Walter Charles Pattenden

Walter Pattenden was born in Bermondsey in 1879. The 1901 Census records Walter living at 148 Union Street, Southwark with his mother Annie and sisters, Annie and Clara, where they shared the house with two other families. Twenty one year old Walter was employed as a Commercial Clerk, while his sisters were both employed as Dressmakers.

The following year on 23 August 1902, Walter married Gertrude Ethel Higham at St. Mary’s Church, Newington, London. The couple lived at 226 Amelia Street, Kennington. The marriage certificate revealed that Walter’s father was named William, and that he was deceased. The 1911 Census shows that the couple had moved to 91 Coteford Street, Tooting with their 6 year old daughter Florence Ethel. Walter’s occupation was as a Shorthand Typist, in Advertising.

Many soldiers went missing during the war, and families were desperate to find out what had happened to them. By the end of 1914, the committee had set up offices in Paris, Boulogne and London, to manage enquiries about the disappeared, and thousands of ‘Searchers’ were recruited to deal with this situation.

On 6 August 1914 Walter was employed at the offices of the Wounded and Missing Department at 83 Pall Mall, under Sir Robert Fox- Symons. The London office began on a small scale at Pall Mall, moving to Arlington Street in April 1915. The office had a staff of about 20 voluntary workers, plus typists, and it is possible that Walter was employed initially as a typist or clerk in a paid capacity. This office became the clearing house for all enquiries received from the public and for all reports collected by the searchers in hospitals at home and abroad.

Records are unclear as Walter has two VAD record cards, but it seems that a year later, on 15 August 1915, Walter was engaged by the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a Searcher (possibly unpaid) and at some point went to France. It is probable that he worked at the office in Boulogne until the office closed on 22 September 1919, which is the date that Walter’s term with the VAD terminated.

The work of Searchers took many forms, from tracing graves, collecting lists of wounded in the hospitals, and returning letters addressed to soldiers picked up on the Marne battlefields that were brought to the office and where possible, returned to the writers. They also checked against lists of prisoners of war provided by the Frankfurt Red Cross. One famous Searcher was the novelist, E.M Forster who was a conscientious objector, and served in Egypt interviewing soldiers in order to try and find out the whereabouts of missing men.

When Walter joined as a VAD, he was living at the Mitcham address, but electoral registers show that he lived at various Lambeth addresses in the 1930’s. Walter died in 1948 at the age of 69. His daughter Florence died in 1982 in Sutton, aged 78.