Leslie Martin’s father Mark Le Grys Martin (b.1862 in Lambeth), was the son of Mark Craig Martin (a Thames Waterman) and Ellen Rhoda Le Grys, having five sisters and three brothers living at 9 Princes Road, Bermondsey in 1881.
He married Mary Hannah Aldam, known as Polly (b.1862 in Louth, Lincolnshire), in the summer of 1893 at St Katharine’s Church, Rotherhithe. His home address at the time given as 40 Rectory Road, Rotherhithe.
Eight years later in 1901, Mark Le Grys Martin was working as a Commercial Clerk for a Wholesale and Export Company. He and Mary were living in Peckham with their four children, Doris (b.1895), Cecil Mark (b.1896), Leslie (b.1899) and Percy (b.1901). Another son, Alan was born in 1903. They shared a house at 4 York Terrace, Astbury Road, just off Queen’s Road, Peckham, with another family, Percy & Lillian Luff and their two children.
Leslie’s family moved to Welling sometime between 1903 and 1907, when he was in his early teens. His youngest brother, Stanley was born in Welling in 1907. Their home was at 11 Gipsy Road, a terraced house that at the time would have had two rooms downstairs and two up, with an outside toilet, not that large for a family of eight. Gipsy Road in those days consisted of around the fifty terraced houses that still exist between Park View Road and Palmeira Road, and is known today as South Gipsy Road.
In 1911, his sister Doris now aged 16, is listed as a Draper’s Clerk, his brother Cecil aged 14 was already working as a Company Clerk / Company Promoter, whilst Leslie and the younger brothers were all still at school.
Leslie was possibly one of the first Boy Scouts of the 9th North West Kent Scout Group, formed in March 1911, and renamed in early 1912 as the 1st East Wickham Scout Troop. They met in the Old Foster’s School rooms on the corner of Upper Wickham Lane and Berwick Road (where the ATC Hall now stands), therefore just across the road from his home.
The outbreak of the First World War interrupted the Troop Summer Camp at Seasalter, and the Troop, possibly including Leslie, his brother Cecil Martin and Herbert Henry Huggett, helped catch a German spy on the Kent coast before returning to Welling to take up guard over a local railway bridge until the Army could be mobilised some three weeks later. It was recorded that the Troop formed a camp in an orchard close to the railway bridge and duties were cheerfully performed. During the First World War local Scouts, as elsewhere, were involved in various forms of service, giving bugle ‘alarms’ of air raids and the ‘all clear’, guarding main roads, railway bridges, telephone and telegraph lines, acting as hospital orderlies, patients for Red Cross trainees, distributing handbills in connection with appeals for National Relief Funds and National Savings.
Leslie was a number of Boy Scouts who answered the call to arms along with Scoutmaster William Wrighton, Honorary Scoutmaster W. Collier (from Huddersfield, stationed in Danson Park), Hawden, Huggett, Worsley, Butterfield, Holmes, Davis, Evans, Charman, Shelley and Harris.
In June 1913 his father died aged 52.
Leslie Martin, described as 5’6” with blue eyes, a fair complexion with light brown hair was working at Woolwich Arsenal as an Examiner of Munitions when he enlisted on 31 January 1917. Although he had to wait until 29 May 1917 to be mobilized as a Private in the 46th Training Reserve Battalion, service number TR/9/29579.
Each Training Reserve battalion was allocated a block of 4000 numbers. The standard form for a number was TR / the number of the District – in which the Record Office of the unit was (there were twelve such Districts) / the man’s unique number. The 46th was recorded as being attached to 13th (Reserve) Battalion, the Worcestershire Regiment at Swanage, in which case his service number / prefix should have been TR/7/. However men who were posted to the TR battalions were not allocated to any particular regiment when the time came for them to be posted. So from this time on it is not safe to assume that a recruit would serve with his local regiment. Later, from May 1917, this arrangement was itself altered when the units of the TR became ‘Graduated’ and Young Soldier Battalions and were once again aligned with specific regiments.
This mattered little in Leslie’s story, as his service was short-lived. In little over a month since he arrived, he appeared before a Medical Board on 13 July 1917 and was a few days later admitted to hospital at the Military Hospital near Sutton Vemy, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
His medical report of 26 July appears to confirm that he fell ill after he enlisted, but before he was mobilised, as it reads that he was “Physically unfit: Tubercule of lungs. Originated Welling in April 1917. Neither cause nor aggravated by Military Service. Permanent. Capacity unimpaired: will require Q.P. treatment. Should be sent to sanatorium.”
The record shows that after a period of care, he was discharged from the hospital on 16 August 1917 and returned home to Welling having been officially in service for 198 days, 81 in uniform, but actually had very little chance to contribute to the war effort as a soldier.
His discharge from the army was confirmed on 30 July 1917 “being no longer physically for war service” at Warley. His character was reported as good – “Judging from his records his conduct has been quite satisfactory during his short period of service.” (Warley, near Brentwood, was a Records Office, he may never have been at the hospital there).
He died aged 18, at home at 11 Gypsy Road on Christmas Day 1917, with his mother by his side. The cause of death was 1.hemoptysis and 2. pulmonary tuberculosis (6 months).
His elder brother Cecil Mark Martin had been killed in Action in Egypt on 10 November 1917, defending the Suez Canal and never returned home. he is buried at the Gaza War Cemetery in Israel. So it was a bitter blow to his mother Hannah Martin having to bear the lost of two sons so close together.
The reason for Leslie’s inclusion on the East Wickham Memorial is not straight-forward as he never went to, and did not die as a result of, the First World War. It could simply be due to being the younger brother of Cecil, and it was felt unfair to leave him off.
One possible theory is the Boy Scouts connection as both Cecil and Leslie were members of the 1st East Wickham Boy Scout Troop. When the Troop was formed in 1911, its founding Scoutmaster was William James Wrighton. He was quick to enlist in August 1914 with the Middlesex Regiment, he returned home wounded in action in 1915. He survived the war to return to Scouting and was in 1920 on the Parish Memorial Committee, along with his father James Daniel Wrighton, deciding which names would appear.
A local newspaper article after the war (30 May 1919), about the Sidcup and District Local Association Memorial Service, recorded the some of the names of those who died and that included Leslie Martin. Another connection would be that Eric G B Hudson, who was the Scoutmaster whilst William was away in France, lived in Gipsy Road almost opposite the Martin family home. Fellow Boy Scout Herbert Henry Huggett also lived in Gypsy Road at number 21.
Commemorated
This story has been researched by volunteers. We have taken every effort to ensure its accuracy. If you are related to Leslie Martin, or if you have any further information, please do get in touch.