FRANCIS ROBERT PEAGAM was born in 1883 and when he was 22 years old he married a lady who had also been born in 1883 – Fanny Eliza DARVILL.

 

The Darvills were a well-known family in Tooting.

 

Fanny Eliza’s father, Frederick, was a carpenter by trade and had been born in Battersea in 1859.

 

In 1881 Frederick Darvill and his family were living at 62 Parkside, Battersea. By 1891 Frederick was married and living (appropriately enough) at 57, Carpenter Street, Battersea.

 

Frederick’s wife, Caroline, was French. As well as Fanny Eliza there were four other children, three daughters and a son. By 1901 the family had moved to 5 Hazlehurst Road, Tooting, It had also expanded – there were nine children living with their parents, the eldest was Fanny Eliza who was eighteen, the youngest, James Job, was one year old.

 

Ten years later the family had moved again, to 42, Pevensey Road, Tooting. The couple had acquired three more children and a grandson.

 

Frederick died in Wandsworth June 1915 aged 56. His widow Caroline died in September 1938 aged 73.

 

In 29 years of marriage the couple had 14 children, of whom two died young.

 

One of those children, William Arthur, is worth a mention. He was born in 1895. On 16 August 1912, aged 17 years and 10 months, he enlisted with the East Surrey (4th Btn) at Kingston. On 7 May 1913 he enlisted again with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

 

With the outbreak of the First World War, William found himself fighting in France. William proved himself and by 1918, aged just 23, was a Sergeant.

 

As a member of the 2nd Battalion of the KOSB, he would have very likely been involved in the fighting at the Battle of Hazebrouck.

 

He died just one month before the cessation of hostilities, on 6 October 1918.

 

Reverend John Robinson reported in the St Mary’s parish magazine of November 1918, ‘William Darvill died in hospital on 6th October having being gassed’.

 

He is buried at St Sever Cemetery on the edge of Rouen. Some distance from the fighting, this great cathedral city was a centre of twenty major army hospitals. Any one of the 3,000 men buried at St Sever very likely died at one of these.

 

Interestingly, on his headstone his mother Caroline’s instructions for the inscription were:

 

“He died for his mother country France”.

 

William would have perhaps been present for the marriage of his eldest sister, Fanny Eliza, when she married FRANCIS ROBERT PEAGAM in September 1905.