488334 Sapper Jesse Hampton
179th Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers
Picture 1
22nd October 1897 - 18th May 1918
Researched and written by Wendy Gates, Jesse’s Great Great Niece
Additional information provided by Chris Graddon (BFHG)
Sapper Jesse Hampton lived in Brownhills, Staffordshire. Jesse, the youngest son of Thomas and Emma Hampton, was born on 22nd October 1897. His family were miners and he too became a miner before the war. Jesse enlisted at Smethwick when he was just 17 years old. He joined the Royal Engineers and served with the 179th Tunneling Company until 18th May 1918 when he died of his wounds at the 9th General Hospital in France.
Jesse never married. The grainy picture above appeared in the 1st June 1918 edition of the Walsall Observer and South Staffordshire Chronicle, alongside notification that Jesse had died as a result of gas poisoning whilst serving on the Western Front.
Report from the 1st June 1918 edition of the Walsall Observer and South Staffordshire Chronicle stating that Jesse had died in France on 18 May 1918.
Picture 2
Jesse Hampton’s Family
Extract from the 1875 marriage register for the Parish Church of St James, Ogley Hay with Brownhills
Picture 3
Jesse’s parents, Thomas Hampton and Emma Jane Taylor, were married at the Parish Church of St. James, Ogley Hay with Brownhills, on 27th December 1875. Thomas was a miner. Thomas’ father Richard Hampton, and Emma’s father William Taylor were also miners. Thomas was born in Portabello, Willenhall, Staffordshire. His wife Emma Jane Taylor was born in Bagworth, Leicestershire. Thomas and Emma went on to have 14 children, of whom 12 survived into adulthood.
Caroline Hampton (born 4 August 1876, baptised 30 August 1876)
Elizabeth Hampton (born 21 November 1877, baptised 19 December 1877)
Richard Hampton (born about 1880, in Castleford, Yorkshire)
Jane Hampton (baptised 23 November 1881)
Emma Hampton (born 10 November 1884)
Jemima Hampton (born 8 April 1885)
John Hampton (born 21 June 1887, baptised 1 July 1887)
Anne Hampton (born 21 June 1887, baptised 1 July 1887, died August 1887, aged 2 months)
Sarah Ann Hampton (born 17 June 1889, baptised 18 July 1889)
Thomas Hampton (born 9 August 1891, baptised 12 August 1891, died August 1891, aged 4 days)
Frederick Hampton (born 9 January 1893, baptised 3 February 1893)
Alice Hampton (born 25 May 1895, baptised 21 June 1895)
Jess Hampton (born 22 October 1897, baptised 26 November 1897)
Rose Hampton (born 12 September 1899)
1881 census record showing Thomas and Emma Hampton with their two eldest daughters Caroline and Elizabeth Hampton and their eldest son Richard Hampton.
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1891 census record showing Thomas and Emma with 8 of their children, Caroline, Elizabeth, Richard, Jane, Emma, Jemima, John and Sarah Hampton.
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1901 census record showing Thomas and Emma with 9 of their children, Richard, Jane, John, Sarah, Frederick, Alice, Jesse and Rose Hampton.
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Note: The 1901 census includes two other children William (aged 8 months) and Thomas (aged 1 month).
The first, William Joseph Hampton, was born on 27 July 1900, and was the son of Thomas and Emma’s eldest daughter Caroline Hampton, as shown on the baptism record, which does not name William’s father. William Joseph Hampton is shown as Thomas Hampton’s grandson on the 1911 census. Caroline married William Henry Smith at the Parish Church of St. James, Ogley Hay with Brownhills, on 3 August 1903, and the 1911 census for William and Henry Smith shows them as having 4 children. William Joseph is not amongst them, the 4 children are all daughters.
The second child, Thomas Hampton was buried at the Parish Church of St. James, Ogley Hay with Brownhills, on 10 April 1901, aged just 1 month. It is conceivable that this baby was another child of Thomas and Emma Hampton, named Thomas in memory of their previous son Thomas, born in 1891, who died aged just 4 days, but there is no way of knowing for certain.
1911 census record for Thomas Hampton when Jesse was 13 and still at school. The record includes Jesse’s elder brother Frederick Hampton, his younger sisters Alice and Rose Hampton, and Jesse’s nephew William Joseph Hampton and niece Gemma Hampton.
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With the exception of their eldest son, Richard, who was born in Castleford, Yorkshire, all the children of Thomas and Emma Hampton were born in Brownhills, and the baptisms mentioned above all took place at the Parish Church of St. James, Ogley Hay with Brownhills.
Extract from the 14 December 1923 edition of the Lichfield Mercury recording the death of Jesse’s father Thomas Hampton.
Picture 8
Jesse’s mother, Emma Hampton died in 1904. She was buried on 11 August 1904 at the Parish Church of St. James, Ogley Hay with Brownhills. Her husband, Thomas Hampton, lived on until December 1923. He too was buried at the Parish Church of St. James, Ogley Hay with Brownhills.
488334 Sapper Jesse Hampton’s military service in the First World War
The Lichfield Mercury newspaper report shown here, and the one above from the Walsall Observer (Picture 2), state that Jesse enlisted when he was 17, more than three years before his untimely death in May 1918. As Jesse was born on 22 October 1897, this would mean that he enlisted either in late 1914 or in the first part of 1915. The reports also indicate that he did not go to the Western Front until about a year before his death, so around May 1917. One possible reason for this is that coal mining was one of the reserved occupations. Men employed in the designated essential services sometimes chose to make their contribution to the war effort at home, where they were exempt from being conscripted and were often prohibited from enlisting on their own initiative. The list of reserved occupations included clergymen, farmers, doctors, teachers and certain industrial workers such as coal miners, dock workers, train drivers, and iron and steel workers. By 1915, one and a half million men were in reserved occupations, a figure that rose to two and a half million by war’s end.
It is possible that Jesse - who had only relatively recently begun working at the Conduit Colliery in Norton Canes - had to continue working as a coal miner because he was in a reserved occupation.
Report of Jesse Hampton’s death that appeared in the Lichfield Mercury on 31 May 1918.
Picture 9
488334 Sapper Jesse Hampton’s medal card
Picture 10
Entry for Sapper Jesse Hampton in the World War I Service Medal and Award Rolls, 1914-1920.
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Jesse’s medal card, and his entry in the World War I Service Medal and Award Rolls, 1914-1920, both show that he was awarded the Victory Medal and the British War Medal, but that he was not awarded the 1914-15 or 1915 Star because, although he had enlisted, he did not enter the field of conflict until 1917.
Both documents state his regimental number prior to the 1917 renumbering of the Territorial Force in 1917. Jesse’s number 1281 (T) was changed to 488334, which indicates that, before he went to the Western Front with the Royal Engineers, he had previously been with the 2nd North Midland Field Company which was originally based at Norton Hall in Norton Canes, near Cannock, the family home of Lieutenant-Colonel W. E. Harrison, whose coal mining employees formed the bulk of the personnel. It seems likely that Jesse was a member of the 2/2nd North Midland Field Company.
The issue of First World War Service Medals in the 1920’s coincided with the publication of a popular comic strip in the Daily Mirror newspaper that featured the characters Pip the dog, Squeak the penguin and Wilfred the rabbit.
The three main campaign medals (the 1914 or 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal) were quickly nicknamed “Pip, Squeak and Wilfred”.
When, as in Jesse’s case, only the British War and Victory Medals were awarded, these became known as “Mutt and Jeff”, after another pair of cartoon characters.
WW1 Victory Medal
Picture 14
Norton Drill Hall, Norton Canes
Picture 12
WW1 British War Medal
Picture 13
Jesse’s family would also have received The Dead Man’s Penny, the memorial plaque issued to the next of kin of all those who died in the First World War in the service of their country. In Jesse’s case, that would have been his father, Thomas Hampton.
Memorial Scroll that accompanied the Bronze Death Plaque.
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Brone Death Plaque, also known as The Soldier’s Penny.
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Tribute from the King that accompanied the Bronze Death Plaque.
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When miners went to the Western Front, their previous experience working underground meant that many were assigned to the Tunnelling Companies. Jesse was assigned to the 179th Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers. The work was hard and dangerous, repetitive and unrelenting, as these two extracts from the 179th Tunnelling Company War Diary show. The extracts cover the period 11th to 14th January 1918.
Pictures 18 and 19
The 179th Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers
The 179th was one of the tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers created by the British Army during World War I. The tunnelling companies were used in both offensive and defensive operations. These included
placing mines under enemy lines, maintaining them so they did not explode before they were due to;
installing and concealing underground listening devices to monitor the movement of enemy troops;
constructing deep dugouts for troop accommodation;
digging saps - narrow trenches to create positions close to the enemy trenches;
digging trenches to carry cables;
digging secret underground chambers for signals and medical services to use.
The most spectacular action carried out by the 179th Tunnelling Company was the firing of the Lochnagar mines at the start of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916.
The first eight tunnelling companies, numbered from 170 to 177, were ready for deployment in mid-February 1915. There was constant underground fighting in the Ypres Salient in the spring of 1915, at Hooge, Hill 60, Railway Wood, Sanctuary Wood and St Eloi. To construct tunnels quicker, and make them safer, the British Army enlisted experienced coal miners, despite the miners having reserved occupation status. Commanded by a regular officer from the Royal Engineers, the tunnelling companies each comprised 5 officers and 269 sappers; additional infantrymen were attached to the tunnellers temporarily, as and when required. Other tunnelling companies came to the Western Front from the countries of the British Commonwealth, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
The 179th Tunnelling Company was formed in the Third Army area in October 1915, and moved into the Thiepval-La Boisselle sector in the Somme region. The sappers at La Boisselle had to dig into chalk rather than the soft clay and sandy soil of Flanders; chalk was much harder and required different mining techniques.
La Boisselle stood on the main axis of the British attack at the start of the Battle of the Somme. The 185th Tunnelling Company had started work on the Lochnagar mine way back on 11 November 1915 but had handed the tunnels over to the 179th Tunnelling Company in March 1916. The four mines at La Boisselle were detonated at 7:28 a.m. on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The explosion of the Lochnagar mine created a huge crater measuring some 220 feet (67 metres) in diameter. The blast obliterated over 300 feet (90 metres) of German dugouts, all said to have been full of German troops. The sound of the blast was thought to be the loudest man-made noise in history up to that point in time, with reports suggesting it had even been heard in London. But the explosions of the Lochnagar and Y Sap mines failed to break the German defences in La Boisselle. The ruined village was meant to fall within 20 minutes, but it had not been taken by the end of that first day on the Somme, while the divisions of the Third Army had lost more than 11,000 casualties.
Lochnagar Crater as it is today (photograph courtesy of The Lochnagar Crater Foundation)
Picture 20
British graves with human bones on the surface in the Lochnagar mine crater at La Boisselle, 21 September 1917.
Photograph courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, reference Q 49394
Picture 22
The spectacular explosion at Hawthorn Ridge.
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British troops running along the lip of the Lochnagar mine crater at La Boisselle on 23rd October 1916
Photograph courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, reference Q 1479
Picture 21
Five signallers in the bottom of the Lochnagar mine crater near La Boisselle on the Somme. The signallers are spelling out the word 'SOMME' in semaphore.
Photograph courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, reference HU 108196
Picture 23
The spectacular explosion at Hawthorn Ridge took place at 7.20 a.m. on 1st July 1918, 8 minutes before the detonation of the Lochnagar mines 6 miles away. British miners had dug a gallery more than 60ft below the surface and packed it with 40,000 lbs of explosives. But the detonation there took place 10 minutes before the whistles blew at 7.30 a.m. to signal the start of the Somme Offensive. This early detonation alerted the Germans to the fact that the infantry attack was imminent, giving them enough time to take up defensive positions in the newly-formed crater, and leading to heavy losses among the attacking British troops.
In the spring of 1917, the men of the 179th Tunnelling Company moved to the Ypres Salient, to the Ypres Canal sector near Boezinge where they started work constructing deep dugouts. The condition of the ground made digging the deep dugouts extremely difficult and dangerous, and the work had to be carried out silently and secretly with the enemy who a few hundred metres away. About 180 dugout sites have now been located in the Ypres Salient.
During the winter of 1917–18 the 179th Tunnelling Company was deployed in the La Bassée sector, constructing defensive tunnels and deep concrete dugouts that enabled the 55th (West Lancashire) Division to hold its ground in the face of the 1918 German spring offensive.
Entrance to one of the dugouts in the reconstructed Yorkshire Trench (photograph courtesy of the York Press website)
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Abandoned dugout in the Ypres Salient (photograph courtesy of the War History Online website)
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Since 3rd May 1918, the 179th Tunnelling Company had been based at map reference D.26.b.7 on the British Trench Map 57D NE. On 12th May 1918, B Section was working on dugouts at White House, Foncquevillers, reference E27.a.7.3 when it came under a severe enemy gas shell attack. This resulted in 21 men from the 179th being taken to hospital, including Jesse Hampton. Such was the severity of the attack that Jesse died six days later on 18th May 1918at the 9th General Hospital, Rouen.
Picture 27
179th Tunnelling Company War Diary entry for 12th May 1918
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Record 731562 for Jesse Hampton in the UK, Army Registers of Soldiers' Effects, 1901-1929
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THOSE WHO BORE OUR BANNERS HIGH, AND BATTLED SIDE BY SIDE
Roll of honour
Page from the 1st June 1918 edition of the Walsall Observer and South Staffordshire Chronicle. The announcement of Jesse’s death is in the second column. Jesse’s photograph is in the 2nd row, 3rd in from the left.
Picture 30
488334 Sapper Jesse Hampton was buried in the St. Sever Cemetery Extension in Rouen, France.
The reference for his grave is Q.III.H.5.
Plan of St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen, showing the location Q.III.H.5 of Sapper Jesse Hampton’s gravestone (courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
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St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen
Photograph of St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen (courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
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Photograph of St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen (courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
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Photograph of St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen (courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
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Photograph of St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen (courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
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Photograph of St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen (courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
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Page A: Sapper Jesse Hampton is included in this list of inscriptions for St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen (courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
Picture 37
Picture 37 shows an official list of inscriptions on the men’s gravestones. Jesse Hampton, 5th on the list, does not have his age recorded. He was just 20 when he died. A simple cross was chosen for his gravestone. Picture 38 shows that no inscription was engraved on his gravestone. Just that simple cross.
Page B: This second page of the list of inscriptions for St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen, shows that only a simple cross was chosen for Sapper Jesse Hampton’s gravestone (courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
Picture 38
Commonwealth War Graves Commission remembrance of 488334 Sapper Jesse Hampton