Occupation

JAMES HARGREAVES MORTON
"ARTIST"
DARWEN, LANCASHIRE

SERJEANT JAMES HARGREAVES MORTON

James Hargreaves Morton lived with his four older sisters: Rachel, Sarah, Fanny and Alice, all unmarried, who worked in the cotton and linen mills of Darwen Lancashire and supported him in his career as an artist. They were proud of him, as the inscription Rachel chose makes clear. They had every reason to be.
Morton received his first training as an artist in Darwen School of Art before winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. After this he took a job teaching art at Darlington Technical School but decided before long that he couldn't concentrate on his painting whilst teaching. It was at this point that his mother and sisters decided he should come home and they would support him whilst he dedicate himself to his painting.
It seems he wasn't totally supported by his sisters. In the 1911 census Morton described himself as a decorative designer in wall paper, working on his own account. There were several wallpaper manufacturers in Darwen who would have bought his designs. But in the following years he became increasingly well known as an artist, exhibiting at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool and at the Royal Academy. One of his best-known paintings, Johanna, which shows a young Belgian refugee, was painted during the first years of the war, as was a rather haunting self portrait in which Morton seems to stare stoically but apprehensively into the future.
Morton was thirty-three when the war broke out. He did not enlist but in 1916 was conscripted. He served with the 5th Battalion East Lancashire Regiment and must have been a capable soldier since within two years he was a serjeant. He was killed in action on 6 November when the battalion launched an attack in the Forest of Mormal, which had to be withdrawn in the face of fierce machine gun fire and a threatened counter attack. The attack succeeded the next day.
After his death, the sisters kept all Morton's paintings, honouring his wish that they should be kept together. But after Alice's death in 1967 they were sold uncatalogued and with no record of the buyers. Recently there has been a revival of interest in his work and in 2013 James Hargreaves Morton A Short Colourful Life was published by the Friends of Darwen Library.

HE LOVED THE FIELDS
HIS PEOPLE AND HIS FLOCKS
A GENTLE SHEPHERD HE

PRIVATE ROBERT SCOTT

Robert Scott's father has composed a beautiful inscription for his son, a "gentle shepherd" who looked after his flocks in the fields of Arnmannoch, Dalbeattie, Dumfries and Galloway, and died of wounds in a base hospital in Etaples.

CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT
SON OF A.B. AND MARY PAIRMAN
OF THE OLD MANSE, BUSBY

PRIVATE JAMES PAIRMAN

This is another biographical inscription. James Pairman's mother was a widow. Was she simply stating the facts when she recorded that he was a Chartered Accountant or was this a matter of some pride for her? James Pairman is commemorated on the Glasgow University Roll of Honour as well as that of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. He was killed on the third day of the Battle of the Somme during fighting round the Leipzig Salient.

ARTIST, OLDHAM, LANCASHIRE

PRIVATE JOSEPH FRANKLIN KERSHAW

Joseph Franklin Kershaw studied at the Royal College of Art and is commemorated on their war memorial. He was born in Oldham, where his father was a prosperous ironmonger, and educated at Oldham Hulme Grammar School. Oldham Library and Art Gallery have three of his paintings, and there is one in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport's Collections. These paintings can be seen on the BBC's Your Paintings site.
Kershaw married in 1908 and it was his widow, Effie, who confirmed his inscription, even though the War Graves Commission doesn't mention her in its register, simply saying that Joseph Franklin was the son of Joseph and Hannah Kershaw of Oldham. I wondered whether there was some antipathy between Joseph Franklin and his parents over his marriage because the 1911 census gives Effie's age as 42, which would have made her 16 years older than her husband. However, the cemetery register for Backup, where Effie was buried on 31 March 1966, gives her age as 85. This means that although she was a couple of years older than her husband she certainly wasn't 16 years older than him. In 1911 the couple were living in Fulham but when Effie Kershaw filled in the War Grave Commission's form she was living in St John's Cross, Storth, a remote house on the shores of Morecombe Bay. Private Joseph Kershaw is commemorated on the Storth war memorial too.

LATE CABINET MAKER
& NEWSAGENT, BOLTON RD.
DARWEN, LANCASHIRE

PRIVATE AMOS TAYLOR

It was important to Amos Taylor's mother, a widow, that she recorded her son's occupations and his place of work on his headstone. They had been his father's occupations too but her husband, Richard, had been dead since before the 1891 census was taken.