57.1 Siblings of Arthur Wheaver

John and Caroline Wheaver had six children in Sutton Coldfield. They are Arthur's siblings.

• 57.1.1 - Rose Caroline Wheaver (1876-1951)
• A gardener's daughter called 'Rose', with her mother's name as her middle name
• 1891: At home in Sutton. A monitress, i.e. a female student who helps keep order or assists a teacher in school
• Married Charles [Charlie] Harper (1875-1941) in the Aston district in 1903
• He was a manufacturer of gas and water fittings, and they lived at 153 Aston Lane, Perry Barr [Handsworth], Birmingham. They were still there in 1939. Charles was now a brassfounder's clerk. It looks like his brother, in a similar trade, lives next door. His father was a brassfounder; Charles had another two brothers and a sister, with no known descendants by 1939.
• Children:
• Alice Vivian Harper (1903)
• Marion Ruth Harper (1905)
• Winifred Mary Harper (1907)
• Charles Clive Harper (1915)

• 57.1.2 - William John Wheaver (1878-1937)
• 1901: 'Weaver'. Boarder at 48-50 Penns Lane, [Wylde Green] Sutton. Carpenter.
• Married Jane Litherland (1864-1924) in the Aston district in 1907. Her father was a land drainer; she had eight brothers (including Oliver Cromwell...) and four sisters. She had been a servant at the Blue Ball Inn and then a private house (Powell family) in Shenstone, and then a housekeeper for her cousin in Sutton. Most of the family were in Staffordshire but some spent time in Lichfield or Sutton Coldfield.
• He was now an employed carpenter and joiner (but had been listed in trade directories suggesting that he had been self-employed). In his own writing, he is now 'Wheaver'. They were living in Sutton Road, Erdington.
• Children:
• John Samuel Wheaver (1908-1985). In 1939, John was living with his mother's sister and family.
• WWI: Corporal in the Royal Engineers (Railways), and received the Victory and British War Medals. One of the RE's roles was to lay Howitzer Spurs for the artillery.
• He was also one of 115,589 who received the Military Medal for 'bravery in the field'. Had he felt so inclined, he could have appended 'MM' to his name.

Military Medal (credit)

• Married Violet [Vi] Amelia Sturdy (1888-1961) in Tamworth in 1927 (shortly after the family photo above was taken). At one time, she had been a packer in a laundry. Her father had been a fish and fruit dealer; most of her family were in heavy industry in Birmingham.
• I remember a story about some sort of building collapsing when Bill was working inside. He was a big, strong man - and caught a falling beam to give time for his co-workers to escape.

• 57.1.3 - Alice Elizabeth Wheaver (1880-1977)
• Married Thomas Hide Badham (1875-1936) at St Jude, Birmingham in 1904
• He was a builder, and they lived at Marazion, Chester Road [A452, Sutton]. His father was a builder and shopfitter; one of Thomas's brothers was a vicar in Market Bosworth
• Children:
• Miriam Mary Florence Badham (1905)
• Phillip Walter Badham (1909)
• Patricia E E Badham (1921)
• 1939: Widowed. Staying with her son Phillip in Birmingham.

• 57.1.4 - Arthur Barnes Wheaver (1881-1963)
• See Chapter 57

• 57.1.5 - Rebecca Mary Wheaver (1885-1955)
• 1911: 'Mary Rebecca Wheaver'. At home in Sutton. Elementary school teacher.
• Married (Henry) Stephen Henstridge (1874-1945) in Tamworth in 1913
• My understanding is that he was a successful accountant. There is an anecdote about Rebecca not acknowledging her father one Sunday, when he was in his working clothes. I mentioned it to Diane - she was horrified at the very thought!
• Children:
• Joan Mary Henstridge (1914)
• Betty Joyce Henstridge (1916)
• Diane Henstridge (1927)
• 1939: 31 Somerville Road, Sutton (a detached house in Maney). Married but Henry absent. 

• 57.1.6 - Samuel Horatio Wheaver (1887-1947)
• 1911: At home in Sutton. Merchant's clerk
• 1916: 77 Sheffield Road, Erdington. Enlisted in Labour Corps in March. The Labour Corps [now mainly Royal Logistics Corps] was manned by men who had been medically rated below the "A1" condition needed for front line service. He was mobilised in April, and transferred in June of the following year.
• 1918: Discharged as unfit for war service, an "insane soldier", elsewhere as suffering from 'melancholia'. His father, John, had to sign for his 'pair of socks, kit bag, undervest, 2 shirts, pair of suspenders, hair brush and comb, 1/2d in an envelope, a piece of fancywork and a knife".
• This was 'shell shock', the cause of a third of medical discharges from the Army. The description was originally coined when the cause was unclear, and physical damage caused by exploding shells had not been ruled out. It was banned as a diagnosis by the Army in 1917. In the C20, 'combat stress' was often considered a variant of  PTSD; C21 research has found evidence that casualties from IEDs show physical damage in the brain tissue, causing behavioural change.
• War correspondent Philip Gibbs wrote: 

"Something was wrong. They put on civilian clothes again and looked to their mothers and wives very much like the young men who had gone to business in the peaceful days before August 1914. But they had not come back the same men. Something had altered in them. They were subject to sudden moods, and queer tempers, fits of profound depression alternating with a restless desire for pleasure. Many were easily moved to passion where they lost control of themselves, many were bitter in their speech, violent in opinion, frightening."

• BBC History has this: 

"Symptoms ranged from uncontrollable diarrhoea to unrelenting anxiety. Soldiers who had bayoneted men in the face developed hysterical tics of their own facial muscles. Stomach cramps seized men who knifed their foes in the abdomen. Snipers lost their sight. Terrifying nightmares of being unable to withdraw bayonets from the enemies' bodies persisted long after the slaughter. The dreams might occur 'right in the middle of an ordinary conversation' when 'the face of a Boche that I have bayoneted, with its horrible gurgle and grimace, comes sharply into view', an infantry captain complained. An inability to eat or sleep after the slaughter was common. Nightmares did not always occur during the war... [one] 'cracked up' [after the Armistice] and found himself unable to eat, deliriously re-living his experiences of combat."

• 1939: Samuel was an in-patient at Rubery Hill Mental Hospital. This had been the 1st Birmingham War Hospital until 1919. The family had it as an old soldiers' home.

The great war poet Wilfred Owen was himself diagnosed with shell shock. This is his poem 'Mental Cases'.

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? 

Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,

Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,

Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?

Stroke on stroke of pain, – but what slow panic,

Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?

Ever from their hair and through their hands’ palms

Misery swelters. Surely we have perished

Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish? 

– These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

Memory fingers in their hair of murders,

Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.

Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,

Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

Always they must see these things and hear them,

Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,

Carnage incomparable, and human squander

Rucked too thick for these men’s extrication. 

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented

Back into their brains, because on their sense 

Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;

Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.

– Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,

Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.

– Thus their hands are plucking at each other; 

Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;

Snatching after us who smote them, brother,

Pawing us who dealt them war and madness

More on these individuals in Chapter 61.

Next (Arthur's paternal cousins)