PRIVATE HARRY JENKS
SOUTH LANCASHIRE REGIMENT
21ST SEPTEMBER 1917 AGE 19
BURIED: MENDINGHEM MILITARY CEMETERY, PROVEN, BELGIUM
There's some interesting information in the first line of this inscription - it was five years after their son's death before the War Graves Commission asked Harry Jenks' parents to confirm the details for his headstone and to choose an inscription. Jenks was killed in 1917 so the year was 1922. This is one reason why so many headstones don't have inscriptions, families no longer lived at their old addresses. This and the fact that the Commission charged 3 1/2d per letter, which it is assumed many families were not able to afford.
However, there's another interesting fact about this inscription - it runs to 78 letters and the Commission's limit was 66. But some official has simply added up the letters, multiplied them by 3 1/2d and written 22s 9d in the margin. The Jenks family were not rich. In the 1901 census the father, Alwyn Jenks, was a general labourer. In the 1891 census he was an inmate in a boys' reformatory.
Although charging the bereaved for a headstone inscription, when their relation had died serving their country, seems rather outrageous to us today, the State was burying the dead and choosing their headstone so paying for an inscription was seen as a way for families to feel that they had had a part to play in the commemoration of their dead. And the fact that there was no fuss over the length of this inscription shows that you didn't have to be a person of influence to exceed the stipulated length - you just had to be prepared to pay.
Jenks served with the 1st/4th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment, part of the 55th West Lancashire Division. The Division took part in the attack on the Menin Road Ridge, 20-23 September. Jenks died in a Casualty Clearing Station at Mendinghem on the 21st.