Peterborough & The Great War

Biography

Harry Clement Cumberland was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire on 14 May 1892.  On the 1901 census, Harry aged 8, was living at 4 High Street, St Martins, Stamford with his father, John Colston Cumberland (43), a grocer, his mother Harriet Sophia (43), brother Willie (10) and sister Frances (15).  By 1911, Harry had started work as an engineer’s apprentice working on motor vehicles.

He enlisted into the Territorial Force Northamptonshire Battery Royal Field Artillery for four years on 30 December 1910.  Harry transferred to the Royal Navy (RN) in 1916, spending most of his time utilising his engineering skills at HMS Vernon, the shore-based RN Torpedo Branch at Portchester Creek, Portsmouth before discharge in January 1919.  He was awarded the British War and Allied Victory medals.

Harry passed through Peterborough East Station on 15 December 1916 and wrote in the visitors’ book “I highly appreciate your kindness while
resting here, am sure we all wish you the best of health and good luck to carry on this patriotic work”  “Many thanks to you are due, For allowing me to write within this book, Perhaps you will think of me, When on this page you look.”

After the war Harry joined his brothers in the family grocery business possibly around the time his father died later in 1919.  Things changed in 1924, when he left his home in St Georges Square, Stamford to emigrate to Australia aboard the ‘Osterley’.  He travelled first class, listed as a 31 year old grocer.  He appears next as a tourist visiting Seattle, USA, in 1926, listed as a resident of Adelaide.

In 1931, he travelled back to the UK, this time in third class.  He married Nellie Morgan three years later in Hampshire where they settled; he had been a grocer in Peterborough at the time.  In 1939, he was a storekeeper and van driver in Droxford, Hampshire.  They do not appear to have had any children.  Nellie died in Bournemouth in 1957, and then, at the age of 68, Harry set off for Australia once more in 1960, settling in Brisbane, Queensland until his death in 1971 aged 79.

Please get in touch if you can tell us more about Harry.