| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Private Stanley Tonkinson of the 8th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment was barely 17 when he was killed in action on the Somme on 14 Jul 1916. His Regiment (part of 8th Brigade, 3rd Division) was in the frontline of the attack on the Bazentin Ridge. Stanley has no known grave and is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing on the Somme. He was posthumously awarded the War and Victory Medals.
Stanley was born the 5 Jun 1899 in Kidderminster and moved to Beverley with his family before the war, the son of Edward Leigh Tonkinson and Sarah Anne, both from Stoke on Trent. Edward Leigh Tonkinson was the Beverley Postmaster, previously working in Kidderminster and Atherstone, Warwickshire. In Beverley they lived at 73 Norwood. Stanley worked as a clerk in the Beverley Town Clerk's Office.
His Army Service Records note that he was unusually tall for his age at 5ft 8.5 inches and that he wore spectacles. Stanley enlisted in Hull on 22 Jun 1915 just after his 16th birthday and joined the 10th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment (also known as the Hull Commercials or the 1st Hull Pals). He arrived in France on 15 Apr 1916 but whilst at Etaples camp he was switched to the 8th Battalion on 15 May.
The Beverley Guardian 5 Aug 1916 noted his death and a letter from a fellow Private, G Jefferson. It stated that, "Stanley was a straightforward and well liked lad and when he had to face the foe he did it like a true Briton. He had just jumped into the German trenches when the fatal blow descended upon him……" .
Stanley's family was to suffer a further tragedy on 27 Feb 1917 when his brother Reginald Tonkinson (b1895), a Private in the 11th Battalion of the London Regiment died of wounds incurred in Belgium. Reginald is remembered along with his brother Stanley on the Hengate War Memorial, the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster and on the Norwood Street Shrine. Reginald is also remembered on the St Mary's Church Roll of Honour.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |