Forgotten faces
Some of the saddest items in archive collections are photographs of unidentified people. I often find myself gazing into the faces of colleagues who worked for Aviva’s ancestor companies and wishing I knew their names.
That is how I felt last week when I carefully scanned the photograph above and prepared to add it to our catalogue. It is part of a collection of archive photographs which belonged to the editor of the General Accident staff magazine. All I knew about it was that it showed Leeds branch staff, was believed to date from around 1930, and featured Percy Miller on the second row third from the right. It had been donated to the collection in 1982.
With hindsight I should perhaps have thought that the high collars might suggest an earlier date for the image, but I accepted the information given on the back and added it to our catalogue as circa 1930. It could have remained a 1930s photo of Percy Miller and his unidentified colleagues if I hadn’t decided to add a little summary of Mr Miller’s career to the archive catalogue. I searched our recently digitised General Accident staff magazines for his retirement notice but found instead something even more useful.
The search led me to a copy of the magazine from 1957 in which Percy Miller was listed as one of the subjects in a photograph of Leeds branch staff from 1912 — the same photograph. This copy of the photograph had been sent to the magazine by the then manager of Leeds branch, Joseph Noble Wood, and appeared in a section of the magazine called ‘Memory Corner’. As well as dating the photograph to c1912, Mr Wood had also provided the editors with a list of names and some career details of the men shown. His memory, or that of retired Leeds branch staff members who had assisted with the identification, was not perfect, but it has helped me to research and give names and background stories to the forgotten faces. Instead of anonymous individuals, we now have information on men who went on to have important insurance careers, brothers who set up as insurance brokers, and war heroes. I’ve written what I know of their stories below. If anyone can add more information, then I would love to hear.
Clarence Butterworth was working for General Accident in Leeds as a claims clerk when the photograph was taken. He had joined the branch in June 1906 when he was 16 and was promoted in January 1914 to claims inspector. He enlisted in 1915 to fight in the First World War and served with the Seaforth Highlanders. He was injured by a shell explosion in 1916 which left him with severe headaches, reduced sight in his right eye, and almost total deafness in his right ear. He decided not to return to General Accident when he was demobbed and, according to Mr Wood, later joined the Provincial Insurance Company as a claims superintendent.
Harry Holland was a fire clerk at the Leeds branch when the photograph was taken. He had joined the company, aged 16, in November 1909 and had an insurance background as his father, Walter, worked for the Prudential. He left the company’s service in December 1913 and, according to Mr Wood, later worked for the Atlas Assurance Company as city inspector.
Richard Ernest Marsden had only recently joined the company when the photograph was taken. He was appointed in April 1912, aged 27, having previously worked in a glass and china warehouse and served six years in the navy. He probably got the job through his younger, half-brother Thomas Mason, who is also in the photograph. He immediately re-joined the navy on the outbreak of war and returned to General Accident in Leeds when he was demobbed in 1919. Richard left General Accident in June 1920 and joined another Aviva ancestor company, Norwich Union. He worked for Norwich Union as a resident inspector for Halifax and district under the Huddersfield branch until his retirement in September 1946.
George Henry Hawkridge was an accounts clerk who joined General Accident at Leeds in March 1912 when he was 20. He left the company just over a year later, in August 1913. He enlisted and served with the Northumberland Fusiliers during the First World War. According to Mr Wood, he later joined the Atlas Assurance Company and retired as chief accountant of the Leeds branch.
Tom Henry Jones also worked on the accounts for the General Accident Leeds branch. He was appointed in November 1909 when he was 17 and left the company in November 1913. Mr Wood was unable to add any details of his further career, and, with such a common surname, it has not been possible for me to find out what happened to him after he left the company.
Frederick Edmund Duckett was chief clerk at the Leeds branch when the photograph was taken. He had joined the company in 1904 when he was 15. He was transferred to Sheffield branch as chief clerk in 1916 and in 1919 became an inspector. He had been accident superintendent at the Sheffield branch for four years when he retired, in 1949, after 45 years’ service.
John McClay was one of the hardest people for me to track down. He was identified by Mr Wood as J McKay and is variously referred to in the company registers as M’Clay and McClay. He joined General Accident, aged 20, in December 1906 in the accounts department in the Perth head office. As part of attempts to decentralise the accounting function, he was sent to the Newcastle branch in 1907 and then appointed chief clerk at Leeds in 1910. He was promoted to inspector of agents in October 1912 and transferred back to Newcastle in October the following year. He enlisted in 1914 and was gazetted Captain in October 1915. He decided not to return to the company when he was demobbed. According to Mr Wood, he later emigrated to Canada.
Harry Langton Procter (or Proctor) is another man for whom Leeds branch was a family affair. His younger brother, Fred, is also in the photograph. He joined the company in January 1898 when he was 15. He became chief clerk and in 1907 was promoted again to claims inspector. In 1908, he wrote an article for the staff magazine on the difficulties of dealing with malingerers, and he was presented by his colleagues with a ‘handsome coloured print’ of A Dedication to Bacchus when he married in 1910. In September 1913, he transferred to Dudley as an inspector under the Birmingham branch. He also worked briefly for the company in Dublin in 1915 before enlisting under Lord Derby’s Scheme and serving in the Motor Transport Division. He left General Accident in November 1919 and, according to Mr Wood, set himself up in business as an insurance broker. The brokerage was probably Procter, Smith and Procter which appears under the name of his younger brother, Langton Procter, in the trade directories in 1921. Langton Procter is also listed as resigning his post at the Zurich Insurance Company to concentrate fully on the brokerage in 1929. His surname is variously given in the staff records, newspapers, and the census, as both Proctor and Procter but was probably Procter.
Arthur Scholey joined General Accident in September 1902 as a clerk at the Sheffield branch when he was 16. In July 1907, he moved to Leeds and was put in charge of the sub-branch at Hull which had an income at that time of £800 a year. In 1930, when Hull became a full branch, he was appointed manager and remained in that position until he retired in 1952 after 50 years’ service with the company.
Thomas Edwin Mason, also known as Edwin Thomas, was the half-brother of Richard Marsden who also appears in the photograph. According to the staff register, he joined General Accident at Leeds in May 1908 when he was twenty, but we have an appointment letter in the Archive which seems likely to belong to him and dates from October 1903 — perhaps he decided not to accept the first offer.
In July 1910, after ‘some years’ in the fire department at Leeds he was sent to run the fire department in the Sheffield branch. He was transferred back to Leeds in January 1912 to assist the fire surveyor, Mr Norminton, and had replaced him in the role by the time the photograph was taken. He left the company in April 1915 and, according to Mr Wood, set himself up as an insurance broker in Leeds. The Yorkshire Post for September 1936 contains a notice that insurance broker Thomas E Mason ACII had commenced business on his own account.
Vernon Tomlinson was another person who was initially hard to trace because Mr Wood had incorrectly identified him as P Thomlinson. However, he had noted that Thomlinson had died in the First World War, so it didn’t take me long to identify the error using our virtual roll of honour. Once I discovered the correct name, I had all the information on Vernon which I had gathered for the memorial, including another photograph of him, in uniform. Vernon joined General Accident’s Leeds branch in June 1912 on the accounts staff. He enlisted on 02 September 1914 in the 1st West Riding Brigade Royal Field Artillery.
He was sent to France in April 1915 and invalided home with tonsillitis in October that year. He returned to France in January 1916 and was killed in action on 30 September 1916. His commanding officer wrote to his mother: “I am exceedingly sorry to have to write and tell you that your son, Vernon, was killed this morning. He was struck on the back of the head by a piece of shell and killed instantaneously. We shall miss him very badly, not only because he was such a good gunner but because of his cheery good humour under all circumstances.” He was described in his obituary in the staff magazine as, a “great favourite with the whole of the staff”.
Frederick Thomas Jackson joined the Leeds branch at General Accident in April 1908 when he was 24. It wasn’t his first insurance job though, as he was recorded as an insurance clerk in the 1901 census. In 1910, he was promoted from chief clerk to inspector and in June 1920 he was promoted again to assistant district manager. It appears that he got fed up waiting for promotion to manager because he left the company in December 1928 to take up the role of manager in the Leeds branch of another Aviva ancestor company, Employers’ Liability Assurance. In 1936, Employers’ Liability moved him to head office in London as Assistant Secretary and in 1938 he was promoted again to Assistant Manager. He retired in September 1947 having been appointed Assistant General Manager of the company the previous year.
Arthur Clapham Watkinson joined the Leeds branch in 1901 when he was 36, having previously worked in a woollen warehouse. He became the resident inspector at Huddersfield and retired from that position in 1930.
George Finney Blakeley joined General Accident in March 1899 when he was around 30, having previously worked as a corn merchant and miller alongside his widowed sister, Ada. He was inspector of agents by 1901 and represented the company at Lincoln and Nottingham before being promoted to resident secretary at Sheffield in December 1905. He was district manager at Leeds when the photograph was taken and was promoted to the management of the more important Birmingham branch in May 1913. A crack rifle shot, he volunteered on the outbreak of war, although over the age limit, and joined the Warwickshire Territorial Battalion as a Captain in November 1914. His name, and those of Tomlinson, McClay, and Marsden is included in the illuminated scroll below.
He later served as a Major in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment 2nd/5th Battalion and was severely injured while in France in 1916 when a shell burst in front of him and fragments struck him in the head and face. A letter he sent to the Birmingham branch while he was in hospital appeared in the staff magazine.
Despite the magazine saying that his injuries were not serious, he subsequently spent long periods in hospital and then left the army in March 1919. He took up the duties of divisional manager for General Accident at the start of April. His injuries were held responsible for his sudden death after his return to civilian life in December that year and his medal roll index card records the fact that he died of wounds.
Percy Eve Miller was the only person originally identified in the photograph. We have another photograph of him in the collection which was taken in 1930 and shows that he had hardly aged. It may have been this photograph which led to the 1912 photograph originally being dated to circa 1930.
Percy joined General Accident in December 1897 at the Glasgow branch when he was 14. He was transferred to Newcastle in 1903 as an inspector where he was promoted to assistant resident secretary before moving to Leeds as assistant secretary in 1907. He was resident secretary when the photograph was taken and, when Mr Blakeley went to Birmingham in 1913, Percy succeeded him as district manager at Leeds. His younger brother, Cyril, had also worked in the branch but had moved in 1912 to the Hull office. He remained as manager at Leeds for the rest of his career until he retired in 1946 due to ill health.
Harold Hainsworth Giddings joined Leeds branch in November 1901 when he was about 25. He had previously been working as an inspector of agents for a life insurance company. He was appointed inspector at York in 1919 and remained there until he retired at the end of April 1945.
Hubert Stanley Mabbott was appointed to the Manchester branch of General Accident in April 1900 when he was 25. He transferred to Leeds branch in April 1912 as fire superintendent. He remained at Leeds until his retirement which was deferred to 1945 so that he could help keep the branch running during the Second World War.
Fred Procter (or Proctor) was the younger brother of Harry Procter, who is also in the photograph. Mr Wood’s original information described him as Harry’s son. He was 13 when he joined the Leeds branch of General Accident in August 1908 as a junior clerk. He left the company in July 1913 and appears eventually have joined the family brokerage, Procter, Smith and Procter.
Arthur Bradley Steel was the other junior clerk and joined the Leeds branch of General Accident in September 1912 when he was 16. He had probably not been with the company long when the photograph was taken. He served as a Corporal in the Royal Field Artillery during the war and then returned to the branch. He left in 1922 and joined the field staff of the Road Transport and General, another Aviva ancestor company, at the start of April that year. He must have been surprised the following year when Road Transport and General became a subsidiary of his previous employers. He was appointed chief clerk of the Road Transport and General Leeds branch in 1924 and held that position until he retired in 1960. I have found him in this photograph which was taken at the Road Transport and General Leeds staff dance in 1952 — the number of people employed in a branch had certainly increased over the years!
