David Twaddle

Many thanks to Margaret for the photos.

David Twaddle was born at West End, Garscube, on 24th February 1889.  His father, George, was a forester presumably employed on the estate.  His mother was Margaret Watt and he was the third of her six children.

This is an extract from a map of the  time - Canniesburn Toll is in the top left.  From there Switchback Road curves away to the bottom left and the A81 (Maryhill Road) runs towards Garscube Bridge.  West End is a cul de sac (still standing on the south side of the main road, now surrounded by houses.

In the 1891 Census four properties are listed, with the Twaddles (two parents, three children) listed in the second one.  The butler from Garscube House and his family occupied a second of the West End properies and the other two were occupied by widowed women with children (Agnes Honeyman aged 38 and Helen Trail aged 43).

Ten years later and the family had expanded to six children.  Presumably as a result of needing more room, the family lived a few hundred yards along the road at North Lodge:

Again, the property is still standing today:

David's older sister Margaret was a "mantle sales girl" aged 16 and his older brother, George, was an ironmonger's apprentice aged 14.  I believe a mantle was a cloak worn over  clothes.

Ten years on and the 1911 Census finds the Twaddles at the same address.  Margaret's occupation is now described as "drapery saleswoman" so the cloak/mantle interpretation seems to be supported.  George had left home.  David himself was a motor driver for a garage (frustratingly the census return does not say which one).  His younger sister, Elizabeth, was 18 but had no stated occupation - I wonder if she helped her mother in the house?  A younger brother, Robert (whose photo appears at the start of this post), had followed Margaret and was a drapery salesman.

I am no expert in cars but the Aberdonia was a popular car introduced about this time.  However, as David worked for a garage I imagine part of his job might have been to drive the cars of wealthy occupants of the villas of Bearsden to and from the garage so a car like this might have been more typical:

Two years later, David was married, on 10th December 1913 at Govan Town Hall.  His wife was Christina Paterson Stewart, aged 28 and daughter of a superintendent engineer  for the Scottish Coop Wholesale Society and his wife from Pollokshields.  David's occupation was "motor mechanic".  As usual with marriage records of the time, Christina is simply described as "spinster", but in the Census from two years earlier, her occupation was as a typist in a lawyer's office.

At some point in the next 18 months, David changed his job.  The owner of Ledcameroch House in Bearsden was enthusiastic about cars and wanted a chauffeur.  Apart from any other attraction, the job came with a property in the grounds of the house.

The cottage on Chesters Road was probably David and Christine's house in 1915.  Their daughter, Eliza Hepburn Twaddle, was born here on 27th March 1915 (as recorded in the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald of 2nd April):

The other family living on the estate was that of the gardener, Duncan Coull; his son 18-year old son, James, joined the army in 1915, probably as a volunteer.  David must have been aware that calls for a compulsory conscription of men into the armed forces were growing.  

He joined the navy on 16th November 1915.  The army and the royal navy were desperate for men who could drive or (better still) to service lorries and other vehicles needed to fight a 20th century European war.  David may well have 'jumped before he was pushed' and joined the navy as a mechanic, a job which automatically gave him the grade of petty officer (I think this is analogous to a sergeant in the army) and would have entitled him to roughly ten times the daily pay of an ordinary infantryman.

Strange as it seems to modern eyes, the Royal Navy did not confine itself to the sea and had infantry serving alongside army units.  There was an early interest in armoured cars as a likely replacement for horse-mounted cavalry and the navy formed several squadrons.  As a continuous line of trenches built up through France and Belgium, there was no role for them to play so many were disbanded but some were sent to Russia as a symbol of the alliance between the two countries.

Showing early armoured cars really were cars with some armour - note each one seems to have had a name, in this case "Venomous".

A Lanchester armoured car in Galicia in April 1917

The Royal Navy armoured car unit sailed from Liverpool for Russia on 4th December 1915 and had an eventful time.  This included being stuck in ice in the harbour, a parade through Moscow, and - finally - successful fighting against the Germans and their allies later in the year.  (For David's military service I have used info from a very readable and well-resented website (click here) and Chris Bunker who runs the site has been very helpful with follow-up questions).

However, David's records show he was assigned to HMS President II, which sounds like a ship but was actually the navy's way of saying he was in a training camp probably in the London area.  For example, there was a depot at Crystal Palace in Sydenham where David might have done his basic training.

David was allocated to HMS President II for about a year, too long to be in training alone.  My own guess is that he was acting as chauffeur for a Royal Navy officer in London, although Chris Bunker suggests he may have been involved with anti-aircraft defences (London was bombed by zeppelin airships).

On 1st October 1916 he was assigned to the armoured car unit based in Russia possibly as a group of reinforcements.  The journey might have taken about a month, possibly via the River Danube, to Tiraspol, then in Russia, now in Moldova north-west of the Black Sea:

The Crimea is bottom-right. Modern day Ukraine at the top and Moldova top-left.  Tiraspol is ringed.

We do not know the circumstances but David became ill soon after this and died in hospital of peritonitis.  I cannot find a record of the unit being in any fighting around this time so an infection is a likely cause, or possibly something like a burst appendix.

By an extraordinary chance, the Imperial War Museum website has a photo of his funeral:

Deaths from disease were sadly common at the time.  The total number of service personnel in the forces of Britain or her (then) Empire killed in battle totalled just over 418,000 and the total who died of disease was just over 113,000 (source).

News would probably have reached Ledcameroch in late March, only a few months after the gardener's family heard their son James had died when his troopship was torpedoed (see my post profiling James).

In Russia the Bolshevik revolution spread and the armoured car unit returned home.  Relations between Britain and the new authorities were not good and amidst all of this the location of David's grave was lost.  He is commemorated in the Haidar Pasha CWGC Cemetery in what is now a suburb of Istanbul.  The cemetery was originally started for British dead of the Crimean War and then used for the burial of men who died as prisoners in the First World War.  David is commemorated through a memorial to men with no known grave in the former southern Russian territories:

David's widow, Christina, took her daughter to live with her parents at 38 Kenmure Street, Pollokshields.

In 1923, her parents emigrated to New Zealand, taking Christina, 8-year old Eliza, and Christina's sister Eliza (known as Isa, I think to distinguish her from little Eliza who was known as Elsie).  While Chrissie's father died aged 53, her mother lived to 100.  Christina does not seem to have married again.  Eliza/Elsie married a local man, Duncan McGregor, and they had a daughter and a son.  Incredibly Eliza lived to 103, only dying in 2018.