CFHS code : AL420
Parish : St Andrew the Less
Inscription : ANN CHANDLER d Nov 20 1949 aged 90
Monument : Headstone (broken)/Urn
Above information from Cambridge Family History Society Survey
Monument
Inscription
Ann Chandler (née Thompson) (19 November 1859 – 20 November 1949)
Ann was born in Haslingfield and baptised there on 5 February 1860. She was the eldest child of Richard and Mary Chandler and grew up on Broad Lane in the village, where her father worked a labourer. In 1881 she was living at Emmanuel House, St. Andrew’s Road, where she was the cook to the Palmer family. Ann married Isaac Badcock (1852-1887) in 1884, they lived at Sedgwick Street and had one daughter: Sarah (1885-1964). Isaac worked on the railway as a shunter, and he was killed at work on 6 January 1887. He was knocked down by the Doncaster Express on the railway crossing, Mill Road and was taken to Addenbrooke’s Hospital but was declared dead on arrival. An inquest was held into his death, which returned a verdict of accidental death. Isaac was buried in the St. Andrew the Less area of Mill Road Cemetery on 12 January 1887, but it is not known which grave he was buried in.
Ann married Charles Chandler (1860-1929) in the autumn of 1887, and they had a further six children: Sapper James (1887-1974), Private Charles (1890-1916), Rose Ann (1892-1939), Alice (1896-1904), Ernest (1897-1959)and one more child who died as an infant. Charles had also been born in Haslingfield and the family lived at 24 Ainsworth Street. He worked as a college kitchen porter (1891/1901) and later as a railway plate layer. Their daughter Alice died at the Mill Road Sanitorium aged 9 years old and was buried at Mill Road Cemetery on 12 September 1904, again it is not known if she was buried in this grave.
Ann’s son Charles served with the 1st Cambridgeshire Regiment in the 1st World War and was killed at the front in September 1916 aged 26 years old. He is commemorated in the Knightsbridge Cemetery, Mesnil-Martinsart. In June 1915 one of his letters home was printed in the Cambridge Independent Press under the title of ‘Still Fellows in Civies?’ It read ‘My Word! What a difference! We are now a little bit out of the firing line, about 800 or 1,000 yards from the heathens. They are rather quiet here and have been for some time at this spot. These are very good trenches, so we don’t mind having our rest here. It has been very hot here this last week, and we have had three days marching, so I can tell you we felt it a bit, after seven weeks in the trenches. However, my feet kept quite well. Do you mean to tell me that there are still fellows like myself walking about in ‘civies’? If they are waiting for compulsion, they haven’t a vein of British blood in them, and they are not work two penn’orth of gin (sic). If they had only seen what we went through on the 14th and 15th of March! I well remember it. We rushed to the trenches from houses which were shaking like the leaves on the trees through shell fire, and then for 24 hours under a storm of lead and shrapnel – that was our baptism of fire. And after – worst of all – a trail of human blood along the narrow road where they brought in the wounded. So, Mrs Crouch has let her eldest son go! And still some hang back. My opinion is that they are not worth a suit of khaki. I am afraid they will have to turn out after all. But perhaps we could do without them if they are not willing to come, although we want men badly. I think I could stir up their blood if I were there. I am not at all sorry to be here, simply because this is where I ought to be. A few weeks back I volunteered for the job of grenade thrower. I thought I would like to demolish more than one at a time, but since then I have been told off as a stretcher-bearer. You would be surprised but there are children playing within two miles of the firing line. Well, Cheer-O, don’t worry; we are in a fine place now’. (NB- Conscription was introduced in January 1916 when the Military Service Act was passed. It imposed conscription on all single men between 18 and 41, but exempted the medically unfit, clergymen, teachers and certain classes of essential industrial worker).
Charles Chandler died in 1929 and Ann then went to live with her daughter Sarah, and son in law Robinson Allgood at 28 Linden Close. She died there in November 1949 aged 90 years old.
Sources:
Ancestry
Newspaper archives
Parish burial records transcribed by CFHS
by Claire Martinsen
[If you have any further information about this person, please contact us at Friendsofmillroadcemetery@gmail.com]