr Buckland of having criminal conversation with his wife and sued for damages as “his affections had been blighted and his happiness destroyed.”
At a time when divorce was impossible for most people, a divorce involved a private Act of Parliament, suing the “seducer” of your wife compensated the husband for the damage to his own reputation from being cuckolded. It also served to ruin the reputation both of the wife and the “seducer” and would effectively end the marriage. It was a very public way of conducting your business. The case was held in the Court of Criminal Pleas in London, was noted as being an unusual & sensitive matter and then was written up in detail by the local papers!

Charles had previously been in the army, then had been a spirit merchant before marrying Mary Boulding in 1812, when he was 27. Shortly after that they left East Grinstead and went to Tunbridge Wells, where he had run the Inn and his wife was often to be found in the bar.

The bones of the case

By 1823, which is the year of the reported criminal conversation, the couple had 5 children, one newly born and lived at Bowling Green, not far away. The prosecutor suggested to the jury that they,  being married men, would understand the anguish of a man doubting the paternity of his youngest child, although no evidence was brought to show that the affair had started that early.

Mary Honeysett, nee Boulding came from Cranbrook, Kent where her father farmed the tithes. She married young,  probably at 16 or 17, but the defence lawyer suggested she may only have been 15. The defence also suggested that they may have had a child before marriage but this was not pursued. She was said to be a small very good looking woman of not yet 30. The defence lawyer could find no witness to substantiate his suggestion that Charles had previously been brought before the magistrate in Canterbury because of his treatment of Mary. These points were seeking to attack Charles’ reputation.

Mr Buckland was described as a local married man, reputedly with no children.

The accounts of witnesses agreed that until Mr Buckland started turning up at the Inn and accusing Charles of treating his wife badly, the couple had rubbed along very well together. Mrs Honeysett did not always occupy the same bed as her husband but was nursing a new born child.
After a big row at the Inn over Mrs Honeysett,  Mr Buckland was thrown out of the Inn by Charles. Later that evening, Mary apparently snuck out of the house to meet Mr Buckland in a copse on Lord Abergevenny’s estate nearby where they indulged in the so called criminal conversation. The reason the court knew this was that several of Mary’s neighbours had followed them and caught them in the woods. The neighbours said that they were on a normal evening stroll and had just been curious, no one had asked them to follow her.  Mr Buckland adjusted his clothing and ran away.  Mrs Honeysett returned home.

So far my sympathies,  and very likely the jury’s, are with Charles.

All is not as it seems

Witnesses then told the court that Mr and Mrs Honeysett had lived and slept together since the “transaction” that had caused the complaint. This was clearly not seen as normal behaviour for a man whose ” happiness has been destroyed”.

At this point, the defence lawyer produced two letters, written on the same date, on the same paper. They were both to another Mary Boulding,  Mary Honeysett’s cousin, one from Charles and one from Mary. Both exhort her to come to court at their expense, to tell everything she knows about the affair, she is “to be explicit and give every information that would bring this business to an end”. Charles’ letter states that they are very happy together and expect to be even happier in the future.

The case falls apart

Charles is accused of either setting the whole thing up and defiling his wife himself, or at the least making her ruin her reputation so that he can profit from the event. The defence states that a man has to have a reputation for it to be damaged and Charles has none. His prosecutor agrees;  even if Charles wins, the damages would be negligable. He stops the case himself by withdrawing a juror. The judge agrees that stopping the case is the best outcome.

So, what do you think?

Did Charles see a well off man clearly attracted to his wife and set up the adultery himself?  Were the neighbours set up to “catch them at it”?  Why would a mother of five, nursing a baby, sneak into the woods with another man?  Is Charles out to make some money after the event? Or do you think Charles is just trying to make the best of a bad situation?

Do you know any more about Charles Honeysett? Where was he born and when was he in the army?

Sources
1. The Kentish Weekly Post, 13th July 1824, reporting on the case held in the Court of Criminal Pleas, London.

https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

2. Church register of East Grinstead parish church, as transcribed by Sussex Family History Group
http://www.sfhg.org.uk/