Robert Huntriss Tolson, 2nd Lieutenant 15th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment

Robert Huntriss Tolson was born 6th November 1884 at Kirkheaton, Huddersfield.  He was one of six children of Whiteley Tolson (1850-1928) and Jessy Tolson, née Huntriss (1851-1904) of Oaklands, Dalton, Huddersfield.  After the death of his wife Whiteley married Mary Ann Abbey (1859-1944).  Robert’s siblings were Muriel (1878-1963), Margaret Dorothy (1878-1956), Gerald (1878-1952), Jessy (1881-1953), Mercy Vera (1891-1936) and James Martin (1898-1918).  Robert was educated at Aysgarth and King Williams School on the Isle of Man where he was at the time of the 1901 census.  He married Zoë Annie Staveley (1881-1952) in Scarborough on 9th October 1909.  She was the daughter of Colonel John Alfred Staveley VD, a landowner.  When war broke out in 1914 Robert was living with his wife Zoë at 78 Holly Bank, Headingley, Leeds and was working as a Bank Clerk at Beckett’s Bank Leeds.  He was 5’ 9” tall, weighed 127lbs, had a sallow complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. 

He enlisted into the Public Schools Battalion, 16th Middlesex Regiment as 206 Private Tolson on 7th September 1914 and was commissioned into the 11th Battalion, Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry on 1st January 1915.  In June 1915 he was transferred to the 15th Battalion whilst they were at Ripon.  He was initially appointed Platoon Commander 2 Platoon, A Company, whose commander was Captain Phillip Mellor.  He trained with the Leeds Pals at Ripon and Fovant on Salisbury Plain before proceeding on active service in December 1915, firstly to Egypt and then to France in March 1916.  Robert led his Platoon in the first wave of the attack at Serre on 1st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.  The attack was devastating for the 15th Battalion which suffered substantial casualties, including all 24 officers being killed, wounded or subsequently dying of their wounds.  One of those was 2nd Lieutenant Robert Tolson. 

News back in Leeds was very sketchy and his family, like many others, went through a period of uncertainty as they were being given conflicting information: The Yorkshire Evening Post July 10th 1916 reported. ‘……..Robert Huntriss Tolson is posted as missing.’  Yorkshire Evening Post July 11th 1916. ’……. telegram to that effect has been received, from the War Office, by his Father.’  Yorkshire Evening Post July 12th 1916. ‘……We stated yesterday, through a misunderstanding that Mr. Whiteley Tolson, of Dalton, Huddersfield, had heard from the War Office that his son, 2/Lt R.H.Tolson of the Leeds Pals Battalion is wounded and in hospital. All the news at present, received on Lt R.H.Tolson, is that he was wounded on the 1st July, and this is confirmed by a letter from the battalion chaplain (Reverend Claude Chappell), to Lt Tolson’s wife, but his father has no news of his whereabouts, and is very anxious.’ 

15/1202 Private Herbert Allan, who was later transferred to the ASC, gave the following statement while in No18 General Hospital at Etaples on 28th November 1916:  ‘I saw him [Tolson] killed to the left of Thiepval, by a shell which completely buried him.  This was during the advance, and we had to go on.  He was not dug out.  He was the officer over my platoon, No11, and was very much liked.’  

The War Office finally confirmed on 13th January 1917 that Robert had been killed on the 1st July 1916 (age 31), although they had previously told the family he had been wounded, then missing.  The Chaplain of the 15th Battalion, Claude Chappell, wrote the following news to Robert’s father on 13th March 1917:  ‘I write you a few lines only to tell you sad news but perhaps it will bring you all some comfort.  We found your son today on the battlefield and buried him there.  We found some things on him but most things were gone.  I picked up his gold watch which will be sent to you.  A handkerchief had been tied around his leg evidently to stop the bleeding.  His name is on this and his watch.  There is not much more to say.  I read the burial service and will try to have his grave kept.’  In fact he was buried at what is now Serre Road Cemetery No1 which is close to the Leeds Pals forward trench line of 1st July 1916.  

The Tolson family losses did not end there as two of the three sons were killed during the First World War.  Robert’s elder brother Gerald enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment in August 1914, at the age of 36, but was discharged as unfit (deafness) on 2nd October that year.  His younger brother James Martin died of wounds on 20th October 1918, aged 20.  James had enlisted in the Honorable Artillery Company as 7609 Private Tolson and was later commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in to the Royal Field Artillery and served with A Battery of the 74th Brigade.  He was buried in Quievy Communal Cemetery Extension, Cambrai. 

  • James Tolson

Robert was awarded the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal.  His widow would also have received a bronze Memorial Plaque and Scroll.  His brother James qualified for the British War and Victory Medals and Memorial Plaque. 

In 1919, Legh Tolson, the brother of their father Whiteley Tolson, who was living at Ravensnowle Hall, made a gift of his house to the Huddersfield Corporation as a tribute and lasting memorial to his two nephews.  This later become the Tolson Museum (a plaque to the brothers is displayed at the Museum).  The family home of Oaklands in Dalton was sold to Huddersfield Corporation in 1944 and used as an old peoples’ home for the next 50 years. It then became an office for the Social Services. 

Ravensknowle Hall, now the Tolson Museum

Ravensknowle Hall was built in the late 1850s for a local textile baron, John Beaumont.  Beaumont died in 1889 leaving the house to his daughter who sold it to a relative, Legh Tolson.  

Distant Tolson relatives of Robert and James were suffragettes.  Catherine ‘Kitty’ (1890-1924) and Helen (1888-1955) were the daughters of Charles Guthrie Tolson (1858–1929) and Anna Tolson née Dymond (1863–1937) who was also a suffragette.  After joining the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) they became militant campaigners for women’s suffrage.  In September 1909 the sisters were amongst the suffragettes arrested for breaking glass at White City in Manchester, and accepted imprisonment in Strangeways Prison rather than pay fines.  Two days later they were released from Strangeways after going on hunger strike for which they received a Hunger Strike Medal from the WSPU.   

In April 1911 Kitty, Helen, with their mother Anna together with their sister in law Florence Tolson née Wheeler (her husband was KIA in 1917), who were ‘all suffragettes who have served time in English jails for the cause’, arrived on a ‘sight-seeing’ visit to New York via the West Indies.  Mrs Tolson stated ‘it was purely a holiday and they would not take part in any suffragette work there’.  Catherine ‘Kitty’, who never married, died of tuberculosis aged 34 while nursing in Russia during the great famine of 1924.   

Sources: 

The National Archives – Officer Service Records 

Ancestry – Soldiers Service Record, Domestic Records, Medal Rolls 

Commonwealth War Graves Commission – Burial Records  

Yorkshire Evening Post – Various associated articles 

London Gazette – Promotions and Appointments 

Tolson Memorial Museum – Details of Ravensknowle Hall and the Suffragettes 

Researcher: David J Owen

Please Note:

  • All opinions and inferences are the researcher’s own.
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