Stanley Morris Bickersteth, Lieutenant 1st Leeds Pals
At 0730 on the morning of 1st July 1916, the men of the Leeds Pals climbed out of their trenches and into a hail of bullets. Precise numbers are not known, but perhaps the best estimate has 750 men out of the 900 in the battalion taking part in the advance, and 72 returning. 209 other ranks were killed and 24 died later of wounds, 13 officers were killed and 2 died of wounds. One of those killed was Acting Captain Stanley Morris Bickersteth.
Stanley Morris Bickersteth, known to his friends and family as Morris, was born in the Vicarage, Belvedere, Kent, on 1st June 1891, and was baptised at All Saints Church, Belvedere, exactly one month later. He was the fifth son of Samuel Bickersteth and Ella Chlora Faithfull Williams, who had married in Oxford in 1881. Samuel was a clerk in holy orders, and working at All Saints, though he did not perform his son’s baptism. Morris had four older brothers, Edward, Geoffrey, Kenneth and John, and one younger, Ralph. There were no daughters. They were clearly a well-to-do family, as there are four servants listed on the 1891 Census, including a governess and a nurse, rising to five by 1901. By this time they had moved west to Lewisham, and now living with them was Samuel’s mother-in-law, the widow of Sir Monier Monier-Williams, Professor of Sanskrit and Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, which is presumably where Samuel and Ella met. Morris does not appear on this census, but is on the one for St David’s School, Reigate. From there he went to Rugby, and in 1910 went up to Christ Church College, Oxford, and appears on the 1911 Census as a student. By this time the family had moved to Leeds, where Samuel was now the vicar of Leeds.
After coming down from Oxford Morris took a holiday in Southern Rhodesia, and was there in August 1914 when war broke out. Returning home rapidly he volunteered for the Leeds Pals, and was granted a commission, as 2nd Lieutenant, and gazetted on 25th September. All this despite being virtually blind in his left eye, and none too good with his right. He managed to learn the eye-chart off by heart and passed with flying colours. His older brother Burgon, having spent two years as a missionary in Canada, also joined up, but in the Royal Dragoons, not the Pals. Geoffrey became a captain in the Royal Marines while Kenneth joined the Chaplain’s Department.
Training began at Colsterdale, and Morris was Platoon Commander of No.6 Platoon in B Company. He was also appointed Assistant Transport Officer, and in these capacities he sailed on the Empress of Britain, on 5th December 1915, for Egypt, where the Pals were to take over the guarding of the Suez Canal against any attack by the Turks. This, fortunately, never materialised, and on 1st March 1916 they sailed again, this time for Marseilles. Once in France they began to prepare for the Big Push, the battle that was to smash through the German lines and bring the war to an end. On 13th May he was appointed Second in Command of C Company, with the acting rank of captain. All through his time with the Pals he wrote long letters to his parents and family, and on 7th May 1916 he wrote one to be delivered in the event of his death. It is a very moving letter, in some ways a prose equivalent of Rupert Brooke’s poem but with a much stronger Christian message.
In the event of my getting a clean knock-out blow from the Hun, Monier will send you this letter. I just wanted to tell you that I do not fear death except in so far as everyone must fear it….. Death, to my mind is simply a gateway through which one passes into Life…..Don’t forget that I shall be loving you both at the moment that you are reading this, just as dearly as I do now while writing it. Ever your own loving son, S Morris Bickersteth.
Morris was killed with his captain as they led their men in the attack on Serre, and buried in Queen’s Cemetery, Puisieux, France. He was exactly 25 years and 1 month old. Monier sent the letter.
At the end of the war Morris was awarded the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal, and a memorial was erected in the Lady Chapel of Leeds Parish Church. The other brothers survived the war, Kenneth winning the Military Cross and Burgon the Military Cross and Bar.
Sources:
Ancestry – Census Records, Medal Records, Baptism Record, Register of Effects
Find My Past – Census Records, Military records
Free BMD – Birth, Marriage and Death Records
Leeds Pals – Laurie Milner, Pen & Sword, 1991
The Leeds Pals – Stephen Wood, Amberley Publishing, 2014
Researcher: Peter Taylor
Please Note:
- All opinions and inferences are the researcher’s own.
- Please refer to our Glossary of Terms for further information on the terms and phrases used in this post.