BORN CAISTOR, LINCOLNSHIRE, 26/06/1889. SON OF PHILIP HENRY GLANVILLE SOUTHWELL (1861-1909) AND BEATRICE HELEN NOVELLI (1856-1923), OF 93 QUEEN STREET, FILEY, YORKS. HE WAS EDUCATED AT HULL’S HYMER COLLEGE, WHERE HE PLAYED CRICKET, RUGBY AND HOCKEY. HE WAS A FINE FOOTBALLER AND CRICKETER. BEFORE THE WAR HE STUDIED LAW AND WAS A SOLICITOR. A CLASSICAL MASTER AT RIPPON SCHOOL, 1910-1914.HE SERVED AS A FIRST LIEUTENANT, IN THE 4TH EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT TERRITORIALS. HE DIED OF WOUNDS, ON 10/04/1917, AGED 27. HE IS BURIED AT DUISANS BRITISH CEMETERY, ENTRUN, FRANCE. HIS DEATH WAS REPORTED IN THE DRIFFIELD TIMES, ON 21/04/1917.
HIS NAME IS LISTED ON HULL’S HYMERS COLLEGE MEMORIAL. HE LEFT £700, IN HIS WILL TO HIS BROTHER, PHILIP GLANVILLE SOUTHWELL, A SCHOOL TEACHER, AT THIS FILEY ADDRESS .
Frederick Edmund Glanville SOUTHWELL was born in 1889, in Rothwell, Lincolnshire. His grandfather, Henry Glanville senior, was vicar there. To the family, he seems always to have been just Edmund. At the age of 21, he was with his widowed mother in Mitford Street, Filey, his occupation given as a Student of Law. The choice to follow his father into the legal profession must have been a difficult one to take. In 1908, Harry Glanville junior, a solicitor in London and estranged from his family, had died from a drug overdose. The coroner’s verdict was “suicide whilst temporarily insane”.
Edmund must have decided the law wasn’t for him and he became a schoolteacher instead. In short order, he found himself the head classics master at, arguably, the best grammar school in Hull. It seems he didn’t wait long to answer his country’s call, enlisting in the front line 4th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment, and serving as a Lieutenant.
He may have seen a great deal of action before he was killed on day two of the First Battle of the Scarpe. This engagement was one of several that are subsumed under a longer campaign, and it is “Arras” that can just be made out on the base of the family headstone in St Oswald’s churchyard. His younger brother, Wilfred GLANVILLE SOUTHWELL, of the Hon. Artillery Company was killed at Hooge, in 1915, aged 20 and is commemorated on the Ypres Menin Gate Memorial.
