SECOND LIEUTENANT GEORGE BENJAMIN JOHNSTONE STODDART
ROYAL AIR FORCE
10TH APRIL 1918 AGE 18
BURIED: PICQUIGNY BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
George Benjamin Johnstone Stoddart was 18 and nine months when he died on 4 March 1918. Born on 21 July 1899 he was therefore just 15 when he enlisted on 1 September 1914, and still 15 when he went to France as a cavalry machine gunner with 6th Dragoon Guards on 23 May 1915, thus qualifying for a 1915 Star. His medal card indicates that he was discharged on 15 January 1915. However, it doesn't look as though he was discharged because he was discovered to be underage but because he received a commission in the Royal Field Artillery.
The 25 January 1918 edition of 'Flight' lists Stoddart's name as among those being confirmed in the rank of Flying Officer, and then three months later among those who have been killed. In the information his mother gave to the War Graves Commission, she says he was killed in action. The announcement of his death in The Times on 16 April says "accidentally killed whilst flying abroad".
Strangely, little has been written about George Stoddart who sounds to have been quite a character. Born George Benjamin Johnstone, the name Stoddart was added after his mother remarried in 1909. Johnstone's father died in 1903 in the London County Asylum. His widow, Rosa, went to work in the Bethlem Royal Hospital Lunatic Asylum. Here she met and married the psychiatrist Dr William Henry Butters Stoddart. In 1911, George, his mother and his two sisters were all living with their step-father at the asylum.