Teenage girl's body in Wardown lake

 

Digest of stories from the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph: November 25th, 1916.

Wardown Lake (Cox 1914)

A letter discovered on the body of a teenage girl in Wardown lake yesterday morning suggested the tragedy may have been the result of her love for a Biscot Camp soldier who had been included in a draft to the station.

The letter identified the girl as 19-year-old Annie Smith, from Newmarket, who was in service to Mr E. Gale of 27 Avondale Road, Luton, for the previous two months. She was sent out yesterday morning to purchase some tomatoes for breakfast but never returned.

Park keeper Alf Lawrence was informed at 10.45 am that there was a body in the lake. It was recovered with the help of another park keeper and transferred by police to the mortuary behind the Town Hall.

It is said that the deceased was engaged to a soldier at Biscot Camp. Her body was being transferred in the police ambulance at the same time as the soldier was en route to the railway station.

The Coroner at Bedford has been informed and an inquest will be held on Monday. The girl's father has in the meantime been communicated with.

  • On Tuesday, while riding a horse at Biscot Camp, Lieut W.T. Cuthbert, of the London R.F.A., was heavily thrown and fell with such force that his right collar bone was broken. He was taken to the Bute Hospital, where he remains an in-patient. Lieut Cuthbert has seen service in France, but after coming home through illness he was transferred to Biscot, where he had been for only a fortnight.

  • The marriage was solemnised at Gibraltar on November 7th between Sgt John Gilbert Shaw, R.G.A. Gibraltar, and Miss Rose Ethel Edgecombe, late of Luton. [Records show that Rose was born in the Hampstead Workhouse in London and was described as an orphan and boarder with her two sisters at the home of a Flitwick family during her childhood. She was listed as a domestic when she sailed on the RMS Mooltan to Gibraltar from London on October 27th, 1916. She died in Bedfordshire in 1976 at the age of 79.]

  • Quartermaster-Sgt Frederick William Lawrence, son of Midland Railway foreman Arthur Edward Lawrence and his wife Sarah Ann, was married at the Holy Trinity Church, Walton Breck, Liverpool, to Miss Evelyn Alice Whittaker. The bridegroom has served in France since November 1914, when he returned after seven years in India with the 1st Indian Cavalry Division. His parents live at 166 High Town Road, Luton.

  • Pte Reginald Bigg, 21-year-old son of Mr William Bigg, of Tennyson Road, Luton, has rejoined his regiment, the East Surreys, after spending time in hospital in France suffering from influenza. He had already recovered from a wounded knee caused by a shrapnel shell. Pte Bigg had originally joined the Public School Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment.

  • Mrs Clara Wood, of 48 Cobden Street, has had official notice from the War Office that her son, Pte Robert Wood, aged 19, of the Bedfordshire Regiment, has been wounded in action. The company to which he belongs were endeavouring to capture a village when a sniper suddenly came up behind and shot him in the left leg. Pte Wood turned round and bombed the sniper, and he has brought home with him a souvenir in the form of a German's gas helmet.

  • Mrs Canderton, of 24 Maple Road, Luton, has received information that her son, Pte James Thomas Canderton, of the Queen's Regiment, was killed in action at the end of last month, just two months after going to France.

  • Although Mrs Dunham, of 1 North Street, Luton, has not received official notification from the War Office that her son, Gunner Horace Dunham, has been killed, a letter from Capt W. S. Green states: "I regret to have to tell you that your son, No. 2783, Gunner Horace George Dunham, was killed in action on 14th November."

  • Mr Ronald Head, the Hon. Secretary of the Luton and District Rifle Club, has received from Major Harold A. Wernher, a Vice-President and one of the warmest supporters of the club, a very handsome solid silver cup for competition annually amongst the club members in memory of his younger brother, the late Lieut Alex Wernher. The engraved cup has been made by the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Co., of Regent Street, London.

  • With a 6-0 victory over Queen's Park Rangers at home today, Luton Town FC kept their first clean sheet of the season in the London Combination. The visitors turned up two players short and had to call on the services of Bdr Beckett from Biscot Camp and old Luton Town reserve player T. Toms to make up numbers. Luton were 4-0 up at the intervals through Simms (2), Brown and Hoar (penalty). After Butcher missed a penalty and then had a goal disallowed for offside, Simms and Hoar completed the scoring in the final 12 minutes of the match.