Archibald John Capham - Chailey 1914-1918

290444 Private Archibald (Archie) John Capham was a patient at Beechland House, Newick in June 1918. His entry in Nurse Oliver’s album reads:

June 20th 1918
Pte A J Capham
4th Suffolk Res Batt
Late South African Constabulary
& Hong Kong Police - China

Archie was born at Hammersmith, London in February 1886, his birth registered in the Fulham district in the March quarter of that year. I have been unable to find him on the 1891 census of England and Wales but he appears on the 1901 census as a 15 year old living with his parents and sister at 13 Weltje Road, Hammersmith. Most of the addresses on the census return have two families living there and it is possible that Archie and his family lived in a typical London Victorian terrace with one family upstairs and the other family occupying the ground floor. The Capham household comprised: Charles Capham (head, married, aged 60, born in Regents Park and working as a gas meter maker), his wife Rosina Capham (aged 58, born in Stepney), their daughter Clara Capham (aged 18, born in Piccadilly, working as a caramel sweet wrapper) and Archie. There was also another sibling, Charles.

As a young man, Archie joined the South African Constabulary and served in Africa, after which he went to Hong Kong and served in the Hong Kong police force. He was hospitalised with typhoid fever during an epidemic and it was whilst he was in hospital that he met his future wife, Sadie. The copule married on 29th November 1912 (almost certainly overseas) and the couple's first son, Archibald John, followed on 2nd May 1913. A daughter, Grace Capham, was born on 29th June 1914. Both children were born in Shanghai.

By the time he was conscripted into the army on 7th June 1916, Archie was working as an assistant hotel manager and living at 1, Broadway, Ealing, West London. He had also previously worked as a hotel manager in Shanghai after leaving the Hong Kong police. Archie was medically examined at Hounslow and was classified as grade B1. He was enlisted with the 1st Reserve Garrison Battalion of the Suffolk Regt and immediately posted to the Cambridgeshire and Suffolk Reserve Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment.

On 10th November he was appointed corporal but already he was suffering as a result of army routine. He attended two Medical Boards in December and on New Year’s Day 1917, was posted to the 3/4th Suffolk Regiment. Four days later his second daughter, Georgina Lucilla Capham, was born.

On 10th March 1917 Private Capham was admitted to No 331 Field Ambulance at Sheringham, Norfolk suffering with a hernia. Two days later he was despatched to the 1st Eastern General Hospital in Cambridge where he would remain for the next seven months; undergoing an operation for a double inguinal hernia before finally rejoining his unit on 29th October.

Just over a month later, on 1st December 1917, he was back at 331 Field Ambulance in Sheringham with an ulcer on his knee. Again he was despatched to the 1st Eastern General Hospital at Cambridge, re-joining his unit on the 10th January.

A District Medical Board convened on 30th January 1918 now classified him as A1 which seems remarkable given that he was B1 when he joined the army in 1916 and since then had spent seven months in hospital with a double inguinal hernia.

He attended two further Medical Boards in February and was supplied with a truss in April. On 4th June he was back in hospital, this time at the 2nd Eastern General in Brighton where the little toe on one foot was amputated. It was at this stage that Archie spent time at Beechland House, his service record stating that he was at the 2nd Eastern General until 19th August 1918.

Between 17th August and 23rd August he was absent without leave for five days and twenty hours and was awarded 28 days Field Punishment Number 2. On 27th August he was posted to the 14th Suffolk Regiment in France and disembarked at Calais the following day. He would spend the next six weeks in France as a Lewis Gunner until wounded in action on 10th October.

Reporting to the 4th Canadian Casualty Clearing Station he moved up to the 55th General Hospital at Boulogne and then, on the 15th October, to England. He was then sent to a hospital in Woolwich with a sever gunshot wound to his left arm. He remained in hospital there until 3rd December and was posted shortly afterwards to the 3rd Suffolk Regiment at Felixstowe.

He must have transferred to Rugely in Staffordshire in 1919 because between the 1st and 10th April he overstayed his pass there and was deprived ten days’ pay. A Medical Board convened there the following month heard how his hernia had been brought on by trench digging and sand bagging. It found that he had had two operations on the right side and one on the left side and that there had been a small recurrence on the left side. He was not wearing the army truss with which he had been supplied.

The Board rated Archie’s disability as less than twenty per cent. A Pension’s Board hearing in June that year awarded him a lump sum gratuity of thirty two pounds and ten shillings. He was transferred to the Army Reserve on 3rd July 1919.

To view Archie's WW1 service record on line, enter his name in the boxes below:

As well as the three children mentioned above, Archie and Sadie would add to their family in later years: Ronald (killed in action with the RAF in 1942), Yvonne, Charles and Robert. Like their father before them, all four would serve their King and Country during WW2. Their mother, Sadie Capham, born in 1890, would also work as an ARP warden during the Second World War. She died in 1980.

Archie Capham did not live to see his country triumph over Germany for a second time. He died on 6th April 1944 at the age of 58, after many years of disability.

Sources and Acknowledgements

- My grateful thanks to Larry Cousins in Canada for the splendid photograph of Archie and two of his children – Grace and Archie junior – which [probably dates to around 1917 or 1918. Also to Larry and Archie’s surviving children, for correcting inaccuracies in my original biography, and for providing additional details
- 1901 Census of England and Wales
- England and Wales Civil Registration Index 1837-1983
- The National Archives: Medal Index Card
- The National Archives: British War and Victory Medal Roll: K/1/103 B4 Page 744: WO 329/874
Archie Capham’s partial service record survives in the burnt document series at The National Archives; ref: WO 363/C308