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L/Cpl. James Henry Melton Todd
British Army 11th (Hull Commercials) Btn. East Yorkshire Regiment
from:14 Frederick Terrace, Strickland Street, Hull
(d.28th Mar 1918)
James Todd (my great-uncle) was mortally wounded during the defence of Ayette, on the 27th of March 1918, and died at Doullens the following day.
He had previously been wounded in late 1916 or early 1917 and treated at Puchervillers Hospital, where he made friends with a Welsh soldier, David Jones. He gave Private Jones his soldier's New Testament, with an inscription "To my friend Pte Jones 53911 as a token for his great kindness to me while in Puchervillers Hospital on his day of evacuation 13th January 1917, Pte Jim Todd with best wishes". In 2006, this book turned up in a charity shop in Colwyn Bay, and a local woman, Mrs Bowen, purchased it with the intention of tracing the family. After a correspondence in the local magazine, Hull in Print, she was able to reunite it with the family of my aunt Mrs Wray, one of Jim's nieces.
Jim's mother, Sarah Jane, visited his grave at Doullens on one of the one-month passports that were issued especially for next-of-kin. She gave a false date of birth on the passport, to hide her paper-trail for legal reasons.
Jim's birth in 1893 was registered under the surname Melton, which was the name of her legal husband, whom she had left (together with an infant son) in Scarborough when she came to Hull for fish-gutting work c 1891. His father (and the father of her younger children, including my grandfather) was John Thomas Todd, with whom she had a bigamous marriage ceremony in 1905.
