Rifleman Cecil Robert Tolcher
1/9th (County of London) Battalion (Queen Victoria’s Rifles), London Regiment
Died of fever in Mesopotamia
Date of Birth: 21 March 1897
Place of Birth: Croxley, Hertfordshire
Date of Death: 23 January 1917 aged 19
Buried: Buried in Merville Communal Cemetery, France; remembered on Salcombe War Memorial.
Awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal
Rifleman Cecil Robert Tolcherage 19.
Born in Croxley, Hertfordshire, on 21 March 1897, he was the son of Frederick and Henrietta Tolcher. In 1901 Cecil is shown with his siblings living with his grandmother in Salcombe. His father who was born in Salcombe died in this year. In 1906 he was shown attending school at Watford and his father was listed as John S Morse; this is his step-father. By 1911 he is living with his mother, a tobacconist, two brothers and a sister in Bromley, Kilburn.
His only army record states that he enlisted at Teignmouth; he went to France on 5 November 1914 and served on the Western Front until his death.
9th (County of London) Battalion (Queen Victoria’s Rifles) cap badge © IWM (INS 7245)
Cecil was serving with 9th Battalion, London (Queen Victoria Rifles) Regiment, service number 5045, in trenches near Lavente. The Battalion was heavily shelled and he died of wounds on 23 January 1917.
Buried in Merville Communal Cemetery, France; remembered on Salcombe War Memorial.
Total gratuities of £8.3s.4d were paid to his mother.
