Fuggle, James Sidney (1898-1916)

James Sidney Fuggle was born in Bombay, India in 1898, and lived in Frindsbury at the time of his enlistment and death.  He died on 9 April 1916 in Mesopotamia.  James was a Corporal in the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment’s 6th Battalion.  His regimental number was 20297, and he first served in the Balkans, joining that theatre of war on 14 November 1915.  He was awarded the Victory, British and 15 Star Medals.  James is remembered on the Basra Memorial.

James’ father, Nelson Henry Fuggle, was an Army Pensioner by the 1911 Census, and was working as a self-employed domestic gardener.  Nelson was born in 1860 in Tenterden in Kent, and from the 1880s, had been working as an agricultural labourer.  James’ mother, Mary Ann (nee Foster), was born in Rodmersham Green, a village near Sittingbourne, in 1878.  In 1911, she did not have an occupation listed, and was presumably running looking after the household, perhaps with the help of her oldest child, Teresa, then 17, single and living at home.  James and his younger brother, Percy, were both still in school.  The family lived at 37 Frindsbury Hill, Frindsbury Road in Strood at this point.

Nelson Henry Fuggle had joined the Army in 1879. He had been a member of the East Kent Militia, but signed up for General Service at Canterbury when he was 18.  He listed his occupation at this point as a baker.  Nelson Henry and Mary Ann had married in 1895 in the Milton registration district.  Mary Ann was Nelson’s second wife, after his first, Ellen, had died in 1891.  Ellen and Nelson had a daughter, Harriett, who was 3 in 1891.  By 1901, she was living with her maternal grandparents, the Watsons, in Rolvenden, Kent.  It would appear that Nelson and Mary Ann had gone to Bombay at some point in the 1890s, where both James and Percy were born, and returning by 1911.  A descendent of Teresa’s noted in 2000 that Nelson Henry was a Sergeant Major in the Royal Fusiliers in India; however, he moved to the Middlesex Regiment (Indian Unattached List), the first and second battalions of which served in India in the late nineteenth century.   The fact that Nelson Fuggle was on the Unattached List indicates that he was seconded to the Indian Army, and this may have extended the family’s stay in India. Sargeant Major Fuggle took his pension on 1 May 1909, when he was in his later 40s, and the family returned to Kent, and to Strood.

Sources:

James Fuggle:

Find My Past: GRO Army Birth Indices (1881-1965)

Ancestry.com. British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.

National Army Museum; Chelsea, London, England; Soldiers’ Effects Records, 1901-60; NAM Accession Number: 1991-02-333; Record Number Ranges: 632501-634000; Reference: 373  Ancestry.com. UK, Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects, 1901-1929 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.

Nelson Fuggle:

1881 Census: Class: RG11; Piece: 942; Folio: 94; Page: 25; GSU roll: 1341225

Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1881 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.

Ancestry.com. UK, British Army Lists, 1882-1962 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

Ellen Fuggle:

FreeBMD. England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.

Harriett E. Fuggle

1901 Census  Class: RG13; Piece: 778; Folio: 56; Page: 4

Source Information

Ancestry.com. 1901 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.

 

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