‘Y’ Company, Army Service Corps
Thomas Townley was born in Charlton Kings, Cheltenham in the early part of 1850 and he was baptised on 21 April that year.
His parents were Robert (a labourer, born in 1811) and Hannah (a laundry worker, born 1814). As far as can be ascertained, the couple had seven children, of which Thomas was the fifth.
Thomas became a labourer and from 1868 to at least 1884 and he was also convicted several times for petty crimes, mostly involving poaching and spent various periods in prison.
More seriously he was convicted of unlawful wounding in October 1873 and in March 1882 he along with several others, were convicted at Cirencester Petty Sessions of trying to join the Gloucestershire Regiment, having previously been in the Army or Militia and been discharged as medically unfit.
This was to unlawfully claim the enlistment bounty: six weeks hard labour was the sentence.
On 8 October 1878 he married Mrs Isabella Taylor at Cheltenham; she was later convicted of malicious damage in 1879.
It is not known how long this marriage lasted but the 1881 Census has Thomas lodging in Bashford, Nottinghamshire, working as a labourer but he cannot be traced in any of the subsequent census returns.
Thomas obviously returned to Cheltenham at some point as on 4 April 1916, at Gloucester, he attested for military service, for the duration of the war, into the Forage Department, Army Service Corps (stating no previous military service) and stating his address as 286 High Street, Cheltenham.
He also quoted his age as ‘54’, when in fact it was 66.
He was posted to ‘Y’ Company working as a hay baler and spent time working in Leamington Spa and Worcester. On 26 September 1916 he went missing. Thomas’ body was recovered from the Gloucester- Sharpness Canal on 12 October. The bridgeman at Hempsted reported to the police that a body was in the canal and he and a policeman recovered it.
At the inquest, held at Shire Hall on 16 October, heard, Townley’s body was found dressed in military uniform, except for his trousers and there were no marks of violence, or indications as to how he came to be in the canal. It was thought that the body had been in the water for about 10 days (which would make the actual date of death about 2 October).
The bridgeman remembered seeing a man dressed similarly to the deceased on the tow path and crossing the bridge in the direction of Bristol Road.
Townley’s body was identified at the mortuary by his sister, Alice, who lived in Cheltenham and she stated that she had not spoken with her brother since the previous May but thought she had seen him in the distance about a fortnight before.
The police could find no one else who had seen him alive. The inquest concluded that he had died as a result of drowning.
Private Thomas Townley came to be buried in Gloucester Old Cemetery, where a standard Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone now marks his grave. This would appear to be a fairly recent addition, as his name does not appear in the original CWGC Register, compiled in the 1930s and he may well have had a previously unmarked grave.
Research by Graham Adams 9 November 2017