Spanish Flu My great uncle was among victims
WHILE reading the story of the Spanish Flu pandemic (BT, November 13) I found to my surprise that you mention my great uncle, William Thomas Humpage.
He joined the Navy on January 15 1915 aged 26 years and his occupation was ship’s cook, working his way up to Officers’ Cook 1st Class.
His last ship was HMS New Zealand, joining her on May 17 1918.
His service ended December 29 1918 when he died in the Royal Naval Hospital Edinburgh of influenza – Spanish Flu – never to see his family or home again. He was 29 years old.
He had a brother, Edwin Sydney Stewart (my Grandad) who was also in the Navy. He did not return straight away at the end of the war.
He and others went to help the White Russians in the Black Sea, returning home 1919 or 1920 safe and sound.
William’s grave is unusual because his father Thomas Humpage was a great inventor and a brilliant engineer, but that is another story – to be told!
Kingswood the trees (originally firs) were planted by a local doctor to celebrate, or possibly commemorate, his seven daughters.
The earliest mention we can find of them comes from 1905, by which time they seem to have been a wellknown landmark and meeting place (especially for sporting fixtures) on the Downs.
The little ridge they were planted on was at the edge of a quarry from where limestone was taken for local road-building – perhaps a lot of the old cobblestones that are still to be seen in parts of Bristol came from here.
This hole in the Downs was filled in sometime around the 1870s; according to one report it was with spoil dug from one of the periodic schemes to widen the Avon around the Horseshoe Bend.
So they might have been planted sometime around then.
Originally, we’re told, there was a circle of six of them, with one in the middle. This latter tree died in the early 1900s and so there were then just six.
These survived everything the 20th century could throw at them until a great storm in 1990 which felled one of them and badly damaged another.
Some years later, two more of the originals had to be felled because they were infected with honey fungus.
So the last time we looked (and please write in and tell us if we’re mistaken) there are just three of the originals left.
The Council, however, planted seven new Scots pines nearby. Churchill at the Wills Building after the University degree congregation of April 12 1941. Australian PM Robert Menzies is to his left, and American Ambassador John Winant is on the right.
overnight. Quite by coincidence(?), that night Bristol suffered its heaviest air raid of the entire war.
During that raid, those adjoining houses in Cromwell Road were destroyed, but no other property was.
An MP who was travelling with Churchill was killed as he stayed in one of those houses as a friend lived there. Is this story true, or just fanciful please?
If it is true, it seems odd, the damage was restricted to just two houses.
Thinking of today’s special forces, it’s possible I suppose that German agents in this country back then knew someone in Churchill’s entourage was in one of those houses and the air raid gave cover to them attacking the buildings using normal explosives?
The houses were rebuilt after the war.
Valerie Pearce
Martin Thorn
Peterborough
» Editor’s reply: Thanks for this interesting tale, though it’s not one we can stand up.
The raid you refer to was the socalled Good Friday Raid on the night of April 11 1941 which saw almost 200 tonnes of high explosive bombs and 37,000 incendiaries dropped on the city in mostly clear weather, so it was very destructive.
Churchill had been due to stay overnight in Bristol that evening, but the raid began as his train was en route here, and so it, and Churchill, spent the night in a siding.
The Prime Minister and his wife arrived the following morning and inspected some of the damage before he presided over a degree congregation at Bristol University in the Wills Building.
This event had been pre-planned as a propaganda gesture and the press and newsreels were out in force to record the PM/Chancellor of Bristol University defiantly carrying on as normal in a building which had already been damaged in a previous raid.
With him were the Prime Minister of Australia and the American Ambassador and by all accounts it greatly impressed audiences in America.
The plan had indeed been for him to visit Cardiff, which he did after leaving Bristol.