Saturday 12th September 1914

Recruitment Meeting in Arncliffe

Tunstill held a meeting at 7.30pm in the schoolroom in Arncliffe. "Spirited addresses" were delivered by the Chairman (Canon Shuffrey), Mr. C.A. Milford of Settle and by Tunstill himself. At the close of the meeting "several young men gave in their names as willing recruits".

Two men were later identified with Arncliffe when the final list of Tunstill's recruits was published:

Percy Hodgson; 28 years old, had been working as a farm labourer.

John Simpson; aged 19, had been living with his mother, Annie, and stepfather, Joseph Ibbotson, at West View, Arncliffe. He was employed as a 'mail driver'.

Recruitment Meeting in Grassington

While Gilbert Tunstill was conducting his recruitment campaign, other initiatives were also underway which would eventually yield recruits who would become ‘adopted’ members of Tunstill’s Company. One such meeting was held in the Town Hall in Grassington. The meeting attracted a considerable crowd and speeches were made by Captains Tee, Lansdale and Mercer**. The meeting produced 18 volunteers. 

• John Edward (known as Jack) Airey; was 17 years old, and therefore under-age when he volunteered. The Airey family had lived for some years in Lon Preston, with Jack working as a farm labourer.
• Benjamin Beaumont  (known as Ben); was 21 years old and working as a carter. He lived, along with his parents and elder brother, Fred, at Sunny Nook, Hebden, near Skipton.
• John Boothman; aged 20, he was living with his parents and younger brother at Fell View Farm, Burnsall.
• Willie Burley; had been born in Islington but had been brought to Yorkshire by the Reverend W.J. Stavert, rector of Burnsall. He worked seven years for Rev. Stavert, before leaving to take up a job at a quarry in Threshfield. He had become a well-known member of the local community and was associated with the Golden Fleece Lodge of Oddfellows in Appletreewick
• Thomas Darwin; a 32 year-old married man with three young children. He had been working as a mason’s labourer. The family lived at Low Head in Grassington. His younger brother, Claude, had emigrated to Australia.
• John Dinsdale; 19 years old and working on the family farm near Cracoe. The family was originally from Aysgarth but had been settled in Cracoe for more than twenty years.
• William Eley; was 32 years of age and had been married for five years to Helena (Briggs), with whom he had one child, Frank, who was born in August 1913. He had met Helena when  both were working at The Oakwell Fever Hospital at Birstall, Dewsbury. Eley had been then employed as a Hospital Porter, but the family had recently moved to King Street, Grassington and William had taken up work in the local limestone quarries. He would be one of a handful of men among Tunstill’s recruits with any previous military experience, having served for eight years in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, including serving in the Boer War. On leaving the Regular Army he had remained on the National Reserve and so would have been called up on the outbreak of war.
• Charles Belton Eyre; worked as a quarryman (he had also previously worked as a railway porter), and lodged at the Post Office in Threshfield. He was 19 years old and originally from Lincolnshire. The whole family had moved to Yorkshire with his parents and elder sister all in service with Mr. Clement Holdsworth, at Mile House, Kettlewell. Charles himself was connected with the Arthur Anderton Mechanics Institute in Grassington.
• Robert (known as Bob) Harrison; was 19 years old (born 4^th November 1894) and had left home to work as a farm labourer in his early teens before becoming a joiner. His trade developed from his family background; his father, William, was a head forester and woodsman. He and his wife, Jane, had six children (five of them boys) and all had been brought up at Smelt Mill, Pateley Bridge. Like Eyre, he was connected with the Arthur Anderton Mechanics Institute.
• William Parkinson Inman; only 16 years old, he concealed his true age in order to volunteer. He had been working as a farm labourer. His father had died in 1910 leaving a widow and two other daughters as well as William; the family lived in Linton. In the absence of a surviving service record it has not been possible to establish details of his service record. However, it seems that he left 10DWR at some point, and certainly did not go to France when the Battalion was posted overseas in August 1915. At some point (date and details unknown) he would be transferred to the Labour Corps, with whom he would serve abroad. It is not known when he was finally released from the Army.

• 

  Christopher Kelly's signed attestation
  He gave his age as 35, so as to meet current
  criteria; in reality he was 40.

  Christopher John Kelly; at 45 years of age was among the oldest recruits to Tunstill’s Company. He lied about his age when enlisting, claiming to be only 35. He was an Irishman, being born in Youghal, County Cork in 1874. By his mid-teens he had arrived in England and was living in Settle with his sister Mary, and her husband Edward Ralph. In 1895 he had married Rose Mary Lynch and set up home at first on Taylor Street, Clitheroe, where the two eldest of their four children were born. The family later moved to various locations in the Settle area. By 1914 the family were living at Rock Cottage in Grassington, with Christopher working in the local quarries.
• Walter Limmer; was the youngest of four sons of Robert and Mary Limmer; he was born in Langcliffe in 1896. His parents came originally from East Anglia, but had spent much of their married life in Yorkshire. By 1903 the family had settled at Chapel Fold, Grassington, with Walter’s father working as a bricklayer. His father died in the Spring of 1914, aged 68, by which time Walter was working as a farm labourer, and living in with his employer, Richard Clark, an elderly farmer and his family, at Pyethorns, Wigglesworth, Long Preston. His three elder brothers, William, John and Alfred, were all married and had set up homes in the area.
• William (known as Billy) Oldfield; was born on 21^st August 1889. He was the fourth and youngest child of William and Thirza Oldfield (nee Milner). The family lived in Cowlow Lane, Doveholes, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, with William snr. working as a labourer. However, before young William had reached his first birthday his father had died, leaving his widow with the care of four children under the age of 10. Thirza soon re-married (in 1892), to Enoch Ball, who worked in the local limestone quarries. Together Thirza and Enoch had three more children before Thirza died in 1904. In 1905 William’s older sister, Martha, married William Blagden, who was from another local quarrying family. When Martha and her husband moved to the Skipton area, where William Blagden took up a job as a blacksmith, William Oldfield, and his sister, Kate Elizabeth Oldfield, moved with them.  In 1909 Kate married local Grassington man John Henry Darwin (he was the brother of Tom Darwin, who was to volunteer along with William Oldfield). In 1911 William was lodging with his sister and brother-in-law at Swinden, near Skipton and working as a labourer. He continued to live with the family when they subsequently moved to Grove House in Grassington.
• Arthur Stubbs; lived with his family (parents, four brothers and two sisters) at Bridge House, Grassington. He was 22 years old (b. 16^th April 1892) and worked as a driver for M.C. Chapman & Co. Like Eyre and Harrison, he was associated with the Arthur Anderton Mechanics Institute.
• Tom Swales; born in the Spring of 1898 and just 16 years old when he enlisted. His father, Thomas, had been married to Grace (Bownas) for 22 years and  combined farming with work as a coal merchant. The family lived at Yew Tree Farm, Rylstone; Tom had three sisters and a younger brother. After leaving school Tom took up a job as a postman, working from Cracoe Post Office and delivering to the local rural communities.
• George Edward Verity; was the son of Robert Verity who was originally from Grassington but had for many years worked as a joiner in Keighley. George and his seven siblings had all been born in Keighley. George enlisted in Grassington, even though he was still living in Keighley at the time. He was just 18 years old when volunteering (he was born 6^th July 1896) and had been working as a shop assistant.
• Thomas Stockdale Worsley; at 19 years old, he was the second oldest of the seven children of Nixon and Betsy Worsley who had a dairy farm at Carnshow, Hebden, near Grassington. Since leaving school Thomas had been working on the family farm.
• Richard Harper; he was 21 years old and had been born in Liverpool, though his family had moved (c.1910) back to Sedbergh, where both his parents had been born.

**James Henry Stanley Tee and Stephen Minchin Mercer had already been involved in raising recruits at Addingham (see 5^th September).

Ernest Esau Lansdale was 43 years old and running a business as a wholesale provisions merchant in Ilkley. His two sons, Ernest Conway Lansdale and Herbert Lansdale, both worked in the family business.  Lansdale had held a commission in the ASC (territorials) for a number of years.

Daniel William Paris Foster re-enlisted in the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment at the regimental depot in Halifax. He would become Quartermaster to the Battalion., and, as such, a key figure for Tunstill and his men.

Daniel Foster was 47 years old and had been working as a painter. He had previously served many years with the regiment and had risen to the rank of Colour Sergeant. At the time of his re-enlistment he was living at 1 John Street, Greetland, near Halifax, with his second wife Emily (Oldfield); they had married in 1911 and had one daughter. Daniel already had eight other children by his first marriage, to Emma Catherine (Lawrence), who had died in 1908.

Daniel's second son, Richard Lawrence Foster (b.1893) had been serving as a regular soldier with 2nd Battalion, West Riding Regiment, at the start of the war. He had been killed in action on 24th August near the village of Hautrage, west of Mons. How far this tragic loss influenced Daniel's decision to re-enlist can only be a matter of speculation.

Thomas Lewis Ingram, elder brother of Robert Stewart Skinner Ingram, who was to become one of the original officers assigned to Tunstill’s Company and had written to the War Office in support of his brother’s application for a commission (see 16^th August) was himself granted a temporary commission, with the rank of Lieutenant, in the Royal Army Medical Corps.