George Walter Todd

1873-1960

One of the most famous photographs from Bourne in past times shows the first fifteen enlisted men who left this town to fight in the Great War.

They had volunteered to join the Lincolnshire Regiment and on Monday 31st August 1914, they met at the recruiting depot in West Street [at the indoor rifle range next to the Bourne Institute] and were escorted to the railway station by the town's brass band with a large number of residents following behind to give them a hearty send-off.

With them was one man in uniform who was known known only as Recruiting Sergeant Todd but after the photograph appeared in The Local newspaper on Friday 15th August 2014 with my feature about letters from the trenches written home by Bourne lads to their loved ones, a lady wrote in saying: “That sergeant was my grandfather.”

Mrs Lily Baldwin, aged 78, of Heathcote Road, Bourne, recognised him and subsequently provided further details about his distinguished army career and his later life as a pub landlord.

George Walter Todd was born in South Street, Bourne on 13th December 1873, the son of William and Fanny Todd, and after school went to work as a labourer but the military life beckoned and on 19th April 1895 he enlisted in the Yorks and Lancs Regiment at the age of 17. After basic training at Pontefract he was posted to India, being promoted sergeant in 1899 before sailing for South Africa where he saw action during the Boer War and was awarded the South Africa medal.

He returned to England for discharge in 1903 but when the Great War broke out in 1914, he re-joined the colours to become recruiting sergeant for the Bourne district for one year during which time he was responsible for enlisting some 800 recruits from the South Lincolnshire area. Sergeant Todd’s army experience proved invaluable for his next series of postings to various military camps along the east coast where he served as a drill sergeant putting new recruits through their paces on the barrack square.

He had married Mary Ann Stubley, aged 24, at Bourne in 1902 and they had four children, three girls and a boy, and during this period the family lived in married quarters with the children continually changing schools until he was finally discharged after the Armistice in November 1918 when he came back to Bourne.

Returning to civilian life meant finding a home for the family and so George and Mary Todd chose the licensed trade, taking over as mine hosts of the New Inn on the Spalding Road in Bourne [now closed] where they remained until 1921 when they moved to Witham-on-the-Hill where he became first the village postmaster and then landlord of the Six Bells. He also ran a cobbler’s shop from the stables using the expertise he had learned during his days in the army to repair boots and shoes brought in by villagers, remaining as landlord until retiring in 1947 when he handed over to his son-in-law, Walter Dalby.

George Todd also used his skill as a cobbler during the Second World War of 1939-45 when he was employed by J T Whyles which then had premises at No 1 South Street, Bourne. He was one of a number of men employed on repairing boots and shoes for the Air Ministry and later for the Ministry of Defence, a total of six outworkers and ten in the workshops where some 1,000 pairs per week were handled.

He died in St George’s Hospital at Stamford on 22nd June 1960, aged 86, his wife having died in 1952, and they are buried together in the town cemetery at Bourne.

One of their daughters, Florence Mary Todd, who died in 1997, aged 92, was the mother of Mrs Baldwin who remembers her maternal grandfather as a proud old soldier who never forgot his military career which she has since researched on the Internet where she found copies of his enlistment papers and service record. “He was always smart, sported a waxed moustache and looked every part the soldier”, she said.

“He smoked twist tobacco in a clay pipe and while mending shoes in his leather apron he used to let me work the foot treadle of his sanding and polishing machine. I even remember him holding the nails in his mouth while re-soling boots and shoes and I used to wonder why ever he didn’t swallow them. He was also a ferocious dominoes player and usually won although I was never sure whether this was by fair means or foul.

"But he was always very kind, especially to we children and I remember him with great affection. He wrote me a lovely letter on my 21st birthday which I treasure to this day.”

PHOTO ALBUM
Old soldier George Todd pictured in 1958 outside the Six Bells at Witham-on-the-Hill where he was landlord for several years. The wooden bench on which he is sitting now stands in the garden of his grand-daughter's home in Bourne.
The New Inn at Bourne and the Six Bells                    at Witham-on-the-Hill.
Mrs Lily Baldwin used the Internet to find her grandfather's military history which she traced back to 1895.

NOTE: The recruits in the photograph with Recruiting Sergeant George Todd and an unknown lad, were: Arthur Maxon, Fred W Savage, John Thomas Baldock, George Sherwin, George Carver, Frank Baldock (married), H Cleary, W Herbert Bloodworth, Percy J Vickers, Walter Parker (married), Ernest Robinson, Harry Darnes, Joseph Smith, Walter Archer and Percy Cave (Witham-on-the-Hill).

See also Living in the clubroom

WRITTEN AUGUST 2014